Looking over the great prairie in the early 1880s, Nellie Buchanan said, "I knew I would never be contented until I had a home of our own in the wonderful West." Some were not so sanguine. Mary Cox described the prairie as "the most barren, forsaken country that we had ever seen." Like the others whose stories appear in this book, these women were describing their own thoughts and experiences traveling to and settling in what became Colorado. Sixty-seven of their original, first-person narratives, recounted to Civil Works Administration workers in 1933 and 1934, are gathered for the first time in this book.
"The First We Can Remember" presents richly detailed, vivid, and widely varied accounts by women pioneers during the late nineteenth century. Narratives of white American-born, European, and Native American women contending with very different circumstances and geographical challenges tell what it was like to settle during the rise of the smelting and mining industries or the gold rush era; to farm or ranch for the first time; to struggle with unfamiliar neighbors, food and water shortages, crop failure, or simply the intransigent land and unpredictable weather. Together, these narratives--historically and geographically framed by Lee Schweninger's detailed introduction--create a vibrant picture of women's experiences in the pioneering of the American West.

Despite acute labour shortages during the Second World War, Canadian employers--with the complicity of state officials--discriminated against workers of African, Asian, and Eastern and Southern European origin, excluding them from both white collar and skilled jobs. Jobs and Justice argues that, while the war intensified hostility and suspicion toward minority workers, the urgent need for their contributions and the egalitarian rhetoric used to mobilize the war effort also created an opportunity for minority activists and their English Canadian allies to challenge discrimination.Juxtaposing a discussion of state policy with ideas of race and citizenship in Canadian civil society, Carmela K. Patrias shows how minority activists were able to bring national attention to racist employment discrimination and obtain official condemnation of such discrimination. Extensively researched and engagingly written, Jobs and Justice offers a new perspective on the Second World War, the racist dimensions of state policy, and the origins of human rights campaigns in Canada.

Donald Raleigh's Soviet Baby Boomers traces the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of Russia into a modern, highly literate, urban society through the fascinating life stories of the country's first post-World War II, Cold War generation.
For this book, Raleigh has interviewed sixty 1967 graduates of two "magnet" secondary schools that offered intensive instruction in English, one in Moscow and one in provincial Saratov. Part of the generation that began school the year the country launched Sputnik into space, they grew up during the Cold War, but in a Soviet Union increasingly distanced from the excesses of Stalinism. In this post-Stalin era, the Soviet leadership dismantled the Gulag, ruled without terror, promoted consumerism, and began to open itself to an outside world still fearful of Communism. Raleigh is one of the first scholars of post-1945 Soviet history to draw extensively on oral history, a particularly useful approach in studying a country where the boundaries between public and private life remained porous and the state sought to peer into every corner of people's lives. During and after the dissolution of the USSR, Russian citizens began openly talking about their past, trying to make sense of it, and Raleigh has made the most of this new forthrightness. He has created an extraordinarily rich composite narrative and embedded it in larger historical narratives of Cold War, de-Stalinization, "overtaking" America, opening up to the outside world, economic stagnation, dissent, emigration, the transition to a market economy, the transformation of class, ethnic, and gender relations, and globalization.
Including rare photographs of daily life in Cold War Russia, Soviet Baby Boomers offers an intimate portrait of a generation that has remained largely faceless until now.

Outside the imagination, witches don't exist. But in Poland and in Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, people imagined their neighbours to be witches, with tragic results. For the first time in English, Michael Ostling tells the story of the imagined Polish witches, showing how ordinary peasant-women got caught in webs of suspicion and accusation, finally confessing under torture to the most heinous of crimes. Through a close reading of accusations and confessions, Ostling also shows how witches imagined themselves and their own religious lives. Paradoxically, the tales they tell of infanticide and host-desecration reveal to us a culture of deep Catholic piety, while the stories they tell of demonic sex and the treasure-bringing ghosts of unbaptized babies uncover a complex folklore at the margins of Christian orthodoxy. Caught between the devil and the host, the self-imagined Polish witches reflect the religion of their place and time, even as they stand accused of subverting and betraying that religion. Through the dark glass of witchcraft Ostling explores the religious lives of early modern women and men: their gender attitudes, their Christian faith and folk cosmology, their prayers and spells, their adoration of Christ incarnate in the transubstantiated Eucharist, and their relations with goblin-like house demons and ghosts.

