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Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
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.
"All Standing" recounts the remarkable tale of the "Jeanie
Johnston" and her ingenious crew, whose eleven voyages are the
stuff of legend. Why did these individuals succeed while so many
others failed? And what new lives in America were the ship's
passengers seeking?
In this deeply researched and powerfully told story, acclaimed
author Kathryn Miles re-creates life aboard this amazing vessel,
richly depicting the bravery and defiance of its shipwright,
captain, and doctor--and one Irish family's search for the American
dream.
Infamous for authoring two concepts since favored by government
powers seeking license for ruthlessness-the utilitarian notion of
privileging the greatest happiness for the most people and the
panopticon-Jeremy Bentham is not commonly associated with political
emancipation. But perhaps he should be. In his private manuscripts,
Bentham agonized over the injustice of laws prohibiting sexual
nonconformity, questioning state policy that would put someone to
death merely for enjoying an uncommon pleasure. He identified
sources of hatred for sexual nonconformists in philosophy, law,
religion, and literature, arguing that his goal of "the greatest
happiness" would be impossible as long as authorities dictate whose
pleasures can be tolerated and whose must be forbidden. Ultimately,
Bentham came to believe that authorities worked to maximize the
suffering of women, colonized and enslaved persons, and sexual
nonconformists in order to demoralize disenfranchised people and
prevent any challenge to power. In Uncommon Sense, Carrie Shanafelt
reads Bentham's sexual nonconformity papers as an argument for the
toleration of aesthetic difference as the foundation for
egalitarian liberty, shedding new light on eighteenth-century
aesthetics and politics. At odds with the common image of Bentham
as a dehumanizing calculator or an eccentric projector, this
innovative study shows Bentham at his most intimate, outraged by
injustice and desperate for the end of sanctioned, discriminatory
violence.
As the author of The Condition of the Working Class in England and,
along with Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels is
a seminal 19th-century figure; the co-founder of Marxism, he left
an indelible impression as a philosopher, political theorist,
economist, historian and revolutionary socialist. The Life, Work
and Legacy of Friedrich Engels is nevertheless the first book to
comprehensively explore Engels' contributions in all of these
spheres. The book sees 13 experts from a range of scholarly
backgrounds examine Engels and his writing in relation to topics
including the United States and the future of capitalism, European
social democracy and the nature of the political economy, with
technology, capital, and labor acting as fundamental cross-cutting
themes throughout. The volume analyses the intriguing relationship
between Engels and Karl Marx, the towering historical figure whose
long shadow has obscured the achievements of Engels for so long,
and reassesses Engels' significance in this context. There are 66
images to be found throughout the text, 30 of these in colour, as
well as a conclusion which successfully views Engels in the context
of the age. As a journalist, author and communist figurehead,
Engels dealt succinctly - and with strong opinions - with the core
questions of the developments changing the globe in the 19th
century and The Life, Work and Legacy of Friedrich Engels finally
shines a light on this in a compelling call for revisionism.
The Battle of Peach Tree Creek marked the beginning of the end for
the Confederacy, for it turned the page from the patient defence
displayed by General Joseph E. Johnston to the bold offense called
upon by his replacement, General John Bell Hood. Until this point
in the campaign, the Confederates had fought primarily in the
defensive from behind earthworks, forcing Federal commander William
T. Sherman to either assault fortified lines, or go around them in
flanking moves. At Peach Tree Creek, the roles would be reversed
for the first time, as Southerners charged Yankee lines. The Gate
City, as Atlanta has been called, was in many ways the capstone to
the Confederacy's growing military-industrial complex and was the
transportation hub of the fledgling nation. For the South it had to
be held. For the North it had to be taken. With General Johnston
removed for failing to parry the Yankee thrust into Georgia, the
fate of Atlanta and the Confederacy now rested on the shoulders of
thirty-three-year-old Hood, whose body had been torn by the war.
Peach Tree Creek was the first of three battles in eight days in
which Hood led the Confederate Army to desperate, but unsuccessful,
attempts to repel the Federals encircling Atlanta. This particular
battle started the South on a downward spiral from which she would
never recover. After Peach Tree Creek and its companion battles for
Atlanta, the clear-hearing Southerner could hear the death throes
of the Confederacy. It was the first nail in the coffin of Atlanta
and Dixie.
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