Search results for ""author franklin"
University of Nebraska Press The Fast Ride: Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing
In an era of spectacular thoroughbreds, Spectacular Bid was perhaps the most exalted racehorse of them all. In 1979 he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes—and transcended his sport on a run of twelve consecutive stakes victories. But he lost his quest for the Triple Crown with a third-place finish in the Belmont Stakes due to a series of bizarre events that have never before been accurately reported. In The Fast Ride, Jack Gilden tells the story of what really happened the day the Bid lost the biggest race of his life. Along the way, he introduces the reader to a cast of characters from the gilded age of late twentieth-century horse racing, from Bid’s owners, the renowned Meyerhoff family, to Grover “Buddy” Delp, the fast-talking trainer, to teenage jockey Ronnie Franklin, whose meteoric rise to fame with Spectacular Bid came at the cost of his innocence and well-being. Also present are four of the era’s magnificent Latino riders, Ángel Cordero Jr., Jacinto Vásquez, Georgie Velásquez, and Ruben Hernandez, who all felt the sting of rejection and bigotry during their long careers even as they raised the level of competition to a feverish pitch.The Fast Ride is the story of a great racehorse, unfulfilled dreams, the exhilaration and steep price of striving at all costs, and an American era in which getting everything you ever wanted could be the most empty and unfulfilling sensation of all.
£29.99
Cornell University Press To Govern the Devil in Hell: The Political Crisis of Territorial Kansas
One hundred and fifty years after Kansas was admitted to the Union, we still find ourselves fascinated by the specter of "Bleeding Kansas" and the violence that preceded the American Civil War by five years. Although ample attention has been devoted to understanding why territorial violence broke out in Kansas in 1856, of equal concern but less illuminated is the question of why government, both local and national, allowed the violence to continue unstanched for so long. This question is fundamentally about governance-its existence, exercise, limits, and continuance-and its study has ramifications for understanding both Kansas events and why the American experiment in government failed in 1861. In addition, the book also sheds light on the nature of democracy, the challenges of implanting it in distant environs, the necessity of cooperation at the various levels of government, and the value of strong leadership. To Govern the Devil in Hell uses the prism of governance to investigate what went wrong in territorial Kansas. From the first elections in late 1854 and early 1855, local government was tarnished with cries of illegitimacy that territorial officials could not ameliorate. Soon after, a shadow government was created which further impeded local management of territorial challenges. Ultimately, this book addresses why Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan failed to act, what hindered Congress from stepping into the void, and why and how the lack of effective governance harmed Kansas and later the United States.
£97.20
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Too Much Lip: A Novel
A gritty and darkly hilarious novel quaking with life—winner of Australia’s Miles Franklin Award—that follows a queer, First Nations Australian woman as she returns home to face her family and protect the land of their ancestors. Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent her adulthood avoiding two things: her hometown and prison. A tough, generous, reckless woman accused of having too much lip, Kerry uses anger to fight the avalanche of bullshit the world spews. But now her Pop is dying and she's an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley for one last visit.Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, across the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of latching on to people—not to mention her chaotic family and the threat of a proposal to develop a prison on Granny Ava’s Island, the family’s spiritual home. On top of that, love may have found Kerry again when a good-looking white fella appears out of nowhere with eyes only for her. As the fight mounts to stop the development, old wounds open. Surrounded by the ghosts of their Elders and the memories of their ancestors, the Salters are driven by the deep need to make peace with their past while scrabbling to make sense of their present. Kerry just hopes they can come together in time to preserve Granny Ava’s legacy and save their ancestral land.
£10.99
Harvard University Press No Coward Soldiers: Black Cultural Politics in Postwar America
In a vibrant and passionate exploration of the twentieth-century civil rights and black power eras in American history, Waldo Martin uses cultural politics as a lens through which to understand the African-American freedom struggle.In black culture, argues Martin, we see the debate over the profound tension at the core of black identity: the duality of being at once both American and African. And in the transformative postwar period, the intersection between culture and politics became increasingly central to the African-American fight for equality. In freedom songs, in the exuberance of an Aretha Franklin concert, in Faith Ringgold’s exploration of race and sexuality, the personal and social became the political.Martin explores the place of black culture in this vision and examines the multiple ways in which various forms of expressive culture and African-American cultural figures influenced consciousness and helped effect social action. From the music of John Coltrane and James Brown to the visual art of Jacob Lawrence and Betye Saar to the dance movements of Alvin Ailey and Arthur Mitchell, Martin discusses how, why, and with what consequences culture became a critical battle site in the freedom struggle. And in a fascinating epilogue, he draws the thread of black cultural politics into today’s hip-hop culture.This engaging book brings a new perspective to the civil rights and black power eras, while illuminating the broader history of American and global freedom struggles.
£32.36
New York University Press Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics
Asked if the country was governed by a republic or a monarchy, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Since its founding, Americans have worked hard to nurture and protect their hard-won democracy. And yet few consider the role of constitutional law in America’s survival. In Unfit for Democracy, Stephen Gottlieb argues that constitutional law without a focus on the future of democratic government is incoherent—illogical and contradictory. Approaching the decisions of the Roberts Court from political science, historical, comparative, and legal perspectives, Gottlieb highlights the dangers the court presents by neglecting to interpret the law with an eye towards preserving democracy. A senior scholar of constitutional law, Gottlieb brings a pioneering will to his theoretical and comparative criticism of the Roberts Court. The Roberts Court decisions are not examined in a vacuum but instead viewed in light of constitutional politics in India, South Africa, emerging Eastern European nations, and others. While constitutional decisions abroad have contributed to both the breakdown and strengthening of democratic politics, decisions in the Roberts Court have aggravated the potential destabilizing factors in democratic governments. Ultimately, Unfit for Democracy calls for an interpretation of the Constitution that takes the future of democracy seriously. Gottlieb warns that the Roberts Court’s decisions have hurt ordinary Americans economically, politically, and in the criminal process. They have damaged the historic American melting pot, increased the risk of anti-democratic paramilitaries, and clouded the democratic future.
£23.99
Skyhorse Publishing Zombies vs. Nazis: A Lost History of the Walking Undead
Zombie expert Scott Kenemore (The Zen of Zombie) unearths a collection of top-secret lost documents from WWII (originally intercepted by the U.S. Signal Corps in 1941 and presented to Franklin Roosevelt in a confidential memorandum), describing efforts of the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (or SD) to harness and weaponize Haitian Voodoo and zombie-creating technologies for military purposes. For the first time, here is the thrilling, humorous, and satisfyingly-gory story of an evil empire’s foolhardy attempt to harness an ancient and unspeakable monster: the zombie! While the Nazis initially dream of creating an army of bloodthirsty, automaton super-zombies to march across Europe, they soon learn that the walking dead are not as obedient and malleable as they’ve been led to believe. In contrast, these Nazi agents quickly find that the walking dead of the Haitian backwoods are closer to brain-eating, flesh-rending dynamos that don’t respect a nicely pressed SS uniform, and instead just go for the jugular. Faced with Voodoo spells, dangerous flora and fauna, and their own naive assumptions about the dark forces with which they’re tangling, these Nazi SD agents learn the hard way that nobody bosses around a zombie. Kenemorewith nearly 100,000 copies of zombie classics in printdoes it again.
