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In the history of the study of Meteor Crater, there is an interlude between its initial geologic exploration in early 1890s (finalized by the seminal publication of the volcanic model by Gilbert in 1896) and the spectacular research-prospective activity of Barringer, completed with a meteoritic concept published in 1905. Here it is shown that the period between 1896 and 1905 did not represent a conceptual stasis in solving the mystery of the Arizona crater. Popular interest in the attractive theme was promoted by known scientists, such as Crookes, Holder, and Meyer. However, it was primarily exemplified by the work of Joseph A. Munk. In unnoticed publications from 1903 to 1906, he presented Coon Mountain indubitably as a meteorite crater, along with a proposal to adopt the appropriate name of Meteorite Mountain for this natural curiosity. His proimpact geologic arguments were widely repeated in later papers. In addition, Munk was a visionary pioneer in the propagation of the geotourist attraction represented by this geologic wonder, as manifested in his well-read guidebook Arizona Sketches. Furthermore, a surprising but significant issue is the hidden stimulating role of Fred W. Volz, known hitherto as a local businessmen and meteorite dealer. Especially in the light of Munk’s publications, Volz is shown to have been an insightful observer of geologic phenomena, including a progressive revival of Gilbert’s incipient conception of a buried “stellar body” under Coon Mountain (rejected by Gilbert himself). Even if this activity can be downgraded as only popular writing, Munk and (to some degree) Volz ought to be known at least as inspiring propagators and therefore pioneers of the meteorite hypothesis regarding Meteor Crater, independently of the widely known Barringer engagement.

This first book-length presentation of the results of our excavations at el-Jib has been written for the general reader who is concerned with the contribution that archaeology has made to the biblical history of the site... In telling the story of Gibeon I have tried to show how the tale of the city unfolded week by week and year by year through excavation and study. I have sought to give in these pages a personally conducted tour, as it were, of the ruins of ancient Gibeon and what we have seen in them... The results of the excavations at el-Jib are unique in that they can be related with a high degree of certainty to specific events described in the Old Testament. For the first time in the history of scientific archaeology in the land of the Bible an actual place name of a biblical city, neatly incised on clay, has been found under circumstances which make certain the identification of the name with the ruins.--from the Preface

The revolt masterminded by Babo in Herman Melville's Benito Cereno in 1855 turned inside out Captain Amasa Delano's account of the same event in his Narrative of Voyages and Travels in 1817. In the 2020s, Benito Cereno provides new insights into the ways in which Black lives in a global community still struggle to overcome the dehumanizing results of colonialism while the United States continues to wrestle with systemic racism resulting from its long legacy of chattel slavery. One early example of the influential power of Melville's “slumbering volcano” of a story came at the beginning of Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man . One of Greg Grandin's many insights is that a significant number of the enslaved Africans would have been Muslims.

After the 1831 Snowtown race riots, Rhode Island held its first executions in thirty years, hanging three men within nineteen months. The same tumult of class, race, and conceptions of public space that contributed to these deaths led Rhode Island to become the first state to abolish public execution in 1833.

