Composite micromechanical modeling using the boundary element method

The use of the boundary element method for analyzing composite micromechanical behavior is demonstrated. Stress-strain, heat conduction, and thermal expansion analyses are conducted using the boundary element computer code BEST-CMS, and the results obtained are compared to experimental observations, analytical calculations, and finite element analyses. For each of the analysis types, the boundary element results agree reasonably well with the results from the other methodologies, with explainable discrepancies. Overall, the boundary element method shows promise in providing an alternative method to analyze composite micromechanical behavior

Kathryn S. Olmsted. Real enemies: conspiracy theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11

Journal ArticleIn 1963, historian Richard Hofstadter donned the clinician's white coat to describe conspiracy theorists and a "paranoid style of American politics" given to exaggeration, distortion, and fantastical thinking. If still the favorite of journalists, Hofstadter's ideas have been significantly revised in the last decade by scholars from diverse disciplines. Their studies have placed conspiracy theorists in a broader frame by considering the institutional, cultural, and technological means that have made conspiracy thinking a mainstream phenomenon. These scholars have suggested that elites in government and the media join countersubversives to teach citizens to fear conspiracy

Hooded empire: the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado

Journal ArticleThe decade of the 1920s conjures up a unique cluster of images. A few broad, organizing conceptions dominate as people and events are filtered through a screen of memories, books, and films. This was the era of "normalcy," prohibition, "flaming youth," and the "golden glow." George Babbitt, Al Capone, and Charles Lindbergh reign unchallenged in America's mind. Looking backward, Middletown seemed to have revolved around the acquisition of automobiles, radios, and washing machines. Beneath this perceptual facade, poorly focused, were ordinary Americans who lived and worked much the same as their ancestors and descendents. The needs, fears, and resulting activities of some of these men and women are the subjects of this study. Alongside the flapper and the bootlegger stands the hooded figure of the Ku Klux Klansman as one of the enduring symbols of the decade

Beneath the hood and robe: a socioeconomic analysis of Ku Klux Klan membership in Denver, Colorado, 1921-1925

Journal ArticleThe Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was in numbers and political influence the most powerful social movement of the 1920s and probably the most significant crusade of the American right-wing. Unlike its predecessor of the Reconstruction period or its descendant of today, this Klan movement was not primarily southern, white supremacist, or terrorist. Preaching a multifaceted program based upon "100 Percent Americanisnm" and militant Protestantism, the secret society ellisted recruits in every section of the nation. Among the strongest Klan organizations were the invisible realms of the West-Colorado, Texas, California, and Oregon. Perhaps as many as six million Americans heeded its call to resist Catholics, Jews, law violators, blacks, and immigrants. The Klan's means of resistance were usually political-the election of trusted men who would assail criminals and regulate minority groups. Boycotts, cross burnings, and night riding tactics were also employed to remind minorities of their place

Don't know much about history

Journal ArticleMost of us have heard of the "Greatest Generation," those who weathered the storms of the Great Depression and World War II. Many of us are Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1965. Other are part of the cynical and worldly Generation X-arriving between the mid '60s and the early '80s-raised in the wreckage of Vietnam, Watergate, and Reaganomics. Each of these generations has lived in interesting times. The drumbeat of history was loud in their ears and they knew its power personally

Jewish perspective

Journal ArticleOUR TOPIC POSES two key questions. First, what are the pitfalls of writing from within our own religious tradition? Second, what are the advantages? In thinking about the Jewish tradition, my mind conjures up and fixes upon a quotation from Sheriff Wyatt Earp, upholder of law and order in Dodge City, Kansas, and later in Tombstone, Arizona: "The law," he said, "is a funny thing." Similarly, being Jewish and writing from within a Jewish tradition is a funny thing. Jews have no hierarchical structure. We don't really belong to an organized religion. Individual congregations affiliate with different movements-the Reform movement, the Conservative movement, the Orthodox movement, and the Reconstructionists. Ties are loose, nonbinding. Each congregation is a body, a community unto itself. The rabbi's authority in each congregation is simply the power to persuade. When our rabbi in Salt Lake City was asked by a member of the First Presidency: "How far does your authority extend?" the rabbi responded, "Never beyond the kitchen of my own home-and usually not even there

Zion in Utah: the Clarion colony and Jewish agrarianism

Book ChapterThe history of the Jewish agricultural colony at Clarion, Utah, presented by Robert A. Goldberg is somewhat special, for western Jewish history has been notably small town and urban. In painstakingly reconstructing the story of those who organized, settled, and finally failed at Clarion, Goldberg places the Clarion experiment within the larger framework of the Jewish Back to the Soil Movement and attempts to isolate those factors that explain the failure of a long train of Jewish efforts to settle on the land in the United States and elsewhere

Esther Rosenblatt Landa: her price is far above rubies

Journal ArticleDr. Robert Goldberg has been a professor of history at the University of Utah since 1980. His teaching and research field is twentieth-century America with a focus on the American West, social, and political history. He has won five teaching awards and is the author of four books: Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado; Back to the Soil: The Jewish Farmers of Clarion, Utah, and Their World; Grass Roots Resistance: Social Movements in Twentieth Century America; and Barry Goldwater. He says, "Esther Landa was an easy choice for she is not only the leading woman of the Utah Jewish Community but has played a vital role in matters of education, politics, service, and women's rights in the larger city, state, and national arenas