Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes (Placido) were perhaps the most important and innovative Cuban writers of African descent during the Spanish colonial era. Both nineteenth-century authors used Catholicism as a symbolic Language for African-inspired spirituality. Likewise, Placido and Manzano subverted the popular imagery of neoclassicism and Romanticism in order to envision black freedom in the tradition of the Haitian Revolution. Placido and Manzano envisioned emancipation through the lens of African spirituality, a transformative moment in the history of Cuban letters. Matthew Pettway examines how the portrayal of African ideas of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur throughout early Cuban literature and became the basis for Manzano and Placido's antislavery philosophy. The portrayal of African-Atlantic religious ideas spurned the elite rationale that literature ought to be a barometer of highbrow cultural progress. Cuban debates about freedom and selfhood were never the exclusive domain of the white Creole elite. Pettway's emphasis on African-inspired spirituality as a source of knowledge and a means to sacred authority for black Cuban writers deepens our understanding of Manzano and Placido not as mere imitators but as aesthetic and political pioneers. As Pettway suggests, black Latin American authors did not abandon their African religious heritage to assimilate wholesale to the Catholic Church. By recognizing the wisdom of African ancestors, they procured power in the struggle for black liberation.

For the first time in English, The Russian Medical Humanities: Past and Present argues that the medical humanities is a vibrant and emerging field in Post-Soviet Russia. In a unique collaboration that brings together diverse experts from both Russia and America, this volume showcases the Russian medical humanities as an interdisciplinary project that combines insights from philosophy, bioethics, anthropology, history, and literature in order to provide more compassionate medical care to patients in the twenty-first century. The chapters in this volume explore past and present humanistic trends in Russian medical training, as well as examine how Russian authors and cultural figures, some physician-writers, some without professional background in medicine of any kind, have positioned healthy and ailing bodies in their creative work. This volume's contributors, who range from literary scholars, educators, translators and poets to medical historians, librarians, museum curators, and social workers, provide empathetic insight into the experience of medical encounters which all cultures grapple with. Their work will prove useful not only to current and future health practitioners, but also to a broader audience of readers who are seeking to make compassionate and informed decisions about healthcare for their loved ones and for themselves.

This is a major, single-volume introduction to the whole of Ancient Greek History. It covers the period from the Golden Age of Knossos and Mycenae to the incorporation of Greece into the Roman empire in the second century BC. The book combines narrative and socio-economic history to cover all regions of Greece, including territories on the edge of the Greek and Hellenistic worlds, as well as the traditional centres such as Athens and Sparta.

"A History of Ancient Greece" provides students with an accessible history of the region, combining accounts of the major events with in-depth analyses of the underlying issues. The book is designed explicitly for student use and contains numerous pedagogic features including summaries of key issues, balanced accounts of controversial points, useful discussions of Greek institutions, chronologies and a glossary.

This Atlantic world history centers on the life of Juan Nepomuceno Prieto (c. 1773-c. 1835), a member of the West African Yoruba people enslaved and taken to Havana during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Richly situating Prieto's story within the context of colonial Cuba, Henry B. Lovejoy illuminates the vast process by which thousands of Yoruba speakers were forced into life-and-death struggles in a strange land. In Havana, Prieto, and most of the people of the Yoruba diaspora, were identified by the colonial authorities as Lucumi. Prieto's evolving identity becomes the fascinating fulcrum of the book. Drafted as an enslaved soldier for Spain, Prieto achieved self-manumission while still in the military. Rising steadily in his dangerous new world, he became the religious leader of Havana's most famous Lucumi cabildo, where he contributed to the development of the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. Then, he was arrested on suspicion of fomenting slave rebellion. Trial testimony shows that he fell ill, but his ultimate fate is unknown. Despite the silences and contradictions that will never be fully resolved, Prieto's life opens a window onto how Africans creatively developed multiple forms of identity and resistance in Cuba and in the Atlantic world more broadly.

In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, a thirty-two-year-old Russian navigator named Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea-a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, and inadequate provisions that left the crew weak and debilitated by scurvy.