A small neighborhood in northern Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. "Craw's" reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with the city's Capital Plaza in the mid-1960s. Douglas A. Boyd's Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community traces the evolution of the controversial community that ultimately saw four-hundred families displaced. Using oral histories and firsthand memories, Boyd not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also demonstrates how this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort police officer describes Craw's residents as a "rough class of people, who didn't mind killing or being killed." In Crawfish Bottom, the former residents of Craw acknowledge the popular misconceptions about their community but offer a richer and more balanced view of the past.

This book brings together fascinating testimonies from thirty inhabitants of the 'Kommunalka,' the communal apartments that were the norm in housing in the cities of Russia during the whole history of the Soviet Union.

As debate continues about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its root causes simmer, Palestinian refugees have become increasingly invisible. Voices from the Camps is about their humanity. This sociological study explores refugee camps in Jordan, where refugees share their plight and narrative of the Nakbeh (Catastrophe) of 1948. They also share their pain, conflicting identities, and aspirations. This book conveys the humanity of the poor, stateless, and invisible, by examining the impacts of displacement, dispossession, and refugee status upon refugees and their descendents as they struggle for survival both as individuals and as a community. This book does not propose solutions; rather, it highlights the human side of the Palestinian trauma and the urgent need for a just solution.

Among sources on the Holocaust, survivor testimonies are the least replaceable and most complex, reflecting both the personality of the narrator and the conditions and perceptions prevailing at the time of narration. Scholars, despite their aim to challenge memory and fill its gaps, often use testimonies uncritically or selectively-mining them to support generalizations. This book represents a departure, bringing Holocaust experts Atina Grossmann, Konrad Kwiet, Wendy Lower, Jurgen Matthaus, and Nechama Tec together to analyze the testimony of one Holocaust survivor. Born in Bratislava at the end of World War I, Helen "Zippi" Spitzer Tichauer was sent to Auschwitz in 1942. One of the few early arrivals to survive the camp and the death marches, she met her future husband in a DP camp, and they moved to New York in the 1960s. Beginning in 1946, Zippi devoted many hours to talking with a small group of scholars about her life. Her wide-ranging interviews are uniquely suited to raise questions on the meaning and use of survivor testimony. What do we know today about the workings of a death camp? How willing are we to learn from the experiences of a survivor, and how much is our perception preconditioned by standardized images? What are the mechanisms, aims, and pitfalls of storytelling? Can survivor testimonies be understood properly without guidance from those who experienced the events? This book's new, multifaceted approach toward Zippi's unique story combined with the authors' analysis of key aspects of Holocaust memory, its forms and its functions, makes it a rewarding and fascinating read."

The term "Holocaust survivors" is often associated with Jewish communities in New York City or along Florida's Gold Coast. Traditionally, tales of America's Holocaust survivors, in both individual and cultural histories, have focused on places where people fleeing from Nazi atrocities congregated in large numbers for comfort and community following World War II. Yet not all Jewish refugees chose to settle in heavily populated areas of the United States. In This Is Home Now: Kentucky's Holocaust Survivors Speak, oral historian Arwen Donahue and photographer Rebecca Gayle Howell focus on overlooked stories that unfold in the aftermath of the Holocaust. They present the accounts of Jewish survivors who resettled not in major metropolitan areas but in southern, often rural, communities. Many of the survivors in these smaller communities did not even seek out the few fellow Jewish residents already there. Donahue transcribes the accounts as she heard them, keeping true to the voices of those she interviewed. One of the survivors who shares her tale, Sylvia Green, describes the pain and desolation of her experiences in the Nazi death camps with a voice that reveals both her German-Polish heritage and her subsequent small-town life in Winchester, Kentucky. The Hungarian-born Paul Schlisser has an equally complex voice, a mix of phrases learned in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and regional speech patterns acquired in his adopted home near Fort Knox. Donahue's collection of voices, accompanied by Howell's poignant photographs, identifies each storyteller as an American -- and as a Kentuckian. Like many others of diverse backgrounds before them, Holocaust survivors joined the "melting pot" as a haven from the suffering in their native lands, but they eventually came to regard America as home. Although they speak of atrocities, most often experienced when they were children and unable to fully comprehend the situation, they also emphasize the comfort of acceptance -- not just by Jewish communities but also by a state that has long equated "religion" with Christianity alone. Kentucky is not known for its cultural and religious diversity, yet these stories reveal one of the many ways that the state has become home to a wide spectrum of immigrants -- people who once were strangers but now are its own.

