|
|
Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900
Intimate, anecdotal, and spell-binding, Singing Out offers a
fascinating oral history of the North American folk music revivals
and folk music. Culled from more than 150 interviews recorded from
1976 to 2006, this captivating story spans seven decades and cuts
across a wide swath of generations and perspectives, shedding light
on the musical, political, and social aspects of this movement. The
narrators highlight many of the major folk revival figures,
including Pete Seeger, Bernice Reagon, Phil Ochs, Mary Travers, Don
McLean, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Ry Cooder, and Holly Near.
Together they tell the stories of such musical groups as the
Composers' Collective, the Almanac Singers, People's Songs, the
Weavers, the New Lost City Ramblers, and the Freedom Singers.
Folklorists, musicians, musicologists, writers, activists, and
aficionados reveal not only what happened during the folk revivals,
but what it meant to those personally and passionately involved.
For everyone who ever picked up a guitar, fiddle, or banjo, this
will be a book to give and cherish. Extensive notes, bibliography,
and discography, plus a photo section.
This first scholarly account of the Royal Navy in the Pacific War
is a companion volume to Arthur Marder's Old Friends, New Enemies:
Strategic Illusions, 1936-1941 (0-19-822604-7, OP). Picking up the
story at the nadir of British naval fortunes - `everywhere weak and
naked', in Churchill's phrase - it examines the Royal Navy's role
in events from 1942 to the Japanese surrender in August 1945.
Drawing on both British and Japanese sources and personal accounts
by participants, the authors vividly retell the story of the
collapse of Allied defences in the Dutch East Indies, culminating
in the Battle of the Java Sea. They recount the attempts of the
`fighting admiral', Sir James Somerville, to train his motley fleet
of cast-offs into an efficient fighting force in spite of the
reluctance of Churchill, who resisted the formation of a full-scale
British Pacific Fleet until the 1945 assault on the Ryukyu Islands
immediately south of Japan. Meticulously researched and fully
referenced, this unique and absorbing account provides a
controversial analysis of the key personalities who shaped events
in these momentous years, and makes fascinating reading for anyone
interested in the Pacific War. This book also appears in the Oxford
General Books catalogue for Autumn 1990.
One of the longest and seemingly most intractable civil wars in
Latin America was brought to an end by the signing of the Peace
Accords between the Guatemalan government and the Unidad
Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG) in December 1996. The
essays in this volume evaluate progress made in the implementation
of the peace agreements and signal some of the key challenges for
future political and institutional reform. The volume opens with a
chapter by Gustavo Porras, the government's main negotiator in the
peace process. The first section then examines the issue of
demilitarization. This is followed by aspects of indigenous rights
in the peace process, including conceptual frameworks for rights
advancement, the harmonization of state law and customary law, and
the challenges of nation-state and citizenship construction. The
next section examines issues of truth, justice, and reconciliation,
and assesses prospects for the Truth Commission. The volume closes
with an analysis of different aspects of political reform in
Guatemala and includes comments made on the chapters and developed
in the debate which took place at the conference on which it is
based. The contributors are Marta Altolaguirre*, Marta Elena
Casa?s*, Demetrio Cojt?*, Edgar Guti?rrez*, Frank La Rue, Roger
Plant, Gustavo Porras*, Alfonso Portillo*, Jennifer Schirmer,
Rachel Sieder, David Stoll, Rosalina Tuyuc*, Anna Vinegrad, Richard
Wilson (* chapters in Spanish).
During the Great War, voluntary medical assistance to British
Forces was organised by the British Red Cross and the Order of St
John. As the conflict escalated there was a shortage of medical
assistance and ancillary services. The solution came with the
creation of the General Service Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD)
which enabled those with little or no medical training to undertake
more routine jobs - cooks, laundry maids, wardmaids, dispensers,
drivers etc. This book is a reprint of the final, and largest,
British Red Cross list giving information of over 18,000 women and
men who were involved. It provides individual detail (name, rank,
unit, destination) together with lists of Headquarters Staff,
Commissioners and Representatives, and also a Roll of Honour
Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak's cross-cultural history of
Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of
environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited
coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple "atollscapes" of
Kwajalein's past and present as Marshallese ancestral land,
Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American
weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves
into personal narratives and collective mythologies from
contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between
"little stories" of ordinary human actors and "big stories" of
global politics-drawing upon the "little" metaphor of the coral
organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the "big" metaphor of
the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past.
Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism and
decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates a layered, nuanced
approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and contradictions of
Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to American hegemony and
globalization within and beyond the region. It also brings
Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American perspectives into
conversation with Micronesians' recollections of colonialism and
war. This transnational history-built upon a combination of
reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural studies, and
postcolonial studies-thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal
site where Islanders have not only thrived for thousands of years,
but also mediated between East and West, shaping crucial world
events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, as
well as Dvorak's own experiences growing up between Kwajalein, the
United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete integrates narrative
and imagery with semiotic analysis of photographs, maps, films, and
music, traversing colonial tropical fantasies, tales of victory and
defeat, missile testing, fisheries, war-bereavement rituals, and
landowner resistance movements, from the twentieth century through
the present day. Representing history as a perennial struggle
between coral and concrete, the book offers an Oceanian paradigm
for decolonization, resistance, solidarity, and optimism that
should appeal to all readers far beyond the Marshall Islands.
The gentrification of Brooklyn has been one of the most striking
developments in recent urban history. Considered one of the city's
most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone
Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip
bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive
townhouses. In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman
offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation.
Challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's
renaissance started in the 1990s, Osman locates the origins of
gentrification in Brooklyn in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s
and 1970s. Gentrification began as a grassroots movement led by
young and idealistic white college graduates searching for
"authenticity" and life outside the burgeoning suburbs. Where
postwar city leaders championed slum clearance and modern
architecture, "brownstoners" (as they called themselves) fought for
a new romantic urban ideal that celebrated historic buildings,
industrial lofts and traditional ethnic neighborhoods as a refuge
from an increasingly technocratic society. Osman examines the
emergence of a "slow-growth" progressive coalition as brownstoners
joined with poorer residents to battle city planners and local
machine politicians. But as brownstoners migrated into poorer
areas, race and class tensions emerged, and by the 1980s, as
newspapers parodied yuppies and anti-gentrification activists
marched through increasingly expensive neighborhoods, brownstoners
debated whether their search for authenticity had been a success or
failure. The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn deftly mixes
architectural, cultural and political history in this eye-opening
perspective on the post-industrial city.
The Weimar period, which extended from 1919 to 1933, was a time of
political violence, economic crisis, generational and gender
tension, and cultural experiment and change in Germany. Despite
these major issues, the Republic is often treated only as a preface
to the study of the rise of Fascism. This text seeks to restore the
balance, exploring the Weimar period in its own right. Amongst the
topics discussed are: Weimar as the avant-garde artistic centre of
Europe in the 1920s when many cultural figures were politically
engaged on both sides of the political spectrum; Weimar as a German
state racked by conflict over questions of morality versus ideas of
greater sexual freedom for women, homosexual rights, abortion and
birth control; the struggle to win the hearts and minds of German
youth, a struggle won decisively by the right-wing; and Weimar as
the first German state in which women played a significant
political role. -- .
In 2003 the role of government in the regulation of cannabis is as hotly debated as it was a century ago. In this lively study James Mills explores the historical background of cannabis legislation, arguing that the drive towards prohibition grew out of the politics of empire rather than scientific or rational assessment of the drug's use and effects.
In the decade following the first Gulf War, most observers regarded
it as an exemplary effort by the international community to
lawfully and forcefully hold a regional aggressor in check.
