Preface to the Fifth Issue of the OU Historical Journal by the Editors

Issue Five of the OU Historical Journal shares much with previous issues: excellence, variety, precision, imagination and many other marks of scholarly rigor. OU students continue to be fascinated by the traumas and transformations of World War II and the political evolution of our state and university. Both of these topics are well-represented in the works our editors have selected for publication. OUHJ Number Five extends our students’ reach into new realms: the era of independence in the Atlantic World, British intellectual history, and the development of Stalinist public architecture in the Cold War.

As always, the process of selecting the papers from a large and extremely distinguished field was difficult, rigorous, and scrupulously fair. While these are by no means the only outstanding papers our students have written over the past year, they are all superb, and reflect the careful and creative work of students and professors alike.