University of Illinois Press

Medicine and Slavery
The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia

Todd L. Savitt

Widely regarded as the most comprehensive study of its kind, this volume offers valuable insight into the alleged medical differences between whites and blacks that translated as racial inferiority and were used to justify slavery and discrimination.

In Medicine and Slavery, Todd L. Savitt evaluates the diet, hygiene, clothing, and living and working conditions of antebellum African Americans, slave and free, and analyzes the diseases and health conditions that afflicted them in urban areas, at industrial sites, and on plantations.

"In all details of symptoms and sores and cadavers, this is a meticulously researched analysis of medical and health conditions and a valuable account of the relationship between black health and white society. It is fresh and objective, and represents a major contribution to the understanding of the pre-Civil War South and its peculiar institution." -- Times Literary Supplement

"This impressive work contains a fascinating analysis of sickle-cell anemia, heat and cold tolerance, lactose deficiency, tuberculosis, and other ills that plagued the slave population." -- Choice

"No historian writing about slavery in America should be without this masterful study. No one learning about slavery should be without it. Savitt's work is indeed the definitive work on the subject." -- Journal of Mississippi History

"Medicine and Slavery will be necessary reading for all scholars dealing with black history and the antebellum south, as well as those concerned with the history of medicine and medical thought." -- Journal of American History

Todd L. Savitt is a professor in the Department of Medical Humanities at the Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, and coeditor of Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South.

August 2002
352 pages. 6 x 9 inches. 7 photographs, 10 line drawings.
Paper, ISBN 0-252-00874-X. $18.95
American History / African American Studies / Medicine

The War for American Independence:

From 1760 to the Surrender at Yorktown in 1781

Samuel B. Griffith II

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/griffith.html


"A book on the American Revolution so fresh
and continually surprising is a miracle at this
time. It is sharp, fast, and beautifully written. . .
. General Griffith has made it, for once, a
two-sided war." -- Barbara Tuchman

The War for American Independence provides
an unprecedented view of America's struggle for
independence in its world context. With wit,
clarity, and dramatic effect, Samuel B. Griffith
II vivifies the characters and incidents of the
period on both sides of the Atlantic, drawing
from personal diaries and letters, newspaper
accounts, and detailed battle maps to create a
unique alternative to standard histories of the
period.

This enduring, exceptionally readable resource,
first published in 1976 as In Defense of the
Public Liberty: Britain, America, and the
Struggle for Independence from 1760 to the
Surrender at Yorktown in 1781, was honored
with the Sons of Liberty Award for the best
book on the American Revolution.

"It is the insights which the author derives from
his own military experience and his willingness
to share these so frankly with the reader that
gives the book its distinctive character. . . . It is,
in the best sense, a soldier's view of the war." --
Economist

"General Griffith has put a global face on
Britain, America and the struggle for
independence over two centuries ago." --
Herbert Mitgang, New York Times

Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith II,
U.S.M.C. (ret.), was wounded at Guadalcanal
and was awarded the Navy Cross in 1942 and
the Army Distinguished Service Cross in 1943.
He earned his Ph.D. in Chinese military history
at New College, Oxford University, and
published articles and essays in the New Yorker,
Town and Country, and the Saturday Evening
Post. He is the author of The Battle for
Guadalcanal and the translator of Mao
Tse-Tung's On Guerrilla Warfare and
Sun-Tzu's Art of War.

June 2002
784 pages. 6 x 9 1/4 inches. 57 photographs, 11 line drawings.
Cloth, ISBN 0-252-02745-0. $55.00
Paper, ISBN 0-252-07060-7. $24.95
Military History

I See America Dancing
Selected Readings, 1685-2000

Edited by Maureen Needham

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/needham.html

Representing dancers, scholars, admirers, and
critics, I See America Dancing is a diverse
collection of primary documents and articles
about the place and shape of dance in the United
States from colonial times to the present.

This volume offers a lively counterpoint
between observers of the dance and dancers'
views of what they do when they dance. Dance
traditions represented include the Native
American pow-wow; Congo Square, where New
Orleans slaves gathered to participate in
traditional tribal music and dance activities on
Sunday afternoons; the colonial Playford Balls
and their modern offspring, country line
dancing; and the Buddhist-inspired Japanese
Bon dances in Hawaii. Antidance perspectives
include government injunctions against Native
American dancing and essays from a range of
speakers who have declared the waltz, the twist,
or the senior prom to be a careless quick-step
away from hell or the brothel.

I See America Dancing examines the styles that
have marked theatrical dance in America, from
French ballet to minstrel shows, and presents the
views of influential dancers, choreographers,
and reformers who have shaped American
dance, including Isadora Duncan, John Durang,
Imre Kiralfy, Ted Shawn, Martha Graham,
Doris Humphrey, and Katherine Dunham.
Specific pieces examined include George
Ballanchine's ballet Stars and Stripes, Yvonne
Rainer's protest piece "Flag Dance, 1970," Bill
T. Jones's "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's
Cabin/The Promised Land," and Sonjé Mayo's
"Naked in America."

Covering historical social attitudes toward dance
as well as the performers and their works, I See
America Dancing is a comprehensive, scholarly
sourcebook that captures the energy and passion
of this vital artform.