Interpretations have changed with the times. The Gulf War led to
the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia, an important
contributing cause of the 9/11 attacks. The war also led to a long
obsession with Saddam Hussein that culminated in a second, far
longer, American-led war with Iraq. In Into the Desert, Jeffrey
Engel has gathered an all-star cast of contributors to reevaluate
the first Gulf War: Michael Gordon of the New York Times; Sir
Lawrence Freedman, former foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair;
Ambassador Ryan Crocker; Middle East specialist Shibley Telhami;
and Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Engel and his contributors examine the war's origins, the war
itself, and its long-term impact on international relations. All
told, Into the Desert offers an astute reassessment of one of the
most momentous events in the last quarter century.
 |
Cold War Texas
(Paperback)
Landry Brewer; Foreword by Amanda Biles
|
R552
R512
Discovery Miles 5 120
Save R40 (7%)
|
Ships in 18 - 22 working days
|
|
|
The Bavarian mountain village of Oberammergau is famous for its
decennial passion play. The play began as an articulation of the
villagers' strong Catholic piety, but in the late 19th and early
20th centuries developed into a considerable commercial enterprise.
The growth of the passion play from a curiosity of village piety
into a major tourist attraction encouraged all manner of
entrepreneurial behavior and brought the inhabitants of this
isolated rural area into close contract with a larger world.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists came to see the play, and
thousands of temporary workers descended on the village during the
play season, some settling permanently in Oberammergau. Adolf
Hitler would attend a performance of the play in 1934, later saying
that the drama "revealed the muck and mire of Jewry." But, Helena
Waddy argues, it is a mistake to brand Oberammergau as a Nazi
stronghold, as has commonly been done. In this book she uses
Oberammergau's unique history to explain why and how genuinely some
villagers chose to become Nazis, while others rejected Party
membership and defended their Catholic lifestyle. She explores the
reasons why both local Nazis and their opponents fought to protect
the village's cherished identity against the Third Reich's many
intrusive demands. On the other hand, she also shows that the play
mirrored the Gospel-based anti-Semitism endemic to Western culture.
As a local study of the rise of Nazism and the Nazi era, Waddy's
work is an important contribution to a growing genre. As a
collective biography, it is a fascinating and moving portrait of
life at a time when, as Thomas Mann wrote, "every day hurled the
wildest demands at the heart and brain."
Continuing its distinguished tradition of focusing on central
political, sociological, and cultural issues of Jewish life in the
last century, Volume XXVI of the annual Studies in Contemporary
Jewry examines the visual revolution that has overtaken Jewish
cultural life in the twentieth century onwards, with special
attention given to the evolution of Jewish museums. Bringing
together leading curators and scholars, Visualizing and Exhibiting
Jewish Space and History treats various forms of Jewish
representation in museums in Europe and the United States before
the Second World War and inquires into the nature and proliferation
of Jewish museums following the Holocaust and the fall of Communism
in Western and Eastern Europe. In addition, a pair of essays
dedicated to six exhibitions that took place in Israel in 2008 to
mark six decades of Israeli art raises significant issues on the
relationship between art and gender, and art and politics. An
introductory essay highlights the dramatic transformation in the
appreciation of the visual in Jewish culture. The scope of the
symposium offers one of the first scholarly attempts to treat this
theme in several countries.
Also featured in this volume are a provocative essay on the nature
of antisemitism in twentieth-century English society; review essays
on Jewish fundamentalism and recent works on the subject of the
Holocaust in occupied Soviet territories; and reviews of new titles
in Jewish Studies..
While much has been written about Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Jr., never before has anyone compared the social and political
origins and evolution of their thoughts on non-violence. In this
path-breaking work, respected political theorist Bidyut Chakrabarty
argues that there is a confluence between Gandhi and King's
concerns for humanity and advocacy of non-violence, despite the
very different historical, economic and cultural circumstances
against which they developed their ideas. At the same time, he
demonstrates that both were truly shaped by their historical
moments, evolving their approaches to non-violence to best advance
their respective struggles for freedom. Gandhi and King were
perhaps the most influential individuals in modern history to
combine religious and political thought into successful and dynamic
social ideologies. Gandhi emphasized service to humanity while
King, who was greatly influenced by Gandhi, pursued religion-driven
social action. Chakrabarty looks particularly at the way in which
each strategically used religious and political language to build
momentum and attract followers to their movements. The result is a
compelling and historically entrenched view of two of the most
important figures of the twentieth century and a thoughtful
meditation on the common threads that flow through the larger and
enduring nonviolence movement.