£11.81
Hatje Cantz András Szánto:The Future of the Museum: 28 Dialogues
As museums worldwide shuttered in 2020 because of the novel coronavirus, New York-based cultural strategist András Szántó conducted a series of interviews with an international group of museum leaders. In a moment when economic, political, and cultural shifts are signaling the start of a new era, the directors speak candidly about the historical limitations and untapped potential of art museums. Each of the twenty-eight dialogues in this book explores a particular topic of relevance to art institutions today, and tomorrow. What emerges from the series of in-depth conversations is a composite portrait of a generation of museum leaders working to make institutions more open, democratic, inclusive, experimental and experiential, technologically savvy, culturally polyphonic, attuned to the needs of their visitors and communities, and concerned with addressing the defining issues of the societies around them. The dialogues offer glimpses of how museums around the globe are undergoing an accelerated phase of reappraisal and reinvention. CONVERSATION PARTNERS: Marion Ackermann, Cecilia Alemani, Anton Belov, Meriem Berrada, Daniel Birnbaium, Tom Campbell, Tania Cohen, Rhana Devenport, Maria Mercedes Gonzales, Max Hollein, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Mami Kataoka, Brian Kennedy, Koyo Kouoh, Sonia Lawson, Adam Levine, Victoria Noorthoorn, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Anne Pasternak, Adriano Pedrosa, Suhanya Raffel, Axel Ruger, Katrina Sedwick, Franklin Sirmans, Eugene Tan, Phil Tinari, Marc-Olivier Wahler, Marie-Cécile Zinsou
£19.80
Distributed Art Publishers The Future of Transportation: SOM Thinkers Series
How will we travel in the future? Essays on the transport to come, from sidewalk scooters to levitating trains With the promise of delivery drones, personal helicopters, and groceries delivered right to your refrigerator, one might think we are living in the best of transportation times. Most city commuters would be quick to tell you otherwise. Of all the technological interventions continuously inserted into our daily travels, which ones will last? Is ride-sharing here to stay? In ten years will we all be taking autonomous vehicles to work? Will traffic as we know it cease to exist? While this volume makes no promises or predictions, it does take a step back from the hype of the new to explore what might seem like yesterday's solutions: buses, bikes and even trains. Perhaps remedies to our transportation woes are not all in the future but are hiding in plain and present sight. The Future of Transportation is the third volume in the SOM Thinkers series, conceived by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. SOM Thinkers originated from a desire to start a public conversation about the built environment. Rather than frame the subject in the expected "professional" language, the series poses today's most pressing questions about design and architecture in a bold and accessible way. This volume features work by Henry Grabar, Oliver Franklin-Wallis, Laura Bliss, Darran Anderson, Nick Van Mead, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Alison Griswold and Christopher Schaberg, with artwork by Olalekan Jeyifous.
£15.99
Princeton University Press The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Volume 65: February 28-July 31, 1920
As this volume begins, controversy over ratification of the Versailles Treaty enters its climactic stage. Wilson, only partly recovered from a stroke, refuses the advice of supporters who beg him to accept Republican reservations in order to put the Treaty through the Senate, and he puts heavy pressure on those Democratic senators who want to consent to reservations. Twenty-one Democrats defy him when the Treaty comes up for a second and final vote on March 19, but their votes, combined with those of Republican reservationists, fall far short of the two-thirds Senate majority necessary for passage of the consent resolution. While Tumulty and the departmental heads carry on the domestic business of the federal government, Wilson follows their recommendations and signs a series of measures that bring various aspects of the progressive movement to fruition: the Transportation Act of 1920, the General Leasing Act, and the Water Power Act. Meanwhile, he devotes most of his strength to foreign affairs. He vetoes the "separate peace" embodied in the Knox Resolution, and the Democrats uphold the veto. In spite of Wilson's wish to run again for president, concern for his health prevails, and the Democrats nominate Governor James M. Cox of Ohio, who names Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, as his running mate. Wilson is deeply depressed, but he blesses the Cox and Roosevelt campaign with all the fervor he can summon.
£127.80
Johns Hopkins University Press The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: The Early Boston Years, 1882–1890
Frederick Law Olmsted relocated from New York to the Boston area in the early 1880s. With the help of his stepson and partner, John Charles Olmsted, his professional office grew to become the first of its kind: a modern landscape architecture practice with park, subdivision, campus, residential, and other landscape design projects throughout the country. During the period covered in this volume, Olmsted and his partners, apprentices, and staff designed the exceptional park system of Boston and Brookline-including the Back Bay Fens, Franklin Park, and the Muddy River Improvement. Olmsted also designed parks for New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, and Detroit and created his most significant campus plans for Stanford University and the Lawrenceville School. The grounds of the U.S. Capitol were completed with the addition of the grand marble terraces that he designed as the transition to his surrounding landscape. Many of Olmsted's most important private commissions belong to these years. He began his work at Biltmore, the vast estate of George Washington Vanderbilt, and designed Rough Point at Newport, Rhode Island, and several other estates for members of the Vanderbilt family. Olmsted wrote more frequently on the subject of landscape design during these years than in any comparable period. He would never provide a definitive treatise or textbook on landscape architecture, but the articles presented in this volume contain some of his most mature and powerful statements on the practice of landscape architecture.
£106.54
Johns Hopkins University Press Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture
A fascinating look at communication in the eighteenth century.This volume addresses questions of communication in several media, from the oral, printed, and visual to the physical. It encompasses essays featuring France, Germany, Early America, Scotland, and Britain more generally.The first section, "Manuscript Communications," opens with Dena Goodman's presidential address on the secret history of learned societies. It is followed by a panel on manuscript and print circulation introduced by Colin Ramsey, which includes essays by Ryan Whyte, Chiara Cillerai, and Jürgen Overhoff. This section concludes with an essay by Carla J. Mulford on Benjamin Franklin's electrification of London politics.The second section, "Arts and Manufactures," opens with David Shields's Clifford Lecture on the flavors of the eighteenth century. It contains essays by Hanna Roman on Buffon's language of heat and Jason Pearl on the perspective of aerostatic bodies and concludes with essays by Matthew Mauger and Michael C. Amrozowicz on the languages of physical disciplines and social organization.The final section, "Devotion and Other Passions," begins with essays on silence and spectacle as means of convening the passions, by Adam Schoene and Anne Vila respectively, and it concludes with a forum introduced by Laura M. Stevens on Enlightenment representations of devotion. This section includes presentations by Clare Haynes, Penny Pritchard, Jennifer L. Airey, Sabine Volk-Birke, Megan E. Gibson, Laura Davies, and Theresa Schoen and an afterword by Emma Salgard Cunha.