Supported by a grant from Lifeworks
Foundation

Maureen Needham is an associate professor of
dance history at the Blair School of Music,
Vanderbilt University.

April 2002
296 pages. 6 x 9 inches. 12 photographs.
Cloth, ISBN 0-252-02693-4. $44.95
Paper, ISBN 0-252-06999-4. $18.95
Dance

Chicago and the Old Northwest, 1673-1835

Milo Milton Quaife

Introduction by Perry R. Duis

In this sweeping survey, Milo Milton Quaife traces the
events leading from Chicago's emergence as a key
outpost at the edge of the frontier to its establishment as
the crossroads of American commerce.

Quaife narrates the opening of trade and the course of
European exploration, facilitated by the Chicago portage
and subsequent construction of the Illinois and Michigan
Canal. He profiles the personalities who shaped the early
Chicago area, from the French explorers La Salle,
Marquette, and Joliet to the ambitious Champlain, who
set the course for decades to come by securing for New
France the enmity of the Iroquois.

Quaife provides a full description of the Indian trade,
which constituted the basis of commerce in the region for
the entire period covered by the book, as well as a
blow-by-blow account of how old rivalries and alliances
between Indian tribes complicated the English and
French plans for divvying up the New World. He also
describes the conflicts between natives and whites with
sympathy and detail on both sides, depicting Indian
attacks on white settlements as rationally motivated acts
of strategy or revenge.

First published in 1913, Chicago and the Old
Northwest, 1673-1835 is one of the earliest works of a
man who became one of the premier scholars of his
generation. In a new introduction, Chicago historian
Perry R. Duis sketches Quaife's long and varied career,
his influence on the history profession, and his crusade
to prove that a black trader was the first permanent
resident of Chicago.

Milo Milton Quaife (1880-1959) was the author of
many books, including The Development of Chicago,
1674-1914, Chicago's Highways, and The Kingdom
of Saint James.

Perry R. Duis, a professor of history at the Univer-sity
of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of Challenging
Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837-1920 and
other books.

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May 2001
520 pages. 6 x 9 inches. Smyth-sewn
Cloth, ISBN 0-252-02656-X. $50.00x
Paper, ISBN 0-252-06970-6. $24.95
American History / Chicago
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French Roots in the Illinois Country

The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial Times

Carl J. Ekberg

Winner of the Kemper and Leila Williams Book Prize for
the Best Book on Louisiana History, French Roots in
the Illinois Country creates an entirely new picture of
the Illinois country as a single ethnic, economic, and
cultural entity. Focusing on the French Creole
communities along the Mississippi River, Carl J. Ekberg
shows how land use practices such as medieval-style
open-field agriculture intersect with economic and social
issues ranging from the flour trade between Illinois and
New Orleans to the significance of the different
mentalities of French Creoles and Anglo-Americans.

"A great comprehensive revisionist work on colonial
Illinois. Quite simply, no respectable library--public,
college, or university--should be without this book."
—Robert McColley, author of Slavery and
Jeffer-sonian Virginia

"Ekberg has produced an extraordinarily learned and yet
most readable book . . . [that] sheds subtle light on the
significant differences between the French and English
colonial experiences." —Morris S. Arnold, Louisiana
History

"A scholar's delight. . . . Ekberg is the first historian to
call attention to the unique pattern of French colonial
settlement in Illinois." —John Mack Faragher,
American Historical Review

"This book will remain the definitive study on this
subject for a long time. It should be required reading for
anyone, scholar or layperson, curious about life in the
French settlements in North America." —Pierre Lebeau,
Journal of Illinois History

CARL J. EKBERG professor emeritus of history at
Illinois State University, is also the author of the
award-winning Colonial Ste. Genevieve: An Adventure
on the Mississippi Frontier.

October 2000
376 pages. 6 x 9 inches. 11 photographs. 21 line drawings
Paper, ISBN 0-252-06924-2. $22.50a
American History / Agriculture

Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783?1854

Second Edition

Edited by Donald Jackson

This beautiful two-volume, boxed set covers all aspects of
the Lewis and Clark Expedition from its authorization and
planning through Meriwether Lewis's violent death. A
cornerstone of any library emphasizing the American
West, Donald Jackson's splendid edition assembles letters,
memoranda, and other documents of the expedition,
providing detailed commentary and notes.

"Donald Jackson's prestigious Letters of the Lewis
and Clark Expedition is equalled only by the original
journals of the expedition in its standing as a premier
reference concerning virtually every dimension of the
exploring enterprise." -- Irving W. Anderson, South
Dakota History

"Jackson's masterpiece rates the highest praise. . . . No
matter how deeply a Lewis and Clark student may have
delved into the voluminous storehouse of the journals and
subsequent books related to the historically monumental
expedition, Jackson's Letters adds a treasure trove of
previously unpublished material." -- Hal G. Stearns,
Montana

Donald Jackson was editor in chief of the University of
Illinois Press from 1948 to 1968 and the author or editor
of a number of important books on the history of the
American West, including (with Mary Lee Spence) The
Expeditions of John Charles Frémont.

February 2000
2-volume Boxed set. Volume 1, 424 pages. volume 2, 448 pages. 6 x 9 inches. 19 illustrations.
ISBN 0-252-00697-6. $100.00s
American West

July 26, 2002