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During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when vast numbers of whites poured into California, the native Indian population was decimated through disease, starvation, homicide, and a declining birth rate. In this prize-winning book, Albert L. Hurtado focuses on the Indians who survived this harrowing time. Hurtado considers the ways in which native life and culture persisted, how the survivors integrated their lives with white society, and how the now-dominant whites related to the Indians living and working with them. "Anyone interested in California Indians should read this book."--William Bright, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Hurtado takes a fresh look at the role Native Americans played in shaping frontier California. The Indians emerge from this study not merely as victims of white rapaciousness but as an active historical influence, serving as both a resistance force to white incursion and as prime shapers of the agricultural work force."--Booklist "A wide-ranging and imaginative discussion of significant issues that are at the very center of scholarship on western settlement during the nineteenth century."--Roger Nichols, University of Arizona Winner of the 1989 Ray Allen Billington Prize awarded by the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American frontier history.
Straddling the line between fiction and poetry, Empire of Dreams speaks of Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi's love affair with New York City--her imagined social, political, erotic, and linguistic relationships to the place that has acted as a magnet to Puerto Ricans for so many years. The work deals with issues of performance, gender ambiguity, and marginality. It is concerned with the boundaries of language and the possibilities of cross-dressing poetry as commercials, diary, tabloids, gossip, confessions, videos, autobiography, musicals, and manifesto. Characters turn into other characters. Clowns, buffoons, shepherds, lead soldiers, magicians, madmen, witches, fortune-tellers, and artists perform their fantasies in the city streets. An antinovel within the book satirizes the writer's role in the modern age and calls for a revolution of poetry. New York City becomes the site of liberation for its marginal citizens, as the narrator is led through a seeming phantasmagoria of internal and external trials in order to experience the center--of political power, of meaning, of feeling, and of personal identity.
An eminent liteary critic enumerates and explores five American classics How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a "classic"? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? In this provocative new book Denis Donoghue essays to answer these questions. He presents his own short list of "relative" classics--works whose appeal may not be universal but which nonetheless have occupied an important place in our culture for more than a century. These books have survived the abuses of time--neglect, contempt, indifference, willful readings, excesses of praise, and hyperbole. Donoghue bestows the term classic on just five American works: Melville's Moby-Dick, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Examining each in a separate chapter, he discusses how the writings have been received and interpreted, and he offers his own contemporary readings, suggesting, for example, that in the post-9/11 era, Moby-Dick may be rewardingly read as a revenge tragedy. Donoghue extends an irresistible invitation to open the pages of these American classics again, demonstrating with wit and acuity how very much they have to say to us now.
This book makes available to scholars for the first time transcriptions of 313 clay tablets preserved in the Yale Babylonian Collection. The tablets date from the reign of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, who presided over the destiny of the Neo-Babylonian empire from 556 b.c. until its conquest by the Persians in 539 b.c. Representing a significant addition to the body of primary sources that illuminate the social and economic history of this transitional era, these clay documents include mainly administrative records and legal transactions, along with a few letters. Each tablet was written in the Akkadian language using the cuneiform script invented in Mesopotamia at the end of the fourth millennium b.c. Paul-Alain Beaulieu's transcriptions of the tablets are presented in autographed facsimile copies. The author also provides an introduction to the volume, a register and descriptive catalogue of the texts, and indexes of personal names, geographical names, and names of gods and temples appearing in the texts. This outstanding collection affords important new access to the history of Mesopotamian civilization during its last phase as an independent political and cultural entity.
In this timely book, Bernard Wasserstein offers the first authoritative history of the fraught diplomatic relations surrounding the Holy City of Jerusalem. Jews, Muslims, and Christians have all claimed the city as their own over the centuries--as have a
Drawing on articles in social work and mental health journals, activist newsletters and autobiographies by search activists, this text offers a new perspective on adoption and the search debate, placing them within a social context.
