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Books > History > History of other lands
This book combines social and institutional histories of Russia, focusing on the secret police and their evolving relationship with the peasantry. Based on an analysis of Cheka/OGPU reports, it argues that the police did not initially respond to peasant resistance to Bolshevik demands simply with the gun-rather, they listened to peasant voices.
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!
This book explores the memory of the Romanian Holocaust in Romanian, German, Israeli, and French cultural representations. The essays in this volume discuss first-hand testimonial accounts, letters, journals, drawings, literary texts and films by Elie Wiesel, Paul Celan, Aharon Appelfeld Norman Manea, Radu Mihaileanu, among others.
From its inception in the early 1900s, The United Church of Canada set out to become the national church of Canada. This book recounts and analyzes the history of the church of Canada's largest Protestant denomination and its engagement with issues of social and private morality, evangelistic campaigns, and its response to the restructuring of religion in the 1960s. A chronological history is followed by chapters on the United Church's worship, theology, understanding of ministry, relationships with the Canadian Jewish community, Israel, and Palestinians, changing mission goals in relation to First Nations peoples, and changing social imaginary. The result is an original, accessible, and engaging account of The United Church of Canada's pilgrimage that will be useful for students, historians, and general readers. From this account there emerges a complex portrait of the United Church as a distinctly Canadian Protestant church shaped by both its Christian faith and its engagement with the changing society of which it is a part.
In 1654, England's Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell conceived a plan of breathtaking ambition: the conquest of Spain's vast American empire. As the first phase of his Western Design, a large expedition sailed to the West Indies, under secret orders to take Spanish colonies. The English Conquest of Jamaica presents entrenched imperial fantasies confronting Caribbean realities. It captures the moment when the revolutionary English state first became a major player in the Atlantic arena. Although capturing Jamaica was supposed to be only the first step in Cromwell's scheme, even that relatively modest acquisition proved difficult. The English badly underestimated the myriad challenges they faced, starting with the unexpectedly fierce resistance offered by the Spanish and other residents who tenaciously defended their island. After sixteen long years Spain surrendered Jamaica and acceded to an English presence in the Americas in the 1670 Treaty of Madrid. But by then, other goals-including profit through commerce rather than further conquest-had superseded the vision behind the Western Design. Carla Gardina Pestana situates Cromwell's imperial project in the context of an emerging Atlantic empire as well as the religious strife and civil wars that defined seventeenth-century England. Though falling short of its goal, Cromwell's plan nevertheless reshaped England's Atlantic endeavors and the Caribbean region as a whole. Long before sugar and slaves made Jamaica Britain's most valuable colony, its acquisition sparked conflicts with other European powers, opened vast tropical spaces to exploitation by the purportedly industrious English, and altered England's engagement with the wider world.
The Rocket Lab: Maurice Zucrow, Purdue University, and America's Race to Space focuses on the golden era of space exploration between 1946 and 1966, specifically the life and times of Purdue University's Dr. Maurice J. Zucrow, a pioneering teacher and researcher in aerospace engineering. Zucrow taught America's first university course in jet and rocket propulsion, wrote the field's first textbook, and established the country's first educational Rocket Lab. He was part of a small circle of innovators who transformed Purdue into the country's largest engineering university, which became a cradle of astronauts. Taking a chronological and thematic approach, The Rocket Lab weaves between the local and national, drawing in rival universities, especially Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Caltech. Also covered is Zucrow's role in the national project system of research and development through World War II and the Cold War. At Aerojet, he was one of the country's original project engineers, dedicated to scientific-technical expertise and the stepwise approach. He made vanguard power plant contributions to the Northrop Flying Wing, as well as the Corporal, Nike, and Atlas missiles, among others. Zucrow's work in propulsion helped to improve the country's arsenal of ballistic missiles and space launchers, and as a teacher, he educated the first generation of aerospace engineers. This book elevates Zucrow and the central role he played in getting the United States to space.
