![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > General
From the earliest times, the medicinal properties of certain herbs were connected with deities, particularly goddesses. Only now with modern scientific research can we begin to understand the basis and rationality that these divine connections had and, being preserved in myths and religious stories, they continued to have a significant impact through the present day. Riddle argues that the pomegranate, mandrake, artemisia, and chaste tree plants substantially altered the development of medicine and fertility treatments. The herbs, once sacred to Inanna, Aphrodite, Demeter, Artemis, and Hermes, eventually came to be associated with darker forces, representing the instruments of demons and witches. Riddle's ground-breaking work highlights the important medicinal history that was lost and argues for its rightful place as one of the predecessors
In The Politics of White Rights, Joseph Bagley recounts the history of school desegregation litigation in Alabama, focusing on the malleability and durability of white resistance. He argues that the litigious battles of 1954-73 taught Alabama's segregationists how to fashion a more subtle defense of white privilege, placing them in the vanguard of a new conservatism oriented toward the Sunbelt, not the South. Scholars have recently begun uncovering the ways in which segregationists abandoned violent backlash and overt economic reprisal and learned how to rearticulate their resistance and blind others to their racial motivations. Bagley is most interested in a creedal commitment to maintaining "law and order," which lay at the heart of this transition. Before it was a buzz phrase meant to conjure up fears of urban black violence, "law and order" represented a politics that allowed self-styled white moderates to begrudgingly accept token desegregation and to begin to stake their own claims to constitutional rights without forcing them to repudiate segregation or white supremacy. Federal courts have, as recently as 2014, agreed that Alabama's property tax system is crippling black education. Bagley argues that this is because, in the late 1960s, the politics of law and order became a politics of white rights, which supported not only white flight to suburbs and private schools but also nominally color-blind changes in the state's tax code. These changes were designed to shield white money from the needs of increasingly black public education. Activists and courts have been powerless to do anything about them, because twenty years of desperate litigious combat finally taught Alabama lawmakers how to erect constitutional bulwarks that could withstand a legal assault.
As told by the musicians who made it happen, Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock revisits country rock's rise to the top of the charts. Music scholar John Einarson delves into the years from 1963, when Buck Owens and his Buckaroos brought an electric edge to their Texas honky-tonk tunes, to 1973, when The Eagles released their album "Desperado" on David Geffen's label. Einarson examines how folk, rockabilly, blues, Nashville country, Tejano, bluegrass, and other musical idioms influenced a generation of journeyman musicians. He traces the paths taken by the songsmiths, the bands in which they served their apprenticeships, and the songs they wrote together, as they steadily shaped the country rock sound. The protagonists of this story include talented but troubled Gram Parsons, a virtuoso determined to burn out before he faded away; the versatile and appealing Linda Ronstadt; Mike Nesmith, the Monkee from Texas who returned to his musical roots with a trilogy of country-rock albums; TV heartthrob turned country rocker Rick Nelson; folkie songbird Emmylou Harris before she made it in Nashville; and many others.
Alternative medicine is a fifty billion dollar per year industry. But is it all nonsense? The Whole Story rounds up the latest evidence on the placebo effect, the randomized control trial, personalized genetic medicine, acupuncture, homeopathy, osteopathy and more. It reaches a provocative conclusion: alternative therapies' whole-body approach might be just what medicine really needs right now to help crack the tough, chronic conditions seemingly untouched by the revolutions of surgery, antiseptics, antibiotics, vaccines and molecular biology.
Widely regarded by historians of the early moving picture as the best work yet published on pre-cinema, "The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema" throws light on a fascinating range of optical media from the twelfth century to the turn of the twentieth. First published in French in 1994 and now translated into English, Laurent Mannoni's account projects a broad picture of the subject area now known as 'pre-cinema'. Starting from the earliest uses of the camera obscura in astronomy and entertainment, Mannoni discusses, among many other devices, the invention and early years of the magic lantern in the seventeenth century, the peepshows and perspective views of the eighteenth century, and the many weird and wonderful nineteenth-century attempts to recreate visions of real life in different ways and forms. This fully-illustrated and accessible account of a strange mixture of science, magic, art and deception introduces to an English-speaking readership many aspects of pre-cinema history from other European countries.
