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Books > History > History of other lands
More than 150 years after its end, we still struggle to understand
the full extent of the human toll of the Civil War and the
psychological crisis it created. In Aberration of Mind, Diane
Miller Sommerville offers the first book-length treatment of
suicide in the South during the Civil War era, giving us insight
into both white and black communities, Confederate soldiers and
their families, as well as the enslaved and newly freed. With a
thorough examination of the dynamics of both racial and gendered
dimensions of psychological distress, Sommerville reveals how the
suffering experienced by southerners living in a war zone generated
trauma that, in extreme cases, led some southerners to contemplate
or act on suicidal thoughts. Sommerville recovers previously hidden
stories of individuals exhibiting suicidal activity or aberrant
psychological behavior she links to the war and its aftermath. This
work adds crucial nuance to our understanding of how personal
suffering shaped the way southerners viewed themselves in the Civil
War era and underscores the full human costs of war.
For at least two centuries, the South's economy, politics,
religion, race relations, fiction, music, foodways and more have
figured prominently in nearly all facets of American life. In A New
History of the American South, W. Fitzhugh Brundage joins a stellar
group of accomplished historians in gracefully weaving a new
narrative of Southern history from its ancient past to the present.
This groundbreaking work draws on both well-established and new
currents in scholarship, including global and Atlantic world
history, histories of African diaspora, environmental history, and
more. The volume also considers the experiences of all people of
the South: Black, white, Indigenous, female, male, poor, elite, and
more. Together, the essays compose a seamless, cogent, and engaging
work that can be read cover to cover or sampled at leisure.
Contributors are Peter A. Coclanis, Gregory P. Downs, Laura F.
Edwards, Robbie Ethridge, Kari Frederickson, Paul Harvey, Kenneth
R. Janken, Martha S. Jones, Blair L. M. Kelley, Kate Masur, Michael
A. McDonnell, Scott Reynolds Nelson, Jim Rice, Natalie Ring, and
Jon F. Sensbach.
'Exquisitely written and lavishly illustrated, this delightful book
brings five centuries of Ottoman culture to life. Diana Darke
constantly amazes the reader with fascinating facts and points of
relevance between the Ottoman past and the present day' - Eugene
Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans A richly illustrated
guide to the Ottoman Empire, 100 years since its dissolution,
unravelling its complex cultural legacy and profound impact on
Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. At its height, the
Ottoman Empire spread from Yemen to the gates of Vienna. Western
perceptions of the Ottomans have often been distorted by
Orientalism, characterizing their rule as oppressive and
destructive, while seeing their culture as exotic and
incomprehensible. Based on a lifetime's experience of living and
working across its former provinces, Diana Darke offers a unique
overview of the Ottoman Empire's cultural legacy one century after
its dissolution. She uncovers a vibrant, sophisticated civilization
that embraced both arts and sciences, whilst welcoming refugees
from all ethnicities and religions, notably Christians and Jews.
Darke celebrates the culture of the Ottoman Empire, from its
aesthetics and architecture to its scientific and medical
innovations, including the first vaccinations. She investigates the
crucial role that commerce and trade played in supporting the
empire and increasing its cultural reach, highlighting the
significant role of women, as well as the diverse religious values,
literary and musical traditions that proliferated through the
empire. Beautifully illustrated with manuscripts, miniatures,
paintings and photographs, The Ottomans: A Cultural Legacy presents
the magnificent achievements of an empire that lasted over 600
years and encompassed Asian, European and African cultures,
shedding new light on its complex legacy.
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?
For the last century, the Western world has regarded Turkey as a
pivotal case of the 'clash of civilisations' between Islam and the
West. Why Turkey is Authoritarian offers a radical challenge to
this conventional narrative. Halil Karaveli highlights the danger
in viewing events in Turkey as a war between a 'westernising' state
and the popular masses defending their culture and religion,
arguing instead for a class analysis that is largely ignored in the
Turkish context. This book goes beyond cultural categories that
overshadow more complex realities when thinking about the 'Muslim
world', while highlighting the ways in which these cultural
prejudices have informed ideological positions. Karaveli argues
that Turkey's culture and identity have disabled the Left, which
has largely been unable to transcend these divisions. This book
asks the crucial question: why does democracy continue to elude
Turkey? Ultimately, Karaveli argues that Turkish history is
instructive for a left that faces the global challenge of a rising
populist right, which succeeds in mobilising culture and identity
to its own purposes. Published in partnership with the Left Book
Club.
What happens when fossil fuels run out? How do communities and
cultures survive? Central Appalachia and South Wales were built to
extract coal, and faced with coal's decline, both regions have
experienced economic depression, labor unrest, and out-migration.