Before the advent of machines in the late 1950s, hop-picking was undertaken by an army of people, many of whom saw the countryside only during these four to six weeks of picking. It was work and a way of earning some much needed extra money, but it was also their annual holiday, an opportunity to which they looked forward all year. For the 'home-dwellers' (the people local to the farms) it meant extra work, sometimes unpaid and always hard. This fascinating and informative collection of reminiscences has been compiled using the contributors' own words. It captures the lives of the hop-pickers in every detail, from the preparation and anticipation before departure, through the epic journeys to the hopfields and tiring work during the harvest, to the evenings and days off spent at the pub, round a fire or with the family. Throughout, the collection is brought to life by numerous anecdotes, both humorous and moving. Despite hardship and poverty, there is a deep-rooted nostalgia for a way of life that no longer exists. One-time hop-pickers miss the warm camaraderie, the open honesty and the satisfaction of working together for a common purpose: to harvest the hops. These emotions are all recorded here.

The charivari is a loud, late-night surprise house-visiting custom from members of a community, usually to a newlywed couple, accompanied by a qu?te (a request for a treat or money in exchange for the noisy performance) and/or pranks. Up to the first decades of the twentieth century, charivaris were for the most part enacted to express disapproval of the relationship that was their focus, such as those between individuals of different ages, races, or religions. While later charivaris maintained the same rituals, their meaning changed to a welcoming of the marriage.

Make the Night Hideous explores this mysterious transformation using four detailed case studies from different time periods and locations across English Canada, as well as first-person accounts of more recent charivari participants. Pauline Greenhill's unique and fascinating work explores the malleability of a tradition, its continuing value, and its contestation in a variety of discourses.

An oral-history-based biography of a seminal Asian-American activist. The book traces Embrey's life from her youth in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, to her harrowing experiences in the Japanese internment camps, to her many decades of passionate advocacy on behalf of her fellow internees.

Since the early 1960s, no other country has endured more acts of terrorism against civilian targets than Cuba, and the US has had its hand in much of it. This book gives a voice to the victims. Keith Bolender brings to bear the enormous impact that terrorism has had on Cuba's civilian population, with over 6,000 documented incidents resulting in more than 3,000 deaths and 2,000 injuries. It is Bolender's aim to articulate the atrocities the Cuban people have suffered -- which largely originate from Cuban counter-revolutionaries based in the US, often with the active help of the CIA." Voices From The Other Side" includes first-person interviews with more than 75 Cuban citizens who have been victims of these terrorist acts, or have had family members or close friends die from the attacks. It is a unique resource for activists, journalists and students interested in Cuba's torrid relationship with the US.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, born out of the 1934 West Coast maritime and San Francisco general strikes under the charismatic leadership of Harry Bridges, has been known from the start for its strong commitment to democracy, solidarity, and social justice. In this collection of firsthand narratives, union leaders and rank-and-file workers - from the docks of Pacific Coast ports to the fields of Hawaii to bookstores in Portland, Oregon - talk about their lives at work, on the picket line, and in the union.

Workers recall the back-breaking, humiliating conditions on the waterfront before they organized, the tense days of the 1934 strike, the challenges posed by mechanization, the struggle against racism and sexism on the job, and their activism in other social and political causes. Their stories testify to the union's impact on the lives of its members and also to its role in larger events, ranging from civil rights battles at home to the fights against fascism and apartheid abroad.

"Solidarity Stories" is a unique contribution to the literature on unions. There is a power and immediacy in the voices of workers that is brilliantly expressed here. Taken together, these voices provide a portrait of a militant, corruption-free, democratic union that can be a model and an inspiration for what a resurgent American labor movement might look like. The book will appeal to students and scholars of labor history, social and economic history, and social change, as well as trade unionists and anyone interested in labor politics and history.

Harvey Schwartz is an oral historian at the Labor Archives and Research Center, San Francisco State University, and curator of the Oral History Collection, ILWU Library.