Entries in this dictionary focus on the people, organizations, events, and ideas that have been significant in the slightly more than two centuries of political communication in this country. The intent is to highlight those events and ideas that still have significance today--thus from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the threshold of the 21st century. The history of political communication and how that history has repeated itself is examined in this volume. Entries arranged from A to Z, deal with freedom of the press and the major threats to freedom of the press; successful and unsuccessful political campaigns, and the changes that have occurred in political communication as well as the tradition that has emerged in the slightly more than two centuries we have been engaged in it. By offering the reader insight into the evolution of political communication as an academic field, this reference will be useful to students and scholars in the disciplines of political science, political communication, mass communication, U.S. history, and related fields, as well as academic and selected public libraries.
Using extensive background research as well as interviews with the principal characters, Fixed provides the first in-depth reconstruction of the point-shaving scandal involving the 1978-1979 Boston College basketball team, from the genesis of the plot in the summer of 1978, through the uncovering of the scheme during an unrelated investigation in 1980, to the trial that captivated the sports world in the fall of 1981 and its aftermath. This multi-layered story of greed and betrayal combines sports, gambling, and the Mafia into an irresistible morality tale with a modern edge.
This is the first and only comprehensive bibliography of American judicial proceedings before 1801. It lists the exact title of everything that was printed before 1801, except in newspapers, about actual judicial proceedings within the 1801 territorial boundaries of the United States. It also covers printed rules of court applicable to those proceedings, judicial proceedings in England relating to the American colonies, and American reprintings of the reports of English and European trials. The bibliography is organized chronologically by jurisdiction, and by subject. An Index of Parallel Entries provides cross-references to 66 other bibliographical sources.
Volume XXV/1 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles, book reviews, and bibliographical information, which makes this publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. Its contributions range widely geographically, chronologically, and in subject-matter. The volume is, as always, a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.
The year 2000 marks the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of Hitotsubashi University, one of Japan's most prestigious universities. This official history celebrates the origins and development of the university and its contribution both to Japan's higher education system and her outstanding economic growth over the last century.
In this, one of Dewey's most accessible works, he surveys the history of liberal thought from John Locke to John Stuart Mill, in his search to find the core of liberalism for today's world. While liberals of all stripes have held to some very basic values -- liberty, individuality, and the critical use of intelligence -- earlier forms of liberalism restricted the state function to protecting its citizens while allowing free reign to socioeconomic forces. But, as society matures, so must liberalism as it reaches out to redefine itself in a world where government must play a role in creating an environment in which citizens can achieve their potential. Dewey's advocacy of a positive role for government -- a new liberalism -- nevertheless finds him rejecting radical Marxists and fascists who would use violence and revolution rather than democratic methods to aid the citizenry.
Pindar-the 'Theban eagle', as Thomas Gray famously called him-has often been taken as the archetype of the sublime poet: soaring into the heavens on wings of language and inspired by visions of eternity. In this much-anticipated new study, Robert Fowler asks in what ways the concept of the sublime can still guide a reading of the greatest of the Greek lyric poets. Working with ancient and modern treatments of the topic, especially the poetry and writings of Friedrich Hoelderlin (1770-1843), arguably Pindar's greatest modern reader, he develops the case for an aesthetic appreciation of Pindar's odes as literature. Building on recent trends in criticism, he shifts the focus away from the first performance and the orality of Greek culture to reception and the experience of Pindar's odes as text. This change of emphasis yields a fresh discussion of many facets of Pindar's astonishing art, including the relation of the poems to their occasions, performativity, the poet's persona, his imagery, and his myths. Consideration of Pindar's views on divinity, transcendence, time, and the limits of language reveals him to be not only a great writer but a great thinker.
This pertinent short history illustrates the leading issues separating the theist from the atheist and agnostic, and sheds light on world events and the inconsistencies inherent in supernaturalism and theistic theories. Thrower discusses atheism both as a reaction to belief and as a separate and consistent form of belief in a world stripped of the divine, where reason, science, and humankind's endless search for knowledge flourish.
Story of a remarkable life and the history of a movement.
