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Books > Humanities > History > History of other lands
The last year of the war saw Russian offensives that cleared the
Germans out of their final strongholds in Finland and the Baltic
states, before advancing into Finnmark in Norway and the east
European states that bordered Germany: Poland, Czechoslovakia and
Hungary. By spring 1945 the Red Army had reached to Vienna and the
Balkans, and had thrust deep into Germany where they met American,
French and British troops advancing from the west. The final days
of the Third Reich were at hand. Berlin was first surrounded, then
attacked and taken. Hitler's suicide and his successors'
unconditional surrender ended the war. For writers and historians
who concentrate on the Western Allies and the battles in France and
the Low Countries, the Eastern Front comes as a shock. The sheer
size of both the territories and the forces involved; the savagery
of both weather and the fighting; the appalling suffering of the
civilian populations of all countries and the wreckage of towns and
cities - it's no wonder that words like armageddon are used to
describe the annihilation. Red Army into the Reich combines a
narrative history, contemporary photographs and maps with images of
memorials, battlefield survivors and then & now views. It may
come as a surprise to the western reader to see how many memorials
there are to Russia's Great Patriotic War and those to the losses
suffered by the countries who spent so long under the murderous
Nazi regime.
Historic levels of polarization, a disaffected and frustrated
electorate, and widespread distrust of government, the news media,
and traditional political leadership set the stage in 2016 for an
unexpected, unlikely, and unprecedented presidential contest.
Donald Trump's campaign speeches and other rhetoric seemed on the
surface to be simplistic, repetitive, and disorganized to many. As
Demagogue for President shows, Trump's campaign strategy was
anything but simple.Political communication expert Jennifer
Mercieca shows how the Trump campaign expertly used the common
rhetorical techniques of a demagogue, a word with two contradictory
definitions - 'a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and
false claims and promises in order to gain power' or 'a leader
championing the cause of the common people in ancient times'
(Merriam-Webster, 2019). These strategies, in conjunction with
post-rhetorical public relations techniques, were meant to appeal
to a segment of an already distrustful electorate. It was an
effective tactic. Mercieca analyzes rhetorical strategies such as
argument ad hominem, argument ad baculum, argument ad populum,
reification, paralipsis, and more to reveal a campaign that was
morally repugnant to some but to others a brilliant appeal to
American exceptionalism. By all accounts, it fundamentally changed
the discourse of the American public sphere.
In what has become the era of the mass shooting, we are routinely
taken to scenes of terrible violence. Often neglected, however, is
the long aftermath, including the efforts to effect change in the
wake of such tragedies. On April 16, 2007, thirty-two Virginia Tech
students and professors were murdered. Then the nation's deadliest
mass shooting by a lone gunman, the tragedy sparked an
international debate on gun culture in the United States and safety
on college campuses. Experiencing profound grief and trauma, and
struggling to heal both physically and emotionally, many of the
survivors from Virginia Tech and their supporters put themselves on
the front lines to advocate for change. Yet since that April,
large-scale gun violence has continued at a horrifying pace. In
After Virginia Tech, award-winning journalist Thomas Kapsidelis
examines the decade after the Virginia Tech massacre through the
experiences of survivors and community members who advocated for
reforms in gun safety, campus security, trauma recovery, and mental
health. Undaunted by the expansion of gun rights, they continued
their national leadership despite an often-hostile political
environment and repeated mass violence. Kapsidelis also focuses on
the trauma suffered by police who responded to the shootings, and
the work by chaplains and a longtime police officer to create an
organization dedicated to recovery. The stories Kapsidelis tells
here show how people and communities affected by profound loss
ultimately persevere long after the initial glare and attention
inevitably fade. Reaching beyond policy implications, After
Virginia Tech illuminates personal accounts of recovery and
resilience that can offer a ray of hope to millions of Americans
concerned about the consequences of gun violence.
Born out of a meticulous, well-researched historical and current
traditional land-use study led by Cega Kinna Nakoda Oyate (Carry
the Kettle Nakoda First Nation), Owoknage is the first book to tell
the definitive, comprehensive story of the Nakoda people (formerly
known as the Assiniboine), in their own words. From pre-contact to
current-day life, from thriving on the Great Plains to forced
removal from their traditional, sacred lands in the Cypress Hills
via a Canadian "Trail of Tears" starvation march to where they now
currently reside south of Sintaluta, Saskatchewan, this is their
story of resilience and resurgence.