After Coal focuses on coalfield residents who chose not to leave,
but instead remained in their communities and worked to build a
diverse and sustainable economy. It tells the story of four decades
of exchange between two mining communities on opposite sides of the
Atlantic, and profiles individuals and organizations that are
undertaking the critical work of regeneration. The stories in this
book are told through interviews and photographs collected during
the making of After Coal, a documentary film produced by the Center
for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University and
directed by Tom Hansell. Considering resonances between Appalachia
and Wales in the realms of labor, environment, and movements for
social justice, the book approaches the transition from coal as an
opportunity for marginalized people around the world to work toward
safer and more egalitarian futures.
This volume provides an in-depth analysis of the attempts of
language experts and governments to control language use and
development in Eastern Europe, Eurasia and China through planned
activities generally known as language planning or language policy.
The ten case studies presented here examine language planning in
China, Russia, Tatarstan, Central Asia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia,
Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and focus in particular on
developments and disputes that have occurred since the 'fall of
communism' and the emergence of a new order in the late 1980s. Its
authors highlight the dominant issues with which language planning
is invariably intertwined. These include power politics, tensions
between 'official language' and 'minority languages', and the
effects of a country's particular political, social, cultural and
psychological environment. Offering a detailed account of the
socio-political and ideological developments that underlie language
planning in these regions, this book will provide a valuable
resource for students and scholars of linguistics, cultural
studies, political science, sociology and history.
This volume brings together a distinguished international group of
researchers to explore public speech in Republican Rome in its
institutional and ideological contexts. The focus throughout is on
the interaction between argument, speaker, delivery and action. The
chapters consider how speeches acted alongside other factors - such
as the identity of the speaker, his alliances, the deployment of
invective against opponents, physical location and appearance of
other members of the audience, and non-rhetorical threats or
incentives - to affect the beliefs and behaviour of the audience.
Together they offer a range of approaches to these issues and bring
attention back to the content of public speech in Republican Rome
as well as its form and occurrence. The book will be of interest
not only to ancient historians, but also to those working on
ancient oratory and to historians and political theorists working
on public speech.
Unmasking the Klansman may read like a work of fiction but is
actually a biography of Asa Carter, one of the South's most
notorious white supremacists (and secret Klansman). During the
1950s, the North Alabama political firebrand became known across
the region for his right-wing radio broadcasts and leadership in
the white Citizens' Council movement. Combining racism and
thinly-concealed anti-Semitism, he created a secret Klan strike
force that engaged in a series of brutal assaults, including an
attack on jazz singer Nat King Cole as well as militant civil
rights activists. Exploring his life during these years offers new
insights into the legal maneuvers as well as the violence used by
white Southern segregationists to derail the civil rights movement
in the region. In the early 1960s Carter became a secret adviser to
George Wallace and wrote the Alabama governor's infamous 1963
inauguration speech vowing "segregation now, segregation tomorrow,
segregation forever." When Carter disappeared from Alabama in 1972,
few knew that he had assumed a new identity in Abilene, Texas,
masquerading as a Cherokee American novelist. Using the name
"Forrest" Carter, he published three successful Western novels,
including The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales that Clint Eastwood made
into a widely acclaimed 1976 movie. His last book, The Education of
Little Tree (a fake biography of his supposed Indian childhood)
posthumously became a number one best-seller in 1991. Author Dan T.
Carter uncovered "Forrest" Carter's true identity while researching
his biography of Georgia Wallace and in a New York Times' op-ed he
exposed Carter's deception. Although the difficulties of uncovering
the full story of the secretive Carter initially led him to abandon
the project, in 2018 he gained access to more than two hundred
interviews by the late Anniston newsman, Fred Burger. These
recordings and his two decades of exhaustive research finally
brought Asa Carter's story into focus. Unmasking the Klansman is
the result.
This book revisits the partition of the British Indian province of
Punjab, its attendant violence and, as a consequence, the divided
and dislocated Punjabi lives. Navigating nostalgia and trauma,
dreams and laments, identity(s) and homeland(s), it explores the
partition of the very idea of Punjabiyat. It was Punjab (along with
Bengal) that was divided to create the new nations of India and
Pakistan. In subsequent years, religious and linguistic
sub-divisions followed - arguably, no other region of the
sub-continent has had its linguistic and ethnic history submerged
within respective national and religious identity(s). None paid the
price of partition like the pluralistic, pre-partition Punjab. This
work analyses the dissonance, distortion and dilution witnessed by
Punjab and presents a detailed narrative of its past.
In this eye-opening cultural history, Brian Tochterman examines
competing narratives that shaped post-World War II New York City.
As a sense of crisis rose in American cities during the 1960s and
1970s, a period defined by suburban growth and deindustrialization,
no city was viewed as in its death throes more than New York.
