"Composer, lyricist, playwright, performer, director, theater owner, and star actor George M. Cohan (1878-1942) definitively shaped the burgeoning genre of musical comedy and the institution of Broadway in the early twentieth century. Remembered today for classic tunes like "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Give My Regards to Broadway," he has been called "the father of musical comedy" and is memorialized with a statue in Times Square. In his day, he was famous as the "Yankee Doodle Boy" from his hit song and as the "Man Who Owned Broadway" from his musical of the same name. His songs and shows captured the spirit of an era when staggering social change gave new urgency to efforts to define Americanism. This book, the first on Cohan in fifty years and the first scholarly study on the subject, is not a biography but rather situates Cohan as a central figure of his day, placing his multifaceted contributions within overlapping historical and cultural contextual webs to examine his wide-ranging cultural impact. Chapters interweave discussion of his songs and shows with explorations of the roles he played in public life-entertainer, Broadway magnate, Irish American, celebrity, and, above all, emblem of patriotism. This approach offers not only a fuller understanding of his shows and career but also new perspectives on fundamental debates about American identity and the performing arts in the early twentieth-century United States"--

Beautiful, vivacious and fearless, Agnes Leclerc was 21 years old when she met Prince Felix Salm, a Prussian officer in the Union Army at the outbreak of the US Civil War. Their marriage took Agnes from small-town America to the royal palaces of Europe. She accompanied Felix on his Civil War campaigns, followed him to Mexico to fight for Emperor Maximilian, then returned home to his ancestral castle in Germany and war with France. Presidents, governors and generals succumbed to her charms. She pleaded with the implacable Benito Juarez for Maximilian's life and the German Kaiser honoured her for her heroism during the Franco-Prussian War. Although Felix's life was cut short in 1870, Agnes lived out the rest of her life as a stately European aristocrat.

Prince recalls his life at sea, including service as a privateer during the Revolution.