£39.00
University of Notre Dame Press Augustine Our Contemporary: Examining the Self in Past and Present
In the massive literature on the idea of the self, the Augustinian influence has often played a central role. The volume Augustine Our Contemporary, starting from the compelling first essay by David W. Tracy, addresses this influence from the Middle Ages to modernity and from a rich variety of perspectives, including theology, philosophy, history, and literary studies. The collected essays in this volume all engage Augustine and the Augustinian legacy on notions of selfhood, interiority, and personal identity. Written by prominent scholars, the essays demonstrate a connecting thread: Augustine is a thinker who has proven his contemporaneity in Western thought time and time again. He has been "the contemporary" of thinkers ranging from Eriugena to Luther to Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. His influence has been dominant in certain eras, and in others he has left traces and fragments that, when stitched together, create a unique impression of the “presentness” of Christian selfhood. As a whole, Augustine Our Contemporary sheds relevant new light on the continuity of the Western Christian tradition. This volume will interest academics and students of philosophy, political theory, and religion, as well as scholars of postmodernism and Augustine. Contributors: Susan E. Schreiner, David W. Tracy, Bernard McGinn, Vincent Carraud, Willemien Otten, Adriaan T. Peperzak, David C. Steinmetz, Jean-Luc Marion, W. Clark Gilpin, William Schweiker, Franklin I. Gamwell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Fred Lawrence, and Françoise Meltzer.
£52.20
Editorial Crítica El telegrama que salvó a Franco Londres Washington y la cuestión del Régimen 19421945
Este libro es el primer estudio sobre las relaciones entre España, Gran Bretaña y los Estados Unidos en el periodo 1942-1945, que se basa no solo en una evaluación exhaustiva de la correspondencia diplomática y política accesible, sino que también tiene en cuenta documentación personal de los principales actores políticos y diplomáticos implicados, entre los que destacan: Winston, Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt y Harry Hopkins. De esta manera, y sobre la base de documentación desconocida hasta la fecha, ha sido posible desglosar el conjunto de intereses divergentes en lo que respecta tanto a la definición de la política oficial como a la actitud y las intenciones de las diferentes figuras que movían las fichas sobre el tablero de las relaciones con la dictadura, y que condujeron a constantes malentendidos y diferencias en vista de la manera de tratar a Franco. Así, más allá de las interpretaciones tradicionales que se basan en la relevancia de los intereses estratégicos de Londres y
£21.06
Duke University Press Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War
In Four Decades On, historians, anthropologists, and literary critics examine the legacies of the Second Indochina War, or what most Americans call the Vietnam War, nearly forty years after the United States finally left Vietnam. They address matters such as the daunting tasks facing the Vietnamese at the war's end—including rebuilding a nation and consolidating a socialist revolution while fending off China and the Khmer Rouge—and "the Vietnam syndrome," the cynical, frustrated, and pessimistic sense that colored America's views of the rest of the world after its humiliating defeat in Vietnam. The contributors provide unexpected perspectives on Agent Orange, the POW/MIA controversies, the commercial trade relationship between the United States and Vietnam, and representations of the war and its aftermath produced by artists, particularly writers. They show how the war has continued to affect not only international relations but also the everyday lives of millions of people around the world. Most of the contributors take up matters in the United States, Vietnam, or both nations, while several utilize transnational analytic frameworks, recognizing that the war's legacies shape and are shaped by dynamics that transcend the two countries.Contributors. Alex Bloom, Diane Niblack Fox, H. Bruce Franklin, Walter Hixson, Heonik Kwon, Scott Laderman, Mariam B. Lam, Ngo Vinh Long, Edwin A. Martini, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Christina Schwenkel, Charles Waugh
£104.40
Oxford University Press Inc A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court
A History of Securities Law and the Supreme Court explores how the Supreme Court has made (and remade) securities law. It covers the history of the federal securities laws from their inception during the Great Depression, relying on the justices' conference notes, internal memoranda, and correspondence to shed light on how they came to their decisions and drafted their opinions. That history can be divided into five periods that parallel and illustrate key trends of the Court's jurisprudence more generally. The first saw the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt--aided by his filling eight seats on the Court-triumph in its efforts to enact the securities laws and establish their constitutional legitimacy. This brought an end to the Court's long-standing hostility to the regulation of business. The arrival of Roosevelt's justices, all committed to social control of finance, ushered in an era of deference to the SEC's expertise that lasted through the 1940s and 1950s. The 1960s brought an era of judicial activism-and further expansion--by the Warren Court, with purpose taking precedence over text in statutory interpretation. The arrival of Lewis F. Powell, Jr. in 1972 brought a sharp reversal. Powell's leadership of the Court in securities law produced a counter-revolution in the field and an end to the SEC's long winning streak at the Court. Powell's retirement in 1987 marked the beginning of the final period of this study. In the absence of ideological consensus or strong leadership, the Court's securities jurisprudence meandered, taking a random walk between expansive and restrictive decisions.
£99.68
Princeton University Press Letters of Benjamin Rush: Volume I: 1761-1792
Volume 1 of 2. Full of flavor and zest, this collection of over 650 letters, two-thirds of them never printed before, is a companion piece to Rush's Autobiography. Written between 1761 and 1813, the letters trace Rush's career, from student in Scotland and England to signer of the Declaration of Independence and Philadelphia's leading physician. He writes to John Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, WItherspoon, and a host of others. Two fascinating series of letters chronicle the failures of the hospital service in the Revolutionary War and teh Philadelphia yellow-fever epidemic of 1793. Rush the private individual is revealed in the letters to his wife. Published for the American Philosophical Society. Lyman Butterfield is associate editor of The Papers of Thomas JeffersonOriginally published in 1951.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
£98.10
Schiffer Publishing Ltd North American Aviation in the Jet Age, Vol. 2: The Columbus Years, 1941–1988
The year was 1941, and the flames of world war were threatening America’s shores. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for an “Arsenal of Democracy” and demanded fabrication of 50,000 warplanes per year. But first, sprawling new airplane factories were needed. Located in the heart of Columbus, Ohio, proved to be an ideal choice. The Columbus plant was home to a broad spectrum of fascinating aircraft. Curtiss-Wright moved in, and soon, thousands of SB2C Helldivers rolled out. The Korean War found North American Aviation (NAA) of Los Angeles as the new occupant. Advanced airplanes, many of them jets, were soon in high-rate production. Some, like the T-28 Trojan and T-2, were docile trainers. The Navy FJ Fury series augmented the dogfighting F-86 Sabre jets during the 1950s. The OV-10 Bronco was built rugged for close-in jungle combat during the Vietnam War. The supersonic Vigilante was a masterpiece of homegrown advanced technology. Production at Columbus ended in 1988 with major subassemblies for the Rockwell B-1B Lancer, a strategic bomber. This is the history of the Columbus plant from pouring concrete footings in 1941 until the plant was vacated in 1988.
