University Press Of Kansas imprint: 325 books

When the Supreme Court strikes down favored legislation, politicians cry judicial activism. When the law is one politicians oppose, the court is heroically righting a wrong. In our polarized moment of partisan fervor, the Supreme Court’s routine work of judicial review is increasingly viewed through...

A series of laws passed in the 1970s promised the nation unprecedented transparency in government, a veritable "sunshine era." Though citizens enjoyed a new arsenal of secrecy-busting tools, officials developed a handy set of workarounds, from over classification to concealment, shredding,...

The original edition of A Season of Inquiry, first published in 1986, offered the public an insider's account of the workings of the Church investigation and of the nation's espionage agencies, including the CIA's covert action against the democratically elected regime of Salvador Allende in Chile....

In the United States we elect members of the House of Representative from single-member districts: the candidate who receives the most votes from each geographically defined district wins a seat in the House. This system—so long in place that it seems perfectly natural—is, however, unusual. Most...

As Americans, we cherish the freedom to associate. However, with the freedom to associate comes the right to exclude those who do not share our values and goals. What happens when the freedom of association collides with the equally cherished principle that every individual should be free from invidious...

Japan's invasion of China in 1937 saw most major campaigns north of the Yangtze River, where Chinese industry was concentrated. The southern theater proved a more difficult challenge for Japan because of its enormous size, diverse terrain, and poor infrastructure, but Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek...

March 1968: three miles below the stormy surface of the North Pacific, a Soviet submarine lay silent as a tomb-its crew dead, its payload of nuclear missiles, once directed toward strategic targets in Hawaii, inoperable. No longer a real threat, the sub still presented an alluring target and it was...

The Warren Commission's major conclusion was that Lee Harvey Oswald was the "lone assassin" of President John F. Kennedy. Gerald McKnight rebuts that view in a meticulous and devastating dissection of the Commission's work. The President's Commission on the Assassination of President...

During the Allies’ invasion of Italy in the thick of World War II, American soldier James Kutcher was hit by a German mortar shell and lost both of his legs. Back home, rehabilitated and given a job at the Veterans’ Administration, he was soon to learn that his battles were far from over. In 1948,...

Without what the Allies learned in the Mediterranean air war in 1942-1944, the Normandy landings—and so, perhaps, the Second World War II—would have ended differently. This is one of many lessons of The Mediterranean Air War, the first one-volume history of the vital role of airpower during the...

Beginning with Brown v. Board of Education and continuing with a series of decisions that, among other things, expanded the reach of the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court that Richard Nixon inherited had presided over a progressive revolution in the law. But by 1972 Nixon had managed to replace four...

Most people could probably tell you that Lizzie Borden "took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks," but few could say that, when tried, Lizzie Borden was acquitted, and fewer still, why. In Joseph A. Conforti's engrossing retelling, the case of Lizzie Borden, sensational in itself, also...

They are war stories, filled with danger and deprivation, excitement and opportunity, sorrow and trauma, scandal and controversy—and because they are the war stories of nurses, they remain largely untold. Laurie Stoff's pioneering work brings the wartime experiences of Russia's "Sisters of...

Public accountability is critical to a democracy. But as government becomes ever more complex, with bureaucracy growing ever deeper and wider, how can these multiplying numbers of unelected bureaucrats be held accountable? The answer, more often than not, comes in the form of inspectors general, monitors...