The Revolutionary War encompassed at least two struggles: one for freedom from British rule, and another, quieter but no less significant fight for the liberty of African Americans, thousands of whom fought in the Continental Army. Because these veterans left few letters or diaries, their story has remained largely untold, and the significance of their service largely unappreciated. Standing in Their Own Light restores these African American patriots to their rightful place in the historical struggle for independence and the end of racial oppression. Revolutionary era African Americans began their lives in a world that hardly questioned slavery; they finished their days in a world that increasingly contested the existence of the institution. Judith L. Van Buskirk traces this shift to the wartime experiences of African Americans. Mining firsthand sources that include black veterans’ pension files, Van Buskirk examines how the struggle for independence moved from the battlefield to the courthouse—and how personal conflicts contributed to the larger struggle against slavery and legal inequality. Black veterans claimed an American identity based on their willing sacrifice on behalf of American independence. And abolitionists, citing the contributions of black soldiers, adopted the tactics and rhetoric of revolution, personal autonomy, and freedom. Van Buskirk deftly places her findings in the changing context of the time. She notes the varied conditions of slavery before the war, the different degrees of racial integration across the Continental Army, and the war’s divergent effects on both northern and southern states. Her efforts retrieve black patriots’ experiences from historical obscurity and reveal their importance in the fight for equal rights—even though it would take another war to end slavery in the United States.

Winnig the College Admission Game: for thr Parents and Students is an innovative book that helps students of all backgrounds-and their parents-develop a winning strategy forgetting into and succedding at the college of their chioice. In a unique flip-book format, this book presents parallel content to parents and students to reveal the mysteries surrounding selective college admission and helps parents and students create a blueprinr for collaboration. This unique approach toward the shared goal of finding a good college fit allows parents to learn how best to help their child while respecting the fact that this important rite of passage belongs to the student.

Philip Van Buskirk enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1846, when he was twelve years old. Beginning in 1851, he recorded his thoughts and experiences on board ship, providing a firsthand account of the countries he visited, the brawling nation in which he lived, and the everyday life and homoerotic exploits of the sailors and marines who sailed with him. In this intimate portrait, the author draws on Van Buskirk's unconventional and revelatory diaries and on social, religious, and medical writings of the time.

In July 1776, the final group of more than 130 ships of the Royal Navy sailed into the waters surrounding New York City, marking the start of seven years of British occupation that spanned the American Revolution. What military and political leaders characterized as an impenetrable "Fortress Britannia"—a bastion of solid opposition to the American cause—was actually very different. As Judith L. Van Buskirk reveals, the military standoff produced civilian communities that were forced to operate in close, sustained proximity, each testing the limits of political and military authority. Conflicting loyalties blurred relationships between the two sides: John Jay, a delegate to the Continental Congresses, had a brother whose political loyalties leaned toward the Crown, while one of the daughters of Continental Army general William Alexander lived in occupied New York City with her husband, a prominent Loyalist. Indeed, the texture of everyday life during the Revolution was much more complex than historians have recognized. Generous Enemies challenges many long-held assumptions about wartime experience during the American Revolution by demonstrating that communities conventionally depicted as hostile opponents were, in fact, in frequent contact. Living in two clearly delineated zones of military occupation—the British occupying the islands of New York Bay and the Americans in the surrounding countryside—the people of the New York City region often reached across military lines to help friends and family members, pay social calls, conduct business, or pursue a better life. Examining the movement of Loyalist and rebel families, British and American soldiers, free blacks, slaves, and businessmen, Van Buskirk shows how personal concerns often triumphed over political ideology. Making use of family letters, diaries, memoirs, soldier pensions, Loyalist claims, committee and church records, and newspapers, this compelling social history tells the story of the American Revolution with a richness of human detail.

This diary is one of the most unusual produced during the Civil War because it contains very little about military life. Early in the war Van Buskirk abandoned his regiment, working as a schoolmaster, farmhand, and casual laborer. He wrote of the suffering civilians endured at the hands of contending armies. But he also found time to chronicle his fascination with handsome young lads he encountered during his life as a deserter--unwittingly providing modern readers an illuminating glimpse of class differences and sexual mores. Naval, social and sexual historians, in particular, will find much valuable source material.

The Russian writer Lydia Ginzburg (1902–90) is best known for her Notes from the Leningrad Blockade and for influential critical studies, such as On Psychological Prose, investigating the problem of literary character in French and Russian novels and memoirs. Yet she viewed her most vital work to be the extensive prose fragments, composed for the desk drawer, in which she analyzed herself and other members of the Russian intelligentsia through seven traumatic decades of Soviet history. In this book, the first full-length English-language study of the writer, Emily Van Buskirk presents Ginzburg as a figure of previously unrecognized innovation and importance in the literary landscape of the twentieth century. Based on a decade's work in Ginzburg’s archives, the book discusses previously unknown manuscripts and uncovers a wealth of new information about the author’s life, focusing on Ginzburg’s quest for a new kind of writing adequate to her times. She writes of universal experiences—frustrated love, professional failures, remorse, aging—and explores the modern fragmentation of identity in the context of war, terror, and an oppressive state. Searching for a new concept of the self, and deeming the psychological novel (a beloved academic specialty) inadequate to express this concept, Ginzburg turned to fragmentary narratives that blur the lines between history, autobiography, and fiction. This full account of Ginzburg’s writing career in many genres and emotional registers enables us not only to rethink the experience of Soviet intellectuals, but to arrive at a new understanding of writing and witnessing during a horrific century.