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Books > Humanities > History > History of other lands
Metis and the Medicine Line is a sprawling, ambitious look at how
national borders and notions of race were created and manipulated
to unlock access to indigenous lands. It is also an intimate story
of individuals and families, brought vividly to life by history
writing at its best. It begins with the emergence of the Plains
Metis and ends with the fracturing of their communities as the
Canada-U.S. border was enforced. It also explores the borderland
world of the Northern Plains, where an astonishing diversity of
people met and mingled: Blackfoot, Cree, Gros Ventre, Lakota,
Dakota, Nez Perce, Assiniboine, Anishinaabes, Metis, Europeans,
Canadians, Americans, soldiers, police, settlers, farmers, hunters,
traders, bureaucrats. In examining the battles that emerged over
who belonged on what side of the border, Hogue disputes Canada's
peaceful settlement story of the Prairie West and challenges
familiar bromides about the "world's longest undefended border."
Animal Fables of the Courtly Mediterranean is a treasure trove of
stories and lessons on how to conduct oneself and succeed in life,
sometimes through cleverness rather than virtue. They feature human
and many animal protagonists, including the two jackals Stephanites
and Ichnelates, after whom the book is named, as well as several
lion kings. At the heart of this work are tales from the Sanskrit
Panchatantra and Mahabharata, to which more were added, both in the
original Middle Persian collection and its eighth-century Arabic
translation, the widely known Kalila wa-Dimna. In the eleventh
century, readers in Constantinople were introduced to these stories
through an abbreviated Greek version, translated by Symeon Seth
from the Arabic. The new Byzantine Greek text and English
translation presented here is a more complete version, originating
in twelfth-century Sicily and connected with Admiral Eugenius of
Palermo. It contains unique prefaces and reinstates the prologues
and stories omitted by Seth.
'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.
A comprehensive study of the island that was once Britain's
foremost colonial possession in the Western Hemisphere.
The rural roads that led to our planet-changing global economy ran
through the American South. That region's impact on the
interconnected histories of business and ecological change is
narrated here by acclaimed scholar Bart Elmore, who uses the
histories of five southern firms-Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines,
Walmart, FedEx, and Bank of America-to investigate the
environmental impact of our have-it-now, fly-by-night,
buy-on-credit economy. Drawing on exclusive interviews with company
executives, corporate archives, and other records, Elmore explores
the historical, economic, and ecological conditions that gave rise
to these five trailblazing corporations. He then considers what
each has become: an essential presence in the daily workings of the
global economy and an unmistakable contributor to the reshaping of
the world's ecosystems. Even as businesses invest in sustainability
initiatives and respond to new calls for corporate responsibility,
Elmore shows the limits of their efforts to "green" their
operations and offers insights on how governments and activists can
push corporations to do better. At the root, Elmore reveals a
fundamental challenge: Our lives are built around businesses that
connect far-flung rural places to urban centers and global
destinations. This "country capitalism" that proved successful in
the US South has made it possible to satisfy our demands at the
click of a button, but each click comes with hidden environmental
costs. This book is a must-read for anyone who hopes to create an
ecologically sustainable future economy.
Alongside Memphis, Detroit, New Orleans, Macon, and Muscle Shoals,
Florida has a rich soul music history - an important cultural
legacy that has often gone unrecognized. Florida Soul celebrates
great artists of the Sunshine State who have produced some of the
most electric, emotive soul music America has ever heard. This book
tells the story of Ray Charles's musical upbringing in Florida,
where he wrote his first songs and made his first recordings. It
highlights the careers of Pensacola singers James and Bobby Purify
and their producer, Papa Don Schroeder. It profiles Hank Ballard,
who wrote the international hit song "The Twist" after seeing the
dance in Tampa, and Gainesville singer Linda Lyndell. It describes
the soul scene of Miami's Overtown and Liberty City neighborhoods,
home to Sam Moore of the legendary duo Sam and Dave, Willie Clarke
and Johnny Pearsall of Deep City Records, and singer Helene Smith.
Miami was also the longtime headquarters of Henry Stone, whose
influential company T.K. Productions put out hits by Timmy Thomas,
Latimore, Betty Wright, and KC and the Sunshine Band. Stone's
distribution deals influenced charts and radio airplay across the
world. Born in the era of segregation with origins in gospel,
rhythm and blues, and jazz, and reaching maturity during the civil
rights movement, soul was one of the first music styles rooted in
African American culture to cross over and gain a significant white
audience. John Capouya draws on extensive interviews with surviving
musicians to re-create the exciting atmosphere of the golden age of
soul, establishing Florida as one of the great soul music capitals
of the United States.
