The Cotton Kings relates a colorful economic drama with striking parallels to contemporary American economic debates. At the turn of the twentieth century, dishonest cotton brokers used bad information to lower prices on the futures market, impoverishing millions of farmers. To fight this corruption, a small group of brokers sought to control the price of cotton on unregulated exchanges in New York and New Orleans. They triumphed, cornering the world market in cotton and raising its price for years. However, the structural problems of self-regulation by market participants continued to threaten the cotton trade until eventually political pressure inspired federal regulation. In the form of the Cotton Futures Act of 1914, the federal government stamped out corruption on the exchanges, helping millions of farmers and textile manufacturers. Combining a gripping narrative with the controversial argument that markets work better when placed under federal regulation, The Cotton Kings brings to light a rarely told story that speaks directly to contemporary conflicts between free markets and regulation.

The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans

Business & Money

Baker, Bruce E.

Hahn, Barbara

Economics

Oxford University Press

A great deal has been written about southern memory centering on the Civil War, particularly the view of the war as a valiant lost cause. In this challenging new book Bruce Baker looks at a related, and equally important, aspect of southern memory that has been treated by historians only in passing: Reconstruction. What Reconstruction Meant examines what both white and black South Carolinians thought about the history of Reconstruction and how it shaped the way they lived their lives in the first half of the twentieth century.Baker addresses the dominant white construct of "the dark days of Reconstruction," which was instrumental both in ending Reconstruction and in justifying Jim Crow and the disfranchisement of African Americans in the South, setting the tone for early historians' accounts of Reconstruction. Looking back on the same era, African Americans and their supporters recalled a time of potential and of rights to be regained, inspiring their continuing struggles to change the South.Baker draws on a tremendous range of newspapers, memoirs, correspondence, and published materials, to show the intricate process by which the white-supremacist memory of Reconstruction became important in the 1890s, as segregation and disenfranchisement took hold in the South, and how it began to crumble as the civil rights movement gained momentum. Examining the southern memory of Reconstruction, in all its forms, is an essential element in understanding the society and politics of the twentieth-century South.

What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South (The American South Series)

History

Americas

University of Virginia Press

A great deal has been written about southern memory centering on the Civil War, particularly the view of the war as a valiant lost cause. In this challenging new book Bruce Baker looks at a related, and equally important, aspect of southern memory that has been treated by historians only in passing: Reconstruction. What Reconstruction Meant examines what both white and black South Carolinians thought about the history of Reconstruction and how it shaped the way they lived their lives in the first half of the twentieth century.
Baker addresses the dominant white construct of "the dark days of Reconstruction," which was instrumental both in ending Reconstruction and in justifying Jim Crow and the disfranchisement of African Americans in the South, setting the tone for early historians' accounts of Reconstruction. Looking back on the same era, African Americans and their supporters recalled a time of potential and of rights to be regained, inspiring their continuing struggles to change the South.
Baker draws on a tremendous range of newspapers, memoirs, correspondence, and published materials, to show the intricate process by which the white-supremacist memory of Reconstruction became important in the 1890s, as segregation and disenfranchisement took hold in the South, and how it began to crumble as the civil rights movement gained momentum. Examining the southern memory of Reconstruction, in all its forms, is an essential element in understanding the society and politics of the twentieth-century South.

Essential Skills for Historians: A Practical Guide to Researching the Past

Essential Skills for Historians helps undergraduate students make the transition from general university study to a more in-depth study of history, and to gain the skills and techniques they need to conduct an independent research project or embark on a career as a professional historian. The book begins with an examination of the historical discipline and its relevance to contemporary culture. It then guides readers through the steps of developing a research project, using two sample projects that illustrate the connections between core proficiencies such as critical thinking and effective time management, and professional proficiencies such as source criticism and historical interpretation. By following these source projects as they develop, the book also highlights the importance of sound historical practice and a critical understanding of the past in contemporary society. Finally, the book discusses the outcomes of historical research and reveals the wide array of possibilities for careers built upon the skills gained from studying history. Covering key topics such as research strategies, reading sources, effective writing and professional ethics - and with useful features such as glossaries, guidelines for student projects, hands-on exercises, further reading and a companion website containing extra resources - Essential Skills for Historians equips aspiring historians with everything they need to succeed whilst also demonstrating the value of history in the wider world.

Hare, J. Laurence

Wells, Jack

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Bloomsbury Academic

Essential Skills for Historians helps undergraduate students make the transition from general university study to a more in-depth study of history, and to gain the skills and techniques they need to conduct an independent research project or embark on a career as a professional historian. 
The book begins with an examination of the historical discipline and its relevance to contemporary culture. It then guides readers through the steps of developing a research project, using two sample projects that illustrate the connections between core proficiencies such as critical thinking and effective time management, and professional proficiencies such as source criticism and historical interpretation. By following these source projects as they develop, the book also highlights the importance of sound historical practice and a critical understanding of the past in contemporary society. Finally, the book discusses the outcomes of historical research and reveals the wide array of possibilities for careers built upon the skills gained from studying history.
Covering key topics such as research strategies, reading sources, effective writing and professional ethics – and with useful features such as glossaries, guidelines for student projects, hands-on exercises, further reading and a companion website containing extra resources – Essential Skills for Historians equips aspiring historians with everything they need to succeed whilst also demonstrating the value of history in the wider world.

This book traces the history of mob violence in North and South Carolina, probing the origins of a phenomenon that has left an open wound in the American psyche. Lynching marked the violent outer boundaries of race and class relations in the American South between Reconstruction and the civil rights era. Everyday interactions could easily escalate into mob violence and did so thousands of times. Bruce E. Baker examines this important aspect of American history by studying seven lynchings in North and South Carolina and looking behind the superficial accounts and explanations provided at the time to explain the deeper causes and wider contexts of these events. 
Many studies of lynching begin only after Reconstruction had ended and African- Americans found themselves with little political power. This Mob Will Surely Take My Life, however, provides the most thorough study yet written of the Ku Klux Klan's most violent episode - the killing of thirteen black militia members in Union, South Carolina, in 1871- to argue that this act of mob violence set the stage in important ways for the entire lynching era. Enmities born in Reconstruction lingered afterwards and lay behind an 1887 lynching in York County, South Carolina. As lynching became an unsurprising part of life in the South, African-Americans even found that they could use it themselves, in one case to punish a child's killer and in another to settle a church's factional squabbles. The book ends with a discussion of the varied forces that opposed lynching and how, by the 1930s, they had begun to be effective.

This Mob Will Surely Take My Life: Lynchings in the Carolinas, 1871-1947

Continuum

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Baker, Bruce E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Baker, Bruce E.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Baker, Bruce E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans

What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South (The American South Series)

What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South (The American South Series)

Essential Skills for Historians: A Practical Guide to Researching the Past

Essential Skills for Historians: A Practical Guide to Researching the Past

This Mob Will Surely Take My Life: Lynchings in the Carolinas, 1871-1947