|
Books > Humanities > History > History of other lands
The history of Macon, Georgia, has an exceptional soundtrack, and
Something in the Water provides a lively narrative of the city's
musical past from its founding in 1823 to 1980. For generations,
talented musicians have been born in or passed through Macon's
confines. Some lived and died in obscurity, while others achieved
international stardom. From its pioneer origins to the modern era,
the city has produced waves of talent with amazing consistency,
representing a wide range of musical genres including country,
classical, jazz, blues, big band, soul, and rock. As the book
points out, the city's influence stretches far beyond the borders
of Georgia, and its musical imprint on the United States and the
world is significant. The story of music in Macon includes a vast,
eclectic cast of characters, such as the city's first music
""celebrity"" Sidney Lanier, entertainment entrepreneur Charles
Douglass, jazz age divas Lucille Hegamin and Lula Whidby, big band
singers Betty Barclay and the Pickens Sisters, rock and roll
founding father Little Richard Penniman, rhythm and blues icons
James Brown and Otis Redding, local country star Eugene ""Uncle
Ned"" Stripling, Capricorn Records founders Phil Walden and Frank
Fenter, and The Allman Brothers Band, one of the most popular
groups of the rock era. Something in the Water also offers a
treatment of Macon's leading entertainment venues, both past and
present, like Ralston Hall, the Grand Opera House, and the Douglass
Theater, along with local institutions such as Wesleyan College,
Mercer University, and the Georgia Academy for the Blind, which
trained generations of music students.
Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the
largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The
smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which
polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall
over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El
Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe
houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the
men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and
made homes there form the history of Smeltertown. Through
interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the
realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed-as is the
strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a
culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the
interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate
the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.
'Exquisitely written and lavishly illustrated, this delightful book
brings five centuries of Ottoman culture to life. Diana Darke
constantly amazes the reader with fascinating facts and points of
relevance between the Ottoman past and the present day' - Eugene
Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans A richly illustrated
guide to the Ottoman Empire, 100 years since its dissolution,
unravelling its complex cultural legacy and profound impact on
Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. At its height, the
Ottoman Empire spread from Yemen to the gates of Vienna. Western
perceptions of the Ottomans have often been distorted by
Orientalism, characterizing their rule as oppressive and
destructive, while seeing their culture as exotic and
incomprehensible. Based on a lifetime's experience of living and
working across its former provinces, Diana Darke offers a unique
overview of the Ottoman Empire's cultural legacy one century after
its dissolution. She uncovers a vibrant, sophisticated civilization
that embraced both arts and sciences, whilst welcoming refugees
from all ethnicities and religions, notably Christians and Jews.
Darke celebrates the culture of the Ottoman Empire, from its
aesthetics and architecture to its scientific and medical
innovations, including the first vaccinations. She investigates the
crucial role that commerce and trade played in supporting the
empire and increasing its cultural reach, highlighting the
significant role of women, as well as the diverse religious values,
literary and musical traditions that proliferated through the
empire. Beautifully illustrated with manuscripts, miniatures,
paintings and photographs, The Ottomans: A Cultural Legacy presents
the magnificent achievements of an empire that lasted over 600
years and encompassed Asian, European and African cultures,
shedding new light on its complex legacy.
Although Arctic explorer and Hudson Bay Company surveyor John Rae
(1813-1893) travelled and recorded the final uncharted sections of
the Northwest Passage, he is best known for his controversial
discovery of the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition of 1845.
Based on evidence given to him by local Inuit, Rae determined that
Franklin's crew had resorted to cannibalism in their final,
desperate days. Seen as maligning a national hero, Rae was shunned
by British society.This collection of personal
correspondence--reissued here for the first time since its original
publication in 1953--illuminates the details of Rae's expeditions
through his own words. The letters offer a glimpse into Rae's daily
life, his ideas, musings, and troubles. Prefaced by the original,
thorough introduction detailing his early life, "John Rae's Arctic
Correspondence" is a crucial resource for any Arctic
enthusiast.This new edition features a foreword by researcher and
Arctic enthusiast Ken McGoogan, the award-winning author of eleven
books, including "Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae"
(HarperCollins, 2002).