This book-a revised and expanded edition of the definitive biography of Bessie Smith, known as the "Empress of the Blues"-debunks many of the myths that circulated after her untimely death in 1937. For this new edition, Chris Albertson provides more details of Bessie's early years, new interview material, and a chapter devoted to events and responses that followed the original publication.
How does one empire differ from another? Why do empires rise and fall? What has made empires flourish in some eras and regions of the world but not in others? In this broad and ambitious book, Dominic Lieven explores the place and meaning of empire from ancient Rome to the present.The central focus of the book is Russia and the rise and fall of the Tsarist and the Soviet Empires. The overwhelming majority of works on empire concentrate on the European maritime powers. Lieven's comparative approach highlights the important role played by Russia in the expansion of Europe and its rise to global dominance. The book contrasts the nature, strategies, and fate of empire in Russia with that of its major rivals, the Habsburg, Ottoman, and British empires, and considers a broad range of other cases from ancient China and Rome to the present-day United States, Indonesia, India, and the European Union.Many of the dilemmas of empire persist in today's world, and Lieven throws new light on some of the most intractable current examples, including the crisis in the former Soviet Union, the troubles in Ulster, and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. This major examination of the imperial experience presents history on the grandest scale, combining formidable erudition with stimulating readability.
In this highly acclaimed book, one of the most prominent theologians in the world offers a theological and psychoanalytic assessment of Freud's atheism and of its implications for current psychoanalytic practice. In the original section of the book, now entitled "God--An Infantile Illusion?," Hans Kung traces Freud's views on religion and religious longing, compares Jung's and Adler's attitudes toward religion, shows that Freud's arguments against the existence of God are theologically unsound, and concludes with a frank and provocative discussion of what psychoanalysis may be able to teach the Christian Church. In a new section, "Religion--The Final Taboo?," Kung points out that religions still plays a negligible role in the practice of psychoanalysis, despite its increasing importance in the lives of most people. Has religion replaced sex, Kung asks, as an integral facet of human experience ignored or repressed by the very profession that seeks to enlighten?Reviews of the first edition: "This should stand as one of Dr. Kung's finest works."--Edmund Fuller, Wall Street Journal"A balanced, thorough, and very readable discussion of Freud's critique of religion... A model of the clarity, honesty, and fairness we can always expect to find in Kung's writings." -John F. Haught, America"An honest, sympathetic pro-and-con assessment of specific elements of Freud's critique by a well-known German Catholic theologian, easily accessible to the interested layperson and valuable for both theologians and psychologists."--Library Journal"Kung carefully, sympathetically investigates Freud's interpretations of religion, both within his clinical theories and personal history." -Lisa Mitchell, Los Angeles Times
This book, published on the eve of the bicentennial of the American census, is the first social history of this remarkably important institution, from its origins in 1790 to the present. Margo Anderson argues that the census has always been an influential policymaking tool, used not only to determine the number of representatives apportioned to each state but also to allocate tax dollars to states, and, in the past, to define groups-such as slaves and immigrants-who were to be excluded from the American polity. "As a history of the census, this study is a delight. It is thoroughly researched and richly detailed. Anderson is to be commended for covering such an expansive chronology with such skill. . . . Anderson has woven together not only social history but also intellectual, institutional, political, and military history into a thoroughly readable book that examines not only changes in the census but also the remarkable changes that have taken place in the US."-Choice "This book is valuable, clearly written and contains many interesting facts. It should be read not only by national policymakers and the statistical community, but by all who are interested in American society."-Bryant Robey, Population Today "A solid and readable piece of social, political, and institutional history. It will be essential reading not only for historians of American politics but also for census and population experts, for any public policy formulators who rely on census figures, and for those interested in the history of numeracy and statistics."-Patricia Cline Cohen, University of California, Santa Barbara
"The vital questions which confront not only students of war but all concerned with peace and security are, why wars happen; how, if necessary, they should be fought; and above all how they can be prevented...An understanding [of these issues] is impossible without some insight into the way in which societies have developed in the past and with them their cultures and their value systems."--Michael Howard This important book by one of the most eminent military historians in the world discusses the processes of historical change that spawned the European wars of the twentieth century. In a series of elegantly written essays, Michael Howard ponders the continuing significance of nationalism and its relationship to the growth of industrial societies, modernization, and war. He explores the conflicting ideologies that arose from industrialism, tracing the development of new political organisms and attitudes as mass communications and universal education raised and transformed the level of political consciousness throughout the world. Howard argues that, although industrialization may tend to reduce belligerence by producing societies dedicated to material welfare rather than heroic achievement, organized violence remains a norm. In an introduction, he links these themes with the emergence of perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet sphere, with the difficulties experienced by Third World countries in creating viable political and economic communities, and with a Western bloc in which social tensions continue to increase.