"Harvey Schwartz is the dockworkers' Studs Terkel. "Solidarity Stories" is right up there with the best of Terkel's books, an inspiring account in their own words of how the men and women working the Pacific Coast docks and beyond built a great union and won dignity and fair pay on the job. Schwartz's oral history is so well organized and fully annotated that it rises to the level of a genuine history of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union." - David Brody, professor emeritus, University of California, Davis

"An engaging and revealing story about the 'making' of one of our country's most democratic and progressive unions - a story of the past that speaks powerfully to the challenges facing labor today." - Howard Kimeldorf, University of Michigan

Ever since the Enlightenment, race theory and its inevitable partner, racism, have followed a crooked road, constructed by dominant peoples to justify their domination of others. Filling a huge gap in historical literature that long focused on the non-white, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, tracing not only the invention of the idea of race but also the frequent worship of "whiteness" for economic, social, scientific, and political ends. Our story begins in Greek and Roman antiquity, where the concept of race did not exist, only geography and the opportunity to conquer and enslave others. Not until the eighteenth century did an obsession with whiteness flourish, with the German invention of the notion of Caucasian beauty. This theory made northern Europeans into "Saxons," "Anglo-Saxons," and "Teutons," envisioned as uniquely handsome natural rulers. Here was a worldview congenial to northern Europeans bent on empire. There followed an explosion of theories of race, now focusing on racial temperament as well as skin color. Spread by such intellectuals as Madame de Stael and Thomas Carlyle, white race theory soon reached North America with a vengeance. Its chief spokesman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, did the most to label Anglo-Saxons-icons of beauty and virtue-as the only true Americans. It was an ideal that excluded not only blacks but also all ethnic groups not of Protestant, northern European background. The Irish and Native Americans were out and, later, so were the Chinese, Jews, Italians, Slavs, and Greeks-all deemed racially alien. Did immigrations threaten the very existence of America? Americans were assumed to be white, but who among poor immigrants could become truly American? A tortured and convoluted series of scientific explorations developed-theories intended to keep Anglo-Saxons at the top: the ever-popular measurement of skulls, the powerful eugenics movement, and highly biased intelligence tests-all designed to keep working people out and down. As Painter reveals, power-supported by economics, science, and politics-continued to drive exclusionary notions of whiteness until, deep into the twentieth century, political realities enlarged the category of truly American. A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People forcefully reminds us that the concept of one white race is a recent invention. The meaning, importance, and realty of this all-too-human thesis of race have buckled under the weight of a long and rich unfolding of events.

Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Traveling on China's new "Sky Train," she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family whom she'd befriended decades earlier and concludes an oral-history project with women elders.

As she uncovers stories of Tibetan women's courage, resourcefulness, and spiritual strength in the face of loss and hardship since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, and observes the changes wrought by the controversial new rail line in the futuristic "new Lhasa," Sam comes to embrace her own capacity for letting go, for faith, and for acceptance. Her glimpse of Tibet's past through the lens of the women - a visionary educator, a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride - affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today - in Tibet, in exile, and in the widening Tibetan diaspora.

Gracefully connecting the women's poignant histories to larger cultural, political, and spiritual themes, the author comes full circle, finding wisdom and wholeness even as she acknowledges Tibet's irreversible changes.

Canyon Sam is a San Francisco writer, performance artist, and Tibet activist. Her one-woman show "The Dissident" was critically acclaimed in the "Village Voice" and the "Boston Globe." This is her first book.

"Canyon Sam's "Sky Train" powerfully moves the heart, as it brings to life deep truths about our world today, about Tibet, the land and people and especially its outstanding women. Just as important is the author's own revelatory discovery of 'Tibet' as a compassionate, wise, and down to earth state-of-mind essential to the survival of the whole world. Words cannot express how wonderful is this honest, generous, and perceptive book." - Robert Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University

"Years ago following her ancestral roots to China, but finding instead Tibet as a spiritual home, Canyon Sam made a miracle of a journey. Now in "Sky Train" she guides the reader on a life-changing adventure back to Tibet after more than twenty years and an epoch of cataclysmic change to produce a miracle of a book." - Maxine Hong Kingston, author of "The Woman Warrior"

"A book that is sure to illuminate a Tibet so many of us have been longing to know." - Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple"

"Through the experiences of older Tibetan women, the author offers a captivating journey spanning half a century and several countries. "Sky Train" conveys women's lessons of community-building, generosity, faith, and determination. A beautiful, moving, riveting book." - Valerie Matsumoto, UCLA

"This book about the Dharma of connection, of companioning, of compassion, has strengthened my own devotion." - Sylvia Boorstein, author of "Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life"

"It is Canyon Sam's love for Tibet - its culture and its people - that makes this book so special. An important work . . . poignant and inspiring." - Sharon Salzberg, author of "Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness"

