Hot Of
The Press : History professors publish new books
Three members of William Jewell’s history
department recently
published or will soon have published books in their
fields of
academic expertise.
Inviting readers to destinations such as eighteenth-century
London, post-Civil War Louisiana and modern-day China,
these scholars convey the importance of historical
perspective
while embodying the values of lifelong learning inherent
in a
liberal arts education.
Following are brief accounts of the Jewell history
faculty’s
recent publications which are contributing to the body
of
knowledge in a wide range of subject matter.
Talk of the Town: The Rise of Alexandria, Louisiana,
and the
Daily Town Talk
By Fredrick Marcel Spletstoser
 With what he called “a tribute to the Alexandria
Daily Town
Talk and the men who founded it,” Dr. Fredrick
Marcel
Spletstoser, professor of history, truly bestowed a
gift to the
people of Alexandria.
His forthcoming book Talk
of the Town: The Rise of Alexandria,
Louisiana, and the Daily Town Talk recounts the first
sixty years
of Alexandria’s daily newspaper, one of the most
successful of
its kind.
Accepting in 1983 a position
to commemorate the newspaper’s first 100 years,
Spletstoser commenced a nearly
25-year relationship with the publication, creating
five
volumes of in-house work before beginning his most
recent
project, in which he chronicles Alexandria’s
past while
focusing on the very people who were influential to
its
history.
In what was an unusual gesture,
the newspaper provided Spletstoser with unrestricted
access to all of its historical
documents, including personal notes.“It is very uncommon for a corporation to open
everything
to you,” he said, noting that he even used personal
diaries,
letters and handwritten notes to depict the people
who
founded and ran the paper a century ago.
This unfettered access allowed the author “to
do much
deeper, intimate personal sketches [on a] group of
unique,
sometimes bizarre, individuals,” he said.
This mix of such unconventional resources with oral
history
combined to create a unique historical work Talk of
the Town
has been published by Louisiana State University Press.
Excerpt
This study of the Alexandria Daily Town
Talk and the city that has been its home
since March 17, 1883, begins in a relatively
isolated southern village that had been virtually
destroyed during the Civil War and traces
the development of the community and its
newspaper through the end of World War II.
Talk of the Town illustrates the role
provincial journalism played in the planning
and expansion of towns throughout the country
as it relates the history of one southern
place and the people who lived there. |
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Finding My Way Home: A Christian Life
in Communist China
By Nettie Ma with Kenneth Chatlos
 In what is one of the only
memoirs that treats modern China from an angle of Christian
faith, Finding My Way
Home: A Christian Life in Communist China, Dr. Kenneth
Chatlos, Oxbridge professor of history and chairman,
details one woman’s amazing Christian journey.
In 1992, after getting to know Dr. Nettie Ma, instructor
of
orchestra and harp, Chatlos asked her to speak to his
Modern China class about her experiences.“I told her, ‘It’s
a fascinating story. You ought to put that in a
book,’” Chatlos said, remembering the conversation
he had
with Ma after she visited his class several times.
Thus began a journey for both of them.
In 1999, after many conversations,
Chatlos began to draft a
copy of the memoir, weaving in material about modern
Chinese history.
Finding My Way Home was published by Smith and Helwys
in
April 2004.
Excerpt
When I was a young girl,
my parents warned me never to record my story
with black ink on white paper. Their political
experiences in . . . Mao’s China had taught them
the dangers of such candor and openness.
My
parents’ caution served me well in
my homeland. But now that I have moved to
the United States, . . . now that I have
found my way home, . . . it is time to speak
and to write. |
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 Before the Bobbies: The
Night Watch and Police Reform in
Metropolitan London, 1720-1830
By Elaine A. Reynolds
A long-time murder mystery
fan, Dr. Elaine Reynolds, professor
of history, chose a fitting dissertation topic at Cornell
University.
An expansion of the same
research produced Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch
and Police Reform in Metropolitan
London, 1720-1830, a book that contends modern policing
in
London began to develop before Scotland Yard and Robert
Peel’s centralized Metropolitan Police of 1829.
The author used as one source to reach her conclusions
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British police reports,
which she said provide glimpses into the lives of eighteenthcentury
British life.
From this specific research, she came away with a deeper
insight.“Human nature doesn’t seem to change,” she
said. “Instead
of automobile accidents, it’s horses.”
Reynolds said this period in history raises the perennial
questions people still ask today, such as how does
a
society prevent crime and what role should police play
in
the community.
“That’s why I like this,” Reynolds
said. “It’s where the
real lives of people–the social history topic–collide
with
the state.”
Before the Bobbies was published in the United Kingdom
by
Palgrave MacMillan and in the United States by Stanford
University Press.
Excerpt
The evolution of professional,
centralized policing in London from 1720
to 1830 gives us another perspective on
the origins of the Metropolitan Police
that allows for a fuller appreciation of
just how complex policing and police reform
were...The techniques and methods of modern
professional police practice, including
full-time officers, beat systems, a crime
prevention focus, and modern bureaucratic
organization, could all be found in the
parishes long before the Metropolitan Police
took to the streets in 1829.
This is not
to deny the important contributions of
the Fieldings, the Bow Street magistrates,
and Peel's Irish police. But London was
not‘unpoliced’ in
the eighteenth century. |
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