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Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
This collection pieces together a wealth of material in order to get inside the experience of scientific practice in the long nineteenth century. It aims to reach, or perhaps to facilitate, an understanding of the ways in which the value of scientific knowledge was produced, lived and challenged. The new turn to the history of experience suggests a logic to the compilation of material that is completely original: the sources are not selected according to the historical success of an idea or experiment, but for the ways in which scientific endeavour loaded knowledge claims with political or moral value, coupled with attendant practical justifications. Thus, 'bad ideas' sit alongside 'good'; now discountenanced practices take their place among the revered. In sum, they reveal an experimental culture that was not merely orientated toward cold knowledge or intellectual output, but defined by shifting sets of affective practices and procedures and the making of expertise out of the lived experience of doing science.
America was made by the railroads. The opening of the Baltimore & Ohio line--the first American railroad--in the 1830s sparked a national revolution in the way that people lived thanks to the speed and convenience of train travel. Promoted by visionaries and built through heroic effort, the American railroad network was bigger in every sense than Europe's, and facilitated everything from long-distance travel to commuting and transporting goods to waging war. It united far-flung parts of the country, boosted economic development, and was the catalyst for America's rise to world-power status. Every American town, great or small, aspired to be connected to a railroad and by the turn of the century, almost every American lived within easy access of a station. By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a latticework of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads and the nation started to forget them. In "The Great Railroad Revolution," renowned railroad expert
Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and the
fall of the greatest of all American endeavors, and argues that the
time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its
often-overlooked rail heritage.
In this biography, the acclaimed author of "Sons of Providence,"
winner of the 2007 George Wash- ington Book Prize, recovers an
immensely important part of the founding drama of the country in
the story of Robert Morris, the man who financed Washington's
armies and the American Revolution.
For more than thirty years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet in Africa, more than 9 million people every year die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every year--most of them children. In this powerful investigative narrative, "Wall Street Journal" reporters Kilman & Thurow show exactly how, in the past few decades, Western policies conspired to keep Africa hungry and unable to feed itself. "Enough" is essential reading on a humanitarian issue of utmost urgency.
A powerful account of a surprisingly forgotten tragedy of the Civil War A stunning wartime account of human endurance and adventure, and an exploration of just how much the human body and mind can take, "Sultana" follows several young Union soldiers through the Civil War and what was, for them, its unimaginably disastrous aftermath. We see them enlist and then almost immediately be plunged into a cascading series of wartime horrors: Battle, trauma, prison camp, and, finally, the sinking of the "Sultana," the steamboat that was taking them back home. On an April night in 1865, the "Sultana" slowly moved up the dark Mississippi, its overtaxed engines straining under the weight of a human cargo that included an estimated twenty-four hundred passengers--more than six times the number it was designed to carry. Most were weak, emaciated Union soldiers, recently paroled from Confederate prison camps, on their way home after enduring the violence of war. At two a.m., three of "Sultana"'s four boilers exploded. Within twenty minutes, it went down in fire and water, taking an estimated seventeen hundred lives. The sinking of the "Sultana" remains the worst maritime disaster in American history, yet due to a confluence of contemporary events (Lincoln had recently been assassinated and the war had ended), it soon faded into relative obscurity. Now Alan Huffman presents this harrowing story against the backdrop of the endless suffering already endured by its survivors. Using contemporary research as well as digging deep into archives and family keepsakes, Huffman paints a gripping portrait of the young men who made it home alive.
Killing Crazy Horse is the latest installment of the multimillion-selling Killing series is a gripping journey through the American West and the historic clashes between Native Americans and settlers. The bloody Battle of Tippecanoe was only the beginning. It's 1811 and President James Madison has ordered the destruction of Shawnee warrior chief Tecumseh's alliance of tribes in the Great Lakes region. But while General William Henry Harrison would win this fight, the armed conflict between Native Americans and the newly formed United States would rage on for decades. Bestselling authors Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard venture through the fraught history of our country's founding on already occupied lands, from General Andrew Jackson's brutal battles with the Creek Nation to President James Monroe's epic "sea to shining sea" policy, to President Martin Van Buren's cruel enforcement of a "treaty" that forced the Cherokee Nation out of their homelands along what would be called the Trail of Tears. O'Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the legends to reveal never-before-told historical moments in the fascinating creation story of America. This fast-paced, wild ride through the American frontier will shock readers and impart unexpected lessons that reverberate to this day.
When, as a young man in the 1880s, Benjamin Lundy signed up for duty aboard a square-rigged commercial sailing vessel, he began a journey more exciting, and more terrifying, than he could have ever imagined: a treacherous, white-knuckle passage around that notorious "graveyard of ships," Cape Horn. A century later, Derek Lundy, author of the bestselling "Godforsaken Sea" and an accomplished amateur seaman himself, set out to recount his forebear's journey. "The Way of a Ship" is a mesmerizing account of life on board a square-rigger, a remarkable reconstruction of a harrowing voyage through the most dangerous waters. Derek Lundy's masterful account evokes the excitement, romance, and brutality of a bygone era -- "a fantastic ride through one of the greatest moments in the history of adventure" ("Seattle Times").