Except for a short period after the end of the First World War
and the ensuing armistice, Turkey has consistently denied that it
ever employed a policy of intentional destruction of Armenians. Th
e 1913-1914 census put the number of Armenians living in Turkey at
close to two million. Today only a few thousand Armenians remain in
the city Istanbul and none elsewhere in Turkey. Armenian sites in
Turkey, including churches, have been neglected, desecrated,
looted, destroyed, or requisitioned for other uses, while Armenian
place names have been erased or changed.
As with the Jewish Holocaust, Armenian properties that were
seized or stolen have not been restored. Sixty and ninety years
after these terrible events, Jewish and Armenian victims and their
heirs continue to struggle to get their properties back. Th ere has
been only partial restitution in the Jewish case and virtually no
restitution at all in the Armenian case.
No adequate reparation for the deeds committed against the
Armenians can ever be made. But resolving claims with respect to
stolen property is a symbolic gesture toward victims and their
heirs. Th is is unfinished business for Jewish heirs and survivor
of the Holocaust, as it is for Armenians. A Perfect Injustice is an
essential contribution to understanding why the issue of stolen
Armenian wealth remains unresolved after all these years--a topic
addressed for the fi rst time in this volume.
The Texas state constitution of 1876 set aside three million acres
of public land in the Texas Panhandle in exchange for construction
of the state's monumental red-granite capitol in Austin. That land
became the XIT Ranch, briefly one of the most productive cattle
operations in the West. The story behind the legendary XIT Ranch,
told in full in this book, is a tale of Gilded Age business and
politics at the very foundation of the American cattle industry.
The capitol construction project, along with the acres that would
become XIT, went to an Illinois syndicate led by men influential in
politics and business. Unable to sell the land, the Illinois group,
backed by British capital, turned to cattle ranching to satisfy
investors. In tracing their efforts, which expanded to include a
satellite ranch in Montana, historian Michael M. Miller
demythologizes the cattle business that flourished in the
late-nineteenth-century American West, paralleling the United
States' first industrial revolution. The XIT Ranch came into being
and succeeded, Miller shows, only because of the work of
accountants, lawyers, and managers, overseen by officers and a
board of seasoned international capitalists. In turn, the ranch
created wealth for some and promoted the expansion of railroads,
new towns, farms, and jobs. Though it existed only from 1885 to
1912, from Texas to Montana the operation left a deep imprint on
community culture and historical memory. Describing the Texas
capitol project in its full scope and gritty detail, XIT cuts
through the popular portrayal of great western ranches to reveal a
more nuanced and far-reaching reality in the business and politics
of the beef industry at the close of America's Gilded Age.
Urban Villages and Local Identities examines immigration to the
Great Plains by surveying the experiences of three divergent ethnic
groups-Volga Germans, Omaha Indians, and Vietnamese-that settled in
enclaves in Lincoln, Nebraska, beginning in 1876, 1941, and 1975,
respectively. These urban villages served as safe havens that
protected new arrivals from a mainstream that often eschewed
unfamiliar cultural practices. Lincoln's large Volga German
population was last fully discussed in 1918; Omahas are rarely
studied as urban people although sixy-five percent of their
population lives in cities; and the growing body of work on
Vietnamese tends to be conducted by social scientists rather than
historians, few of whom contrast Southeast Asian experiences with
those of earlier waves of immigration. As a comparative study,
Urban Villages and Local Identities is inspired, in part, by
Reinventing Free Labor, by Gunther Peck. By focusing on the
experiences of three populations over the course of 130 years,
Urban Villages connects two distinct eras of international border
crossing and broadens the field of immigration to include Native
Americans. Ultimately, the work yields insights into the
complexity, flexibility, and durability of cultural identities
among ethnic groups and the urban mainstream in one capital city.
Inside the experiences of immigrants from Latin America and the
Caribbean Latino Orlando portrays the experiences of first- and
second-generation immigrants who have come to the Orlando
metropolitan area from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela,
Colombia, and other Latin American countries. While much research
on immigration focuses on urban destinations, Simone Delerme delves
into a middle- and upper-class suburban context, highlighting the
profound demographic and cultural transformation of an overlooked
immigrant hub. Drawing on interviews, observations, fieldwork,
census data, and traditional and new media, Delerme reveals the
important role of real estate developers in attracting Puerto
Ricans-some of the first Spanish-speaking immigrants in the
region-to Central Florida in the 1970s. She traces how language
became a way of racializing and segregating Latino communities,
leading to the growth of suburban ethnic enclaves. She documents
not only the tensions between Latinos and non-Latinos, but also the
class-based distinctions that cause dissent within the Latino
population. Arguing that Latino migrants are complicating racial
categorizations and challenging the deep-rooted Black-white binary
that has long prevailed in the American South, Latino Orlando
breaks down stereotypes of neighborhood decline and urban poverty
and illustrates the diversity of Latinos in the region. A volume in
the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall
M. Miller
'Beautifully written, sumptuously illustrated, constantly
fascinating' The Times On 26 November 1922 Howard Carter first
peered into the newly opened tomb of an ancient Egyptian boy-king.