This fascinating study examines wartime Chinese-Soviet relations from a Moscow-based, Chinese perspective at the ambassadorial level. The book includes descriptions of everyday life in Moscow, of embassy business, of contemporary events and diplomacy, of intelligence operations, of meetings with Stalin, and of communications to and from Chongqing.
This book brings together fascinating testimonies from thirty inhabitants of the 'Kommunalka,' the communal apartments that were the norm in housing in the cities of Russia during the whole history of the Soviet Union.
"Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature" is a study of the work of over twenty contemporary Atlantic-Canadian writers that counters the widespread impression of Atlantic Canada as a quaint and backward place. By examining their treatment of work, culture, and history, author Herb Wyile highlights how these writers resist the image of Atlantic Canadians as improvident and regressive, if charming, folk. After an introduction that examines the current place of the region within the Canadian federation and the broader context of economic globalization, "Anne of Tim Hortons" explores how Atlantic-Canadian writers present a picture of the region that is much more complex and less quaint than the stereotypes through which it is typically viewed. Through the works of authors such as Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, George Elliott Clarke, Rita Joe, Frank Barry, Alistair MacLeod, and Bernice Morgan, among others, the book looks at the changing (and increasingly corporate) nature of work, the cultural diversification and subversive self-consciousness of Atlantic-Canadian literature, and Atlantic-Canadian writers' often revisionist approach to the region's history. What these writers are engaged in, the book contends, is a kind of collective readjustment of the image of the region. Rather than a marginal place stranded outside of time, Atlantic Canada in these works is very much caught up in contemporary economic, political, and cultural developments, particularly the broad sweep of economic globalization.
This book traces the profound influence that Russian literature, which was tied inseparably to the political victory of the Russian revolution, had on China during a period that saw the collapse of imperial rule and the rise of the Communist Party.
Seven leading specialists present chapters devoted to key themes in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian politics. Those themes include: the personal versus the institutional in the political process; legitimacy and legitimation; and change and collapse of a mono-organisational society. While the book focuses on these major themes, individual chapters deal with wide-ranging and even unusual cases: Graeme Gill analyzes the legitimating functions of Moscow's architecture, Sheila Fitzpatrick uses the archives to draw a picture of Stalin 'the boss' dealing with his closest colleagues, Eugene Huskey provides a detailed description of post-Soviet Russian pantouflage, and Archie Brown and Peter Reddaway present their different takes on Gorbachev and the Soviet collapse. Stephen Fortescue provides an overview of policy-making processes from Lenin and Putin, and Leslie Holmes updates the concept of goal-rational legitimacy.
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.
As British and Irish migrants sought new lives in the Caribbean, Asia, North America and Australasia, they left a trail of physical remains where settlement occurred. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to their old and new worlds. This book expands upon earlier examination of cultural imperialism to reveal how individuals, kinship groups and occupational connections identified with place and space over time. With analyses based on gravestones and memorial markers in the UK and Ireland, Australasia, Asia, Africa and the Americas, the contributors explore how this evidence can inform 21st-century ideas about the attachments that British and Irish migrants had to 'home' - in both life and death.
This book presents theoretical and empirical investigation of the impact of human capital on economic growth in Ukraine during the period of 1989-2009. It defines place and role of human capital in the process of transition from the exogenous to the endogenous forms of growth.
Russian Bureaucracy and the State provides a rich and innovative assessment of Russian bureaucracy from 1881 to the present. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the work assesses the organization, personnel, and practices of officialdom across three different Russian regimes - tsarist, Soviet and postcommunist.
