Books

In 1953, seven universities seceded from the NCAA’s Southern Conference to form the Atlantic Coast Conference. Founding members Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina and Wake Forest were soon joined by Virginia. Inspired by national academic and gambling scandals, and a bowl game crisis in 1951, the ACC’s leaders hoped to reduce the commercialism and professionalism that permeated college athletics in the 1950s.

This first ever full-length history examines founding of the ACC, the star athletes and coaches and football and basketball season highlights, along with the negotiations that led to the creation one of America’s most successful athletic conferences.

Ante Pavelić was the leader of the fascist party of Croatia (the Ustaše), who, on Adolf Hitler's instruction, became the leader of Croatia after the Nazi invasion of 1941. Pavelić was an extreme Croatian nationalist who believed that the Serbian people were an inferior race - he would preside over a genocide that ultimately killed an estimated 390,000 Serbs during World War II. Croatia under Ante Pavelic provides the full history of this period, with a special focus on the United States' role in the post-war settlement. Drawing on previously unpublished documents, Robert McCormick argues that President Harry S. Truman's Cold War priorities meant that Pavelic was never made to answer for his crimes. Today, the Ustaše remains difficult legacy within Croatian society, partly as a result of Pavelić's political life in exile in South America. This is a new account of US foreign policy towards one of the Second World War's most brutal dictators and is an essential contribution to Croatian war-time history.

International contributors from the fields of political science, cultural studies, history, and literature grapple with both the local and global impact of World War I on marginal communities in China, Syria, Europe, Russia, and the Caribbean. Readers can uncover the neglected stories of this World War I as contributors draw particular attention to features of the war that are underrepresented such as Chinese contingent labor, East Prussian deportees, remittances from Syrian immigrants in the New World to struggling relatives in the Ottoman Empire, the war effort from Serbia to Martinique, and other war experiences. By redirecting focus away from the traditional areas of historical examination, such as battles on the Western Front and military strategy, this collection of chapters, international and interdisciplinary in nature, illustrates the war’s omnipresence throughout the world, in particular its effect on less studied peoples and regions. The primary objective of this volume is to examine World War I through the lens of its forgotten participants, neglected stories, and underrepresented peoples.

Ivan Meštrovic, one of the most highly-regarded Croatian artists, especially in the early twentieth century, crafted powerful free-standing sculptures. Meštrovic featured religious and heroic themes but exhibited a keen understanding of pain and suffering in his work. His final years were spent at Notre Dame University where his Pieta is featured in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.