When asked if he could see anything, he replied: 'Yes, yes,
wonderful things.' In Tutankhamun's Trumpet, acclaimed Egyptologist
Toby Wilkinson takes a unique approach to that tomb and its
contents. Instead of concentrating on the oft-told story of the
discovery, or speculating on the brief life and politically
fractious reign of the boy king, Wilkinson takes the objects buried
with him as the source material for a wide-ranging, detailed
portrait of ancient Egypt - its geography, history, culture and
legacy. One hundred artefacts from the tomb, arranged in ten
thematic groups, are allowed to speak again - not only for
themselves, but as witnesses of the civilization that created them.
Never before have the treasures of Tutankhamun been analysed and
presented for what they can tell us about ancient Egyptian culture,
its development, its remarkable flourishing, and its lasting
impact. Filled with surprising insights, unusual details, vivid
descriptions and, above all, remarkable objects, Tutankhamun's
Trumpet will appeal to all lovers of history, archaeology, art and
culture, as well as all those fascinated by the Egypt of the
pharaohs. 'I've read many books on ancient Egypt, but I've never
felt closer to its people' The Sunday Times
The Scottish Highlands form the highest mountains in the British
Isles, a broad arc of rocky peaks and deep glens stretching from
the outskirts of Glasgow, Perth and Aberdeen to the remote and
storm-lashed Cape Wrath in Scotland's far northwest. The Romans
never conquered the region - according to the historian Tacitus,
the Highland warrior chieftain Calgacus dubbed his people 'the last
of the free' - and in the Dark Ages the island of Iona became home
to a Celtic Church that was able to pose a serious challenge to the
Church of Rome. Few travellers ever ventured there, however,
disturbed by the tales of wild beasts, harsh geography and the
bloody conflicts of warring families known as the clans. But after
the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden the
influence of the clans was curbed and the Scottish Highlands became
celebrated by poets, writers and artists for their beauty rather
than their savagery. In the nineteenth century, inspired by the
travel reportage of Samuel Johnson, the novels of Walter Scott, the
poems of William Wordsworth and the very public love of the
Highlands espoused by Queen Victoria, tourists began flocking to
the mountains - even as Highlanders were being removed from their
land by the brutal agricultural reforms known as the Clearances.
With the popularity of hiking and the construction of railways,
including the famed West Highland line across Rannoch Moor, the
fate of the Highlands as one of the great tourist playgrounds of
the world was sealed. Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past
and vibrant present of this landscape, where the legacy of events
from the first Celtic settlements to the Second World War and from
the construction of military roads to mining for lead, slate and
gold have all left their mark.
A classic account of courage, integrity and most of all, belonging.
In 1977, after serving as a leading activist for the democratic
dissident movement in the Soviet Union and the movement for free
Jewish emigration from there, Natan Sharansky was arrested. He
spent nine years as a political prisoner, convicted of treason
against the state. In fact, Sharansky was fighting for individual
freedom in the face of overt tyranny, a struggle that would come to
define the rest of his life. In Never Alone, Natan Sharansky and
historian Gil Troy show how Sharansky's years in prison, many spent
in harsh solitary confinement, prepared him for a very public life
after his release. As an Israeli politician and the head of the
Jewish Agency, Sharansky brought extraordinary moral clarity and
uncompromising, often uncomfortable, honesty. Never a follower of
tradition for tradition's sake, or someone who placed expediency or
convenience ahead of consistent values, Sharansky was an often
awkward political colleague but always visionary in his
appreciation of where the real threats to freedom lay. Never Alone
is suffused with reflections from his time as a political prisoner,
from his seat at the table as history unfolded in Israel and the
Middle East, along with his passionate efforts to unite the Jewish
people. Written with frankness, affection, and humor, the book
offers us profound insights from a man who embraced the essential
human struggle: to find his own voice when it was denied him, his
own faith and the people to whom he could belong.