For nearly a year and a half, the twenty-five men and one woman aboard the Saint Anna endured terrible hardships and danger as the icebound ship drifted helplessly north. Convinced that the Saint Anna would never free herself from the ice, Albanov and thirteen crewmen left the ship in January 1914, hauling makeshift sledges and kayaks behind them across the frozen sea, hoping to reach the distant coast of Franz Josef Land. With only a shockingly inaccurate map to guide him, Albanov led his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, enduring blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears and walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness, and mutiny. That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his ninety-day ordeal-a story that Jon Krakauer calls an "astounding, utterly compelling book," and David Roberts calls "as lean and taut as a good thriller"-is nearly miraculous.

First published in Russia in 1917, Albanov's narrative is here translated into English for the first time. Haunting, suspenseful, and told with gripping detail, In the Land of White Death can now rightfully take its place among the classic writings of Nansen, Scott, Cherry-Garrard, and Shackleton.

In the summer of 1917 three Wisconsin National Guard companies came together to form the 150th Machine Gun Battalion of the now famous 42nd "Rainbow" Division. As true comrades, they relied on one another for support as they fought in every major battle of the American Expeditionary Forces, including the landmark battle of Chateau Thierry, which cost the unit dearly. As one of Wisconsin's most celebrated units, a soldier coming from the battalion was selected to represent the state at the unveiling of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C., in 1921. Today, the 150th is all but forgotten, in part because their unit history was never written. Through letters, diaries, and other recollections, Larson tells us the story of these Guardsmen's experiences. He traces the path of their wartime service and considers the impact of war's trauma and tedium on their lives.

Owned by his father, Isaac Harold Anderson (1835-1906) was born a slave but went on to become a wealthy businessman, grocer, politician, publisher, and religious leader in the African American community in the state of Georgia. Elected to the state senate, Anderson replaced his white father there, and later shepherded his people as a founding member and leader of the Colored Methodist Episcopal church. He helped support the establishment of Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, where he subsequently served as vice president. Anderson was instrumental in helping freed people leave Georgia for the security of progressive safe havens with significantly large Black communities in northern Mississippi and Arkansas. Eventually under threat to his life, Anderson made his own exodus to Arkansas, and then later still, to Holly Springs, Mississippi, where a vibrant Black community thrived. Much of Anderson's unique story has been lost to history-until now. In The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson, author Alicia K. Jackson presents a biography of Anderson and in it a microhistory of Black religious life and politics after emancipation. A work of recovery, the volume captures the life of a shepherd to his journeying people, and of a college pioneer, a CME minister, a politician, and a former slave. Gathering together threads from salvaged details of his life, Jackson sheds light on the varied perspectives and strategies adopted by Black leaders dealing with a society that was antithetical to them and to their success.

Ancient Anatolia was a region where many indigenous or at least long-established peoples mingled with many conquerors or incomers: Persians, Greeks, Gauls, Romans, Jews. Its rich and complex history of cultural interaction is only spasmodically illuminated by literary sources. Inscriptions, by contrast, abound and attest well over 100,000 name-bearing inhabitants. Many of those names retain regional associations, and when analysed with tact allow lost histories and micro-histories to be recovered. This volume exploits the huge possibilities for social and linguistic history being created by the expansion of The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names into Anatolia. One topic is that of continuities and discontinuities between the naming practices of the Hittites and Luvians in the second millennium BC and those of the Greco-Roman period. Several studies trace changing patterns of naming in particular regions; this may reflect real changes in population, but the need for sociological sensitivity is stressed, as the change may lie rather in changing self-perceptions or preferred self-identifications. The Anatolian treasure house of names can also be used to illuminate the psychology of naming, the rise of nursery nicknames to the status of proper names (and their subsequent fall from favour), for instance, or the fascination with exotic luxury items expressed in names such as Amethyst or Emerald, or the fashion for 'second names' among the Greek-speaking elite. The volume shows how, as has been said, the study of names is a 'paradigm case of the convergence of disciplines, where the history of language meets social history'.