For more about the author, go to http: //www.canyonsam.com/skytrain.html

More than twelve million immigrants, many of them children, passed through Ellis Island's gates between 1892 and 1954. Children also came through the "Guardian of the Western Gate," the detention center on Angel Island in California that was designed to keep Chinese immigrants out of the United States. Based on the oral histories of fifty children who came to the United States before 1950, this book chronicles their American odyssey against the backdrop of World Wars I and II, the rise and fall of Hitler's Third Reich, and the hardships of the Great Depression. Ranging in age from four to sixteen years old, the children hailed from Northern, Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe; the Middle East; and China. Across ethnic lines, the child immigrants'life stories tell a remarkable tale of human resilience. The sources of family and community support that they relied on, their educational aims and accomplishments, their hard work, and their optimism about the future are just as crucial today for the new immigrants of the twenty-first century. These personal narratives offer unique perspectives on the psychological experience of being an immigrant child and its impact on later development and well-being. They chronicle the joys and sorrows, the aspirations and achievements, and the challenges that these small strangers faced while becoming grown citizens.

Like an old-fashioned hymn sung in rounds, Something's Rising gives a stirring voice to the lives, culture, and determination of the people fighting the destructive practice of mountaintop removal in the coalfields of central Appalachia. Each person's story, unique and unfiltered, articulates the hardship of living in these majestic mountains amid the daily desecration of the land by the coal industry because of America's insistence on cheap energy. Developed as an alternative to strip mining, mountaintop removal mining consists of blasting away the tops of mountains, dumping waste into the valleys, and retrieving the exposed coal. This process buries streams, pollutes wells and waterways, and alters fragile ecologies in the region. The people who live, work, and raise families in central Appalachia face not only the physical destruction of their land but also the loss of their culture and health in a society dominated by the consequences of mountaintop removal. Included here are oral histories from Jean Ritchie, "the mother of folk," who doesn't let her eighty-six years slow down her fighting spirit; Judy Bonds, a tough-talking coal-miner's daughter; Kathy Mattea, the beloved country singer who believes cooperation is the key to winning the battle; Jack Spadaro, the heroic whistle-blower who has risked everything to share his insider knowledge of federal mining agencies; Larry Bush, who doesn't back down even when speeding coal trucks are used to intimidate him; Denise Giardina, a celebrated writer who ran for governor to bring attention to the issue; and many more. The book features both well-known activists and people rarely in the media. Each oral history is prefaced with a biographical essay that vividly establishes the interview settings and the subjects' connections to their region. Written and edited by native sons of the mountains, this compelling book captures a fever-pitch moment in the movement against mountaintop removal. Silas House and Jason Howard are experts on the history of resistance in Appalachia, the legacy of exploitation of the region's natural resources, and area's unique culture and landscape. This lyrical and informative text provides a critical perspective on a powerful industry. The cumulative effect of these stories is stunning and powerful. Something's Rising will long stand as a testament to the social and ecological consequences of energy at any cost and will be especially welcomed by readers of Appalachian studies, environmental science, and by all who value the mountain's majesty -- our national heritage.

In neighborhoods, schools, community centers, and workplaces, people are using oral history to capture and collect the kinds of stories that the history books and the media tend to overlook: stories of personal struggle and hope, of war and peace, of family and friends, of beliefs, traditions, and values--the stories of our lives. "Catching Stories: A Practical Guide to Oral History" is a clear and comprehensive introduction for those with little or no experience in planning or implementing oral history projects. Opening with the key question, "Why do oral history?" the guide outlines the stages of a project from idea to final product--the interviewing process, basic technical principles, and audio and video recording techniques. The guide covers interview transcription, legal issues, archiving, funding sources, and sharing oral history with audiences. Intended for teachers, students, librarians, local historians, and volunteers as well as individuals, "Catching Stories" is the place to start for anyone who wants to document the memories and collect the stories of community or family.

It was often joked that Swindon Works' men came with 'GWR' stamped on their bottoms, so much so that even in the BR era they considered themselves Great Western! Those who worked 'Inside' as locals called it, possessed a fierce price in their work and in their worldwide reputation. Using material from numerous interviews with workshop men and women as well as official documents, Swindon expert Rosa Matheson examines the differences of each era - GWR / BR; conditions in the Works; the idiosyncrasies of work practices, such as odd names of jobs like 'holder-upper' and generational family work histories. She also explores the relationships between the workers - men ad women, shopfloor and management, foremen and men and especially 'Loco' versus Carriage and Wagon! Whilst many books have been written about the Works, few, if any, have given a chance to those who worked in its workshops to have their voices heard in the telling of that story. This beautifully illustrated book uses their words and experiences to tell the good, the bad and the ugly of working 'Inside'.