Feeding this narrative of the dying city was a wide range of
representations in film, literature, and the popular
press--representations that ironically would not have been produced
if not for a city full of productive possibilities as well as
challenges. Tochterman reveals how elite culture producers,
planners and theorists, and elected officials drew on and
perpetuated the fear of death to press for a new urban vision. It
was this narrative of New York as the dying city, Tochterman
argues, that contributed to a burgeoning and broad anti-urban
political culture hostile to state intervention on behalf of cities
and citizens. Ultimately, the author shows that New York's
decline--and the decline of American cities in general--was in part
a self-fulfilling prophecy bolstered by urban fear and the new
political culture nourished by it.
This book is a transnational study of rural and anti-Semitic
violence around the triple frontier between Austria-Hungary,
Romania and Tsarist Russia at the beginning of the twentieth
century. It focuses on the devastating Romanian peasant uprising in
1907 and traces the reverberations of the crisis across the triple
frontier, analysing the fears, spectres and knee-jerk reactions it
triggered in the borderlands of Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia.
The uprising came close on the heels of the 1905-1907 social
turmoil in Tsarist Russia, and brought into play the major issues
that characterized social and political life in the region at the
time: rural poverty, the Jewish Question, state modernization, and
social upheavals. The book comparatively explores the causes and
mechanisms of violence propagation, the function of rumour in the
spread of the uprising, land reforms and their legal underpinnings,
the policing capabilities of the borderlands around the triple
frontier, as well as newspaper coverage and diplomatic reactions.
This book offers a comparative analysis of value and identity
changes in several post-Soviet countries. In light of the
tremendous economic, social and political changes in former
communist states, the authors compare the values, attitudes and
identities of different generations and cultural groups. Based on
extensive empirical data, using quantitative and qualitative
methods to study complex social identities, this book examines how
intergenerational value and identity changes are linked to
socio-economic and political development. Topics include the rise
of nationalist sentiments, identity formation of ethnic and
religious groups and minorities, youth identity formation and
intergenerational value conflicts.
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This open
access book is a result of the first ever study of the
transformations of the higher education institutional landscape in
fifteen former USSR countries after the dissolution of the Soviet
Union in 1991. It explores how the single Soviet model that
developed across the vast and diverse territory of the Soviet Union
over several decades has evolved into fifteen unique national
systems, systems that have responded to national and global
developments while still bearing some traces of the past. The book
is distinctive as it presents a comprehensive analysis of the
reforms and transformations in the region in the last 25 years; and
it focuses on institutional landscape through the evolution of the
institutional types established and developed in Pre-Soviet, Soviet
and Post-Soviet time. It also embraces all fifteen countries of the
former USSR, and provides a comparative analysis of transformations
of institutional landscape across Post-Soviet systems. It will be
highly relevant for students and researchers in the fields of
higher education and and sociology, particularly those with an
interest in historical and comparative studies.
This book tells the story of new Yugoslav feminism in the 1970s and
1980s, reassessing the effects of state socialism on women's
emancipation through the lens of the feminist critique. This volume
explores the history of the ideas defining a social movement,
analysing the major debates and arguments this milieu engaged in
from the perspective of the history of political thought,
intellectual history and cultural history. Twenty-five years after
the end of the Cold War, societies in and scholars of East Central
Europe still struggle to sort out the effects of state socialism on
gender relations in the region. What could tell us more about the
subject than the ideas set out by the only organised and explicitly
feminist opposition in the region, who, as academics, artists,
writers and activists, criticised the regime and demanded change?
This book is an insider's account of the search for missing
American servicemen who became trapped in the Soviet Union and the
US government's efforts to free them or discover their fates. The
book, which is based on years of work as a consultant to the US
government, includes archive research that took place in Russia and
four other republics of the Soviet Union as the USSR broke apart.
Volume I explores the history of missing American servicemen, with
particular emphasis on thousands who were not accounted for during
the Korean War and Cold War era. As US relations with Russia and
North Korea become more intense, this book is an extremely timely
resource for scholars, laymen, and policymakers.
This collection of thirteen essays examines reactions in Eastern
Europe to the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968. Countries covered include the Soviet Union
and specific Soviet republics (Ukraine, Moldavia, the Baltic
States), together with two chapters on Czechoslovakia and one each
on East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and
Albania. The individual contributions explain why most of these
communist regimes opposed Alexander Dubcek's reforms and supported
the Soviet-led military intervention in August 1968, and why some
stood apart. They also explore public reactions in Eastern Europe
to the events of 1968, including instances of popular opposition to
the crushing of the Prague Spring, expressions of loyalty to
Soviet-style socialism, and cases of indifference or uncertainty.