Some have called it the tortilla curtain. Others have viewed it as
a Third World entity where primitive conditions and poverty exist
alongside the latest marvels of the computerized Information Age.
But the border region between Mexico and the United States is more
dynamic than ever since its transition into a sort of Mexamerica a
world fueled by corporate colonialism, the North American Free
Trade Agreement (or NAFTA) and contraband of every stripe, from
illegal drugs to illegal aliens. Forging the Tortilla Curtain
reveals how the borderlands got to be that way. Thomas Torrans's
narrative is a sweeping history of the 2,000-mile-long borderlands
from the time of the early intrusions of the Spaniards in their
endless quest for gold to the recent invasions of multinationals in
their endless quest for cheap labor. It is a fascinating story of
the long struggle to establish a boundary as an institution and
cultural margin of the two Americas an Anglo North and a Latin
South. It was a difficult and hazardous course heavily peopled with
westering adventurers: filibusters William Walker and Henry
Alexander Crabb, among many others; scalp hunters like John
Glanton; dreamers and schemers vanquished Confederate generals
Alexander Watkins Terrell and John B. Magruder, who hoped to
establish a new Confederacy south of the border, and Albert Kimsey
Owen who founded a short-lived socialist utopia at Topolobampo;
empire builders like William Cornell Greene and William Randolph
Hearst; and profiteers in the industry of contraband. Americans,
contained at the Rio Grande since the 1840s by the Mexican-American
War and the boundary that later developed across the desert
Southwest to the Pacific, did not accept that contentedly. Thwarted
in efforts to secure a port on the Sea of Cortez the Gulf of
California they nonetheless were successful in bridging the
continent by a climatically favorable southerly route. Even so, in
the minds of many the notion of further aggrandizement long
prevailed: for example, some argued that even Baja California
properly should be United States territory, a sort of
geographically balanced equivalent, so to speak, to the Florida
peninsula itself. From the outset the frontier that would become
the border was a work in progress and remains so today.
Understanding Contemporary Asia Pacific provides a comprehensive
introduction to one of the most complex and rapidly changing
regions in the world today. This thoroughly revised new edition
reflects more than a decade of major developments in the region
(encompassing China, Japan, the Koreas, and all of the ASEAN member
states), including the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. With
accessible discussions of history, politics, economics,
international relations, society, and culture, it provides the
tools essential to understanding the dynamic Asia Pacific and its
influence in the global arena.
OutKast, the Atlanta-based hip-hop duo formed in 1992, is one of
the most influential musical groups within American popular culture
of the past twenty-five years. Through Grammy-winning albums, music
videos, feature films, theatrical performances, and fashion, Andre
"Andre 3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton have articulated
a vision of postmodern, post-civil rights southern identity that
combines the roots of funk, psychedelia, haute couture, R&B,
faith and spirituality, and Afrofuturism into a style all its own.
This postmodern southern aesthetic, largely promulgated and
disseminated by OutKast and its collaborators, is now so prevalent
in mainstream American culture (neither Beyonce Knowles's
"Formation" nor Joss Whedon's sci-fi /western mashup Firefly could
exist without OutKast's collage aesthetic) that we rarely consider
how challenging and experimental it actually is to create a new
southern aesthetic. An OutKast Reader, then, takes the group's
aesthetic as a lens through which readers can understand and
explore contemporary issues of Blackness, gender, urbanism,
southern aesthetics, and southern studies more generally. Divided
into sections on regional influences, gender, and visuality, the
essays collectively offer a vision of OutKast as a key shaper of
conceptions of the twenty-first-century South, expanding that
vision beyond long-held archetypes and cultural signifiers. The
volume includes a who's who of hip-hop studies and African American
studies scholarship, including Charlie Braxton, Susana M. Morris,
Howard Ramsby II, Reynaldo Anderson, and Ruth Nicole Brown.
A wonderfully concise and readable, yet comprehensive, history of the
Mediterranean Sea, the perfect companion for any visitor -- or indeed,
anyone compelled to stay at home.
'The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the
Mediterranean.'
Samuel Johnson, 1776
The Mediterranean has always been a leading stage for world history; it
is also visited each year by tens of millions of tourists, both local
and international. Jeremy Black provides an account in which the
experience of travel is foremost: travel for tourism, for trade, for
war, for migration, for culture, or, as so often, for a variety of
reasons. Travellers have always had a variety of goals and situations,
from rulers to slaves, merchants to pirates, and Black covers them all,
from Phoenicians travelling for trade to the modern tourist sailing for
pleasure and cruising in great comfort.