£36.89
The University of North Carolina Press Oconaluftee: The History of a Smoky Mountain Valley
The Oconaluftee Valley, located on the North Carolina side of the Smokies, is home of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians and part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site). This seemingly isolated valley has an epic tale to tell. Always a desirable place to settle, hunt, gather, farm, and live, the valley and its people have played an integral role in some of the greatest dramas of the colonial era, the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War era. The experiences of turn-of-the-twentieth-century industrial logging alongside the national park movement show how land-use trends changed communities and families. Though the valley saw its share of conflict, its residents often lived like neighbors, sharing resources and acting cooperatively for mutual benefit and survival. They demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of threats to their existence.Elizabeth Giddens offers a deeply researched and elegantly written account of Oconaluftee and its people from Indigenous settlements to the establishment of the national park by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940. She builds the tale from archives, census records, property records, personal memoirs, and more, showing how national events affected all Oconaluftee's people—Indigenous, Black, and white.
£22.50
PublicAffairs,U.S. Suspected of Independence: The Life of Thomas McKean, America's First Power Broker
The last signatory to the Declaration of Independence was one of the earliest to sign up for the Revolution: Thomas McKean lived a radical, boisterous, politically intriguing life and was one of the most influential and enduring of America's Founding Fathers.Present at almost all of the signature moments on the road to American nationhood, from the first Continental Congress onward, Thomas McKean was a colonel in the Continental Army president of the Continental Congress governor of Pennsylvania and, perhaps most importantly, chief justice of the new country's most influential state, Pennsylvania, a foundational influence on American law. His life uniquely intersected with the many centres of power in the still-formative country during its most vulnerable years, and shows the degree of uncertainty that characterized newly independent America, unsure of its future or its identity.Thomas McKean knew intimately not only the heroic figures of the Revolutionary era,George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin,but also the fascinating characters who fought over the political identity of the new country, such as Caesar Rodney, Francis Hopkinson, and Alexander Dallas. His life reminds us that America's creation was fraught with dangers and strife, backstabbing and bar-brawling, courage and stubbornness. McKean's was an epic ride during utterly momentous times.
£18.99
University of Minnesota Press The Backcountry and the City: Colonization and Conflict in Early America
What would an account of early America look like if it were based on examining rural insurrections or Native American politics instead of urban republican literature? Offering a new interpretation of eighteenth-century America, The Backcountry and the City focuses on the agrarian majority as distinct from the elite urban minority. Ed White explores the backcountry-city divide as well as the dynamics of indigenous peoples, bringing together two distinct bodies of scholarship: one stressing the political culture of the Revolutionary era, the other taking an ethnohistorical view of white–Native American contact. White concentrates his study in Pennsylvania, a state in which the majority of the population was rural, and in Philadelphia, a city that was a center of publishing and politics and the national capital for a decade. Against this backdrop, White reads classic political texts such as Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, Franklin’s Autobiography, and Paine’s “Agrarian Justice,” alongside missionary and captivity narratives, farmers’ petitions, and Native American treaties. Using historical and ethnographic sources to enrich familiar texts, White demonstrates the importance of rural areas in the study of U.S. nation formation and finds unexpected continuities between the early colonial period and the federal ascendancy of the 1790s. Ed White is associate professor of English at the University of Florida.
£21.99
Profile Books Ltd History's People: Personalities and the Past
What difference do individuals make to history? Are we all swept up in the great forces like industrialisation or globalisation, or is the world we inhabit shaped just as much by real people - leaders for example - and the decisions that they make? For better or for worse, the personalities of the powerful can affect millions of people and the future of countries: it matters who is in the driving seat, and who is making plans. Equally important: how is history itself made by those who keep the records? In History's People Margaret Macmillan explores the lives of the great and lesser-known figures of the past: men, women, explorers, rulers, dreamers, politicians, observers, campaigners. She looks at the concept of leadership, from Bismarck to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but also at the role of observers such as Babur, first Mughal emperor of India, and asks how explorers and visionaries such as Fanny Parkes and Elizabeth Simcoe managed to defy or ignore the constraints of their own societies. And, in doing so, she uncovers the important and complex relationship between biography and history, and between individuals and their times. Like all the best history, this book will change the way you see the past, as well as your own times - and perhaps introduce you to some people you didn't know.
£9.99
WW Norton & Co Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography through Essays
In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud’s own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature. In twenty-six intimate, brilliant, and funny essays, Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk, and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In the luminous title essay, she explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of “a single successful sentence.” Together, these essays show the inner workings of a dazzling literary mind. Crafting a vivid portrait of a life in celebration of the power of literature, Messud proves once again "an absolute master storyteller" (Rebecca Carroll, Los Angeles Times).
£16.07
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Edge of England: Landfall in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is England's second-largest county—and one of the least well-known. Yet its understated chronicles, unfashionable towns and undervalued countryside conceal fascinating stories, and unique landscapes: its Wolds are lonely and beautiful, its towns characterful; its marshlands and dynamic coast are metaphors of constant change. From plesiosaurs to Puritans, medieval ghosts to eighteenth-century explorers, poets to politicians, and Vikings to Brexit, this marginal county is central to England's identity. Canute, Henry IV, John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford all called Lincolnshire home. So did saints, world-famed churchmen and reformers—Etheldreda, Gilbert, Guthlac and Hugh, Robert Grosseteste, John Wycliffe, John Cotton, John Foxe and John Wesley—as well as Isaac Newton, Joseph Banks, John Harrison and George Boole. Lincolnshire explorers went everywhere: John Smith to Jamestown, George Bass and Matthew Flinders to Australia, and John Franklin to a bitter death in the Arctic. Artists and writers have been inspired—including Byrd, Taverner, Stukeley, Stubbs, Eliot and Tennyson—while Thatcher wrought neo-liberalism. Extraordinary architecture testifies to centuries of both settlement and unrest, from Saxon towers to sky-piercing spires; evocative ruined abbeys to the wonder of the Cathedral. And in between is always the little-known land itself—an epitome of England, awaiting discovery.
£20.00
The University Press of Kentucky Kentuckians and Pearl Harbor: Stories from the Day of Infamy
When the air raid alarm sounded around 7:55 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Gunner's Mate Second Class James Allard Vessels of Paducah was preparing to participate in morning colors aboard the USS Arizona. In the scramble for battle stations, Vessels quickly climbed to a machine gun platform high atop the mainmast as others descended below decks to help pass ammunition up to gunners. At 8:06, a bomb exploded and the Arizona sank. Vessels's lofty perch saved his life, but most of his shipmates were not so lucky.In Kentuckians and Pearl Harbor, Berry Craig employs an impressive array of newspapers, unpublished memoirs, oral histories, and official military records to offer a ground-up look at the day that Franklin D. Roosevelt said would "live in infamy," and its aftermath in the Bluegrass State. In a series of vignettes, Craig uncovers the untold, forgotten, or little-known stories of ordinary people - military and civilian - on the most extraordinary day of their lives. Craig concludes by exploring the home front reaction to this pivotal event in American history.Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor swept away any illusions Kentuckians had about being able to stay out of World War II. From Paducah to Pikeville, people sprang to action. Their voices emerge and come back to life in this engaging and timely history.
