In The Soldier’s Two Bodies, James M. Greene investigates an overlooked genre of early American literature—the Revolutionary War veteran narrative—showing that it by turns both promotes and critiques a notion of military heroism as the source of U.S. sovereignty. Personal narratives by veterans of the American Revolution indicate that soldiers in the United States have been represented in two contrasting ways from the nation’s first days: as heroic symbols of the body politic and as human beings whose sufferings are neglected by their country. Published from 1779 through the late 1850s, narrative accounts of Revolutionary War veterans’ past service called for recognition from contemporary audiences, inviting readers to understand the war as a moment of violence central to the founding of the nation. Yet, as Greene reveals, these calls for recognition at the same time underscored how many veterans felt overlooked and excluded from the sovereign power they fought to establish. Although such narratives stem from a discourse that supports centralized, continental nationalism, they disrupt stable notions of a unified American people by highlighting those left behind. Greene discusses several well-known examples of the genre, including narratives from Ethan Allen, Joseph Plumb Martin, and Deborah Sampson, along with Herman Melville's fictional adaptation of the life of Israel Potter. Additional chapters focus on accounts of postwar frontier actions, including narratives collected by Hugh Henry Brackenridge that voice concerns over populist violence, along with stranger narratives like those of Isaac Hubbell and James Roberts, which register as fantastic imitations of the genre commenting on antebellum racial politics. With attention to questions of historical context and political ideology, Greene charts the process by which veteran narratives promote exception, violence, and autonomy, while also encouraging restraint, sacrifice, and collectivity. Revolutionary War veteran narratives offer no easy solutions to the appropriation of veterans’ lives within military nationalism and sovereign violence. But by bringing forward the paradox inherent in the figure of the U.S. soldier, the genre invites considerations of how to reimagine those representations. Drawing attention to paradoxes presented by the memory of the American Revolution, The Soldier’s Two Bodies locates the origins of a complicated history surrounding the representation of veterans in U.S. politics and culture.

An explosive thriller of drugs, gang warfare, and two fatherless teenage boys on the wrong side of the law. In a bleak Stockholm suburb where juvenile gang crime is rapidly on the rise, two 19-year-old boys, best friends since third grade and drug addicts since age 9, have spent their young lives establishing a ruthless criminal enterprise--known as the Raby Warriors. With the recruitment of children as foot soldiers, the Warriors are now poised to become the most powerful syndicate in the region. Twenty years on the force, Jose Pereira now heads the Organized Crime and Gang Section in Raby. If it was not so deadly, Pereira might appreciate the absurdity of watching boys like Leon and Gabriel, raised on Hollywood images, morph themselves into characterizations of gangsters. After Leon and Gabriel execute a maximum-security prison break, in which a female guard is kidnapped and feared murdered, Pereira Chief Superintendent Ewert Grens joins the investigation, a maverick detective who never gives up. For Grens, this case awakens troubled ghosts from his past. Soon all four are on a violent collision course that will irrevocably change all their lives.

Originally published in 1957, this classic work has guided generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology. Throughout history, the notion of two bodies has permitted the postmortem continuity of monarch and monarchy, as epitomized by the statement, “The king is dead. Long live the king.” In The King’s Two Bodies, Ernst Kantorowicz traces the historical dilemma posed by the “King’s two bodies”—the body natural and the body politic—back to the Middle Ages. The king’s natural body has physical attributes, suffers, and dies, as do all humans; however the king’s spiritual body transcends the earth and serves as a symbol of his office as majesty with the divine right to rule. Bringing together liturgical works, images, and polemical material, Kantorowicz demonstrates how early modern Western monarchies gradually began to develop a political theology. Featuring a new introduction and preface, The King’s Two Bodies is a subtle history of how commonwealths developed symbolic means for establishing their sovereignty and, with such means, began to establish early forms of the nation-state.

This vibrant collection of essays reveals the intimate politics of how people with a wide range of relationships to war identify with, and against, the military and its gendered and racialised norms. It synthesises three recent turns in the study of international politics: aesthetics, embodiment and the everyday, into a new conceptual framework. This helps us to understand how militarism permeates society and how far its practices can be re-appropriated or even turned against it.

The award-winning combat historian and author of Washington’s Immortals honors the Unknown Soldier with this “gripping story” of America’s part in WWI (Washington Times). The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is sacred ground at Arlington National Cemetery. Originally constructed in 1921 to hold one of the thousands of unidentified American soldiers lost in World War I, it now receives millions of visitors each year. “With exhaustive research and fluid prose,” historian Patrick O’Donnell illuminates the saga behind the creation of the Tomb itself, and the stories of the soldiers who took part in its consecration (Wall Street Journal). When the first Unknown Soldier was laid to rest in Arlington, General John Pershing selected eight of America’s most decorated veterans to serve as Body Bearers. These men appropriately spanned America’s service branches and specialties. Their ranks include a cowboy who relived the charge of the light brigade, an American Indian who heroically breached mountains of German barbed wire, a salty New Englander who dueled a U-boat for hours in a fierce gunfight, a tough New Yorker who sacrificed his body to save his ship, and an indomitable gunner who, though blinded by gas, nonetheless overcame five machine-gun nests. In telling the stories of these brave men, O’Donnell shines a light on the service of all veterans, including the hero they brought home. Their stories present an intimate narrative of America’s involvement in the Great War, transporting readers into the midst of dramatic battles that ultimately decided the conflict.

By 1914, Australia's German immigrants were well-regarded in their communities and made up (after Irish and Scots) the fourth-largest white ethnic community in Australia. This history traces the experience of the immigrants who enlisted for service in World War I and the difficulties they faced.