Charles King

The lands surrounding the Black Sea share a colourful past. Though in recent decades they have experienced ethnic conflict, economic collapse, and interstate rivalry, their common heritage and common interests go deep. Now, as a region at the meeting point of the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East, the Black Sea is more important than ever. In this lively and entertaining book, which is based on extensive research in multiple languages, Charles King investigates the myriad connections that have made the Black Sea more of a bridge than a boundary, linking religious communities, linguistic groups, empires, and later, nations and states.

The first English-language book to present a complete picture of this intriguing East European borderland, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture, illuminates the perennial problems of identity politics and cultural change that the country has endured.

This book discusses trans-border ethnic populations in the former Soviet Union in a broader conceptual context, highlighting the importance of diaspora issues both for post-Sovietologists and for scholars of comparative politics and international relations in general.

The Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition in 1876 was successful in scattering the united and victorious Indians of the Custer massacre. Commanded by General George Crook and covering eight hundred miles in ten weeks, the campaign was a hard one on Indians and soldiers alike. Before it ended, many of the cavalrymen were walking - their horses had either died or were killed for food. The Indians had their problems, too. The earlier Rosebud and Custer fights had expended much of their ammunition, their own scorched-earth tactics had destroyed much of their grazing land, and they were pressed so hard by Crook they had little opportunity to hunt.The story of the campaign is vividly told by Charles King, adjutant of General Merritt's Fifth Cavalry. A fine companion volume to newsman John F. Finerty's War-Path and Bivouac (Norman, 1961), King's account presents the soldier's point of view. It also covers the activities of the fifth Cavalry before joining Crook's force, including the fight on the War Bonnet, which succeeded in turning a large group of Cheyennes back to the Red Cloud Agency and prevented their joining Sitting Bull. It was on the War Bonnet that King witnessed Buffalo Bill Cody's famous fight with Yellow Hand, which he recounts in detail.King's book, first published in 1880, presents an articulate and detailed picture of the dangers and privations of Indian campaigning at its toughest.