£32.00
Trinity University Press,U.S. Powering a City: How Energy and Big Dreams Transformed San Antonio
At the center of San Antonio’s growth from a small pioneering town to a major western metropolis sits CPS Energy, the largest municipally owned energy utility in the United States and an innovator in harnessing, conserving, and capitalizing on natural energy resources.The story of modern energy in San Antonio begins in 1860, when the San Antonio Gas Company started manufacturing gas for streetlights in a small plant on San Pedro Creek, using tree resin that arrived by oxcart. The company grew from a dark, dusty frontier town with more saloons than grocery stores to a bustling crossroads to the West and, ultimately, a twentieth-first-century American city. Innovative city leaders purchased the utility from a New York–based holding company in 1942, and CPS Energy as we know it today was born.In Powering the City, Catherine Nixon Cooke discusses the rise and fall of big holding companies, the impact of the Great Depression and World War II--when 25 percent of the company’s workforce enlisted in the armed forces--on the city’s energy supply, and the emergence of nuclear energy and a nationally acclaimed model for harnessing solar and wind energy.Known and relatively unknown events are recounted, including Samuel Insull’s move to Europe after his empire crashed in 1929; President Franklin Roosevelt’s Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which made it possible for the city to purchase the San Antonio Public Service Company; the city's competition with the Guadalupe Blanco River Authority, whose champion was Congressman Lyndon Johnson, in which the city emerged victorious in a deal that today returns billions in financial benefit; legal wranglings such as one that led to the establishment of Valero Energy Corporation; and energy’s role in the Southwest Research Institute and the South Texas Medical Center, HemisFair 1968, Sea World, Fiesta Texas, and Morgan’s Wonderland.Images from CPS's archive of historic photographs, some dating as far back as the early 1900s; back issues of its in-house magazine; and the Institute of Texas Cultures provide rich material to illustrate the story.As CPS Energy celebrates seventy-five years of city ownership, the region's industrial, scientific, and technological innovation are due in part to the company’s extraordinary impact on San Antonio.
£17.01
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Edge of England: Landfall in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is England's second-largest county—and one of the least well-known. Yet its understated chronicles, unfashionable towns and undervalued countryside conceal fascinating stories, and unique landscapes: its Wolds are lonely and beautiful, its towns characterful; its marshlands and dynamic coast are metaphors of constant change. From plesiosaurs to Puritans, medieval ghosts to eighteenth-century explorers, poets to politicians, and Vikings to Brexit, this marginal county is central to England's identity. Canute, Henry IV, John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford all called Lincolnshire home. So did saints, world-famed churchmen and reformers—Etheldreda, Gilbert, Guthlac and Hugh, Robert Grosseteste, John Wycliffe, John Cotton, John Foxe and John Wesley—as well as Isaac Newton, Joseph Banks, John Harrison and George Boole. Lincolnshire explorers went everywhere: John Smith to Jamestown, George Bass and Matthew Flinders to Australia, and John Franklin to a bitter death in the Arctic. Artists and writers have been inspired—including Byrd, Taverner, Stukeley, Stubbs, Eliot and Tennyson—while Thatcher wrought neo-liberalism. Extraordinary architecture testifies to centuries of both settlement and unrest, from Saxon towers to sky-piercing spires; evocative ruined abbeys to the wonder of the Cathedral. And in between is always the little-known land itself—an epitome of England, awaiting discovery.
£12.99
Skyhorse Publishing Yankees 1936–39, Baseball's Greatest Dynasty: Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and the Birth of a New Era
The Story of the Greatest Yankees Team—and Baseball Team—of All Time New York, 1936. Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Bill Dickey, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, and rookie Joe DiMaggio—with these six future Hall of Fame players, the Yankees embarked on a four-year run that would go down in the history books as the greatest Yankees team, if not, the greatest baseball team of all time. Over the next four years, the Yankees won four straight pennants, finishing an average of nearly fifteen games ahead of the second-place team. They won their four World Series by an overall margin of 16-3, sweeping the last two, putting the punctuation mark on baseball’s first true dynasty. Even the Ruthian Yankees of the twenties never won more than two consecutive world championships. From 1936 to 1939, the world was changing rapidly. America was in the grip of the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected president in the greatest landslide in American history. And Hitler’s Germany was on the move in the fall of 1939, just as the Yankee dynasty reached its climax. Against the backdrop of a world in turmoil, baseball, and America’s love for baseball, thrived. Starring the best team of all time, featuring little-known anecdotes of players and set against a history of the world, Yankees 1936–39, Baseball's Greatest Dynasty tells the tale of a legendary team that changed history.
£18.99
Harvard University Press Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System
Whether flying a kite in Franklin Park, gardening in the Fens, or jogging along the Riverway, today’s Bostonians are greatly indebted to the legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted. The man who dreamed of an “emerald necklace” of parks for Boston completed his plans in 1895, yet his invigorating influence shapes the city to this day, despite the encroachment of highways and urban sprawl. Cynthia Zaitzevsky’s book is the first fully illustrated account of Olmsted’s work: the process of “getting the plan” of a park, supervising its construction, adding the necessary “furniture” of bridges and other structures, and selecting plants, shrubs, and trees.Frederick Law Olmsted’s stellar career in landscape architecture began with his design for Central Park in New York City. Public concern for open spaces led Boston to commission Olmsted to design peaceful “country parks” for the mental and physical refreshment of those who lived in the expanding city. He planned the system of five parks and connecting parkways extending out from the original Boston Common and Public Garden, as well as harbor and riverfront improvements—a vast set of projects involving 2,000 acres of open land. He and his firm also designed many smaller parks, playgrounds, and suburban subdivisions.This book will be invaluable to anyone interested in landscape architecture, city planning, the history of Boston, or the nineteenth-century urban park movement and its current revival.
£75.56
Ebury Publishing A Head Full of Music: The soundtrack to my life
Foreword by Bob StanleyOn a sunny Saturday morning in May 1956, a fifteen-year-old, then called Harry Webb, was mooching down Waltham Cross High Street. He heard some music blaring out of a parked car. It stopped him in his tracks.The song was 'Heartbreak Hotel' by Elvis Presley. It sounded like nothing he had ever heard before. In that instant, the schoolboy who was destined to take the hit parade by storm as Cliff Richard fell in love with rock and roll. It gave him the thrill, the purpose and the mission that has shaped his life ever since.Cliff lives in and for music. And with 65 years as a hitmaker, the music filling his head is a broad category. His soundtrack begins by blasting us all back into that first life-changing explosion of rock and also includes great soul soul stars such as Aretha Franklin, longtime colleagues like Elton John, and much-missed close friends Cilla Black and Olivia Newton-John.This book is meaningful to Cliff on many levels. The 30 or so songs here that make up the soundtrack to his life have each moved him deeply, but it's also about the legendary artists he met, and often got to know. He shares those stories and memories with you, too.A Head Full of Music is a vibrant personal journey for Cliff, and it's a joy to accompany him on it. Get wired for sound with him and read on.