Deborah Posel breaks new ground in exposing some of the crucial
political processes and struggles which shaped the reciprocal
development of Apartheid and capitalism in South Africa. Her
analysis debunks the orthodoxy view which presents apartheid as the
product of a single `grand plan', created by the State in response
to the pressures of capital accumulation. Using as a case study
influx control during the first phase of apartheid (1948-1961), she
shows that apartheid arose from complex patterns of conflict and
compromise within the State, in which white capitalists, the black
working class, and popular movements exercised varying and uneven
degrees of influence. Her book integrates a detailed empirical
analysis of the capitalist State and its relationship to class
interests.
After Empires describes how the end of colonial empires and the
changes in international politics and economies after
decolonization affected the European integration process. Until
now, studies on European integration have often focussed on the
search for peaceful relations among the European nations,
particularly between Germany and France, or examined it as an
offspring of the Cold War, moving together with the ups and downs
of transatlantic relations. But these two factors alone are not
enough to explain the rise of the European Community and its more
recent transformation into the European Union. Giuliano Garavini
focuses instead on the emergence of the Third World as an
international actor, starting from its initial economic cooperation
with the creation of the United Nations Conference for Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 up to the end of unity among the
countries of the Global South after the second oil shock in
1979-80. Offering a new - less myopic - way to conceptualise
European history more globally, the study is based on a variety of
international archives (government archives in Europe, the US,
Algeria, Venezuela; international organizations such as the EC,
UNCTAD, and the World Bank; political and social organizations such
as the Socialist International, labour archives and the papers of
oil companies) and traces the reactions and the initiatives of the
countries of the European Community, but also of the European
political parties and public opinion, to the rise and fall of the
Third World on the international stage.
Protracted occupation has become a rare phenomenon in the 21st
century. One notable exception is Israel's occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, which began over four decades ago after the
Six-Day War in 1967. While many studies have examined the effects
of occupation on the occupied society, which bears most of the
burdens of occupation, this book directs its attention to the
occupiers. The effects of occupation on the occupying society are
not always easily observed, and are therefore difficult to study.
Yet through their analysis, the authors of this volume show how
occupation has detrimental effects on the occupiers. The effects of
occupation do not stop in the occupied territories, but penetrate
deeply into the fabric of the occupying society. The Impacts of
Lasting Occupation examines the effects that Israel's occupation of
Palestinian territories have had on Israeli society. The
consequences of occupation are evident in all aspects of Israeli
life, including its political, social, legal, economic, cultural,
and psychological spheres. Occupation has shaped Israel's national
identity as a whole, in addition to the day-to-day lives of Israeli
citizens. Daniel Bar-Tal and Izhak Schnell have brought together a
wide range of academic experts to show how occupation has led to
the deterioration of democracy and moral codes, threatened personal
security, and limited economic growth in Israel.
In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the Weimar Republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks and jewels were routine...
The United Africa Company (UAC), formed in 1929 by the fusion of
the Niger Company and the African and Eastern Corporation, was by
far the largest single commercial organization in West and
Equatorial Africa, and thus central to modern African economic
history. This is the first detailed account to be published and one
which fills a serious gap in the literature. It was not
commissioned by the company (now reabsorbed into Unilever) but the
author had full access to all confidential material in the UAC and
Unilever archives and complete freedom in what he wrote. The book
is not intended to be primarily a company history but uses the UAC
as a focal point for detailed study of how the role of foreign
merchant capital changed in response to economic and political
developments in Black Africa during this critical half century.