Bats, baronets and Battle is more than just about cricket. This is a history full of colourful characters - eccentric baronets with a fondness for gambling, forthright women who wished to take their role and the game beyond an excuse to wear a pretty dress, and brothers from local villages who played the sport at the highest levels home and abroad. If Sussex was the 'cradle' for the earliest of cricket, the villages around Battle were there at the game's birth. From Georgian times and the murky world of 18th century politics, Tim Dudgeon traces Battle cricket's role from its role in 18th century Georgian gambling though the fear of 19th century rural unrest and the dawn of the professional game to the tragic impact of two world wars and into the modern era. The story he uncovers is an intriguing one that has local people and communities at its heart, but throws light on their links with events and forces that have shaped our world today.
In Histories of Social Studies and Race: 1865-2000, researchers investigate the interplay of race and the emerging social studies field from the time of the Emancipation of enslaved peoples in the second half of the nineteenth century to the multicultural and Afrocentric education initiatives of the late-twentieth century. The chapters incorporate viewpoints from various regions and local communities, as well as different ideas and ideals regarding teaching about race and Black history. This volume makes a case for considering the goals of such efforts-whether for individual development or social justice-and views the teaching of social studies education through the lens of race.
Bismarck once said that God looked after drunkards, children and the U.S. of A. Some say that baseball should be added to the list. It must have been divine intervention that led the sport through a series of transformative challenges from the end of World War II to the games first expansion in 1961. During this period baseball was forced to make a number of painful choices. From 1949 to 1954, attendance dropped more than 30 percent, as once loyal fans turned to other activities, started going to see more football, and began watching television. Also, the sport had to wrestle with racial integration, franchise shifts and unionization while trying to keep a firm hold on the minds and emotions of the public. This work chronicles how baseball, with imagination and some foresight, survived postwar challenges. Some of the solutions came about intelligently, some clumsily, but by 1960 baseball was a stronger, healthier and better balanced institution than ever before.
Volume 15 offers a series of critical articles and commentaries by some of the leading historically-oriented social scientists writing in academia today. Collectively, the articles examine issues ranging from the relations between class, power and history, to the role of states and culture in mediating those dynamics. Special attention is paid to race, gender, citizenship and civil society in the formation of such structures and processes. The countries or regions under study include the United States, Brazil, Chile, China, Mexico, Samoa and Southwest Africa.In keeping with the journal's commitment to inter-disciplinary, as well as historical inquiry, our nine contributors come from a variety of disciplines (sociology, political science, anthropology and history), all drawing on debates and themes that cut across the social sciences. The significance of the inter-disciplinary perspective is seen not only in the range of cases, literatures and methodologies brought to bear on the key issues under study; it also forms the substantive core of several contributions that call for a rethinking of conventional disciplinary boundaries and methodological frames.
A lost sketch book on a Portuguese castle rampart left Manuel Joao Ramos bereft, and the impulse to draw deserted him - but his first trip to Ethiopia reawakened this pleasure, so long denied. Drawing obsessively and free from care, his rapidly caught impressions convey the rough edges of the intensely lived experiences that are fundamental to the desire to travel. For the travel sketch is more than a record or register of attendance (`been there, seen that'): it holds invisibly within itself the remnant of a look, the hint of a memory and a trace of an osmosis of feelings between the sketcher and the person or objects sketched. Less intrusive than using a camera, Ramos argues drawing comprises a less imperialist, more benign way of researching: his sketchbook becomes a means of communication between himself and the world in which he travels, rendering him more human to those around him. As he journeys through the Ethiopian Central Highlands, collecting historical legends of the power struggles surrounding the arrival of the first Europeans in the mid-sixteenth century, he is drawn to the Portuguese legacy of castles, palaces and churches, near ruins now, though echoes of their lost splendour are retained in oral accounts. Excerpts from his diary, as well as journalistic pieces, share the conviviality of his encounters with the priests, elders and historians who act as custodians of the Amhara oral tradition. Their tales are interwoven with improvised, yet assured, drawings, and this informality of structure successfully retains the immediacy and pleasure of his discovery of Ethiopia. It also suggests the potential for drawing to play a more active part in anthropological production, as a means of creating new narratives and expositional forms in ethnography, bringing it closer to travel writing or the graphic novel. |
You may like...
The Springbok Captains - The Men Who…
Edward Griffiths, Stephen Nell
Paperback
(5)R774 Discovery Miles 7 740
|