"Our Liverpool" is an oral history about the real Liverpool--about the city before its slick transformation to European City of Culture and about the spirit that remains at its heart. Here, at last, is Liverpool's grievous and glorious past. And here, through the people's voices, we find old Liverpool, without the gift-wrap. Its stories pulsate with the rhythms of an alternately funny, flippant, belligerent, stubborn, and warm heart, and they broadcast the values of a community, which are the city's true legacy to the modern world. Piers Dudgeon has listened to dozens of people who remember the city as it was, and who have lived through its many changes. They talk of childhood and education, of work and entertainment, of family, community values, health, politics, religion, and music. Their stories will make you laugh and cry. It is people's own memories that make history real and this engrossing book captures them vividly.

This collection of interviews explores how the Chinese Dream is fueling the aspirations of individuals in China today and presents 40 representative cases that showcase the journeys that ordinary people undertake in pursuit of their dreams as well as their extraordinary achievements. The authors identify autonomy, self-awareness, and hard work as the most fundamental driving forces in individuals taking control of their own lives and achieving their dreams, with family and social support as further important factors. Despite the vast differences in the interviewees' dreams and experiences in pursuing them, there is a common thread in their stories, namely the impact of major changes in the country on their lives. The future of individuals is closely linked to the future of the country: a bright future for the country means a good life for all. People's longing for a better life is the basis and a central element of the Chinese Dream, which is the dream of the nation and the dream of every citizen. This book will appeal to a wide audience, including ordinary people.

After the Restoration, parliamentarians continued to identify with the decisions to oppose and resist crown and established church. This was despite the fact that expressing such views between 1660 and 1688 was to open oneself to charges of sedition or treason. This book uses approaches from the field of memory studies to examine 'seditious memories' in seventeenth-century Britain, asking why people were prepared to take the risk of voicing them in public. It argues that such activities were more than a manifestation of discontent or radicalism - they also provided a way of countering experiences of defeat. Besides speech and writing, parliamentarian and republican views are shown to have manifested as misbehaviour during official commemorations of the civil wars and republic. The book also considers how such views were passed on from the generation of men and women who experienced civil war and revolution to their children and grandchildren. -- .

In 'Fighting Words', award-winning author Richard F. Miller (In Words and Deeds) looks to some of history's most successful battle speechmakers to answer the age-old question of how. How did Pope Urban II's speech convince tens of thousands of Europeans to wage the First Crusade, a dangerous, and for many, a one-way journey to Jerusalem? How did George Patton's speech transform the green kids of the Third Army into the terror of the Third Reich? How did the words of General David Petraeus resurrect a losing effort in Iraq and in the process, retrain his soldiers for a new kind of war?Miller argues that human persuasion is seamless and that the persuasive strategies by which men (and increasingly women) are recruited, trained, and exhorted for war can be applied to politics and business.For those who manage-whether a convenience store or a Fortune 500 company-motivating, instructing, and preparing your people to perform their jobs is, for the competent manager, Job One. And for those who recognize that in this partisan age, politics is just war by other means, 'Fighting Words' applies the insights of battle speeches to politics. Miller concludes his study by analyzing three of President Obama's most successful and controversial speeches based on the lessons learned from the great military motivators of history. What did the president do right? What did he do wrong? What can he do better?Miller doesn't speculate about "what works" on the public podium. Rather, he analyzes real historical examples and extracts their lessons-from Alexander the Great to General David H. Petraeus and President Obama. As Miller aptly demonstrates, persuasive strategies based on love, hate, duty, patriotism, comradeship, fear, and shame are as widely used today as they were in antiquity.'Fighting Words' offers a catalog of time-tested, effective speaking strategies whose double-edged usefulness extends far beyond any battlefield.About the Author: Historian and journalist Richard F. Miller is a graduate of Harvard College (AB, 1974) and Case Western Reserve University School of Law (JD, 1977.) He has served four stints as an embedded journalist: aboard the USS Kitty Hawk (2003); with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment in Fallujah, Iraq (2005); with the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division near Baqubah, Iraq (2006), and most recently, with the 101st Airborne at various posts in eastern Afghanistan (2008). Miller is a Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society and a Director of New England Quarterly, Inc. He is the author of In Words and Deeds: Battle Speeches in History (2008), and the award-winning Harvard's Civil War: The History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (2007).returncharacterreturncharacter returncharacterreturncharacter REVIEWS returncharacterreturncharacter"Wise, illuminating and useful, this book by an author who's paid his dues both as a war correspondent and serious historian makes a convincing case for well-deployed words as a mighty tool of war--or of politics, business or mass communication. Among other things, this highly readable meditation of the enduring importance of coherent speech (in an age of slovenly chatter) reminds us that every word is a potential weapon. Read as stimulating military history or as a guide to effective leadership--in any sphere--Fighting Words is a first-rate work that will reward all aspiring leaders." -- Ralph Peters, Fox News Strategic Analyst and author of The War After Armageddon..".offers time tested speaking strategies whose sharp double edged usefulness can be used on motivating employees, soldiers, and citizens to accomplish great goals. Lone Star Book Review, 08/2010

This oral history of London's East End spans the period after World War I to the upsurge of prosperity at the beginning of the 1960s--a time period which saw fresh waves of immigrants in the area, the Fascist marches of the 1930s, and its spirited recovery after virtual obliteration during the Blitz. Piers Dudgeon has listened to dozens of people who remember this fiercely proud quarter to record their real-life experiences of what it was like before it was fashionable to buy a home in the Docklands. They talk of childhood and education, of work and entertainment, of family, community values, health, politics, religion, and music. Their stories will make you laugh and cry. It is people's own memories that make history real and this engrossing book captures them vividly.