Among the many complex legacies of the East European '1968' was the
development of new ways of thinking about regional identity, state
borders, de-Stalinisation and the burdens of the past.
This book describes the life, times and science of the Soviet
physicist Lev Vasilevich Shubnikov (1901-1937). From 1926 to 1930
Shubnikov worked in Leiden where he was the co-discoverer of the
Shubnikov-De Haas effect. After his return to the Soviet Union he
founded in Kharkov in Ukraine the first low-temperature laboratory
in the Soviet Union, which in a very short time became the foremost
physics institute in the country and among other things led to the
discovery of type-II superconductivity. In August 1937 Shubnikov,
together with many of his colleagues, was arrested and shot early
in November 1937. This gripping story gives deep insights into the
pioneering work of Soviet physicists before the Second World War,
as well as providing much previously unpublished information about
their brutal treatment at the hands of the Stalinist regime.
Where nostalgia was once dismissed a wistful dream of a never-never
land, the academic focus has shifted to how pieces of the past are
assembled as the elements in alternative political thinking as well
as in artistic expression. The creative use of the past points to
the complexities of the conceptualization of nostalgia, while
entering areas where the humanities meet the art world and
commerce. This collection of essays shows how this bond is
politically and socially visible on different levels, from states
to local communities, along with creative developments in art,
literature and religious practice. Bringing together scholars from
a range of disciplines, the book offers analyses from diverse
theoretical perspectives, united by an interest in the political
and cultural representations of the past in South-East Europe from
a long-term perspective. By emphasising how the relationship
between loss and creative inspiration are intertwined in cultural
production and history writing, these essays cover themes across
South-East Europe and provide an insight into how specific agents -
intellectuals, politicians, artists - have represented the past and
have looked towards the future.
This book offers a linguistic-semantic analysis of the expression
'Eastern Europe' in international English-language media discourse
and academic discourse. Interdisciplinary in nature, it provides
insights beyond semantics and lexicology, commenting on the
politics, history, economy and culture of the region. Its thorough
analysis of 'Eastern Europe' as a linguistic entity, surrounded and
affected by other linguistic entities, allows for a systematic
description of the term's linguistic 'behaviour' in specialist
written discourse. The author measures the 'quantity' and 'quality'
of 'Eastern Europe' in specialist discourse, painting a holistic
picture of how it appears in English-language quality texts
published in the last twenty-five years. This book will appeal to
students and scholars of cognitive linguistics, semantics,
lexicology and lexicography, and to specialists working on history,
political theory and international relations as they relate to
Eastern Europe.
'Beautifully written, sumptuously illustrated, constantly
fascinating' The Times On 26 November 1922 Howard Carter first
peered into the newly opened tomb of an ancient Egyptian boy-king.
When asked if he could see anything, he replied: 'Yes, yes,
wonderful things.' In Tutankhamun's Trumpet, acclaimed Egyptologist
Toby Wilkinson takes a unique approach to that tomb and its
contents. Instead of concentrating on the oft-told story of the
discovery, or speculating on the brief life and politically
fractious reign of the boy king, Wilkinson takes the objects buried
with him as the source material for a wide-ranging, detailed
portrait of ancient Egypt - its geography, history, culture and
legacy. One hundred artefacts from the tomb, arranged in ten
thematic groups, are allowed to speak again - not only for
themselves, but as witnesses of the civilization that created them.
Never before have the treasures of Tutankhamun been analysed and
presented for what they can tell us about ancient Egyptian culture,
its development, its remarkable flourishing, and its lasting
impact. Filled with surprising insights, unusual details, vivid
descriptions and, above all, remarkable objects, Tutankhamun's
Trumpet will appeal to all lovers of history, archaeology, art and
culture, as well as all those fascinated by the Egypt of the
pharaohs. 'I've read many books on ancient Egypt, but I've never
felt closer to its people' The Sunday Times
This book explores Soviet influences on Yugoslav gender policies,
examining how Yugoslav communists interpreted, adapted and used
Soviet ideas to change Yugoslav society. The book sheds new light
on the role of Soviet models in producing Yugoslav family and
reproductive laws, and in framing the understandings of gender
which affected key policies such as the collectivisation of
agriculture, labour policies, policies towards Muslim populations,
and policies concerning youth sexuality. Through a gender analysis
of all these policies, this book points to the difficulties of
applying Soviet solutions in Yugoslavia. Deeply entrenched
patriarchal attitudes undermined Yugoslav communists' ability to
challenge gender norms, causing many disputes and struggles within
the Communist Party over the meanings and application of Soviet
gender models. Yet, Soviet models informed how Yugoslav communists
approached gender-related issues for many years, even after the
conflict erupted between these two countries.
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