The Wise Virgins (1914), Leonard Woolf's second novel, was published two years after the author's marriage to Virginia Stephen--and begun during their honeymoon. The autobiographical elements of the book are well documented. Its publication caused acute distress to Woolf's family. Leonard's sister, Bella, urged him to bury the novel, while his mother was shocked and mortified by unflattering portraits of herself and her neighbors. Two weeks after reading the novel, Virginia Woolf suffered the worst of her many breakdowns.As a roman a clef the novel holds considerable interest for its picture of Leonard and Virginia's courtship, as well as its sketches of Vanessa Stephen and Clive Bell. (Virginia would later retell the story, from a much different perspective, in Night and Day.) But the novel offers the contemporary reader other rewards. It remains a witty, engaging satire about English society just before World War I and its conventions and prejudices. In Harry Davis, Woolf created a memorable Jewish antihero who rails against society's conventions but tragically finds himself unable to escape them. Award-winning biographer Victoria Glendinning contributes a foreword to this new paperback edition.
Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night is regarded as his masterpiece and a classic of American drama. With this new edition, at last it has the critical edition that it deserves. William Davies King provides students and theater artists with an invaluable guide to the text, including an essay on historical and critical perspectives; glosses of literary allusions and quotations; notes on the performance history; an annotated bibliography; and illustrations. This is a worthy new edition, one that I'm sure will appeal to many students and teachers. William Davies King provides a thoughtful introduction to Long Day's Journey into Night--equally sensitive to the most particular and most encompassing of the play's materials.--Marc Robinson
Lothian boasts some of Scotland's most picturesque villages and fine Georgian towns, but its architectural history goes back to the twelfth century. The introduction of monastic orders and the establishment of the parish churches has left examples at Dalmeny and Tyninghame. Lothian also has fine church buildings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries while schisms within the Reformed religion are reflected in a variety of lesser churches. Tower-houses are reminders of war and conflict and of the power struggles of the nobility, poignantly expressed in the ruins of Linlithgow Palace. More peaceful and prosperous years, both before and after the Act of Union, produced large estates and a series of fine classical mansion houses - Newhailes, Yester House, Dalkeith - while the grandiloquent Hopetoun, Newliston and Gosford House testify to the genius of the Adams, father and sons. Where Tantallon, Dirleton and other early castles were defensive, their successors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Dalmeny and Dalhousie, are unashamedly romantic. Lothian's achievements of the Industrial Revolution range form the simplicity of Telford's Lothian Bridge to the dramatic and celebrated spans of the Forth Rail Bridge.
G. E. Rumphius, also known as the "Indian Pliny," was one of the great tropical naturalists of the seventeenth century. Born in Germany, he spent most of his life in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, stationed on the island of Ambon in eastern Indonesia. He wrote two major works; this one, the first modern work on tropical fauna, was published posthumously in Dutch in 1705. A classic text of natural history, it is now available in English for the first time. The descriptions in "The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet cover "the gamut of organisms found in the seas surrounding Ambon--crabs, shrimp, sea urchins, mussels--as well as minerals and rare concretions taken from animals and plants. A series of exquisite etchings accompanies the descriptions. The book has been masterfully translated and extensively annotated by E. M. Beekman, whose introduction provides the first biography of Rumphius in English that incorporates new material.