Throughout the book the emphasis is on the sea, on coastal regions and
on port cities visited by cruise liners - Athens, Barcelona, Naples,
Palermo. But it also looks beyond, notably to the other waters that
flow into the Mediterranean - the Black Sea, the Atlantic, the Red Sea
and rivers, from the Ebro and Rhone to the Nile.
Much of western Eurasia and northern Africa played, and continues to
play, a role, directly or indirectly, in the fate of the Mediterranean.
At times, that can make the history of the sea an account of conflict
after conflict, but it is necessary to understand these wars in order
to grasp the changing boundaries of the Mediterranean states, societies
and religions, the buildings that have been left, and the peoples'
cultures, senses of identity and histories.
Black explores the centrality of the Mediterranean to the Western
experience of travel, beginning in antiquity with the Phoenicians,
Minoans and Greeks. He shows how the Roman Empire united the sea, and
how it was later divided by Christianity and Islam. He tells the story
of the rise and fall of the maritime empires of Pisa, Genoa and Venice,
describes how galley warfare evolved and how the Mediterranean fired
the imagination of Shakespeare, among many artists. From the
Renaissance and Baroque to the seventeenth-century beginnings of
English tourism - to the Aegean, Sicily and other destinations - Black
examines the culture of the Mediterraean. He shows how English naval
power grew, culminating in Nelson's famous victory over the French in
the Battle of the Nile and the establishment of Gibraltar, Minorca and
Malta as naval bases. Black explains the retreat of Islam in north
Africa, describes the age of steam navigation and looks at how and why
the British occupied Cyprus, Egypt and the Ionian Islands. He looks at
the impact of the Suez Canal as a new sea route to India and how the
Riviera became Europe's playground. He shows how the Mediterranean has
been central to two World Wars, the Cold War and ongoing conflicts in
the Middle East. With its focus always on the Sea, the book looks at
the fate of port cities particularly - Alexandria, Salonika and Naples.
For more than one hundred years, Jewish women and men of the Dallas
area have responded to Tikkun Olam, the religious challenge to heal
the world. Repairing Our World: The First 100 Years of the National
Council of Jewish Women, Greater Dallas Section is a history of
this passion to create a more humane society. Organized by decades
from the group's beginnings in 1913, the book identifies both
leadership and accomplishments of the NCJW. Its content is richly
enhanced with personal essays from the organization's members,
historical highlights, and graphics. Through education, community
service, advocacy, and collaboration, members work to address the
needs of all peoples and faiths within the community. Advocacy
efforts aim to correct the root causes of current social problems.
More than one thousand members devote countless volunteer hours to
advance NCJW's mission. Leaders dare to have a vision of what is
possible.
After Ross Benes left Nebraska for New York, he witnessed his
polite home state become synonymous with 'Trump country.' Long
dismissed as 'flyover' land, the area where he was born and raised
suddenly became the subject of TV features and frequent opinion
columns. With the rural-urban divide overtaking the national
conversation, Benes knew what he had to do: go home. In Rural
Rebellion, Benes explores Nebraska's shifting political landscape
to better understand what's plaguing America. He clarifies how
Nebraska defies red-state stereotypes while offering readers
insights into how a frontier state with a tradition of
nonpartisanship succumbed to the hardened right. Extensive
interviews with US senators, representatives, governors, state
lawmakers, and other power brokers illustrate how local disputes
over health-care coverage and education funding became microcosms
for our current national crisis. Rural Rebellion is also the story
of one man coming to terms with both his past and present. Benes
writes about the dissonance of moving from the most rural and
conservative region of the country to its most liberal and urban
centers as they grow further apart at a critical moment in history.
He seeks to bridge America's current political divides by
contrasting the conservative values he learned growing up in a town
of three hundred with those of his liberal acquaintances in New
York City, where he now lives. At a time when social and political
differences are too often portrayed in stark binary terms, and
people in the Trump-supporting heartland are depicted in reductive,
one-dimensional ways, Benes tells real-life stories to add depth
and nuance to our understanding of rural Americans' attitudes about
abortion, immigration, big government, and other contentious
issues. His argument and conclusion are simple but powerful: that
Americans in disparate places would be less hostile to one another
if they just knew each other a little better. Part memoir,
journalism, and social science, Rural Rebellion is a book for our
times.