This book examines the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games. It tells
the story of the extensive infrastructural transformation of the
city and its changing global image in relation to hosting of the
Games. Reviewing different cultural representations of Sarajevo in
the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, the book explores how the
promotion of the city as a future global tourist centre resulted in
an increased awareness among its populace of the city's cultural
particularities. The analysis reveals how the process of
modernisation relating to hosting of the Olympics provided an
opportunity to re-imagine the city as a particularly
environmentally progressive city. Placed within the field of
studies of late socialism, the book offers important insights into
Yugoslav society during the period, including those relating to the
country's unique geopolitical position and its nationalities
policies.
Intimation of Revolution studies the rise of Bengali nationalism in
East Pakistan in the 1950s and 60s by showcasing the interactions
between global politics and local social and economic developments.
It argues that the revolution of 1969 and the national liberation
struggle of 1971 were informed by the 'global sixties' that
transformed the political landscape of Pakistan and facilitated the
birth of Bangladesh. Departing from the typical understanding of
the Bangladesh as a product of Indo-Pakistani diplomatic and
military rivalry, it narrates how Bengali nationalists resisted the
processes of internal colonization by the Pakistani military
bureaucratic regime to fashion their own nation. It details how
this process of resistance and nation-formation drew on
contemporaneous decolonization movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America while also being shaped by the Cold War rivalries between
the USA, USSR, and China.
Theodore (759-826), abbot of the influential Constantinopolitan
monastery of Stoudios, is celebrated as a saint by the Orthodox
Church for his stalwart defense of icon veneration. Three important
texts promoting the monastery and the memory of its founder are
collected in The Life and Death of Theodore of Stoudios. In the
Life of Theodore, Michael the Monk describes a golden age at
Stoudios, as well as Theodore's often antagonistic encounters with
imperial rulers. The Encyclical Letter of Naukratios, written in
826 by his successor, informed the scattered monks of their
leader's death. Translation and Burial contains brief biographies
of Theodore and his brother, along with an eyewitness account of
their reburial at Stoudios. These works, translated into English
for the first time, appear here alongside new editions of the
Byzantine Greek texts.
A University of Tradition is a fascinating compilation of history,
customs, pictures, and facts about Purdue University from its
founding in 1869 to the present day. Covering all aspects of
Purdue, from the origin of the nickname of its students and
alumni'Boilermakers'to a chronological list of all buildings ever
constructed on the campus of West Lafayette, Indiana, this book
presents the ultimate insider--s guide to one of the world--s great
universities. It contains a wealth of facts about student,
academic, sporting, and campus traditions, as well as biographical
information on all the University presidents and other members of
Purdue--s family, including David Ross, Neil Armstrong, Eliza
Fowler, Jack Mollenkopf, Helen Schleman, and Amelia Earhart.A
University of Tradition spotlights many items that will spark the
memories of any Purdue alumnus or fan. No matter if you were in the
...All-American' Marching Band, lived in the Quad, participated in
Grand Prix, wrote for the Purdue Exponent, or were on campus when
the Boilermakers won the 1967 Rose Bowl, you will appreciate and
enjoy this book. The second edition is fully updated for 2012 and
includes information about new landmarks, new traditions, and the
incoming twelfth president of the University.
Kansas Boy: The Memoir of A. J. Bolinger offers the
twenty-first-century reader delightful and revealing insights on
life during an era of dramatic change in American history. Bolinger
describes those years as 'bursting with energy, wild with
ambition.' The Kansas of his childhood and young adulthood was a
place where life was lived at a rapid pace: investors pursued
fortunes as town developers, settlers sought to establish
prosperous farms and ranches, and reformers tried to create an
ideal society. A. J. opens his account with a vividly detailed
description of the prairie itself, including how the frontier
settlements of Kansas were in the process of becoming established
communities. Born and raised in Elk County, Kansas, he tells
stories of ranching and cattle drives. Retelling some of the
legends of early Kansas, he debunks more than a few frontier myths.
As he moves toward adulthood his accounts of farming and small-town
life grow increasingly aware of the agricultural crisis of the
1880s and 1890s faced by farmers and small-town businesses as they
struggled with the growing power of corporations, in particular the
railroads. In doing so he offers ground-level insights into the
appeal of the Populist movement and the rise of the People' Party.