Published 60 years after the building of the Berlin Wall. 'An impressively clear and engaging biography of a fascinating city at the very centre of European history' Antony Beevor 'My only complaint is that it was so fascinating I wish it had been longer. What a story!' Philip Mansel Telling the story of its people and its rulers, from its medieval origins up to the present day, Berlin is a fascinating and informative history of an extraordinary city from the author of the international bestseller Partition. Berlin is Europe's most fascinating and exciting city. It is and always has been a city on the edge - geographically, culturally, politically and morally. The great movements that have shaken Europe, from the Reformation to Marxism have their origins in Berlin's streets. The long-time capital of Prussia and of the Hohenzollern dynasty it has never, paradoxically, been a Prussian city. Instead it has always been a city of immigrants, a city that accepts everyone and turns them into Berliners. A typical Berliner, it is said, is someone who has just arrived at the railway station. With its unique dialect, exceptional museums, experimental cultural scene, its liberated social life and its open and honest approach to its history, with monuments to the Holocaust as prominent as its rebuilt royal palace, it is as challenging a city as it is absorbing. And it has always been like that, since its medieval foundation as twin fishing villages. Too often Berlin is seen through the prism of Nazism and its role on the front line in the Cold War. Important, frightening and interesting as those periods are, its history starts much further ago than that. As approachable for the casual visitor to Berlin as it is informative for those who enjoy reading history, Berlin: The Story of a City is as fascinating as its subject.

Logging in the northern forest has been romanticized, with images of log drives, plaid shirts, and bunkhouses in wide circulation. Increasingly dismissed as a quaint, rural pastime, logging remains one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States, with loggers occupying a precarious position amid unstable markets, expanding global competition, and growing labor discord. Examining a time of transition and decline in Maine's forest economy, Andrew Egan traces pathways for understanding the challenges that have faced Maine's logging community and, by extension, the state's forestry sector, from the postwar period through today. Seeking greater profits, logging companies turned their crews loose at midcentury, creating a workforce of independent contractors who were forced to purchase expensive equipment and compete for contracts with the mills. Drawing on his own experience with the region's forest products industry, interviews with Maine loggers, media coverage, and court documents, Egan follows the troubled recent history of the industry and its battle for survival.

A biography of the Democratic leader once considered the most important man in state politics "When the Mississippi school boy is asked who is called the 'Great Commoner' of public life in his State," wrote Mississippi's premier historian Dunbar Rowland in 1901, "he will unhesitatingly answer James Z. George." While George's prominence has decreased through the decades since then, many modern historians still view him as a supremely important Mississippian, with one writing that George (1826-1897) was "Mississippi's most important Democratic leader in the late nineteenth century." Certainly, the Mexican War veteran, prominent lawyer and planter, Civil War officer, Reconstruction leader, state Supreme Court chief justice, and Mississippi's longest-serving United States senator in his day deserves a full biography. George's importance was greater than just on the state level as other southerners copied his tactics to secure white supremacy in their own states. James Z. George: Mississippi's Great Commoner seeks to rectify the lack of attention to George's life. In doing so, this volume utilizes numerous sources never before or only slightly used, primarily a large collection of George's letters held by his descendents and never before referenced by historians. Such wonderful sources allow not only a glimpse into his times, but perhaps more importantly an exploration of the man himself, his traits, personality, and ideas. The result is a picture of an extremely commonplace individual on the surface, but an exceptionally complicated man underneath. James Z. George: Mississippi's Great Commoner will bring this important Mississippi leader of the nineteenth century back into the minds of twenty-first-century Mississippians. Timothy B. Smith, Adamsville, Tennessee, is a lecturer of history at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He is the author of several books, including Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front, published by University Press of Mississippi; The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield; and Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg.

