Sexual violence and exploitation occur in many conflict zones, and the children born of such acts face discrimination, stigma, and infanticide. Yet the massive transnational network of organizations working to protect war-affected children has, for two decades, remained curiously silent on the needs of this vulnerable population. Focusing specifically on the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, R. Charli Carpenter questions the framing of atrocity by human rights organizations and the limitations these narratives impose on their response. She finds that human rights groups set their agendas according to certain grievances-the claims of female rape victims or the complaints of aggrieved minorities, for example-and that these concerns can overshadow the needs of others. Incorporating her research into a host of other conflict zones, Carpenter shows that the social construction of rights claims is contingent upon the social construction of wrongs. According to Carpenter, this pathology prevents the full protection of children born of war.

This biography of one of World War II’s great military leaders is a “rich tribute to a staunch American naval hero” (WWII Quarterly). John S. “Slew” McCain was an old-school sailor. Wiry, profane, a cusser, and a gambler, he reminded more than one observer of Popeye. He was also a pioneer in the hard-hitting naval tactics that brought Imperial Japan to its knees. McCain graduated from Annapolis in 1906 and served aboard an armored cruiser in World War I. Perceiving the future of naval warfare, he earned his aviation wings in 1936, and by 1939, McCain was commander of the aircraft carrier USS Ranger. He was thus well-placed to play a leading role in America’s cut-and-thrust war with the Japanese across the broad expanses of the Pacific. In 1942, he was made commander of all land-based aircraft during the campaign for Guadalcanal. Though he took his share of blame for the disaster at Savo Island, he counterattacked with every means at his disposal, to the point of commandeering the planes of the crippled carriers Enterprise and Saratoga to reinforce US strength on Henderson Field. By the time the US returned to the Philippines, McCain was leading a fast carrier task force under William “Bull” Halsey. When asked what he thought about his carrier commander, Halsey replied, “Not much more than my right arm.” McCain’s carrier group would destroy thousands of enemy planes and hundreds of ships with aggressive swarming tactics. Four days after Japan officially surrendered, McCain died in his bed. His name has lived on, however, through his son, who became commander of US naval forces in the Pacific, and his grandson, John S. McCain III, carrier pilot, Vietnam POW, and United States Senator. Drawing upon a wealth of primary sources, including information provided by the McCain family, as well as an expert grasp of the titanic battles waged by the US armed forces in the Pacific, Alton Keith Gilbert has provided the fullest account of the Admiral John McCain’s life yet written.

The vision of America seen through the lyrics of its popular songs

Gustav Victor Rudolf Born was born in Göttingen in 1921 as one of the three children of Hedwig Born and the already famous physicist Max Born who became Nobel laureate in Physics in 1954. On the grounds of the Born’s Jewish origins and the open pacifism of Max Born, the National Socialists forced the Born family to leave Germany in 1933, soon after the National Socialist Party seized power. The family immigrated to Great Britain, first to Cambridge, later to Edinburgh. The Born children spent the rest of their childhood and youth in Britain, and Gustav Born obtained his medical degree from Edinburgh University, his doctoral degree from the University of Oxford. During his long and distinguished academic career, Born has held chairs of pharmacology at the Royal College of Surgeons, at Cambridge University, and at King’s College in London. At the end of his outstanding career and his invaluable contributions to knowledge of the pathophysiology of the circulation, haemosthasis, thrombosis and atherogenesis, he was Research Professor at the William Harvey Research Institute. In this book he reflects on the life journey the Born family was forced to take. The text stems from the conference “Göttingen and the development of the Natural Sciences”, organized by the Georgia Augusta’s Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in November 2000. Gustav Born agreed to attend and follow the invitation to present a keynote address on “The Born family in and out of Göttingen”, which was held in the University’s sanctum sanctorum, the so-called Alte Aula. His address was the highlight of the conference, attended by many from Göttingen’s academic community and concluded with a long standing ovation. In a personal conversation with Arnulf Quadt (professor for particle physics at Göttingen University), briefly before his sad passing in April 2018, Gustav Born encouraged to make the book on the story of his family available again. The University of Göttingen is deeply honoured to follow Gustav Born’s suggestion and present a commented reprint of the original keynote in 2002.

African-Americans had seen their fortunes ride a sea of change ever since the first Africans set foot on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The onset of plantation-based economies in the South meant that they were to be held at all cost to the land; and the less they know of their rights and fight for them, the better for the plantation and slaveowners. That, however, was bound to be addressed by people from their own ranks, as well as white men who are aware of the evil and inhumanity of the conditions they were consigned to. In Born Black in the USA, we trace such developments, perhaps culminating in the presidency of Barack Obama. Yet, there is that nagging questions at the end: Has discrimination really ended in the USA?