While the French Revolution has been much discussed and studied, its impact on religious life in France is rather neglected. Yet, during this brief period, religion underwent great changes that affected everyone: clergy and laypeople, men and women, Catholics, Protestants and Jews. The "Reigns of Terror" of the Revolution drove the Church underground, permanently altering the relationship between Church and State. In this book, Nigel Aston offers a guide to these tumultuous events. While the structures and beliefs of the Catholic Church are central, it does not neglect minority groups like Protestants and Jews. Among other features, the book discusses the Constitutional Church, the end of state support for Catholicism, the "Dechristianization" campaign and the Concordat of 1801-2. Key themes discussed include the capacity of all the Churches for survival and adaptation, the role of religion in determining political allegiances during the Revolution, and the turbulence of Church-State relations. In this study, based on the latest evidence, Aston sheds new light on a dynamic period in European history and its impact on the next 200 years of religious life in France.
This is the first book on the genesis, impact and reception of the most-widely read History of England of the early 18th century: Paul Rapin Thoyras' Histoire d'Angleterre (1724-27). The Histoire and complementary works (Extraits des Actes de Rymer, 1710-1724; Dissertation sur les Whigs et les Torys, 1717) gave practical expression to theorizations of history against Pyrrhonian postulations by foregrounding an empirical form of history-writing. Rapin's unprecedented standards of historiographical accuracy triggered both politically-informed reinterpretations of the Histoire in partisan newspapers and a multitude of adaptations that catered to an ever-growing number of readers. Despite a long-standing assessment as a "standard Whig historian", Rapin fashioned the impartial persona of a judge-historian, in compliance with the expectations of the Republic of Letters. His personal trajectory illuminates how scholars pursued trustworthy knowledge and how they reconsidered the boundaries of their community in the face of the booming printing industry and the interconnected growth of general readership. Rapin's oeuvre provided significant raw material for Voltaire's and Hume's Enlightenment historiographical narratives. A comparative foray into their respective different approaches to history and authorship cautions us against assuming a direct transition from the Republic of Letters into an Enlightenment Republic of Letters. To study the diffusion and the impact of Rapin's works is to understand that empirical history-writing, defined by its commitment to erudition in the service of impartiality, coexisted with the histoire philosophique.
"Francis Jeffrey is celebrated as the editor of the Edinburgh Review, but little is known of his remarkable visit to America and his enthusiastic reception by American readers. Elliott and Hook have produced a marvellous edition of Jeffrey's record of his journey between New York and Washington during the second Anglo-American War. Historians will be fascinated by Jeffrey's account of his discussion of British-American differences with President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe, which furnish remarkable first hand accounts of these men's beliefs about the origins and nature of the conflict. Literary scholars will be intrigued by the unsuspected romantic sensibilities evident in Jeffrey's descriptions of the American environment. This is an excellent edition of Jeffrey's engaging account of the new American republic." -- Simon P. Newman, Sir Denis Brogan Professor of American Studies, University of Glasgow. Clare Elliott is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Northumbria University and has taught at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, recently completing a post at Teesside University. Her research interests lie in Transatlantic Literary Studies, Transnationalism and Transatlantic Romanticisms. Clare has published on William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and is reviewer of American literature to 1900 for the Years Work in English Studies. The long eighteenth century in Scotland is increasingly recognized as a period of outstanding cultural achievement. In these years both the Scottish Enlightenment and Scottish Romanticism made lasting contributions to Western intellectual and cultural life. This series is designed to further our understanding of this crucial era in a range of ways: by reprinting less familiar but important works by writers in the period itself; by producing new editions of key out-of-print books by modern scholars; and by publishing new research and criticism by contemporary scholars. Perspectives: Scottish Studies of the long Eighteenth Century Series Editor: Andrew Hook
Provincial towns in Britain grew in size and importance in the eighteenth century. Ports such as Glasgow and Liverpool greatly expanded, while industrial centres such as Birmingham and Manchester flourished. Market towns outside London developed as commercial centres or as destinations offering spa treatments as in Bath, horse racing in Newmarket or naval services in Portsmouth. Containing over 100 images of towns in England, Wales and Scotland, this book draws on the extensive Gough collection in the Bodleian Library. Contemporary prints and drawings provide a powerful visual record of the development of the town in this period, and finely drawn prospects and maps - made with greater accuracy than ever before - reveal their early development. This book also includes perceptive observations from the journals and letters of collector Richard Gough (1735-1809), who travelled throughout the country on the cusp of the industrial age.
More than one million immigrants fled the Irish famine for North
America--and more than one hundred thousand of them perished aboard
the "coffin ships" that crossed the Atlantic. But one small ship
never lost a passenger.
From the time Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern
Virginia on June 1, 1862, until the Battle of Gettysburg thirteen
months later, the Confederate army compiled a record of military
achievement almost unparalleled in our nation's history. How it
happened--the relative contributions of Lee, his top command,
opposing Union generals, and of course the rebel army itself--is
the subject of Civil War historian Jeffry D. Wert's fascinating new
history.
The story of modern Singapore as told through its living heritage is encapsulated in this handsome book, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Singapore's founding as a city-state. Today's vibrant, cosmopolitan country developed a singular identity through the many colourful `ingredients' outlined in this book. Starting with the founding of modern Singapore by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, we review the many events, people, artefacts, legends and lifestyles pre- and post-1819 that contributed to make Singapore the unique city it is today. This is the first book to encompass all aspects of Singaporean heritage, be it sociological, environmental or man-made. Historic personages, monuments, architecture and the arts, cultures and traditions, and flora and fauna are all covered in their many facets. The book showcases how much of 1800s and early 1900s Singapore remains today, thereby presenting a lesser-known side to the city-state - one that is surprisingly historic and richly evocative, a different face to a place more often associated with a stark modernity. Insightful, lively texts by museum director and heritage expert, Kennie Ting, are accompanied by archival images, contemporary photographs, maps and more, to present a comprehensive picture of the city-state - past and present. |
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