If you wish to retain your image of an 'Angel' as depicted on our Christmas cards, then to read this work may be ill-advised. However, if you would like to learn of their Real Activities, and astounding interactions with the Patriarchs, taken straight from the Old Testament, then this is the book for you. But be prepared for a shock. Gone are the heroes, the innocence and certainty the Wings (which were never there in the first place). You will learn of their ruthless activities, deciding who will live or die, the slaughter of humans in great numbers by flood, in the days of Noah and what sound like nuclear bombs when destroying the cities of the plain, i.e., Sodom and Gomorrah. Before Exodus, a 'destroying Angel' moved over the houses, murdering new born Egyptian children. After Exodus and before a battle, they instructed the army of Moses Let not a creature that breathes to live. They inseminated even barren women to produce a wonder child to do their bidding. They treated humankind as if their property. Their forebears came to earth from elsewhere, descended from our skies and decided, Let us make men in our image. They were extra-terrestrial by any definition. To the patriarchs, any creature that could descend from and ascend to the sky could only be coming from and returning to heaven in a Biblical interpretation. Today, they keep their distance in the knowledge that modern humans would not fall on their faces in awe, yet they remain in earth space because they have inherited a responsibility for humankind. An explanation for their continual abductions exists herein, which may not bode well for humankind. We are their 'Property.'

This book explores and comparatively assesses how Armenians as minorities have been represented in modern Turkey from the twentieth century through to the present day, with a particular focus on the period since the first electoral victory of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in 2002. It examines how social movements led by intellectuals and activists have challenged the Turkish state and called for democratization, and explores key issues related to Armenian identity. Drawing on new social movements theory, this book sheds light on the dynamics of minority identity politics in contemporary Turkey and highlights the importance of political protest.

This book looks beyond the Aylesbury's public face by examining its rise and fall from the perspective of those who knew it, based largely on the oral testimony and memoir of residents and former residents, youth and community workers, borough Councillors, officials, police officers and architects. What emerges is not a simple story of definitive failures, but one of texture and complexity, struggle and accord, family and friends, and of rapidly changing circumstances. The study spans the years 1967 to 2010 - from the estate's ambitious inception until the first of its blocks were pulled down. It is a period rarely dealt with by historians of council housing, who have typically confined themselves to the years before or after the 1979 watershed. As such, it demonstrates how shifts in housing policy, and broader political, economic and social developments, came to bear on a working-class community - for good and, more especially, for ill.

Do, Die, or Get Along weaves together voices of twenty-six people who have intimate connections to two neighboring towns in the southwestern Virginia coal country. Filled with evidence of a new kind of local outlook on the widespread challenge of small community survival, the book tells how a confrontational ""do-or-die"" past has given way to a ""get-along"" present built on coalition and guarded hope. St. Paul and Dante are six miles apart; measured in other ways, the distance can be greater. Dante, for decades a company town controlled at all levels by the mine owners, has only a recent history of civic initiative. In St. Paul, which arose at a railroad junction, public debate, entrepreneurship, and education found a more receptive home. The speakers are men and women, wealthy and poor, black and white, old-timers and newcomers. Their concerns and interests range widely, including the battle over strip mining, efforts to control flooding, the 1989-90 Pittston strike, the nationally acclaimed Wetlands Estonoa Project, and the grassroots revitalization of both towns led by the St. Paul Tomorrow and Dante Lives On organizations. Their talk of the past often invokes an ethos, rooted in the hand-to-mouth pioneer era, of short-term gain. Just as frequently, however, talk turns to more recent times, when community leaders, corporations, unions, the federal government, and environmental groups have begun to seek accord based on what will be best, in the long run, for the towns. The story of Dante and St. Paul, Crow writes, ""gives twenty-first-century meaning to the idea of the good fight."" This is an absorbing account of persistence, resourcefulness, and eclectic redefinition of success and community revival, with ramifications well beyond Appalachia.

What Britain refined, America defined. Assembled by two key figures at the heart of the movement and told through the voices o musicians, artists, iconoclastic reporters and entrepreneurial groupies, PLEASE KILL ME is the full decadent story of the American punk scene, through the early years of Andy Warhol's Factory to the New York underground of Max's Kansas City and later, its heyday at CBGB's, spiritual home to the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie. PLEASE KILL ME goes backstage and behind apartment doors to chronicle the sex, drugs and power struggles that were the very fabric of the American punk community, to the time before piercing and tattoos became commonplace and when every concert, new band and fashion statement marked an absolute first. From Iggy Pop and Lou Reed to the Clash and the Sex Pistols (the first time around), McNeil and McCain document a time of glorious self-destruction and perverse innocence - possibly the last time so many will so much fun in the pursuit of excess.

