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Books > Humanities > History > History of other lands
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Eskimo Life
(Paperback)
Fridtjof Nansen; Translated by William Archer
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R1,555
Discovery Miles 15 550
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In later life the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his
humanitarian work, the Norwegian explorer and scientist Fridtjof
Nansen (1861-1930) led the team that in 1888 made the first
successful crossing of Greenland's interior. Finding themselves cut
off from the rest of the world for the winter, Nansen and his men
spent several months living among the Greenlandic Inuit. Although
'far too short a time in which to attain a thorough knowledge', it
was nevertheless sufficient to form a strong acquaintance and
affection. First published in 1893, this English translation of the
1891 Norwegian original offers a valuable insight into much that
was, and remains, foreign and peculiar to European experience. The
coverage ranges from culinary to linguistic observations, and
Nansen is by turns repulsed, fascinated and full of compassion,
asking what the future holds for a people 'already stung with the
venom of our civilisation'.
In 1921 Tulsa's Greenwood District, known then as the nation's
'Black Wall Street,' was one of the most prosperous African
American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that
year, a white mob, inflamed by rumors that a young Black man had
attempted to rape a white teenage girl, invaded Greenwood. By the
end of the following day, thousands of homes and businesses lay in
ashes, and perhaps as many as three hundred people were dead.
Tulsa, 1921 shines new light into the shadows that have long been
cast over this extraordinary instance of racial violence. With the
clarity and descriptive power of a veteran journalist, author Randy
Krehbiel digs deep into the events and their aftermath and
investigates decades-old questions about the local culture at the
root of what one writer has called a white-led pogrom. Krehbiel
analyzes local newspaper accounts in an unprecedented effort to
gain insight into the minds of contemporary Tulsans. In the process
he considers how the Tulsa World, the Tulsa Tribune, and other
publications contributed to the circumstances that led to the
disaster and helped solidify enduring white justifications for it.
Some historians have dismissed local newspapers as too biased to be
of value for an honest account, but by contextualizing their
reports, Krehbiel renders Tulsa's papers an invaluable resource,
highlighting the influence of news media on our actions in the
present and our memories of the past. The Tulsa Massacre was a
result of racial animosity and mistrust within a culture of
political and economic corruption. In its wake, Black Tulsans were
denied redress and even the right to rebuild on their own property,
yet they ultimately prevailed and even prospered despite systemic
racism and the rise during the 1920s of the second Ku Klux Klan. As
Krehbiel considers the context and consequences of the violence and
devastation, he asks, Has the city - indeed, the nation - exorcised
the prejudices that led to this tragedy?
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.
""The Worst Journey in the World" is to travel writing what "War
and Peace" is to the novel . . . a masterpiece."--"The New York
Review of Books
""When people ask me, 'What is your favorite travel book?' I nearly
always name this book. It is about courage, misery, starvation,
heroism, exploration, discovery, and friendship." --Paul
Theroux
"National Geographic Adventure "magazine hailed this volume as the
#1 greatest adventure book of all time. Published in 1922 by an
expedition survivor, it recounts the riveting tale of Robert Falcon
Scott's ill-fated race to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard,
the youngest member of the party, offers sensitive
characterizations of each of his companions. Their journal entries
complement his narrative, providing vivid perspectives on the
expedition's dangers and hardships as well as its inspiring
examples of optimism, strength, and selflessness.
Hoping to prove a missing link between reptiles and birds, the
author and his companions traveled through the dead of Antarctic
winter to the remote breeding grounds of the Emperor Penguin. They
crossed a frozen sea in utter darkness, dragging an 800-pound
sledge through blizzards, howling winds, and average temperatures
of 60 below zero. This "worst journey" was followed by the
disastrous trek to the South Pole. Cherry-Garrard's compelling
account constitutes a moving testament to Scott and to the other
men of the expedition. This new edition of the adventure classic
features several pages of vintage photographs.
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.
The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made
available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of
exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899,
consists of 100 books containing published or previously
unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir
Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and
Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This volume contains an
English translation of the extraordinary story of Johann
Schiltberger (1381-?1440), who was captured in battle as a teenager
and enslaved by Bayezid I. On the latter's defeat by Timur
(Tamburlane) in 1402, Schiltberger fell into the hands of the
legendary Scourge of God, and in his service and that of his sons,
he travelled to Armenia, Georgia and other Caucasian territories,
down the river Volga, to Siberia and to the Crimea, eventually
escaping and returning to his home in 1427.
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.
