In this engrossing account, footnotes to history give way to footnotes as history, recounting in their subtle way the curious story of the progress of knowledge in written form.

Alternating Current's annual literary journal dedicated to historical and contemporary views on history contains poetry, maps and historical photographs, fiction, essays, articles, and nonfiction by various authors, both contemporary and historical, about various topics of history. Within these covers fantastically drawn by artist Terry Fan, you'll meet the Romanovs, Serbian poet Vojislav Ilic, Dr. Zhivago, Stephen Crane, Geronimo, Lord Strathcona, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. You'll learn of the misprint in Herman Melville's obituary, the constellations in the Southern Planisphere mapped out by Nicolas de La Caille, what might have been exchanged between William Wordsworth and Thomas Carlyle, how Laura Cereta thrived on insomnia, and who's buried in the cemeteries at Pere-Lachaise and Montparnasse. Our first Featured Writer, A. Jay. Adler -- an interviewee for a junior fellowship at Harvard Society of Fellows, Vermont Studio Center grant recipient, and Maui Writers Conference Screenwriting Competition prize winner -- will take you through Jewish life on the Lower East Side, Van Gogh's mental asylum, Route 66, and the bordello rooms of Old-West Tombstone. Our second Featured Writer, Jesseca Cornelson -- a Catskill Center's Platte Clove Preserve and a Sundress Academy for the Arts' Firefly Farms resident artist -- will take you through the Tablet of Daughters, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville's journals of the South, and a history of her home state of Alabama's unfortunate past with racial lynchings. Their work is showcased next to three of our Pushcart Prize nominees and the first, second, and third places, and nine notable-mention finalists, for our 2015 Charter Oak Award for Best Historical. From the Wild West to the Holocaust to Lincoln's exhumation to the folk music of the sixties to the lost city of Atlantis, you'll discover entire past worlds between these covers and meet a cast of characters colorful enough to color every page.

The triumphant story of how an all-Black Broadway cast and crew changed musical theatre—and the world—forever. "This musical introduced Black excellence to the Great White Way. Broadway was forever changed and we, who stand on the shoulders of our brilliant ancestors, are charged with the very often elusive task of carrying that torch into our present."—Billy Porter, Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award-winning actor If Hamilton, Rent, or West Side Story captured your heart, you'll love this in-depth look into the rise of the 1921 Broadway hit, Shuffle Along, the first all-Black musical to succeed on Broadway. No one was sure if America was ready for a show featuring nuanced, thoughtful portrayals of Black characters—and the potential fallout was terrifying. But from the first jazzy, syncopated beats of composers Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, New York audiences fell head over heels. Footnotes is the story of how Sissle and Blake, along with comedians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, overcame poverty, racism, and violence to harness the energy of the Harlem Renaissance and produce a runaway Broadway hit that launched the careers of many of the twentieth century's most beloved Black performers. Born in the shadow of slavery and establishing their careers at a time of increasing demands for racial justice and representation for people of color, they broke down innumerable barriers between Black and white communities at a crucial point in our history. Author and pop culture expert Caseen Gaines leads readers through the glitz and glamour of New York City during the Roaring Twenties to reveal the revolutionary impact one show had on generations of Americans, and how its legacy continues to resonate today. Praise for Footnotes: "A major contribution to culture."—Brian Jay Jones, New York Times bestselling author of Jim Henson: The Biography "With meticulous research and smooth storytelling, Caseen Gaines significantly deepens our understanding of one of the key cultural events that launched the Harlem Renaissance."—A Lelia Bundles, New York Times bestselling author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker "Absorbing..."—The Wall Street Journal

How should historians speak truth to power – and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history – especially long-term history – so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which gave rise to our conflicted present? The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society. Leading historians Jo Guldi and David Armitage identify a recent shift back to longer-term narratives, following many decades of increasing specialisation, which they argue is vital for the future of historical scholarship and how it is communicated. This provocative and thoughtful book makes an important intervention in the debate about the role of history and the humanities in a digital age. It will provoke discussion among policymakers, activists and entrepreneurs as well as ordinary listeners, viewers, readers, students and teachers. This title is also available as Open Access.

The fourth issue of Alternating Current Press' annual literary publication contains 48 works of poetry, photographs, fiction, essays, articles, and nonfiction by 33 authors about various historical topics. Within these pages, you will find contemporary outlooks on history right alongside little-known historical works that feel as fresh and as vibrant (and as scary) as if they were written today. Here, the old meets the new, and you'll discover fascinating history from a personal, accessible, non-scholarly literary approach. As we go through an age of accountability and social justice as a society, the writing we're seeing becomes more aware, more prominent in its voicing of history's ill treatment of certain subsets of people and ideas. We start right out with the gut punch of American slavery, hearing the voices of then and now, through Rev. Richard Allen, slavemasters, runaways, and Frederick Douglass, and leading up to Juneteenth, when enslaved workers in Texas finally learned that they'd already been free for two years. We'll meet Civil War zombies and cattle-hunting soldiers, and we'll go in search of the lost hoof of a famous fire horse. We'll explore the missionary failures of David Livingstone and Eleazar Wheelock and travel the seafaring journeys and shipwrecks of robber Joaquín Murrieta, arctic explorers, British lightermen, and one unfortunate girl in a rum keg. Women like Conchita Cintrón will have their firsts (and be arrested, naturally), and we'll unravel the dark mind of Virginia Woolf. We'll learn about the Brothertown Indians, the ill beginnings of Dartmouth College, and the massacres and stereotypes that Native Americans endured in the mid-to-late 1800s. We'll travel to England with Samson Occom, Dominic Fanning, Oliver Cromwell, nuclear bombs, and the erosion of the East Yorkshire coastline through the years. Art is explored through the eyes of Leda with her swan, Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, the photography of the Great Depression, and Victorian photographs with dead people. Featured Writer Kindra McDonald will take us through the Dismal Swamp and into the suicidal minds of Robert Frost and Meriwether Lewis, then through a history of salt, foot binding, and lost languages. Featured Writer Benjamin Goluboff examines the work and art curation of John Quinn and Walker Evans, the former responsible for the 1913 Armory Show that was the first exhibit of modern art, and the latter a renowned photographer of life in the 1930s. Their work is showcased next to the winners and finalists for the 2018 Charter Oak Award for Best Historical.