In the last quarter of the 19th century, a circle of 16 tall Cottonwood trees stood in the wash that extended to the Verde River just north of where the old jail building now stands. Cattlemen and ranchers from Oak Creek and the mountains made their overnight stops under these trees and the location became known as "The Cottonwoods." The lush riparian area attracted hardy settlers, and Fort Verde's military camp and the copper mines of Jerome provided a ready market for agricultural goods. Thus began the town that was soon to become the commercial hub for the Verde Valley. Today the incorporated city of Cottonwood serves an area population of over 55,000 and boasts a diverse economy based on health care, education, tourism, and the service and retail industries. With its moderate climate, beautiful setting, and small-town charm, combined with the amenities of a larger city, Cottonwood continues to attract steady growth and tourism.

When Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, no one doubted that a battle to control the Mississippi River was imminent. Throughout the war, the Federals pushed their way up the river. Every port and city seemed to fall against the force of the Union Navy. The capitol was forced to retreat from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. Many of the smaller towns, like Bayou Sara and Donaldsonville, were nearly shelled completely off the map. It was not until the Union reached Port Hudson that the Confederates had a fighting chance to keep control of the mighty Mississippi. They fought long and hard, under supplied and under manned, but ultimately the Union prevailed.

The United Africa Company (UAC), formed in 1929 by the fusion of the Niger Company and the African and Eastern Corporation, was by far the largest single commercial organization in West and Equatorial Africa, and thus central to modern African economic history. This is the first detailed account to be published and one which fills a serious gap in the literature. It was not commissioned by the company (now reabsorbed into Unilever) but the author had full access to all confidential material in the UAC and Unilever archives and complete freedom in what he wrote. The book is not intended to be primarily a company history but uses the UAC as a focal point for detailed study of how the role of foreign merchant capital changed in response to economic and political developments in Black Africa during this critical half century.

Sixties British rock and pop changed music history. While American popular music dominated the record industry in the late fifties and early sixties, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and numerous other groups soon invaded the world at large and put Britain at the center of the modern musical map. Please Please Me offers an insider's view of the British pop-music recording industry during the seminal period of 1956 to 1968, based on personal recollections, contemporary accounts, and all relevant data that situate this scene in the economic, political, and social context of postwar Britain. Author Gordon Thompson weaves issues of class, age, professional status, gender, and ethnicity into his narrative, beginning with the rise of British beat groups and the emergence of teenagers as consumers in postwar Britain, and moving into the competition between performers and the recording industry for control over the music. He interviews session musicians who recorded anonymously with the Beatles, Hermans Hermits, and the Kinks, professional musicians who toured with British bands promoting records or providing dance music, songwriters, music directors, and producers and engineers who worked with the best-known performers of the era. The consequences of World War Two for pop music in the late fifties and early sixties form the backdrop for discussion of recording equipment, musical instruments, and new jet-age transportation, all contributors to the rise of British pop-music alongside the personalities that more famously made entertainment news. And these famous personalities traverse the pages of Please Please Me as well: performing songwriters John Carter and Ken Lewis, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Ray Davies, and Pete Townshend took center stage while the production teams and session musicians created the art of recording behind the doors of Londons studios. Drawing his interpretation of the processes at work during this musical revolution into a wider context, Thompson unravels the musical change and innovation of the time with an eye on understanding what traces individuals leave in the musical and recording process. Opening up important new historical and musical understandings in a repertoire that is at the core of rock music's history, Please Please Me will appeal to all students, scholars, and fans of popular music.

It's time to meet the real Vikings.

A comb, preserved in a bog, engraved with the earliest traces of a new writing system. A pagan shrine deep beneath a lava field. A note from an angry wife to a husband too long at the tavern. Doodles on birch-bark, made by an imaginative child.

From these tiny embers, Eleanor Barraclough blows back to life the vast, rich and complex world of the Vikings. These are not just the stories of kings, raiders and saga heroes. Here are the lives of ordinary people: the merchants, children, artisans, enslaved people, seers, travellers and storytellers who shaped the medieval Nordic world.

Immerse yourself in the day-to-day lives of an extraordinary culture that spanned centuries and spread from its Scandinavian heartlands to the remote fjords of Greenland, the Arctic wastelands, the waterways and steppes of Eurasia, all the way to the Byzantine Empire and Islamic Caliphate.