The 366 lyrics of Petrarch's Canzoniere exert a unique influence in literary history. From the mid-fifteenth century to the early seventeenth, the poems are imitated in every major language of western Europe, and for a time they provide Renaissance Europe with an almost exclusive sense of what love poetry should be. In this stimulating look at the international phenomenon of Petrarch's poetry, Gordon Braden focuses on materials in languages other than English--Italian, French, and Spanish, with brief citations from Croatian and Cypriot Greek, among others. Braden closely examines Petrarch's theme of love for an impossible object of desire, a theme that captivated and inspired across centuries, societies, and languages. The book opens with a fresh interpretation of Petrarch's sequence, in which Braden defines the poet's innovations in the context of his predecessors, Dante and the troubadours. The author then examines how Petrarchan predispositions affect various strains of Renaissance literature: prose narrative, verse narrative, and, primarily, lyric poetry. In the final chapter, Braden turns to the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to demonstrate a sophisticated case of Petrarchism taken to one of its extremes within the walls of a convent in seventeenth-century Mexico.
The little-known story of the charismatic, utopian leader Octavia and her devoted followers in the interwar years In 1919, in the wake of the upheaval of World War I, a remarkable group of English women came up with their own solution to the world's grief: a new religion. At the heart of the Panacea Society was a charismatic and autocratic leader, a vicar's widow named Mabel Bartlrop. Her followers called her Octavia, and they believed that she was the daughter of God, sent to build the New Jerusalem in Bedford.When the last living members of the Panacea Society revealed to historian Jane Shaw their immense and painstakingly preserved archives, she began to reconstruct the story of a close-knit utopian community that grew to include seventy residents, thousands of followers, and an international healing ministry reaching 130,000 people. Shaw offers a detailed portrait of Octavia and describes the faith of her devoted followers who believed they would never die. Vividly told, by turns funny and tragic, Octavia, Daughter of God is about a moment at the advent of modernity, when a generation of newly empowered women tried to re-make Christianity in their own image, offering a fascinating window into the anxieties and hopes of the interwar years.
This work covers the English county of Berkshire. Stretching from the fringes of London, Berkshire originally covered much of present day Oxfordshire. The variety of architecture is, consequently, broad and remarkable, from the towns of the home counties to the farmhouses and churches of its west.
In this ambitious reinterpretation of the early Stuart period in England, Glenn Burgess contends that the common understanding of seventeenth-century English politics is oversimplified and inaccurate. The long-accepted standard view holds that gradual polarization between the Court and Parliament during the reigns of James I and Charles I reflected the split between absolutists--who upheld the divine right of monarchy to rule--and constitutionalists--who resisted tyranny by insisting the monarch was subject to law--and resulted inevitably in civil war. Yet, Burgess argues, the very terms that have been used to understand the period are misleading: there were almost no genuine absolutist thinkers in England before the Civil War, and the "constitutionalism" of common lawyers and parliamentarians was a very different notion from current understandings of that term. Burgess turns to the great body of common law that enshrined many of England's liberties and institutions. Examining the political opinions of such key figures as Sir Edward Coke and Sir Francis Bacon, he concludes that the laws of the land represented a civilization no monarchist would have attacked. Further, absolutism was a rare creed at the time and, while it was accepted that the king was next to God in authority, this detracted nothing from the insistence that he rule under the law. Rather than a polarization of ideas fueling political division, says Burgess, it was Charles I's inappropriate exploitation of agreed prerogatives that exposed tensions, forged divisions, and ruptured the "pacified politics" of which the early modern English were so proud. Burgess's new perspective sets the political thought of Hobbes, Locke, and others into contemporary context, revises the distorted view of pre-civil war England, and refocuses discussion on the real conflicts and human complexities of the period.