£22.50
Taylor & Francis Inc Robert F. Kennedy in the Stream of History
This assessment of the statesmanship, principles, and policies of Robert F. Kennedy places him "in the stream of history," to assess what came before his time in political life, what happened during that time, and what happened to his legacy after his assassination. Terrence Edward Paupp evaluates the themes and issues RFK confronted, responded to, and for which he provided visionary solutions.Paupp first chronicles the influence of Franklin D. Roosevelt's legacy as a prologue to the New Frontier and Great Society. During Robert F. Kennedy's time in power—both in his brother's administration and on his own in the US Senate—he struggled with striking a balance between power and purpose. In the years after John F. Kennedy's assassination, RFK emphasized the need to unite power and purpose, national and international concerns, ideals and practice. Much of this has been ignored, Paupp argues, by what C. Wright Mills called "the power elite."In assessing RFK's statesmanship, Paupp examines his commitments to human and civil rights, which linked themes and ideals within the US to those struggles taking place outside the country. Robert F. Kennedy brought zeal and passion to these problems by discussing the moral necessity of honouring human dignity while articulating practical solutions, policies, and programs to structural injustice. His legacy remains a beacon of light, intelligence, and hope in today's world.
£84.99
Cornell University Press Delivering the People's Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate
Presidents have long invoked electoral mandates to justify the use of executive power. In Delivering the People’s Message, Julia R. Azari draws on an original dataset of more than 1,500 presidential communications, as well as primary documents from six presidential libraries, to systematically examine choices made by presidents ranging from Herbert Hoover in 1928 to Barack Obama during his 2008 election. Azari argues that Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 marked a shift from the modern presidency formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to what she identifies as a more partisan era for the presidency. This partisan model is a form of governance in which the president appears to require a popular mandate in order to manage unruly and deeply contrary elements within his own party and succeed in the face of staunch resistance from the opposition party. Azari finds that when the presidency enjoys high public esteem and party polarization is low, mandate rhetoric is less frequent and employs broad themes. By contrast, presidents turn to mandate rhetoric when the office loses legitimacy, as in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam and during periods of intense polarization. In the twenty-first century, these two factors have converged. As a result, presidents rely on mandate rhetoric to defend their choices to supporters and critics alike, simultaneously creating unrealistic expectations about the electoral promises they will be able to fulfill.
£42.00
Princeton University Press The Strategic President: Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership
How do presidents lead? If presidential power is the power to persuade, why is there a lack of evidence of presidential persuasion? George Edwards, one of the leading scholars of the American presidency, skillfully uses this contradiction as a springboard to examine--and ultimately challenge--the dominant paradigm of presidential leadership. The Strategic President contends that presidents cannot create opportunities for change by persuading others to support their policies. Instead, successful presidents facilitate change by recognizing opportunities and fashioning strategies and tactics to exploit them. Edwards considers three extraordinary presidents--Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan--and shows that despite their considerable rhetorical skills, the public was unresponsive to their appeals for support. To achieve change, these leaders capitalized on existing public opinion. Edwards then explores the prospects for other presidents to do the same to advance their policies. Turning to Congress, he focuses first on the productive legislative periods of FDR, Lyndon Johnson, and Reagan, and finds that these presidents recognized especially favorable conditions for passing their agendas and effectively exploited these circumstances while they lasted. Edwards looks at presidents governing in less auspicious circumstances, and reveals that whatever successes these presidents enjoyed also resulted from the interplay of conditions and the presidents' skills at understanding and exploiting them. The Strategic President revises the common assumptions of presidential scholarship and presents significant lessons for presidents' basic strategies of governance.
£25.20
Harvard University Press Japan in the American Century
No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order.The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions.Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.
£29.66
Cornell University Press To Govern the Devil in Hell: The Political Crisis of Territorial Kansas
One hundred and fifty years after Kansas was admitted to the Union, we still find ourselves fascinated by the specter of "Bleeding Kansas" and the violence that preceded the American Civil War by five years. Although ample attention has been devoted to understanding why territorial violence broke out in Kansas in 1856, of equal concern but less illuminated is the question of why government, both local and national, allowed the violence to continue unstanched for so long. This question is fundamentally about governance-its existence, exercise, limits, and continuance-and its study has ramifications for understanding both Kansas events and why the American experiment in government failed in 1861. In addition, the book also sheds light on the nature of democracy, the challenges of implanting it in distant environs, the necessity of cooperation at the various levels of government, and the value of strong leadership. To Govern the Devil in Hell uses the prism of governance to investigate what went wrong in territorial Kansas. From the first elections in late 1854 and early 1855, local government was tarnished with cries of illegitimacy that territorial officials could not ameliorate. Soon after, a shadow government was created which further impeded local management of territorial challenges. Ultimately, this book addresses why Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan failed to act, what hindered Congress from stepping into the void, and why and how the lack of effective governance harmed Kansas and later the United States.
£22.99
The University of Chicago Press Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism
From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surprisingly central to literature and culture of the period, mesmerism embraced a variety of phenomena, including mind control, spirit travel, and clairvoyance. Although it had been debunked by Benjamin Franklin in late eighteenth-century France, the practice nonetheless enjoyed a decades-long resurgence in the United States. Emily Ogden here offers the first comprehensive account of those boom years. Credulity tells the fascinating story of mesmerism’s spread from the plantations of the French Antilles to the textile factory cities of 1830s New England. As it proliferated along the Eastern seaboard, this occult movement attracted attention from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s circle and ignited the nineteenth-century equivalent of flame wars in the major newspapers. But mesmerism was not simply the last gasp of magic in modern times. Far from being magicians themselves, mesmerists claimed to provide the first rational means of manipulating the credulous human tendencies that had underwritten past superstitions. Now, rather than propping up the powers of oracles and false gods, these tendencies served modern ends such as labor supervision, education, and mediated communication. Neither an atavistic throwback nor a radical alternative, mesmerism was part and parcel of the modern. Credulity offers us a new way of understanding the place of enchantment in secularizing America.
£80.00
Hub City Press You Want More: Selected Stories of George Singleton
Thirty stories, collected in one volume for the very first time, from one of the South's best known and most acclaimed short story writers. With his signature darkly acerbic and sharp-witted humor, George Singleton has built a reputation as one of the most astute and wise observers of the South. Now Tom Franklin introduces this master of the form with a compilation of acclaimed and prize-winning short fiction spanning twenty years and eight collections, including stories originally published in outlets like the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Playboy, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, and many more. A lovelorn and chatty euthanasia vet arrives at a couples’ house to put down their dog, Probate; a father-to-be searches his workplace—a bar—for a replacement sonogram after recording an episode of Bonanza over the original; an unlikely romance sparks between a librarian and a professional bowler while they compete to win an RV; a father takes his son to visit the many ex-girlfriends that could have been his mother. These stories bear the influence of Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver, at other times Lewis Nordan and Donald Barthelme, and touch on the mysteries of childhood, the complexities of human relationships, and the absurdity of everyday life, its inexorable defeats and small triumphs. Assembled here for the very first time, You Want More showcases the body of work, hilarious and incisive, that has cemented George Singleton’s place among the South’s greatest living writers.