The challenges result in the Bolinger family's move to the city of
Topeka where A. J. attends Washburn College. As a college student
he helps temperance activist Carry Nation wage her antisaloon
campaign and goes to Washburn's new law school. His first step in
pursuing what would be a lifelong career in the law is to replicate
his family's and his era's pattern of moving to where new
opportunities lay: the Oklahoma territory. A. J. Bolinger
(1881-1977) offers today's reader a deeply felt memoir with keen
insights and thoughtful commentary that is by turns startlingly
progressive and deeply conservative. He offers us a richer
understanding of life on the prairies and plains of the last
decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the
twentieth century.
The absorbing vintage photographs brought together in "Vanishing
Georgia" recall life in the state from halfway through the
nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Pictured here
are both great events and commonplace occurrences: Atlanta in the
wake of Sherman's march and a small town bedecked in flags on the
Fourth of July; paddlewheelers loaded with barrels of turpentine
and proud owners of new automobiles; a get-together with neighbors
for a corn shucking and a crowd straining to hear the last words of
a convicted man. "Vanishing Georgia" is an engaging entree into the
state's vast and varied history, a treasure for both casual
browsers and serious scholars.
A TLS and Prospect Book of the Year. The scintillating story of the
Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought refuge
in Belle Epoque Paris. The fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917
forced thousands of Russians to flee their homeland with only the
clothes on their backs. Many came to France's glittering capital,
Paris. Former princes drove taxicabs, while their wives found work
in the fashion houses. Some intellectuals, artists, poets,
philosophers, and writers eked out a living at menial jobs; a few
found success until the economic downturn of the 1930s hit. In
exile, White activists sought to overthrow the Bolshevik regime
from afar, and double agents plotted from both sides, to little
avail. Many Russians became trapped in a cycle of poverty and their
all-consuming homesickness. This is their story.
This classic in West Indian history is invaluable, not only for a
study of the history of Barbados, but for its wealth of information
about the island.
A journey - both historical and contemporary - among the
fantastical landscapes, beguiling creatures and isolated tribes of
the world's fourth island: Madagascar. An improbable world beckons.
We think we know Madagascar but it's too big, too eccentric, and
too impenetrable to be truly understood. If it was stretched out
across Europe, the islands would reach from London to Algiers, and
yet its road network is barely bigger than tiny Jamaica's. There is
no evidence of any human life until about 10,000 years ago, and,
when eventually people settled, it was migrants from Borneo - 3,700
miles away - who came out on top. As well as visiting every corner
of Madagascar, John Gimlette journeys deep into its past in order
to better understand how Madagascar became what it is today. Along
the way, he meets politicians, sorcerors, gem prospectors,
militiamen, rioters, lepers and the descendants of
seventeenth-century pirates.
Warfare has long been central to a proper understanding of ancient
Greece and Rome, worlds where war was, as the philosopher
Heraclitus observed, 'both king and father of all'. More recently,
however, the understanding of Classical antiquity solely in such
terms has been challenged; it is recognised that while war was
pervasive, and a key concern in the narratives of ancient
historians, a concomitant desire for peace was also constant. This
volume places peace in the prime position as a panel of scholars
stresses the importance of 'peace' as a positive concept in the
ancient world (and not just the absence of, or necessarily even
related to, war), and considers examples of conflict resolution,
conciliation, and concession from Homer to Augustine. Comparing and
contrasting theories and practice across different periods and
regions, this collection highlights, first, the open and dynamic
nature of peace, and then seeks to review a wide variety of
initiatives from across the Classical world.
The Aura of Confucius is a ground-breaking study that reconstructs
the remarkable history of Kongzhai, a shrine founded on the belief
that Confucius' descendants buried the sage's robe and cap a
millennium after his death and far from his home in Qufu, Shandong.
Improbably located on the outskirts of modern Shanghai, Kongzhai
featured architecture, visual images, and physical artifacts that
created a 'Little Queli,' a surrogate for the temple, cemetery, and
Kong descendants' mansion in Qufu. Centered on the Tomb of the Robe
and Cap, with a Sage Hall noteworthy for displaying sculptural
icons and not just inscribed tablets, Kongzhai attracted scholarly
pilgrims who came to experience Confucius's beneficent aura.
Although Kongzhai gained recognition from the Kangxi emperor, its
fortunes declined with modernization, and it was finally destroyed
during the Cultural Revolution. Unlike other sites, Kongzhai has
not been rebuilt and its history is officially forgotten, despite
the Confucian revival in contemporary China.