Richard Rodgers, a musical genius whose Broadway career spanned six successful decades, composed more than a thousand songs for the American stage. Although he reaped wealth, success, and recognition that included two shared Pulitzer Prizes, Rodgers found happiness elusive. In this first comprehensive biography of Rodgers, William G. Hyland tells the full story of the complex man and his incomparable music. Hyland's portrait of Rodgers (1902-79) begins with his childhood in an affluent Jewish family living in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. During college years at Columbia University and early work on the amateur circuit and Broadway, Rodgers entered into a historic collaboration with the lyricist Lorenz Hart. The team produced a dozen popular shows and such enduring songs as The Lady Is a Tramp. Rodgers' next partnership, with Oscar Hammerstein II, led to the creation of the musical play, a new and distinctively American art form. Beginning with Oklahoma! in 1943, this pair dominated Broadway for almost twenty years with a string of hits that remain beloved favorites: Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. When Hammerstein died in 1960, Rodgers began a new phase in his career, writing the lyrics to his own music, then joining lyricists Stephen Sondheim, Sheldon Harnick, and Martin Charnin. Despite periods of depression, excessive drinking, hypochondria, and devastating illness at different points in his life, Rodgers' outpouring of music seemed little affected, and he continued to compose until his death at age seventy-seven. An icon of the musical theater, Rodgers left a legacy of timeless songs that audiences return to hear over and again.
From an esteemed military historian, a sweeping history of the revolutions in war-fighting that have shaped the modern world
A fascinating history of the profitable paradox of the American outdoor experience: visiting nature first requires shopping
Thomas L. Kane (1822-1883), a crusader for antislavery, women's rights, and the downtrodden, rose to prominence in his day as the most ardent and persuasive defender of Mormons' religious liberty. Though not a Mormon, Kane sought to defend the much-reviled group from the "Holy War" waged against them by evangelical America. His courageous personal intervention averted a potentially catastrophic bloody conflict between federal troops and Mormon settlers in the now nearly forgotten Utah War of 1857-58. Drawing on extensive, newly available archives, this book is the first to tell the full story of Kane's extraordinary life. The book illuminates his powerful Philadelphia family, his personal life and eccentricities, his reform achievements, his place in Mormon history, and his career as a Civil War general. Further, the book revises previous understandings of nineteenth-century reform, showing how Kane and likeminded others fused Democratic Party ideology, anti-evangelicalism, and romanticism.
"One of the most brilliant and illuminating interpreters of modern eastern Europe . . . a wonderfully vivid writer . . . He reaches the parts that others do not reach."--Richard Davy, The Times "The best single account of what happened--and why."--Newsweek The definitive account of Solidarity's spectacular rise and tragic fall . . . a book to set the record straight . . . amply documented, indispensable."--John Darnton, New York Times Book Review A brilliant eyewitness and analyst, Timothy Garton Ash in this book offers a gripping account of the Polish shipyard workers who defied their communist rulers in 1980. He describes the emergence of the improbable leader Lech Walesa, the ensuing tumult that culminated in martial law, and--for this updated edition--the fate of the Solidarity movement in subsequent years.
The Vinland Map, dated to about A.D. 1440--at least fifty years before Columbus landed in the Americas--is a unique map of the world that shows an outline of the northeast American coast and a legend describing its discovery in about 1000 by Leif Eiriksson, the Norseman from Greenland. The map was published by Yale University Press in 1965 and generated an enormous amount of debate. Chemical analysis of the ink later suggested the map might be a forgery, but recent appraisals of both scientific and humanist evidence argue that it is indeed authentic. Now, on the thirtieth anniversary of its original publication, here is this classic of historical cartography in a new edition. It reprints unaltered the original text on the Vinland Map and an account of Friar John of Plano Carpini's mission to the Mongols from 1245 to 1247, with which the map had at some stage been bound. To this have been added a new introduction by George D. Painter, sole survivor of the original team of editors, who discusses the verification of the map's authenticity; a new essay by Wilcomb E. Washburn, director of the Smithsonian's American Studies Program, on the map's provenance and the tests that have been performed on it; and a new discussion of the map's compositional and structural aspects by Thomas A. Cahill and Bruce H. Kusko, of the Crocker Historical and Archaeological Projects at the University of California, Davis. There is also an account by Laurence C. Witten II, the rare-book dealer who sold the map to the benefactor who donated it anonymously to the Yale University Library.
