Rhode Island's contribution to World War II vastly exceeded its small size. Narragansett Bay was an armed camp dotted by army forts and navy facilities. They included the country's most important torpedo production and testing facilities at Newport and the Northeast's largest naval air station at Quonset Point. Three special, top-secret German POW camps were based in Narragansett and Jamestown. Meanwhile, Rhode Island workers from all over the state - including, for the first time, many women - manufactured military equipment and built warships, most notably the Liberty ships at Providence Shipyard. Authors from the Rhode Island history blog smallstatebighistory.com trace Rhode Island's outsized wartime role, from the scare of an enemy air raid after Pearl Harbor to the war's final German U-boat sunk off Point Judith.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the shifting of American foreign policy away from "old" Europe, long-established patterns of interaction between Germany and the U.S. have come under review. Although seemingly disconnected from the cultural and intellectual world, political developments were not without their influence on the humanities and their curricula during the past century. In retrospect, we can speak of the many different roles Germany has played in American eyes. The Many Faces of Germany seeks to acknowledge the importance of those incarnations for the study of German culture and history on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the major questions raised by the contributors is whether the transformations in the transatlantic dynamics and in the importance of Germany for the U.S. have had a major influence on the study of things German in the U.S. internally. The volume gathers together leading voices of the older and younger generations of social historians, literary scholars, film critics, and cultural historians.

Who were the Hessians? Where did they come from? Were all Hessians truly Hessians? Were they mercenaries or auxiliary troops of the British? This well-researched historical narrative answers these questions and more as it vividly portrays the events of the Rhode Island campaign, which lasted from December 8, 1776 to October 25, 1779. Information gleaned from source diaries and unit journals, originally recorded in German, provide a wealth of insight into the daily life of the German soldiers who were committed to the Rhode Island campaign. In light of modern travel and technology, it is difficult to imagine the perilous two-month journey across the Atlantic to America that was just the beginning of the hardships, dangers, and fears to be experienced by these eighteenth-century German soldiers. The 1776 occupation of Newport, troop movements, raids and incursions, the Treaty of Paris, the 1778 siege of Newport, the Battle of Rhode Island, and much more are examined in detail. A bibliography and an index add to the value of this work.

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