'A daily taste of eternity in the midst of time' BBC Radio 4 staple
Thought for the Day has been running for 50 years, aiming to
capture the mood of the country and speak to it in a way that
reaches people of all faiths and none. Take a tour of half a
century of daily reflections from some of our most prominent and
insightful thinkers, including Pope Benedict XVI, Desmond Tutu and
Mona Siddiqui. Covering our changing attitudes to sexuality,
science, politics, national life, international relations and more,
Thought for the Day charts the constant evolution of British
society from its uniquely timeless perspective.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Son, there's more treasure buried right here In Oklahoma than in
the rest of the whole Southwest."" Those words from an old-timer
launched Steve Wilson on a yearslong quest for the stones of
Oklahoma's treasures. This book is the result.It is a book of
stories-some true, some legendary- about fabulous caches of lost
treasure: outlaw loot buried in the heat of pursuit, hoards of
Spanish gold dud silver secreted for a later day, Frenchmen's gold
ingots hidden amid massive cryptic symbols, Indian treasure
concealed in caves, and lost mines- gold and silver and platinum.
It tells about the earliest treasure seekers of the region and
those who are still hunting today. Along the way it describes
shootouts and massacres, trails whose routes are preserved in the
countless legends of gold hidden alongside them, Mexicans'
smelters, and mines hidden and sought over the centuries. Among the
chapters: ''The Secrets Spanish Fort Tells,"" ""Quests for Red
River's Silver Mines,"" ""Oklahoma's Forgotten Treasure Trail,'""
""Ghosts of Devil's Canyon and Their Gold,"" ""Jesse James's
Two-Million-Dollar Treasure,"" ""The Last Cave with the Iron
Door,"" and, perhaps most intriguing of all, ""The Mystery of
Cascorillo-A Lost"" City."" This is a book about quests over trails
dim before the turn of the century. It is about early peoples,
Mound Builders, Vikings, conquistadors, explorers, outlaw, gold
seekers. The author has spent years tracking down the stories and
hours listening to the old-timers' tales of their searches. Wilson
has provided maps, both detailed modem ones and photographs of
early treasure maps and has richly illustrated the book with
pictures of the sites that gave rise to the tales. . For armchair
travelers, never-say-die treasure hunters, historians, and
chroniclers and aficionados of western lore, this is an absorbing
and delightful book. And who knows? The reader may find gold!
During the Civil War, southerners produced a vast body of writing
about their northern foes, painting a picture of a money-grubbing,
puritanical, and infidel enemy. Damn Yankees! explores the
proliferation of this rhetoric and demonstrates how the perpetual
vilification of northerners became a weapon during the war,
fostering hatred and resistance among the people of the
Confederacy. Drawing from speeches, cartoons, editorials, letters,
and diaries, Damn Yankees! examines common themes in southern
excoriation of the enemy. In sharp contrast to the presumed
southern ideals of chivalry and honor, Confederates claimed that
Yankees were rootless vagabonds who placed profit ahead of fidelity
to religious and social traditions. Pervasive criticism of
northerners created a framework for understanding their behavior
during the war. When the Confederacy prevailed on the field of
battle, it confirmed the Yankees' reputed physical and moral
weakness. When the Yankees achieved military success, reports of
depravity against vanquished foes abounded, stiffening the resolve
of Confederate soldiers and civilians alike to protect their
homeland and the sanctity of their women from Union degeneracy.
From award-winning Civil War historian George C. Rable, Damn
Yankees! is the first comprehensive study of anti-Union speech and
writing, the ways these words shaped perceptions of and events in
the war, and the rhetoric's enduring legacy in the South after the
conflict had ended.
George Crook was one of the most prominent military figures of the
late-nineteenth-century Indian Wars. Yet today his name is largely
unrecognized despite the important role he played in such pivotal
events in western history as the Custer fight at the Little Big
Horn, the death of Crazy Horse, and the Geronimo campaigns. As Paul
Magid portrays Crook in this highly readable second volume of a
projected three-volume biography, the general was an innovative and
eccentric soldier, with a complex and often contradictory
personality, whose activities often generated intense controversy.
Though known for his uncompromising ferocity in battle, he
nevertheless respected his enemies and grew to know and feel
compassion for them. Describing campaigns against the Paiutes,
Apaches, Sioux, and Cheyennes, Magid's vivid narrative explores
Crook's abilities as an Indian fighter. The Apaches, among the
fiercest peoples in the West, called Crook the Gray Fox after an
animal viewed in their culture as a herald of impending death.
Generals Grant and Sherman both regarded him as indispensable to
their efforts to subjugate the western tribes. Though noted for his
aggressiveness in combat, Crook was a reticent officer who rarely
raised his voice, habitually dressed in shabby civilian attire, and
often rode a mule in the field. He was also self-confident to the
point of arrogance, harbored fierce grudges, and because he marched
to his own beat, got along poorly with his superiors. He had many
enduring friendships both in- and outside the army, though he
divulged little of his inner self to others and some of his closest
comrades knew he could be cold and insensitive. As Magid relates
these crucial episodes of Crook's life, a dominant contradiction
emerges: while he was an unforgiving warrior in the field, he not
infrequently risked his career to do battle with his military
superiors and with politicians in Washington to obtain fair
treatment for the very people against whom he fought. Upon hearing
of the general's death in 1890, Chief Red Cloud spoke for his Sioux
people: ""He, at least, never lied to us. His words gave the people
hope.
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