A sound of a distant hornO'er shadowed lake is borne--my father's song.--Charles Ives Charles Ives, perhaps the quintessential American composer of the twentieth century, drew on his childhood experiences in a small New England town in his music. Through his close relationship with his father, George, a Civil War bandmaster, Ives developed a powerful feeling for nineteenth-century rural America. This book--the first full-scale psychoanalytic biography of a major composer--examines the lives of the two men and shows how a knowledge of their relationship as father and son, teacher and pupil, is central to an understanding of Ives's work. Stuart Feder, a psychoanalyst with training in musicology, demonstrates that George exerted so pervasive an influence on Charles's creative life that Ives's music may be seen as the result of an unconscious fantasy of posthumous collaboration between father and son. The music bears George's mark, not only in its incorporation of hymn tunes, parlor ballads, Civil War marches, and other homely sources that derived from his youth, but also in its use of technical musical devices attributed to George. Moreover, the span of Ives's creative life reveals another connection to his father: Charles's musical productivity began to wane in his forties, as he approached the age at which his father died. Dr. Feder examines the influence of George's teaching and storytelling on Charles's years as a composer. Ives's later decline is traced psychologically and medically. Using Ives's music as an essential part of his data, Dr. Feder demonstrates how music can illuminate and be expressive of the inner life of its creator.
A detailed look at early American flowers and herbs, with expert advice on creating a garden with historically accurate plants Hounds-tongue. Ragged robin. Costmary. Pennyroyal. All-heal. These plants, whose very names conjure up a bygone world, were among the great variety of flowers and herbs grown in America's colonial and early Federal gardens. In this sumptuously illustrated book, a leading historic plant expert brings this botanical heritage back to life.Drawing on years of archival research and field trials in Colonial Williamsburg's gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, Lawrence Griffith documents fifty-six species of flowers and herbs and provides details on how they were cultivated and used. For each plant, an elegant period hand-colored engraving, watercolor, or woodcut is presented along with glorious new photographs by Barbara Temple Lombardi.This book is a dazzling treat for armchair gardeners and for those who have visited and admired the famous gardens of Colonial Williamsburg. It is also an invaluable companion for twenty-first-century gardeners who will appreciate the specific advice of a master gardener on how to plan, choose appropriate species for, and maintain a beautiful, historic flower and herb garden.The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is a not-for-profit educational institution that operates the world's largest living history museum. Published in association with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb collaborated for more than forty years, longer than any such partnership in Broadway history. Together they wrote over twenty musicals. Their two most successful works, Cabaret and Chicago, had critically acclaimed Broadway revivals and were made into Oscar-winning films. This book, the first study of Kander and Ebb, examines their artistic accomplishments as individuals and as a team. Drawing on personal papers and on numerous interviews, James Leve analyzes the unique nature of this collaboration. Leve discusses their contribution to the concept musical; he examines some of their most popular works including Cabaret, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman; and he reassesses their "flops" as well as their incomplete and abandoned projects. Filled with fascinating information, the book is a resource for students of musical theater and lovers of Kander and Ebb's songs and shows.
Despite the United States' ban on slave importation in 1808, profitable interstate slave trading continued. The nineteenth century's great cotton boom required vast human labor to bring new lands under cultivation, and many thousands of slaves were torn from their families and sold across state lines in distant markets. Shocked by the cruelty and extent of this practice, abolitionists called upon the federal government to exercise its constitutional authority over interstate commerce and outlaw the interstate selling of slaves. This groundbreaking book is the first to tell the complex story of the decades-long debate and legal battle over federal regulation of the slave trade. David Lightner explores a wide range of constitutional, social, and political issues that absorbed antebellum America. He revises accepted interpretations of various historical figures, including James Madison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln, and he argues convincingly that southern anxiety over the threat to the interstate slave trade was a key precipitant to the secession of the South and the Civil War.
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