Experience a remarkable year among the real people of ancient Greece, as they prepare for the most important event in their calendar. It is 248 BC, the year of the 133rd Olympic Games. At this time the Hellenistic world is at its peak, with Greek settlements spread across the Middle East, Egypt and Spain. As ever, the world is politically troubled, with Rome locked in a war with Carthage and a major conflict brewing between Egypt and Syria. However, ordinary people are still preoccupied with the crops, household affairs - and in some cases, with winning an Olympic crown. Starting at the autumn equinox, in this imagined account of a year in the life of eight fascinating characters, Philip Matyszak reveals what life was really like at this time. Rather than focusing on the kings and generals from the histories of Thucydides and Polybius, we are invited into the homes of ordinary Greek citizens. From the diplomat who is using the Games as a cover to engage in political skulduggery to the sprinter who dreams of glory, A Year in the Life of Ancient Greece takes us through a dramatic twelve months to reveal the opportunities and the perils of everyday life during this period.

This classic in West Indian history is invaluable, not only for a study of the history of Barbados, but for its wealth of information about the island.

This book offers a unique approach to memory studies by focusing on local memory work conducted across the divide of the fall of Communism, whereas other histories have consistently used 1989 as a watershed moment. By examining the ways in which the Holocaust has been exhibited in Krakow, it investigates the impact local memory work has had on Polish collective memory and problematizes the importance of the fall of Communism for memory work. Using the Polish case study, it contributes to international debates on the nature of urban memory. It brings to the fore the role of mid-ranking governmental and municipal activists for local remembrance, investigates the relationship between the form and the content of the exhibitions, and highlights the importance of authenticity and emotional evocations for Holocaust remembrance. In particular, it focuses on the emergence of cosmopolitan memory of the Holocaust, a process with local, Krakow, sources.

The Massie-Kahahawai case of 1931-1932 shook the Territory of Hawai'i to its very core. Thalia Massie, a young Navy wife, alleged that she had been kidnapped and raped by "some Hawaiian boys" in Waik?k?. A few days later, five young men stood accused of her rape. Mishandling of evidence and contradictory testimony led to?a mistrial, but before a second trial could be convened, one of the accused, Horace Ida, was kidnapped and beaten by a group of Navy men and a second, Joseph Kahahawai, lay dead from a gunshot wound. Thalia's husband, Thomas Massie; her mother, Grace Fortescue; and two Navy men were convicted of manslaughter despite witnesses who saw them kidnap Kahahawai and the later dis- covery of Kahahawai's body in Massie's car. Under pressure from Congress and the Navy, territorial governor Lawrence McCully Judd commuted their sentences. After spending only an hour in the governor's office at 'Iolani Palace, the four were set free. Local Story is a close examination of how Native Hawaiians, Asian immigrants, and others responded to challenges posed by the military and federal government during the case's investigation and aftermath. In addition to providing a concise account?of events as they unfolded, the book shows how this historical narrative has been told and retold in later decades to affirm a local identity among descendants of working-class Native Hawaiians, Asians, and others-in fact, this understanding of the term "local" in the islands dates from the Massie-Kahahawai case. The Massie-Kahahawai case revealed racial and sexual tensions in pre-World War II Hawai'i that kept local men and white women apart. And this tension coexisted with the uneasy relationship between federal and military officials and territorial administrators.

This book explores the history of banditry in the medieval Balkans between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. While several scholars have recognized the problems which various outlaw groups caused in the region during the Middle Ages, few have given much attention to the bandits themselves, their origins, their reasons for taking up brigandage, and the steps taken by the central authorities to control their activity. Among other things, this book identifies three main sources of banditry: shepherds, soldiers and peasants. Far from being 'lone wolves', these men operated within well-defined social networks. Poverty played a decisive role in driving them to a life of crime, but there is strong evidence to suggest that the growing economic prosperity in parts of the Balkans from the ninth century onwards may have also contributed to the rise of the phenomenon.