Does history matter? Is it anything more than entertainment? And if so, what practical relevance does it have? In this fully revised second edition of a seminal text, John Tosh persuasively argues that history is central to an informed and critical understanding of topical issues in the present. Including a range of contemporary examples from Brexit to child sexual abuse to the impact of the internet, this is an important and practical introduction for all students of history. Inspiring and empowering, this book provides both students and general readers with a stimulating and practical rationale for the study of history. It is essential reading for all undergraduate students of history who require an engaging introduction to the subject. New to this Edition: - Illustrative examples and case studies are fully updated - Features a postscript on British historians and Brexit - Bibliography is heavily revised

Chapters 22 and 23 of 2 Kings tell the story of the religious reforms of the Judean King Josiah, who systematically destroyed the cult places and installations where his own people worshipped in order to purify Israelite religion and consolidate religious authority in the hands of the Jerusalem temple priests. This violent assertion of Israelite identity is portrayed as a pivotal moment in the development of monotheistic Judaism. Monroe argues that the use of cultic and ritual language in the account of the reform is key to understanding the history of the text's composition, and illuminates the essential, interrelated processes of textual growth and identity construction in ancient Israel. Until now, however, none of the scholarship on 2 Kings 22-23 has explicitly addressed the ritual dimensions of the text. By attending to the specific acts of defilement attributed to Josiah as they resonate within the larger framework of Israelite ritual, Monroe's work illuminates aspects of the text's language and fundamental interests that have their closest parallels in the priestly legal corpus known as the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26), as well as in other priestly texts that describe methods of eliminating contamination. She argues that these priestly-holiness elements reflect an early literary substratum that was generated close in time to the reign of Josiah, from within the same priestly circles that produced the Holiness Code. The priestly composition was reshaped in the hands of a post-Josianic, exilic or post-exilic Deuteronomistic historian who transformed his source material to suit his own ideological interests. The account of Josiah's reform is thus imprinted with the cultural and religious attitudes of two different sets of authors. Teasing these apart reveals a dialogue on sacred space, sanctified violence and the nature of Israelite religion that was formative in the development not only of 2 Kings 23, but of the historical books of the Bible more broadly.

Iranian history has long been a source of fascination for European and American observers. The country's ancient past preoccupied nineteenth-century historians and archaeologists as they attempted to construct a unified understanding of the ancient world. Iran's medieval history has likewise preoccupied scholars who have long recognized the Iranian plateau as a cultural crossroad of the world's great civilizations. In more recent times, Iran has continued to demand the attention of observers when, for example, the revolution of 1978-79 dramatically burst onto the world stage, or more recently, when the Iranian democracy movement has come to once again challenge the status quo of the clerical regime. Iran's dominance in the Middle East has brought it into conflict with the United States and so it is the subject of almost daily coverage from reporters. Sympathetic observers of Iran-students, scholars, policy makers, journalists, and the educated public-tend to be perplexed and confused by this tangled web of historical development. Iran, as it appears to most observers, is a foreboding, menacing, and far away land with a history that is simply too difficult to fathom.
The Handbook is a guide to Iran's complex history. The book emphasizes the large-scale continuities of Iranian history while also describing the important patterns of transformation that have characterized Iran's past. Each of the chapters focuses on a specific epoch of Iranian history and surveys the general political, social, cultural, and economic issues of that era. The ancient period begins with chapters considering the anthropological evidence of the prehistoric era, through to the early settled civilizations of the Iranian plateau, and continuing to the rise of the ancient Persian empires. The medieval section first considers the Arab-Muslim conquest of the seventh century, and then moves on to discuss the growing Turkish influence filtering in from Central Asia beginning in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The last third of the book covers Iran in the modern era by considering the rise of the Safavid state and its accompanying policy of centralization and the introduction of Shi'ism, followed by essays on the problems of reform and modernization in the Qajar and Pahlavi periods, and finally with a chapter on the revolution of 1978-79 and its aftermath.
The book is a collaborative exercise among scholars specializing in a variety of sub-fields, and across a number of disciplines, including history, art history, classics, literature, politics, and linguistics. Here, readers can find a reliable and accessible narrative that can serve as an introduction to the field of Iranian studies. While the number of monographs published within specialized subfields of Iranian history continues to proliferate, there have been, to date, no books that attempt to produce a comprehensive single-volume history of Iranian civilization.

Winner of the Prix Renaudot 2019 'Extraordinarily beautiful... a long last loving glance at the planet.' Carl Safina, author of Becoming Wild The Art of Patience sees the renowned French adventurer and writer set off for the high plateaux of remotest Tibet in search of the elusive snow leopard. There, in the company of leading wildlife photographer Vincent Munier and two companions, at 5,000 metres and in temperatures of -25C, the team set up their hides on exposed mountainsides, and occasionally in the luxury of an icy cave, to await a visitation from the almost mythical beast. This tightly focused and tautly written narrative is simultaneously a dazzling account of an exacting journey, an apprenticeship in the art of patience, an acceptance of the ruthlessness of the natural world and, finally, a plea for ecological sanity. A small masterpiece, it is one of those books that demands to be read again and again.

My recollection of one of the proudest days of my life. At the Meardy Farm, I stood next to my mother and my dad Arthur while she rang France to speak to the Duke of Windsor. The change in my mothers voice from this miserable woman in her sixties, who would moan and groan regardless about life, into a young girl blushing at the sound of his voice. "Hello David, its Rose," she sounded so gentle. I looked at Arthur and he did not look happy with mum, hearing her conversation, watching her acting in this way. I stood waiting nervously, what would I say to this man? A Prince, a King, and now the Duke of Windsor, but always my father. Then mum passed me the telephone, I put it against my ear and stammered. "Hello, it's Roy, Roy Albert." The telephone went silent for a few moments, then a voice on the end of the line replied, "Hello Roy Albert, this is Edward ..."