The desirable size and characteristics of current immigrant inflows into the United States, numerically larger than those experienced by any other country in history, are the subject of vigorous debate. This debate has striking antecedents, not only in its passionate intensity but also in the specifics of the arguments enlisted. Reprinted below in full is an especially articulate expression of anti‐immigration sentiments and reasoning written by the eminent late‐nineteenth‐century economist and statistician Francis Amasa Walker. It appeared, under the title “Restriction of Immigration,” in the June 1896 issue of Atlantic Monthly (Volume 77, no. 464, pp. 822–829). In the 1880s, as Walker notes in this article, more than 5 million foreigners entered US ports. Immigration was accelerating. The 1890 census recorded a total US population of 62.2 million; 9.2 million of these were foreign born. More than 97 percent of this immigrant population came from Europe and Canada. But the composition of immigrants by country of origin, hence by ethnic background, was changing, with southern and eastern Europe taking an increasingly larger share of the total. Regulations on the admissibility of immigrants did bar entry to some persons with personal characteristics deemed undesirable. Walker notes “gross and scandalous neglect” in enforcing even these rules, but his concern is not with the numerically small effect their strict application would entail. He argues for restricting immigration at large—for “protecting the American rate of wages, the American standard of living, and the quality of American citizenship from degradation.” He recognizes that “the prevailing sentiment of our people [is] to tolerate, to welcome, and to encourage immigration, without qualification and without discrimination,” but seeks to refute the rationale underpinning those sentiments. To counter the notion that immigration represents “a net reinforcement of our population,” he sets out the thesis, perhaps most memorably associated with his name, that sees immigration as “a replacement of native by foreign elements”—because it is a cause of the diminishing fertility of the receiving population. He also rejects a second pro‐immigration argument, that immigration is necessary “in order to supply the country with a laboring class…able and willing to perform the lowest kind of work,” which native‐born Americans now refuse to perform. Such refusal, Walker argues, is the consequence rather than the cause of large‐scale immigration. Walker's positive argument for restricting immigration emphasizes four factors. With the closing of the frontier, land is no longer free for new occupants; mechanization of agriculture now requires less labor for farm production; immigration creates a general labor problem, including unrest and unemployment, formerly unknown in America; and the character of new immigrants is inferior to that of the native population. Walker's main concern is with this last factor. In earlier times, “the average immigrant…was among the most enterprising, thrifty, alert, adventurous, and courageous of the community from which he came,” and immigration was “almost exclusively from western and northern Europe.” With cheap railroad fares and ocean transport, this is no longer so. The new immigrants, increasingly from southern and eastern Europe, “have none of the inherited instincts and tendencies which made it comparatively easy to deal with the immigration of the olden time….They have none of the ideas and aptitudes which fit men to take up readily and easily the problem of self‐care and self‐government.” Immigration, thus, is menacing to America's “peace and political safety.” Communities are formed “in which only foreign tongues are spoken, and into which can steal no influence from our free institutions and from popular discussion.” On immigration, Walker concludes, “we should take a rest, and give our social, political, and industrial system some chance to recuperate.” Walker's advice was not heeded until the 1920s. Immigration to the US in the first decade of the twentieth century amounted to nearly 9 million. In recent decades there has been a resurgence in numbers, and in the decade of the 1990s immigration exceeded 9 million. With that influx came a reinvigorated immigration debate. In the arguments for restriction, immigration from Asia and especially Latin America now substitutes for that from southern and eastern Europe. Francis A. Walker (1840–97) had a distinguished career as a Union officer in the Civil War, reaching the rank of brigadier‐general, as a civil servant in the federal government, and, most notably, as an economist and educator. He was superintendent of the 1870 and 1880 US censuses and served as professor of political economy at Yale (1872–80), president of the American Statistical Association (1882–96), first president of the American Economic Association (1885–92), and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1881–96).

Interpreting Macroeconomics explores a variety of different approaches to macroeconomic thought. The book considers a number of historiographical and methodological positions, as well as analyzing various important episodes in the development of macroeconomics, before during and after the Keynesian revolution. Roger Backhouse shows that the full richness of these developments can only by brought out by approaches which blend both relativism and absolutism, and historical and rational reconstructions. Examples discussed include Hobson, Keynes and Friedman.

The year 1897 marked the deaths of the 2 writers who first brought American economic thought to prominence on the world scene: Francis Amasa Walker, author of The Wages Question (1876), and Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty (1879). Walker was to be 1 of the earliest and bitterest critics of Progress and Poverty, yet there were important affinities between that work and The Wages Question. Both works offered significant criticisms of the classical theory of distribution, especially the wage-fund doctrine, helping to pave the way for the subsequent marginal productivity theory. Both accepted laissez-faire in a competitive regime as producing a socially desirable outcome once 2 preconditions were met. The first precondition, on which both authors were agreed, was that the state should limit protectionism and exercise control over monopolies or dominant firms, even placing natural monopolies under public ownership. The goal of the other precondition was also shared: to alleviate the product poverty and immiseration of a substantial segment of the working classes.

Francis Amasa Walker, a political economist, in his book, Land and Its Rent (1883), gave the most detailed criticism ever presented of Henry George's economic analysis in Progress and Poverty (1954 edition). His argument begins with a misrepresentation of George's proposal of collecting the rental value of land as a single tax as an attack on private ownership. George defended private property, believing that each man's equal right to land could be achieved through government appropriation of land rent by taxation, & he even believed that buildings & other improvements should not be taxed. Walker did make some valid points concerning George's views of land speculation: that it is not the main cause of depression & that much of the land held for speculation is not kept idle. Several of Walker's arguments concerning production, exchange, compensation, soil conservation, & the administration of the single tax are also explored, with the conclusion that Walker's stance as an adversary resembled somewhat that of a paper tiger. L. A. Hoffman

Herman Melville's Benito Cereno is one of the bleakest pieces of writing in American literature. Grandin examines the real events behind the book.