This book explores the role played by families in the Russian revolutionary movement and the first decades of the Soviet regime. While revolutionaries were expected to sever all family ties or at the very least put political concerns before personal ones, in practice this was rarely achieved. In the underground, revolutionaries of all stripes, from populists to social-democrats, relied on siblings, spouses, children and parents to help them conduct party tasks, with the appearance of domesticity regularly thwarting police interference. Family networks were also vital when the worst happened and revolutionaries were imprisoned or exiled. After the revolution, these family networks continued to function in the building of the new Soviet regime and amongst the socialist opponents who tried to resist the Bolsheviks. As the Party persecuted its socialist enemies and eventually turned on threats perceived within its ranks, it deliberately included the spouses and relatives of its opponents in an attempt to destroy family networks for good.

The River Dnipro (formerly better known by the Russian name of Dnieper) is intimately linked to the history and identity of Ukraine. Cybriwsky discusses the history of the river, from when it was formed and its many uses and modifications by human agencies from ancient times to the present. From key vantage points along the river's course-its source in western Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea-interesting stories shed light on past and present life in Ukraine. Scenes set along the river from Russian and Ukrainian literature are evoked, as well as musical compositions and works of art. Topics include the legacy of the region's cultural ancestors as the Kyivan Rus, the period of Cossack dominion, the epic battles for the river's bridges in World War II, the building of dams and huge reservoirs by the Soviet Union, and the crisis of Chornobyl (Chernobyl). The author argues that the Dnipro and the farmlands along it are Ukraine's chief natural resources, and that the country's future depends on putting both to good use. Written without academic pretence in an informal style with dashes of humor, Along Ukraine's River is illustrated with original line drawings, maps, and photographs.

As the Antarctic Treaty comes up for renewal and global warming increasingly becomes a reality, the polar regions have attracted renewed interest. However, while Western policy in the Arctic regions is well documented, little is known of traditional Soviet policy in this area. And this, despite the fact that the Soviet Union is one of the most important nations in the field of polar exploration. Even in the era of glasnost, research remains difficult. In "The Soviet Arctic" Pier Horensma sets out to correct this situation. Horensma has based his research on the comparatively wide literature available on this topic in Russian, but barely known in the West. He traces Soviet policy of the last 100 years - giving particular importance to the Stalin period and his legacy to current Soviet attitudes in the Arctic. He also considers the international implications of this policy and the effect of technological advances. This book should be of interest to lecturers and students of history, geography, Soviet studies and politics.

The dramatic increase in U.S. prison populations since the 1970s is often blamed on the mandatory sentencing required by "three strikes" laws and other punitive crime bills. Michael M. O'Hear shows that the blame is actually not so easy to assign. His meticulous analysis of incarceration in Wisconsin-a state where judges have considerable discretion in sentencing-shows that the prison population has ballooned anyway, increasing nearly tenfold over forty years. O'Hear tracks the effects of sentencing laws and politics in Wisconsin from the eve of the imprisonment boom in 1970 up to the 2010s. Drawing on archival research, original public-opinion polling, and interviews with dozens of key policymakers, he reveals important dimensions that have been missed by others. He draws out the lessons from the incarcerations that have cost taxpayers billions of dollars and caused untold misery to millions of inmates and their families.

European Empires in the American South examines the process of European expansion into a region that has come to be known as the American South. After Europeans began to cross the Atlantic with confidence, they interacted for three hundred years with one another, with the native people of the region, and with enslaved Africans in ways that made the South a significant arena of imperial ambition. As such, it was one of several similarly contested regions around the Atlantic basin. Without claiming that the South was unique during the colonial era, these essays make clear the region's integral importance for anyone seeking to shed new light on the long-termprocess of global social, cultural, and economic integration. For those who are curious about how the broad processes of historical change influenced particular people and places, the contributors offer key examples of colonial encounter. This volume includes essays on all three imperial powers, Spain, Britain, and France, and their imperial projects in the American South. Engaging profitably - from the European perspective at least - with Native Americans proved key to these colonial schemes. While the consequences of Indian encounters with European invaders have long remained a principal feature of historical research, this volume advances and expands knowledge of Native Americans in the South amid the Atlantic World.