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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Oral history
Hollywood: The Oral History covers the history of Hollywood from
the Silent era up to the 21st century. What makes this book unique
from any other survey of Hollywood's history is that it is the
history of an art form through the words of those people who
created it - from Harold Lloyd to Katharine Hepburn to Warren
Beatty to Jane Fonda and beyond, including directors, writers,
producers, editors, designers of sets and costumes. As such, the
authenticity of the text is irrefutable. The material in the book -
gathered over the decades by the American Film Institute - has
never been published before, has never been heard before. It is
comprehensive - a monument that will never age nor be surpassed.
In "Big Thicket Legacy," Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller present the
stories of people living in the Big Thicket of southeast Texas.
Many of the storytellers were close to one hundred years old when
interviewed, with some being the great-grandchildren of the first
settlers. Here are tales about robbing a bee tree, hunting wild
boar, plowing all day and dancing all night, wading five miles to
church through a cypress brake, and making soap using hickory
ashes.
*Highly Commended by the British Records Association for the 2019
Janette Harley Prize* In September 1943, at the height of World War
II, the Aegean island of Leros became the site of the most pivotal
battle of the Dodecanese campaign as the British tried, in vain, to
retain control of the island. Over the course of two short months -
from 15 September 1943 to 17 November 1943 - almost 1500 men lost
their lives and hundreds more ended up in Prisoner-of-War camps. In
this book, Julie Peakman, a modern-day resident of Leros, brings to
life the story of the men caught up in the battle based on
first-hand interviews and written accounts including diaries,
letters and journals. She tells of the preparations of the soldiers
leading up to the battle, the desperate hand-to-hand fighting, and
the suffering endured from continual bombings. She also shows the
extent of the men's despair at the allied surrender, the many
subsequent daring escapes as well as the terrible years of
incarceration for those who were captured and imprisoned. Many of
the heart-rending accounts of the battle are told here for the
first time, providing a unique eyewitness take on this forgotten
corner of World War II.
This ground-breaking history of the UK Women's Liberation Movement
shows why and how feminism's 'second wave' mobilized to demand not
just equality but social and gender transformation. Oral history
testimonies power the work, tracing the arc of a feminist life from
1950s girlhoods to late life activism today. Peppered with personal
stories, the book casts new light on feminist critiques of society
and on the lives of prominent and grassroots activists. Margaretta
Jolly uses oral history as creative method, making significant use
of Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History
Project to animate still-unresolved controversies of race, class,
sexuality, disability, and feminist identity. Women activists
vividly recall a divisive education system, the unevenness of
sexual liberation and the challenges of Thatcherism, Northern
Ireland's Troubles and the policing of minority ethnic communities.
They illuminate key campaigns in these wider contexts, and talk of
the organizational and collaborative skills they struggled to
acquire as they moved into local government, NGOs and even the
business sector. Jolly provides fresh insight into iconic actions
including the Miss World Protest, the fight to protect abortion
rights, and the peace protest at Greenham Common. Her accounts of
workplace struggles, from Ford and Grunwick to Women Against Pit
Closures and Women and Manual Trades, show how socialist ideals
permeated feminism. She explores men's violence and today's demands
for trans-liberation as areas of continuing feminist concern. Jolly
offers a refreshingly jargon-free exploration of key debates and
theoretical trends, alongside an appreciation of the joyfully
personal aspects of feminism, from families, homes, shopping and
music to relationships, health, aging, death and faith. She
concludes by urging readers to enter the archives of feminist
memory to help map their own political futures. Her work will
appeal to general readers, scholars and practitioners alike.
Living in the shadow of state is not a dark, static and silent
world. It was the world in full radiance, involving multiple
process of reenactment to life, lifeways and relationship. If state
and history demonized the hill people as the 'pest' and 'nuisance'
to civilization, and the hill practices as the 'relics' of the
'primitive', the hillmen's narratives celebrated them as their core
cultural collective. Against State, Against History is a radical
reevaluation of the dominant civilizational narratives on the
'tribe' and attempts to recast their history in the light of recent
historiography that presents the hillmen as state evading
population. Bringing together both conventional and oral
narratives, and from the counter-perspectives of the margin, the
book explores the conditions in which section of valley population
escaped to the hills, their migration history, how they reenact
their space, society, culture and economy in the hills. Their
physical dispersion in the highland terrain, choosing an
independent village polity, defended by trained warriors,
fortressed at the top of hills, connected by repulsive pathways,
following jhum economy, and adopting a pliable social, cultural,
ethnic and gender formations, are their counter cultural collective
at the margins of state. They were reenacted to prevent state
control and the emergence of domination relations in the hills.
This process is understood as unstate involving the process of
disowning state and becoming an egalitarian society where freedom
of individuals was located at the core of their cultural
collective.