Loretta Czernis applies her sociological training in document analysis to study one government prescription for what ails Canadians. The "Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity" rewrote Canada by reinventing patriotism, essentially inviting Canadians to imagine a new Canada. The "Report" itself is the product of what she calls the "federal writing machine" which exists to continually rewrite and thus reinvent Canada. Czernis' contextual reading of the "Report" occurs on two levels: reading technically, she examines the "Report"'s anonymous writing style that asks readers to imitate its own conclusions (be patriotic, buy a flag, shop at home). Gestural reading invites reading as performance. Canadians are invited to participate in reshaping Canada by reading Canada allegorically, as a social body, capable of changing its form. What a document may intend is not always the same as what is read into it. Mistakes can and do occur in the reading. Czernis suggests that these "mistakes" constitute a significant form of resistance to the anonymous writing machine. "Weaving a Canadian Allegory" will be of special interest to Canadianists, sociologists and to those involved in cultural, political and textual studies.
Jack Robinson made his name as a much-sought-after fashion and celebrity photographer during the 1960s and early 1970s, and his work is well documented in hundreds of pages of Vogue, Harper' Bazaar, and Life, as well as other publications. However, his personal life remains virtually unknown. In this study of Robinson and his photography, Howard Philips Smith takes an in-depth look at Robinson's early life in New Orleans, where he discovered his passion for painting, photography, and the Dixie Bohemian life of the French Quarter. A Sojourn in Paradise: Jack Robinson in 1950s New Orleans features more than one hundred photographs taken by the artist, accompanied by detailed commentary about Robinson's life in New Orleans and excerpts from interviews with the people who knew him when he lived there. Robinson's photographs of New Orleans reveal the genesis of two unique and fascinating facets of the city's history and culture: the creation of the first gay Carnival krewes who would make their own unique contribution to the rich cultural history of the city and the formation of the Orleans Gallery, one of the earliest centers of the contemporary art movement blossoming in 1950s America. This detailed study of Jack Robinson's early life and photography illustrates the contributions of a gifted, gay artist whose quiet spirit and constant interior struggle found refuge in New Orleans, the city where he was able to find himself, for a time, free from society's grip and open to exploring life on his own terms.
This book draws on the latest archival releases - including those from the secret world of British intelligence - to offer the first comprehensive analysis of Anglo-Turkish relations during the Second World War, with a particular emphasis on Turkey's place in the changing relationship between Britain and the Soviet Union.
Explores the dynamics between Orthodoxy and politics in Romania, providing an accessible narrative on church-state relations from the establishment of the state in 1859 to the rise of Ceau?escu in 1965. The book argues that Romanian national communism had an ally in a strong Church, and analyzes religious diplomacy with actors in the West.
Studies of seventeenth-century New Mexico have largely overlooked the soldiers and frontier settlers who formed the backbone of the colony and laid the foundations of European society in a distant outpost of Spain's North American empire. This book, the final volume in the Coronado Historical Series, recognizes the career of Juan Dominguez de Mendoza, a soldier-colonist who was as instrumental as any governor or friar in shaping Hispano-Indian society in New Mexico. Dominguez de Mendoza served in New Mexico from age thirteen to fifty-eight as a stalwart defender of Spain's interests during the troubled decades before the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. Because of his successful career, the archives of Mexico and Spain provide extensive information on his activities. The documents translated in this volume reveal more cooperative relations between Spaniards and Pueblo Indians than previously understood.
In 1949, Margaret Norquay moved with her new husband, a minister with the United Church of Canada, to Mayerthorpe, in northern Alberta, a village in the centre of what was in those days a pioneer hinterland. "Broad Is the Way" is a collection of stories from their seven years there. Told with affection and gentle humour, the stories cover the challenges, heartaches, and delights of a young community and a minister and his wife in a very new marriage. Topics include the experience of orphan children sent to work on Western farms, manoeuvring for a restroom downtown for farmers' wives in need of a place to change their babies while their husbands did business, dealing with the RCMP over liquor found in the church basement, and the generosity of spirit shown by the community to the Norquays. Throughout the book, Margaret Norquay's indomitable spirit and determination are evident and illustrate her passionate belief in making positive change and having fun while doing it. |
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