Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire examines the role of mercenary figures in negotiating relations between the United States and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Mercenaries are often treated as historical footnotes, yet their encounters with the Ottoman world contributed to US culture and the impressions they left behind continue to influence US approaches to Africa and the Middle East. The book's analysis of these mercenary encounters and their legacies begins with the Battle of Derna in 1805-in which the US flag was raised above a battlefield for the first time outside of North America with the help of a mercenary army-and concludes with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882-which was witnessed and criticized by many of the US Civil War veterans who worked for the Egyptian government in the 1870s and 1880s. By focusing these mercenary encounters through the lenses of memory, sovereignty, literature, geography, and diplomacy, Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire reveals the ways in which mercenary force, while marginal in terms of its frequency and scope, produced important knowledge about the Ottoman world and helped to establish the complicated relationship of intimacy and mastery that exists between Americans in the United States and people in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, South Sudan, and Turkey.

A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 1: White American Muslims before 1975 is the first in-depth study of the thousands of white Americans who embraced Islam between 1800 and 1975. Drawing from little-known archives, interviews, and rare books and periodicals, Patrick D. Bowen unravels the complex social and religious factors that led to the emergence of a wide variety of American Muslim and Sufi conversion movements. While some of the more prominent Muslim and Sufi converts—including Alexander Webb, Maryam Jameelah, and Samuel Lewis—have received attention in previous studies, White American Muslims before 1975 is the first book to highlight previously unknown but important figures, including Thomas M. Johnson, Louis Glick, Nadirah Osman, and T.B. Irving.

Between the Revolution and the Civil War, the dialogue of religious skepticism and faith profoundly shaped America. Although usually rendered nearly invisible, skepticism touched-and sometimes transformed-more lives than might be expected from standard accounts. This book examines Americans wrestling with faith and doubt as they tried to make sense of their world.