Nine years before Abraham Lincoln was elected president, Story came into being. In 1851, Pres. Millard Fillmore granted a land patent to Dr. George Story for the creation of this little town. Tucked into a scenic spot near the Hoosier National Forest, 13 miles southeast of Nashville, Indiana, Story lies deep in the heart of historic Brown County. And Story is just one reason to visit Brown County, also known as "the Art Colony of the Midwest." Amid forests, rolling hills, and winding country roads, charming Nashville is home to more than 120 shops, art galleries, and artists' studios and neighbors two villages quaintly named Gnawbone and Bean Blossom. The beauty of Brown County has always attracted artists and history buffs. Wander back roads across covered bridges that have spanned sparkling streams for more than a century to retrace the paths taken by artists seeking to capture the county's beauty.

This is the first full scholarly study of British anticolonialism, an offshoot of a massive global upsurge of sentiment which has dominated much of the history of this century. In this wide-ranging and important book, Stephen Howe surveys the attitudes and activities relating to colonial issues of British critics of Empire during the years of decolonisation. He also evaluates the changing ways in which, arising out of the experience of Empire and decolonisation, more general ideas about imperialism, nationalism, and underdevelopment were developed during these years. His discussion encompasses both the left wing of the Labour Party and groups outside it: in the Communist Party, other independent left-wing groups, and single-issue campaigns. The book has considerable contemporary relevance, for British reactions to more recent events - the Falklands and Gulf Wars, race relations, South African apartheid - cannot fully be understood except in the context of the experience of decolonisation and the legacy of Empire.

Voices of Liberation: Archie Mafeje should be understood as an attempt to contextualise Mafeje's work and thinking and adds to gripping intellectual biographies of African intellectuals by African researchers. Mafeje's scholarship can be categorised into three broad areas: a critique of epistemological and methodological issues in the social sciences; the land and agrarian question in sub-Saharan Africa; and revolutionary theory and politics (including questions of development and democracy). Noted for his academic prowess, genius mind, incomparable wit and endless struggle for his nation and greater Africa, Mafeje was also hailed by his daughter, Dana El-Baz, as a 'giant' not only in the intellectual sense but as a human being. Part I discusses Mafeje's intellectual and political influences. Part II consists of seven of Mafeje's original articles and seeks to contextualise his writings. Part III reflects on Mafeje's intellectual legacy.

At 7:30 a.m. on June 16, 1944, George Junius Stinney Jr. was escorted by four guards to the death chamber. Wearing socks but no shoes, the 14-year-old Black boy walked with his Bible tucked under his arm. The guards strapped his slight, five-foot-one-inch frame into the electric chair. His small size made it difficult to affix the electrode to his right leg and the face mask, which was clearly too large, fell to the floor when the executioner flipped the switch. That day, George Stinney became, and today remains, the youngest person executed in the United States during the twentieth century.How was it possible, even in Jim Crow South Carolina, for a child to be convicted, sentenced to death, and executed based on circumstantial evidence in a trial that lasted only a few hours? Through extensive archival research and interviews with Stinney's contemporaries-men and women alive today who still carry distinctive memories of the events that rocked the small town of Alcolu and the entire state-Eli Faber pieces together the chain of events that led to this tragic injustice. The first book to fully explore the events leading to Stinney's death, The Child in the Electric Chair offers a compelling narrative with a meticulously researched analysis of the world in which Stinney lived-the era of lynching, segregation, and racist assumptions about Black Americans. Faber explains how a systemically racist system, paired with the personal ambitions of powerful individuals, turned a blind eye to human decency and one of the basic tenets of the American legal system that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. As society continues to grapple with the legacies of racial injustice, the story of George Stinney remains one that can teach us lessons about our collective past and present. By ably placing the Stinney case into a larger context, Faber reveals how this case is not just a travesty of justice locked in the era of the Jim Crow South but rather one that continues to resonate in our own time. A foreword is provided by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of History Emerita at Baruch College at the City University of New York and author of several books including Civil War Wives: The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant.

This book is the never-before-told story of the dream to set up camp in a vast African wasteland and return it to its former glory as one of the world’s premier wildlands.

Outdoor writer Mike Arnold takes us on an impressionistic journey through Coutada 11, a once again magnificent natural area in Mozambique’s Zambeze Delta. Mike leads us from its poached-out days as a source of bush meat for starving villagers and civil war military troops to the arrival in the early ‘90s of hunting outfitter Mark Haldane and his partners, on their often perilous, sometimes hilarious, travails to take the defiled and uninhabitable place and make it whole again.

Through Mike’s encounters with Haldane and his crew of scientists, guides, and motor-cycle-riding poacher patrols; with local villagers who were an integral part from the beginning; and, of course, with the apex predators, birds, and game animals that 30 years ago no one could have imagined thriving in this locale, this book serves as proof that a small group of dedicated people can make all the difference, and dreams can come true.