This book explores the transition from oral to written history now
taking place in tribal Jordan, a transition that reveals the many
ways in which modernity, literate historicity, and national
identity are developing in the contemporary Middle East. As
traditional Bedouin storytellers and literate historians lead him
through a world of hidden documents, contested photographs, and
meticulously reconstructed pedigrees, Andrew Shryock describes how
he becomes enmeshed in historical debates, ranging from the local
to the national level. The world the Bedouin inhabit is rich in
oral tradition and historical argument, in subtle reflections on
the nature of truth and its relationship to poetics, textuality,
and power. Skillfully blending anthropology and history, Shryock
discusses the substance of tribal history through the eyes of its
creators - those who sustain an older tradition of authoritative
oral history and those who have experimented with the first written
accounts. His focus throughout is on the development of a
'genealogical nationalism' as well as on the tensions that arise
between tribe and state. Rich in both personal revelation and
cultural implications, this book poses a provocative challenge to
traditional assumptions about the way history is written.
During the 872-day siege of Leningrad from September 1941 to
January 1944, civilians endured air raids, bread rations as low as
125 grams, food theft and speculation by opportunistic officials
and shadow market traders, and death by starvation. As shocks of
total war weaken institutions, desperate survival can compel
violation of norms, and personal suffering can shatter long-held
beliefs and practices. In Wartime Suffering and Survival, Jeffrey
K. Hass uses the Blockade of Leningrad in World War II to explore
the social practices and dynamics by which we cope or collapse.
Using hundreds of personal accounts from diaries, recollections,
police records, interviews, and state documents, Hass tells the
story of how average Leningraders coped with the nightmares of war,
starvation, and extreme uncertainty. By exploring the state and
shadow markets, food, families, gender, class, death, and
suffering, he describes the routines of daily life, the functioning
of official institutions, and the development of illegal practices
that were made and remade in the interactions of citizens and state
agencies coping with new and extreme situations. The key to what
Leningraders did and how they survived, Hass argues, is relations
to anchors-entities of symbolic and personal significance that
tethered Leningraders to each other and shaped practices of empathy
and compassion, and of opportunism and egoism. Moving and powerful,
Wartime Suffering and Survival goes to the heart of human
resilience and fragility and to the core of the human
condition-both individual and social.
Few cultural activities speak more powerfully to international
histories of the modern world than football. In the late nineteenth
century, this cheap and simple sport emerged as a major legacy of
Britain's formal and informal empires and spread quickly across
Europe, South America, and Africa. Today, football (known to many
as soccer) is arguably the world's most popular pastime, an
activity played and watched by millions of people around the globe.
Contested Fields introduces readers to key aspects of the global
game, synthesizing research on football's transnational role in
reflecting and shaping political, socio-economic, and cultural
developments over the past 150 years. Each chapter uses case
studies and cutting-edge scholarship to analyze an important
element of football's international story: migration, money,
competition, gender, race, space, spectatorship, and confrontation.
From the bestselling author of FORGOTTEN VOICES OF THE GREAT WAR,
comes an unforgettable collection of vivid eyewitness accounts of
life in the Royal Navy Acclaimed historian Max Arthur pays tribute
to the Royal Navy from 1914 to 1945. Drawing on the personal
stories of those who have served during this period, he has created
a unique narrative history of the senior service. FORGOTTEN VOICES:
THE ROYAL NAVY is a memorable and moving testament to the courage,
spirit, skill and irrepressible humour of those who served in the
Royal Navy during these crucial years.
Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee: An Oral History of
the Struggle for Civil Rights offers an unrivalled account of how a
rural Black community drew together to combat the immense forces
aligned against them. Author Robert Hamburger first visited Fayette
County as part of a student civil rights project in 1965 and, in
1971, set out to document the history of the grassroots movement
there. Beginning in 1959, Black residents in Fayette County
attempting to register to vote were met with brutal resistance from
the white community. Sharecropping families whose names appeared on
voter registration rolls were evicted from their homes and their
possessions tossed by the roadside. These dispossessed families
lived for months in tents on muddy fields, as Fayette County became
a "tent city" that attracted national attention. The white
community created a blacklist culled from voter registration rolls,
and those whose names appeared on the list were denied food, gas,
and every imaginable service at shops, businesses, and gas stations
throughout the county. Hamburger conducted months of interviews
with residents of the county, inviting speakers to recall childhood
experiences in the "Old South" and to explain what inspired them to
take a stand against the oppressive system that dominated life in
Fayette County. Their stories, told in their own words, make up the
narrative of Our Portion of Hell. This reprint edition includes
twenty-nine documentary photographs and an insightful new afterword
by the author. There, he discusses the making of the book and
reflects upon the difficult truth that although the civil rights
struggle, once so immediate, has become history, many of the core
issues that inspired the struggle remain as urgent as ever.
Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee: An Oral History of
the Struggle for Civil Rights offers an unrivalled account of how a
rural Black community drew together to combat the immense forces
aligned against them. Author Robert Hamburger first visited Fayette
County as part of a student civil rights project in 1965 and, in
1971, set out to document the history of the grassroots movement
there. Beginning in 1959, Black residents in Fayette County
attempting to register to vote were met with brutal resistance from
the white community. Sharecropping families whose names appeared on
voter registration rolls were evicted from their homes and their
possessions tossed by the roadside. These dispossessed families
lived for months in tents on muddy fields, as Fayette County became
a "tent city" that attracted national attention. The white
community created a blacklist culled from voter registration rolls,
and those whose names appeared on the list were denied food, gas,
and every imaginable service at shops, businesses, and gas stations
throughout the county. Hamburger conducted months of interviews
with residents of the county, inviting speakers to recall childhood
experiences in the "Old South" and to explain what inspired them to
take a stand against the oppressive system that dominated life in
Fayette County. Their stories, told in their own words, make up the
narrative of Our Portion of Hell. This reprint edition includes
twenty-nine documentary photographs and an insightful new afterword
by the author. There, he discusses the making of the book and
reflects upon the difficult truth that although the civil rights
struggle, once so immediate, has become history, many of the core
issues that inspired the struggle remain as urgent as ever.
THESE ARE THE WORDS THAT CAME TO ME. NO MATTER HOW THEY GOT HERE,
THEY DID THE F***ING JOB. Iggy Pop hasn't left a mark on music;
he's left it battered and bruised, too. Inducted into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, here for the first time are his selected
lyrics, complete with stunning original photographs, illustrations,
alongside Iggy and others' reflections on a genre-defining music
career that spans five decades. Coinciding with a new album, FREE,
this is the ultimate book for every rock and roll fan.
Pickers come from near and far, year after year, for the
berry-picking season, and from a variety of backgrounds. In the
20th century, for local people, both adults and children, it was an
opportunity to supplement the family income; Glasgow folk combined
it with a holiday. For the Scottish Traveller community it was an
annual opportunity to meet up with friends and family, and forge
new relationships. Roger Leitch encouraged many of those berry
pickers to share their (mostly happy) recollections for this book -
which is published at a time of political change with challenges
for the soft fruit cultivation business. He also interviewed
workers in other seasonal employments: potato picking; working with
crops: hay/bracken/reed/flax cutting and sugar-beet lifting;
fencing; repairing drystone dykes; being a deer ghillie or a river
ghillie or water bailiff; salmon fishing.
Over a span of eighteen years, Lady Bird Johnson recorded
forty-seven oral history interviews with Michael Gillette and his
colleagues. These conversations, just released in 2011, form the
heart of Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History, an intimate story of a
shy young country girl's transformation into one of America's most
effective and admired First Ladies. Lady Bird Johnson's odyssey is
one of personal and intellectual growth, political and financial
ambition, and a shared life with Lyndon Baines Johnson, one of the
most complicated, volatile, and powerful presidents of the 20th
century. The former First Lady recounts how a cautious,
conservative young woman succumbed to an ultimatum to marry a man
she had known for less than three months, how she ran his
congressional office during World War II, and how she transformed a
struggling Austin radio station into the foundation of a
communications empire. As a keen observer of the Washington scene
during the eventful decades from the 1930s through the 1960s, Lady
Bird Johnson shares dramatic accounts of pivotal moments in
American history. We attend informal dinners at Sam Rayburn's
apartment and opulent social events at grand mansions from an
earlier age. Her rich verbal portraits bring to life scores of
personalities, including First Ladies Edith Bolling Wilson, Eleanor
Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, and
Pat Nixon. An informal, candid narrative by one of America's most
admired First Ladies, this volume reveals how instrumental Lady
Bird Johnson's support and guidance were at each stage of her
husband's political ascent and how she herself emerged as a
significant political force.
Women were at the forefront of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011,
with the Arab Spring protests providing an unprecedented
opportunity to make their voices heard. But these women also faced
an intense backlash from Egypt's patriarchal authorities, with
female activists subjected to sexual violence and intimidation by
the regime and even fellow protestors. Centered on the testimonies
of four women who each played a significant role in the protests,
this book provides unique insight into women's experiences during
the Egyptian Revolution, and into the methods of resistance these
women developed in response to sexual violence. In the process,
Hamzeh casts new light on the relationship between gendered and
state violence, and argues that women's resistance to this violence
is reshaping gender relations in Egypt and the wider Arab world.
This is an oral history of a second-generation, urban-born woman
who struggles to survive in the poor, Andean city of La Paz. It
shows how her identity shifts over time, shaped by the major events
in her life. Topics range fron social networks to magical
interventions and clairvoyant dreaming.
Topics discussed in these recorded oral interviews with residents
of Stranraer and district, in south-west Scotland, include tattie
howking, war, the capsizing of the Larne-Stranraer ferry and the
stormy winter of 1947. The interviews took place over a period of
time, the first being with Helen Davies who was 87 when recorded in
1997.This is the first book based on research carried out by the
European Ethnological Research Centre (EERC) as part of their
current research programme: Dumfries and Galloway: A Regional
Ethnology - part of a wider research programme, The Regional
Ethnology of Scotland Project.Co-published by NMS Enterprises Ltd -
Publishing and the EERC.
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