£17.99
New York University Press Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected
Winner of the 2013 John Hope Franklin Book Prize presented by the American Studies Association A necessary read that demonstrates the ways in which certain people are devalued without attention to social contexts Social Death tackles one of the core paradoxes of social justice struggles and scholarship—that the battle to end oppression shares the moral grammar that structures exploitation and sanctions state violence. Lisa Marie Cacho forcefully argues that the demands for personhood for those who, in the eyes of society, have little value, depend on capitalist and heteropatriarchal measures of worth. With poignant case studies, Cacho illustrates that our very understanding of personhood is premised upon the unchallenged devaluation of criminalized populations of color. Hence, the reliance of rights-based politics on notions of who is and is not a deserving member of society inadvertently replicates the logic that creates and normalizes states of social and literal death. Her understanding of inalienable rights and personhood provides us the much-needed comparative analytical and ethical tools to understand the racialized and nationalized tensions between racial groups. Driven by a radical, relentless critique, Social Death challenges us to imagine a heretofore “unthinkable” politics and ethics that do not rest on neoliberal arguments about worth, but rather emerge from the insurgent experiences of those negated persons who do not live by the norms that determine the productive, patriotic, law abiding, and family-oriented subject.
£23.99
New York University Press America Ascendant: From Theodore Roosevelt to FDR in the Century of American Power, 1901-1945
Traces the development of American industrial power and the hurdles that threatened the country's ascendenceC A lively tour of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, America Ascendant traces the development of America's tremendous industrial power and its commercial deployment, at home and abroad. Emphasizing the contributions of those charismatic presidents who shaped the future of politics—Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt—the book also covers pioneers such as Henry Ford and the Wright brothers, whose technological contributions transformed societies the world over. The book investigates the phenomena that threatened America's ascendance—the Great Red Scare of 1917-20 and the rout of organized labor, the Great Crash of 1929 and the searing depression years, and the apartheid policies that undermined American democratic ideals. Moreover, Sean Dennis Cashman sets the American story within the dramatic context of the rise and fall of political empires in Europe and Asia and two devastating world wars. Enriching the volume is an integrated account of the American cultural scene, replete with such figures as Ernest Hemingway, Frank Lloyd Wright, George Gershwin, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith. Imaginatively conceived, America Ascendant once again reveals Sean Dennis Cashman's flair for bringing American history to life with all its triumphs, drama, and ambiguities.
£24.99
Oxford University Press Inc From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776
A finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this prize-winning and critically acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from thirteen disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower. George C. Herring tells a story of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures, captured in a fast-paced narrative that illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of the nation, and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. He shows how policymakers defined American interests broadly to include territorial expansion, access to growing markets, and the spread of an "American way" of life. And Herring does all this in a story rich in human drama and filled with epic events. Statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin and Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman and Dean Acheson played key roles in America's rise to world power. But America's expansion as a nation also owes much to the adventurers and explorers, the sea captains, merchants and captains of industry, the missionaries and diplomats, who discovered or charted new lands, developed new avenues of commerce, and established and defended the nation's interests in foreign lands. From Colony to Superpower captures all this as it tells the dramatic story of America's emergence as superpower--its birth in revolution, its troubled present, and its uncertain future.
£15.99
University of Illinois Press Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South
In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.
£15.99
The University of Chicago Press Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism
From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surprisingly central to literature and culture of the period, mesmerism embraced a variety of phenomena, including mind control, spirit travel, and clairvoyance. Although it had been debunked by Benjamin Franklin in late eighteenth-century France, the practice nonetheless enjoyed a decades-long resurgence in the United States. Emily Ogden here offers the first comprehensive account of those boom years. Credulity tells the fascinating story of mesmerism’s spread from the plantations of the French Antilles to the textile factory cities of 1830s New England. As it proliferated along the Eastern seaboard, this occult movement attracted attention from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s circle and ignited the nineteenth-century equivalent of flame wars in the major newspapers. But mesmerism was not simply the last gasp of magic in modern times. Far from being magicians themselves, mesmerists claimed to provide the first rational means of manipulating the credulous human tendencies that had underwritten past superstitions. Now, rather than propping up the powers of oracles and false gods, these tendencies served modern ends such as labor supervision, education, and mediated communication. Neither an atavistic throwback nor a radical alternative, mesmerism was part and parcel of the modern. Credulity offers us a new way of understanding the place of enchantment in secularizing America.
£25.16
Peepal Tree Press Ltd New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean
Discover some of the best in speculative short fiction from the Caribbean's up and coming voices. Edited by writer Karen Lord, New Worlds, Old Ways encompasses science fiction, fantasy and more. It is the third publication of Peekash Press, an imprint of Akashic Books and Peepal Tree Press committed to supporting the emergence of new Caribbean writing, and as part of CaribLit project.Do not be misled by the ‘speculative’ in the title. Although there may be robots and fantastical creatures, these common symbols are tools to frame the familiar from fresh perspectives.Here you will find the recent past and ongoing present of government and society with curfews, crime and corruption; the universal themes of family with parents and children, growth and death, love and hate; the struggle to thrive when power is capricious and revenge too bittersweet. Here too is the passage of everything – old ways, places, peoples, and ourselves – leaving nothing behind but memories, histories, stories.This anthology speaks to the fragility of our Caribbean home, but reminds the reader that although home may be vulnerable, it is also beautifully resilient. The voice of our literature declares that in spite of disasters, this people and this place shall not be wholly destroyed.Read for delight, then read for depth, and you will not be disappointed.Edited by Karen Lord, with stories by Tammi-Browne Bannister, Summer Edward, Portia Subran, Brandon O’Brien, Kevin Jared Hosein, Richard B. Lynch, Elizabeth J. Jones, Damion Wilson, Brian Franklin, Ararimeh Aiyejina and H.K. Williams.
£8.23
Anness Publishing Illustrated History of World War Two
This is a highly readable history of the military and political events of the war, from the rapid advance of the Nazi forces across Europe to triumph over Germany and the surrender of the Japanese. Colour campaign maps and battle plans complement descriptions of every major battle, with the analysis of the successes and failures of the various military strategies. Fascinating fact boxes highlight the lives of important political leaders and generals who shaped the course of the war, such as General Douglas MacArther, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Illustrated with over 350 compelling and evocative photographs taken during the conflict. This engaging volume is divided into five chapters, one for each specific phase of the European and Pacific Wars, plus an introductory chapter on the causes of the war, and a concluding discussion of its aftermath and long-term legacy. The chapters follow the war's battles and campaigns, and there are special feature boxes on key personalities and areas of significant interest alongside detailed maps and battle plans to show how the conflict progressed. The fall of France, the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor and Operation Barbarossa are all discussed in detail, as are accounts of the battles in North Africa and the war in the Pacific. The harrowing history of World War Two is retold here in an expert but accessible way, supplemented with over 350 evocative photographs, maps and battle plans, making this a fascinating reference book for both general and specialist readers.