The Presidency of George W. Bush is the first balanced academic
study to analyze the entirety of his presidency-domestic, social,
economic, and national security policies-as well as the
administration's response to 9/11 and the subsequent "War on
Terror." In so doing, John Robert Greene argues persuasively that
the judgment of most scholars-that the Bush administration was a
complete failure-has been made in haste and without the benefit of
primary sources. This book is the first scholarly work to make wide
use of the documents at the George W. Bush Presidential Library,
many of which have only recently been made available to researchers
through the Freedom of Information Act. John Robert Greene offers
balanced assessment and nuanced conclusions supported by
documentary evidence. Yet in doing so he does not absolve the Bush
administration of its shortcomings. The Presidency of George W.
Bush shows that the administration could be vindictive, as
demonstrated by the Wilson-Plame affair and the firing of the US
attorneys. It all too often moved too slowly, as shown by the
National Security Council's lethargic handling of terrorism
pre-9/11, the failed attempt to revise Social Security, and the
sluggish reaction to Hurricane Katrina. It was an administration
that accepted, and acted on, the highly suspect theory of the
unitary presidency as advocated by Dick Cheney and accepted by the
president. On the other side of the balance sheet, however, the
evidence also makes it eminently clear that the Bush administration
was responsible for many positive achievements: No Child Left
Behind set the nation on the road toward affecting serious
educational reform. In healthcare reform, the Bush administration
both strengthened the Medicare system and extended its benefits for
millions of Americans. And Bush did more to combat the worldwide
scourge of AIDS as well as for Africa than any other president. In
sum, the actions of this presidency continue to affect the
presidencies of each of his successors as well as the trajectory of
world history to the present day.
Elizabeth B. Schwall aligns culture and politics by focusing on an
art form that became a darling of the Cuban revolution: dance. In
this history of staged performance in ballet, modern dance, and
folkloric dance, Schwall analyzes how and why dance artists
interacted with republican and, later, revolutionary politics.
Drawing on written and visual archives, including intriguing
exchanges between dancers and bureaucrats, Schwall argues that
Cubans dancers used their bodies and ephemeral, nonverbal
choreography to support and critique political regimes and cultural
biases. As esteemed artists, Cuban dancers exercised considerable
power and influence. They often used their art to posit more
radical notions of social justice than political leaders were able
or willing to implement. After 1959, while generally promoting
revolutionary projects like mass education and internationalist
solidarity, they also took risks by challenging racial prejudice,
gender norms, and censorship, all of which could affect dancers
personally. On a broader level, Schwall shows that dance, too often
overlooked in histories of Latin America and the Caribbean,
provides fresh perspectives on what it means for people, and
nations, to move through the world.
In this revised and expanded edition of Anna Kingsley's remarkable
life story, Daniel Schafer draws on new discoveries to prove true
the longstanding rumors that Anna Madgigine Jai was originally a
princess from the royal family of Jolof in Senegal. Captured from
her homeland in 1806, she became first an American slave, later a
slaveowner, and eventually a central figure in a free black
community. Anna Kingsley's story adds a dramatic chapter to the
history of the South, the state of Florida, and the African
diaspora.
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Knight's Gambit
(Hardcover)
William Faulkner; Edited by John N Duvall
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R665
R539
Discovery Miles 5 390
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Originally published in 1949, William Faulkner's Knight's Gambit is
a collection of six stories written in the 1930s and 1940s that
focus on the criminal investigations of Yoknapatawpha's long-time
county attorney, Gavin Stevens?a man more interested in justice
than the law. All previous and current editions of Knight's Gambit
have been based on the first edition, which is fraught with a
number of problems. Since tear sheets of the five previously
published stories were used in setting the first edition, the
original Knight's Gambit is a hodgepodge of various magazines?
house styles with no consistency in punctuation and spelling
conventions from story to story. Far greater issues arise, however,
from the substantive (and sometimes substantial) changes magazine
editors made to Faulkner's prose. These changes were made variously
for concision, propriety, or magazine design. Sometimes northern
editors removed the southernness of Faulkner's stories, either out
of ignorance of the South or in order to appeal to a mass audience.
Using four previously unknown Faulkner typescripts, along with
other manuscript and typescript evidence, John N. Duvall presents
an edition of Knight's Gambit that restores over four thousand
words that editors cut from the stories. Also included is an
introduction by Duvall discussing the role of detective fiction and
popular magazines in creating a different kind of postwar
readership for Faulkner that paves the way for the eventual
republication of Faulkner's modernist masterpieces. The new edition
enables readers to reevaluate the stories of Knight's Gambit and
their place in Faulkner's career as a short story writer.
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