How could the newly authorized space shuttle help in the U.S. quest
to build a large research station in Earth orbit? As a means of
transporting goods, the shuttle could help supply the parts to the
station. But how would the two entitles be physically linked?
Docking technologies had to constantly evolve as the designs of the
early space stations changed. It was hoped the shuttle would make
missions to the Russian Salyut and American Skylab stations, but
thesewere postponed until the Mir station became available, while
plans for getting a new U. S. space station underway were stalled.
In Linking the Space Shuttle and Space Stations, the author delves
into the rich history of the Space Shuttle and its connection to
these early space stations, culminating in the nine missions to
dock the shuttle toMir. By 1998, after nearly three decades of
planning and operations, shuttle missions to Mir had resulted in: *
A proven system to link up the space shuttle to a space station*
Equipment and hands-on experience in handling tons of materials* An
infrastructure to support space station assembly and resupply Each
of these played a pivotal role in developing the skills and
procedures crucial to the creation of the later, much larger and
far more complex International Space Station, as described in the
companionvolume Assembling and Supplying the ISS: The Space Shuttle
Fulfills Its Mission.
On Friday, January 28, 1977, it began to snow in Buffalo. The
second largest city in New York State, located directly in line
with the Great Lakes' snowbelt, was no stranger to this kind of
winter weather. With their city averaging ninety-four inches of
snow per year, the citizens of Buffalo knew how to survive a
snowstorm. But the blizzard that engulfed the city for the next
four days was about to make history. Between the subzero wind chill
and whiteout conditions, hundreds of people were trapped when the
snow began to fall. Twenty- to thirty-foot-high snow drifts
isolated residents in their offices and homes, and even in their
cars on the highway. With a dependency on rubber-tire vehicles,
which lost all traction in the heavily blanketed urban streets,
they were cut off from food, fuel, and even electricity. This one
unexpected snow disaster stranded tens of thousands of people,
froze public utilities and transportation, and cost Buffalo
hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses and property
damages. The destruction wrought by this snowstorm, like the
destruction brought on by other natural disasters, was from a
combination of weather-related hazards and the public policies
meant to mitigate them. Buffalo's 1977 blizzard, the first
snowstorm to be declared a disaster in US history, came after a
century of automobility, suburbanization, and snow removal
guidelines like the bare-pavement policy. Kneeland offers a
compelling examination of whether the 1977 storm was an anomaly or
the inevitable outcome of years of city planning. From the local to
the state and federal levels, Kneeland discusses governmental
response and disaster relief, showing how this regional event had
national implications for environmental policy and how its effects
have resounded through the complexities of disaster politics long
after the snow fell.
'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible
and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human
experience.' - History Revealed 'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire
Post 'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at
the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of
people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating
journey' - The Scotsman There are few things more in common across
cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the
very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally
'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich
mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired,
fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are
only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the
ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic
literature. But their origins are much, much older... The First
Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very
beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of
writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel
has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to
unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to
breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The
First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient
spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years,
covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get
rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as
well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts,
why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of
concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?
'A wonderfully fluent account of how the strange magic of water and
the beings that inhabit it can enchant and intoxicate' Chris Yates
'[Will Millard] writes with a genuine sense of humility (...)
humour and reflection' Kevin Parr, Countryfile *** Growing up on
the Cambridgeshire Fens, Will Millard never felt more at home than
when he was out with his granddad on the riverbank, whiling away
the day catching fish. As he grew older his competitive urge to
catch more and bigger fish led him away from that natural
connection between him, his grandfather and the rivers of his home.
That is, until the fateful day he let a record-breaking sand eel
slip through his fingers and he knew that he had lost the magic of
those days down by the river, and that something had to change. The
Old Man and the Sand Eel is at its heart the story of three
generations of men trying to figure out what it is to be a man, a
father and a fisherman. It plots Will's scaly stepping stones back
to his childhood innocence, when anything was possible and the wild
was everywhere. *** 'Delightful and informative (...) beautifully
drawn' The Spectator '[Will Millard] is a master wordsmith and his
first book is a joyful testament to that' Isabelle Broom, Heat 'The
writing is sharp and clever (...) I loved all of it and would as
happily read it again as I would sit beside the river waiting for
the evening rise of trout to begin' Tom Fort, Literary Review 'This
is post-modern nature writing that embraces beauty where it finds
it and marvels at nature's tenacity (...) But there's more here
than just fish. This is also a book about growing up, about how to
retain a connection with those who raised you while forging your
own identity - what to keep and what to discard. And it's about
men. The strong surges of emotion that both draw them together and
keep them apart, and the shared pastimes which recognise that
intimacy and meaning aren't always accompanied by words' Olivia
Edward, Geographical
The story of western correspondents in Russia is the story of
Russia's attitude to the west. Russia has at different times been
alternately open to western ideas and contacts, cautious and
distant or, for much of the twentieth century, all but closed off.