Sixties British rock and pop changed music history. While American
popular music dominated the record industry in the late fifties and
early sixties, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who,
and numerous other groups soon invaded the world at large and put
Britain at the center of the modern musical map. Please Please Me
offers an insider's view of the British pop-music recording
industry during the seminal period of 1956 to 1968, based on
personal recollections, contemporary accounts, and all relevant
data that situate this scene in the economic, political, and social
context of postwar Britain. Author Gordon Thompson weaves issues of
class, age, professional status, gender, and ethnicity into his
narrative, beginning with the rise of British beat groups and the
emergence of teenagers as consumers in postwar Britain, and moving
into the competition between performers and the recording industry
for control over the music. He interviews session musicians who
recorded anonymously with the Beatles, Hermans Hermits, and the
Kinks, professional musicians who toured with British bands
promoting records or providing dance music, songwriters, music
directors, and producers and engineers who worked with the
best-known performers of the era. The consequences of World War Two
for pop music in the late fifties and early sixties form the
backdrop for discussion of recording equipment, musical
instruments, and new jet-age transportation, all contributors to
the rise of British pop-music alongside the personalities that more
famously made entertainment news. And these famous personalities
traverse the pages of Please Please Me as well: performing
songwriters John Carter and Ken Lewis, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger
and Richards, Ray Davies, and Pete Townshend took center stage
while the production teams and session musicians created the art of
recording behind the doors of Londons studios. Drawing his
interpretation of the processes at work during this musical
revolution into a wider context, Thompson unravels the musical
change and innovation of the time with an eye on understanding what
traces individuals leave in the musical and recording process.
Opening up important new historical and musical understandings in a
repertoire that is at the core of rock music's history, Please
Please Me will appeal to all students, scholars, and fans of
popular music.
This is the first full scholarly study of British anticolonialism,
an offshoot of a massive global upsurge of sentiment which has
dominated much of the history of this century. In this wide-ranging
and important book, Stephen Howe surveys the attitudes and
activities relating to colonial issues of British critics of Empire
during the years of decolonisation. He also evaluates the changing
ways in which, arising out of the experience of Empire and
decolonisation, more general ideas about imperialism, nationalism,
and underdevelopment were developed during these years. His
discussion encompasses both the left wing of the Labour Party and
groups outside it: in the Communist Party, other independent
left-wing groups, and single-issue campaigns. The book has
considerable contemporary relevance, for British reactions to more
recent events - the Falklands and Gulf Wars, race relations, South
African apartheid - cannot fully be understood except in the
context of the experience of decolonisation and the legacy of
Empire.
This book: covers the essential content in the new specifications
in a rigorous and engaging way, using detailed narrative, sources,
timelines, key words, helpful activities and extension material
helps develop conceptual understanding of areas such as evidence,
interpretations, causation and change, through targeted activities
provides assessment support for A level with sample answers,
sources, practice questions and guidance to help you tackle the
new-style exam questions. It also comes with three years' access to
ActiveBook, an online, digital version of your textbook to help you
personalise your learning as you go through the course - perfect
for revision.
In 1899, Carrie Chapman Catt, who succeeded Susan B. Anthony as
head of the National American Women Suffrage Association, argued
that it was the "duty" of U.S. women to help lift the inhabitants
of its new island possessions up from "barbarism" to
"civilization," a project that would presumably demonstrate the
capacity of U.S. women for full citizenship and political rights.
Catt, like many suffragists in her day, was well-versed in the
language of empire, and infused the cause of suffrage with
imperialist zeal in public debate. Unlike their predecessors, who
were working for votes for women within the context of slavery and
abolition, the next generation of suffragists argued their case
against the backdrop of the U.S. expansionism into Indian and
Mormon territory at home as well as overseas in the Philippines,
Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. In this book, Allison L. Sneider carefully
examines these simultaneous political movements--woman suffrage and
American imperialism--as inextricably intertwined phenomena,
instructively complicating the histories of both.
|
|