A close reading of postrevolutionary Russian and Yiddish literature
and film recasts the Soviet Jew as a novel cultural figure: not
just a minority but an ambivalent character navigating between the
Jewish past and Bolshevik modernity. The Russian Revolution of 1917
transformed the Jewish community of the former tsarist empire. The
Pale of Settlement on the empire's western borderlands, where Jews
had been required to live, was abolished several months before the
Bolsheviks came to power. Many Jews quickly exited the shtetls,
seeking prospects elsewhere. Some left for bigger cities, others
for Europe, America, or Palestine. Thousands tried their luck in
the newly established Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East,
where urban merchants would become tillers of the soil. For these
Jews, Soviet modernity meant freedom, the possibility of the new,
and the pressure to discard old ways of life. This ambivalence was
embodied in the Soviet Jew-not just a descriptive demographic term
but a novel cultural figure. In insightful readings of Yiddish and
Russian literature, films, and reportage, Sasha Senderovich finds
characters traversing space and history and carrying with them the
dislodged practices and archetypes of a lost Jewish world. There is
the Siberian settler of Viktor Fink's Jews in the Taiga, the
folkloric trickster of Isaac Babel, and the fragmented, bickering
family of Moyshe Kulbak's The Zemlenyaners, whose insular lives are
disrupted by the march of technological, political, and social
change. There is the collector of ethnographic tidbits, the pogrom
survivor, the emigre who repatriates to the USSR. Senderovich urges
us to see the Soviet Jew anew, as not only a minority but also a
particular kind of liminal being. How the Soviet Jew Was Made
emerges as a profound meditation on culture and identity in a
shifting landscape.
As the Antarctic Treaty comes up for renewal and global warming
increasingly becomes a reality, the polar regions have attracted
renewed interest. However, while Western policy in the Arctic
regions is well documented, little is known of traditional Soviet
policy in this area. And this, despite the fact that the Soviet
Union is one of the most important nations in the field of polar
exploration. Even in the era of glasnost, research remains
difficult. In "The Soviet Arctic" Pier Horensma sets out to correct
this situation. Horensma has based his research on the
comparatively wide literature available on this topic in Russian,
but barely known in the West. He traces Soviet policy of the last
100 years - giving particular importance to the Stalin period and
his legacy to current Soviet attitudes in the Arctic. He also
considers the international implications of this policy and the
effect of technological advances. This book should be of interest
to lecturers and students of history, geography, Soviet studies and
politics.
What happens to the citizen when states and nations come into
being? How do the different ways in which states and nations exist
define relations between individuals, groups, and the government?
Are all citizens equal in their rights and duties in the newly
established polity? Addressing these key questions in the contested
and ethnically heterogeneous post-Yugoslav states of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, this book reinterprets the
place of citizenship in the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the
creation of new states in the Western Balkans. Carefully analysing
the interplay between competing ethnic identities and
state-building projects, the author proposes a new analytical
framework for studying continuities and discontinuities of
citizenship in post-partition, post-conflict states. The book
maintains that citizenship regimes in challenged states are shaped
not only by the immediate political contexts that generated them,
but also by their historical trajectories, societal environments in
which they exist, as well as the transformative powers of
international and European factors.
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished
Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a
construction site killed six of the city's firefighters. It was a
clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly
convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading
editor J. Patrick O'Connor, the facts-or a lack of them-didn't add
up. Justice on Fire is O'Connor's detailed account of the terrible
explosion that led to the firefighters' deaths and the terrible
injustice that followed. Justice on Fire describes a misguided
eight-year investigation propelled by an overzealous Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agent keen to
retire; a mistake-riddled case conducted by a combative assistant
US attorney willing to use compromised "snitch" witnesses and
unwilling to admit contrary evidence; and a sentence of life
without parole pronounced by a prosecution-favoring judge. In
short, an abuse of government power and a travesty of justice.
O'Connor's own investigation, which uncovered evidence of witness
tampering, intimidation, and prosecutorial misconduct, helped give
rise to a front-page series of articles in the Kansas City
Star-only to prompt a whitewashing inquiry by the Department of
Justice that exonerated the lead ATF agent and named other possible
perpetrators who remain unidentified and unindicted. O'Connor
extends his scrutiny to this cover-up and arrives at a startling
conclusion suggesting that the case of the Marlborough Five is far
from closed. Journalists are not supposed to make the news. But
faced with a gross injustice, and seeing no other remedy, O'Connor
felt he must step in. Justice on Fire is such an intervention.
|
|