From the revolutionary period of the First World War onwards,
correspondents in Russia have striven to tell the story of a
country known to few outsiders. Their stories have not always been
well received by political elites, audiences, and even editors in
their own countries-but their accounts have been a huge influence
on how the West understands Russia. Not always perfect, at times
downright misleading, they have, overall, been immensely valuable.
In Assignment Moscow, former foreign correspondent James Rodgers
analyses the news coverage of Russia throughout history, from the
coverage of the siege of the Winter Palace and a plot to kill
Stalin, to the Chernobyl explosion and the Salisbury poison
scandal.
One man's immigration to the Canadian Prairies in the early 1930s
reveals the character of Canada today as sharply as it did long
ago. In 1930, a young Jewish man, Yehuda Eisenstein, arrived in
Canada from Poland to escape persecution and in the hopes of
starting a new life for himself and his young family. Like
countless other young European men who came to Canada from
"non-preferred" countries, Yehuda was only granted entry because he
claimed to be single, starting his Canadian life with a lie. He
trusted that his wife and children would be able to follow after he
had gained legal entry and found work. For years, Yehuda was given
two choices: remain in Canada alone, or return home to Poland to be
with his family. Who Gets In is author Norman Ravvin's pursuit of
his grandfather's first years in Canada. It is a deeply personal
family memoir born from literary and archival recovery. It is also
a shocking critique of Canadian immigration policies that directly
challenges Canada's reputation as a tolerant, multicultural
country, a criticism that extends to our present moment, as war
once again continues to displace millions from their homes.
"Ambitious, fast-paced, fact-filled, and accessible." -Science "A
compelling case for why achieving the right balance of time with
our families...is vital to the economic success and prosperity of
our nation... A must read." -Maria Shriver From backyard barbecues
to the blogosphere, working men and women across the country are
raising the same worried question: How can I get ahead at my job
while making sure my family doesn't suffer? A visionary economist
who has looked at the numbers behind the personal stories, Heather
Boushey argues that resolving the work-life conflict is as vital
for us personally as it is essential economically. Finding Time
offers ingenious ways to help us carve out the time we need, while
showing businesses that more flexible policies can actually make
them more productive. "Supply and demand curves are suddenly 'sexy'
when Boushey uses them to prove that paid sick days, paid family
leave, flexible work schedules, and affordable child care aren't
just cutesy women's issues for families to figure out 'on their own
time and dime,' but economic issues affecting the country at
large." -Vogue "Boushey argues that better family-leave policies
should not only improve the lives of struggling families but also
boost workers' productivity and reduce firms' costs." -The
Economist
First Impressions: A Reader's Journey to Iconic Places of the
American Southwest tells the story of fifteen iconic sites across
Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and southern Colorado through the eyes
of the explorers, missionaries, and travelers who were the first
nonnatives to describe them. Noted borderlands historians David J.
Weber and William deBuys lead readers through centuries of
historical, cultural, and environmental change at sites ranging
from Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, and Mesa Verde to such
living Native communities as Acoma and Zuni. Lovers of the
Southwest, both residents and visitors alike, will delight in the
authors' skillful evocation of the region's sweeping landscapes,
its rich Hispanic and Native heritage, and the sense of discovery
that so enchanted its early explorers.
In the 1980s, The Nature Conservancy began work on the fast-growing
Outer Banks by protecting Nags Head Woods, one of the last intact
maritime forests on the East Coast that was in danger of becoming a
housing development. In the late nineteenth century the woods was
home to about forty families and remnants of their time there can
be seen during a walk in the preserve to this day. Based on oral
histories, this book documents the social and cultural history of a
community that worked the land and waters of this unique place.
Originally published in 1987, this reissue edition contains a
foreword by David S. Cecelski and an afterword by the authors.
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