This book analyzes the spread of American female consumer culture to Italy and its influence on Italian women in the postwar and Cold War periods, eras marked by the political, economic, social, and cultural battle between the United States and Soviet Union. Focusing on various aspects of this culture-beauty and hygiene products, refrigerators, and department stores, as well as shopping and magazine models-the book examines the reasons for and the methods of American female consumer culture's arrival in Italy, the democratic, consumer capitalist messages its products sought to "sell" to Italian women, and how Italian women themselves reacted to this new cultural presence in their everyday lives. Did Italian women become the American Mrs. Consumer? As such, the book illustrates how the modern, consuming American woman became a significant figure not only in Italy's postwar recovery and transformation, but also in the international and domestic cultural and social contests for the hearts and minds of Italian women.

This open access book brings together oral histories that record the experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities in Shanghai as they participate in their careers. Employees with intellectual disabilities describe their experiences seeking, attaining, and maintaining employment. Their managers, colleagues, and family members also provide keen insight into the challenges and opportunities these individuals have encountered in the process of securing employment. An appendix provides a compilation of employment policies related to people with intellectual disabilities, particularly with respect to Shanghai.

This book delves into the history of the Horn of Africa diaspora in Italy and Europe through the stories of those who fled to Italy from East African states. It draws on oral history research carried out by the BABE project (Bodies Across Borders: Oral and Visual Memories in Europe and Beyond) in a host of cities across Italy that explored topics including migration journeys, the memory of colonialism in the Horn of Africa, cultural identity in Italy and Europe, and Mediterranean crossings. This book shows how the cultural memory of interviewees is deeply linked to an intersubjective context that is changing Italian and European identities. The collected narratives reveal the existence of another Italy - and another Europe - through stories that cross national and European borders and unfold in transnational and global networks. They tell of the multiple identities of the diaspora and reconsider the geography of the continent, in terms of experiences, emotions, and close relationships, and help reinterpret the history and legacy of Italian colonialism.

Parliament is Britain's most important political institution, yet its workings remain obscure to academics and the wider public alike. MPs are often seen as 'out of touch' or 'all the same' and their individual motivations, achievements and regrets remain in the background of party politics. In this book, Emma Peplow and Priscila Pivatto draw on the History of Parliament Trust's collection of oral history interviews with postwar British MPs to highlight their diverse political experiences in Parliament. Featuring extracts from a collection of interviews with over 160 former MPs who sat from the 1950s until the 2000s, The Political Lives of Postwar British MPs gives a voice to those MPs' stories. It explores why they became interested in politics, how they found their seat and fought election campaigns, what it felt like to speak in the chamber and how their class or gender dictated their experiences at Westminster. In the process, readers will be given rare glimpse into the spaces inhabited by MPs, the political rivalries and friendships and the rising and falling of their careers. With accounts from MPs of all political stripes, from the well-known like David Owen and Ann Taylor to those who sat for just a few years such as Denis Coe; from old political families like Douglas Hurd to those like Maria Fyfe who felt themselves outsiders, this book provides deep insight into the political lives of MPs in our age.

This book is part of the Tempus Oral History series, which combines the reminiscences of local people with old photographs and archived images to show the history of various local areas in Great Britain, through their streets, shops, pubs, and people.

This book brings together the Armenian Genocide process and its transgenerational outcome, which are often juxtaposed in existing scholarship, to ask how the Armenian Genocide is conceptualized and placed within diasporic communities. Taking a dual approach to answer this question, Anthonie Holslag studies the cultural expression of violence during the genocidal process itself, and in the aftermath for the victims. By using this approach, this book allows us to see comparatively how genocide in diasporic communities in the Netherlands, London and the US is encapsulated in an historic narrative. It paints a picture of the complexity of genocidal violence itself, but also in its transgenerational and non-spatial consequences, raising new questions of how violence can be perpetuated or interlocked with the discourse and narratives of the victims, and how the violence can be relived.

In the pre-reserve era, Aboriginal bands in the northern plains were relatively small multicultural communities that actively maintained fluid and inclusive membership through traditional kinship practices. These practices were governed by the Law of the People as described in the traditional stories of Wisashkecahk, or Elder Brother, that outlined social interaction, marriage, adoption, and kinship roles and responsibilities. In Elder Brother and the Law of the People, Robert Innes offers a detailed analysis of the role of Elder Brother stories in historical and contemporary kinship practices in Cowessess First Nation, located in southeastern Saskatchewan. He reveals how these tradition-inspired practices act to undermine legal and scholarly definitions of ""Indian"" and counter the perception that First Nations people have internalized such classifications. He presents Cowessess's successful negotiation of the 1996 Treaty Land Agreement and their high inclusion rate of new ""Bill-C31s"" as evidence of the persistence of historical kinship values and their continuing role as the central unifying factor for band membership. Elder Brother and the Law of the People presents an entirely new way of viewing Aboriginal cultural identity on the northern plains.