£16.50
University of Notre Dame Press The Glory and the Burden: The American Presidency from the New Deal to the Present, Expanded Edition
Robert Schmuhl chronicles the American presidency for nearly a century, providing a compelling picture of how the functions of the office and who occupies it have changed over the decades. The Glory and the Burden: The American Presidency from the New Deal to the Present is a timely examination of the state of the American presidency and the forces that have shaped it since 1933, with an emphasis on the dramatic changes that have taken place within the institution and to the individuals occupying the Oval Office. A new chapter and other elements have been added to the book, which originally appeared in the fall of 2019. This expanded, updated edition probes the election of Joe Biden in 2020, the transition of the White House from Donald Trump to Biden, and Biden’s first several months in office. Robert Schmuhl traces the evolution of the modern presidency back to the terms of Franklin Roosevelt, maintaining that FDR’s White House years had a profound impact on the office, resulting in significant changes to the job and to those who’ve served since then. Specifically, the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution, limiting a president to two terms, has largely redefined each administration’s agenda. News sources and social media have also grown exponentially, exercising influence over the conduct of presidents and affecting the consequences of their behavior. Schmuhl examines the presidency as an institution and the presidents as individuals from several different perspectives. The Glory and the Burden is an engrossing read for a general audience, particularly those with an interest in politics, American history, and communications.
£74.70
Princeton University Press Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-Making
Franklin Roosevelt's intentions during the three years between Munich and Pearl Harbor have been a source of controversy among historians for decades. Barbara Farnham offers both a theory of how the domestic political context affects foreign policy decisions in general and a fresh interpretation of FDR's post-Munich policies based on the insights that the theory provides. Between 1936 and 1938, Roosevelt searched for ways to influence the deteriorating international situation. When Hitler's behavior during the Munich crisis showed him to be incorrigibly aggressive, FDR settled on aiding the democracies, a course to which he adhered until America's entry into the war. This policy attracted him because it allowed him to deal with a serious problem: the conflict between the need to stop Hitler and the domestic imperative to avoid any risk of American involvement in a war. Because existing theoretical approaches to value conflict ignore the influence of political factors on decision-making, they offer little help in explaining Roosevelt's behavior. As an alternative, this book develops a political approach to decision-making which focuses on the impact that awareness of the imperatives of the political context can have on decision-making processes and, through them, policy outcomes. It suggests that in the face of a clash of central values decision-makers who are aware of the demands of the political context are likely to be reluctant to make trade-offs, seeking instead a solution that gives some measure of satisfaction to all the values implicated in the decision.
£45.00
Pennsylvania State University Press Voting Deliberatively: FDR and the 1936 Presidential Campaign
The 1932 election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt seemed to hold the promise of Democratic domination for years to come. However, leading up to the 1936 election, persistent economic problems, a controversial domestic agenda, and the perception of a weak foreign policy were chipping away at public support. The president faced unrelenting criticism from both the Left and the Right, and it seemed unlikely that he would cruise to the same clear victory he enjoyed in 1932. But 1936 was yet another landslide win for FDR, which makes it easy to forget just how contested the campaign was. In Voting Deliberatively, Mary Stuckey examines little-discussed components of FDR’s 1936 campaign that aided his victory. She reveals four elements of this reelection campaign that have not received adequate attention: the creation of public opinion, the attention paid to local organizations, the focus on specific kinds of interests, and the public rhetoric that tied it all together. Previous studies of the 1936 presidential election discuss elements such as FDR’s vulnerability before the campaign and the weakness of Republican candidate Alf Landon. But these histories pay little attention to the quantity and quality of information Roosevelt acquired, the importance of organizations such as the Good Neighbor League and the Committee of One, the mobilization of the vote, and the ways in which these organizational strategies fused with Roosevelt’s rhetorical strategies. Stuckey shows how these facets combined in one of the largest victories in Electoral College history and provided a template for future victory.
£53.06
Skyhorse Publishing Lee: A Biography
General Robert E. Lee is well known as a major figure in the Civil War. However, by removing Lee from the delimiting frame of the Civil War and placing him in the context of the Republic's total history, Dowdey shows the "eternal relevance" of this tragic figure to the American heritage. With access to hundreds of personal letters, Dowdey brings fresh insights into Lee's background and personal relationships and examines the factors which made Lee that rare specimen, a complete person.” In tracing Lee's reluctant involvement in the sectional conflict, Dowdey shows that he was essentially a peacemaker, very advanced in his disbelief in war as a resolution.Lee had never led troops in combat until suddenly given command of a demoralized, hodgepodge force under siege from McClellan in front of Richmond. In a detailed study of Lee's growth in the mastery of the techniques of war, he shows his early mistakes, the nature of his seemingly intuitive powers, the limitations imposed by his personal character and physical decline, and the effect of this character on the men with whom he created a legendary army. It was after the fighting was over that Dowdey believes Lee made his most significant and neglected achievement. As a symbol of the defeated people, he rose above all hostilities and, in the wreckage of his own fortunes, advocated rebuilding a New South, for which he set the example with his progressive program in education. The essence of Lee's tragedy was the futility of his efforts toward the harmonious restoration of the Republic with the dissensions of the past forgotten.Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
£17.27
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Architecture and Interpretation: Essays for Eric Fernie
Essays centred on the methods, pleasures, and pitfalls of architectural interpretation. Architecture affects us on a number of levels. It can control our movements, change our experience of our own scale, create a particular sense of place, focus memory, and act as a statement of power and taste, to name but a few. Yet the ways in which these effects are brought about are not yet well understood. The aim of this book is to move the discussion forward, to encourage and broaden debate about the ways in which architecture is interpreted, with aview to raising levels of intellectual engagement with the issues in terms of the theory and practice of architectural history. The range of material covered extends from houses constructed from mammoth bones around 15,000 years ago in the present-day Ukraine to a surfer's memorial in Carpinteria, California; other subjects include the young Michelangelo seeking to transcend genre boundaries; medieval masons' tombs; and the mythographies of early modern Netherlandish towns. Taking as their point of departure the ways in which architecture has been, is, and can be written about and otherwise represented, the editors' substantial Introduction provides an historiographical framework for, and draws out the themes and ideas presented in, the individual contributors' essays. Contributors: Christine Stevenson, T. A. Heslop, John Mitchell, Malcolm Thurlby, Richard Fawcett, Jill A. Franklin, StephenHeywood, Roger Stalley, Veronica Sekules, John Onians, Frank Woodman, Paul Crossley, David Hemsoll, Kerry Downes, Richard Plant, Jenifer Ní Ghrádraigh, Lindy Grant, Elisabeth de Bièvre, Stefan Muthesius, Robert Hillenbrand, AndrewM. Shanken, Peter Guillery.
£90.00