Since the 1980s Chicana writers including Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Alma Luz Villanueva have reworked iconic Mexican cultural symbols such as mother earth goddesses and La Llorona (the Wailing Woman of Mexican folklore), re-imagining them as powerful female figures. After reading the works of Chicana writers who created bold, powerful, and openly sexual female characters, Debra J. Blake wondered how everyday Mexican American women would characterize their own lives in relation to the writers' radical reconfigurations of female sexuality and gender roles. To find out, Blake gathered oral histories from working-class and semiprofessional U.S. Mexicanas. In "Chicana Sexuality and Gender," she compares the self-representations of these women with fictional and artistic representations by academic-affiliated, professional intellectual Chicana writers and visual artists, including Alma M. Lopez and Yolanda Lopez.

Blake looks at how the Chicana professional intellectuals and the U.S. Mexicana women refigure confining and demeaning constructions of female gender roles and racial, ethnic, and sexual identities. She organizes her analysis around re-imaginings of La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Llorona, indigenous Mexica goddesses, and La Malinche, the indigenous interpreter for Hernan Cortes during the Spanish conquest. In doing so, Blake reveals how the professional intellectuals and the working-class and semiprofessional women rework or invoke the female icons to confront the repression of female sexuality, limiting gender roles, inequality in male and female relationships, and violence against women. While the representational strategies of the two groups of women are significantly different and the U.S. Mexicanas would not necessarily call themselves feminists, Blake nonetheless illuminates a continuum of Chicana feminist thinking, showing how both groups of women expand lifestyle choices and promote the health and well-being of women of Mexican origin or descent.

Proverbs in African Orature examines how preliterate Africans handle oral literacy criticism of their proverbs. The study demonstrates that Africans employ literary styles and strategies in speaking their proverbs. It also shows that the notion and practice of literary aesthetics are indigenous to African peoples. In studying these proverbs, the author goes beyond mere translation or contextual analysis and employs a new empirical approach. The approach involves the researcher recording live scenes of proverb use, appreciation, and criticism by the people of Aniocha in Delta State, Nigeria. By examining the literary background and the present study, the author demonstrates that scholars have indeed recognized the need for this new approach but have not yet tried it. Monye is the first. The author also situates proverbs in the context of other African oral forms, drawing copious examples from the Anoicha Igbo people. This study and analysis reveals that Anoicha proverbs have literary value and that the people apply their folk critical canons in the appreciation and criticism of these proverbs. Proverbs in African Orature is a highly appropriate work for African Studies scholars, especially those focusing on oral literature.

Celebrating Israel--past, present, and future

"A singular achievement that captures Israel's past, present, and future with compelling words and vivid photographs....More than a handsome volume, the Strobers have made an extraordinary contribution to understanding today's Middle East."
--Rabbi A. James Rudin, Senior Interreligious Advisor, American Jewish Committee

"Deborah and Gerald Strober have done it once again. Israel at Sixty is a fine oral history about a brilliant and noble moment in Jewish history--and human history."
--Ben J. Wattenberg, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Based on the authors' extensive interviews with Israelis and others throughout the world who have participated in the many events encompassing the Jewish state's sixty years of nationhood and who represent a broad spectrum of views, Israel at Sixty offers a balanced, comprehensive understanding of this constantly changing nation. Through the medium of oral history, combined with extensive background and factual data, this exquisite commemorative volume re-creates the most important moments of Israel's past through the eyes of those who lived it, and looks forward to new challenges that await this vibrant and dynamic nation in the future.

From the fall of the Bastille in 1789 to the coming of Napoleon ten years later, the commemoration of the dead was a recurring theme during the French Revolution. Based on extensive research across a wide range of sources, this book is the first comprehensive study of the cultural politics of commemoration in Revolutionary France. It examines what remembrance meant to the people who staged and attended ceremonies, raised monuments, listened to speeches and purchased souvenirs in memory of the Revolution's dead. It explores the political purposes these commemorations served and the conflicts they gave rise to while also examining the cultural traditions they drew upon. Above all, it asks what private ends did the Revolution's rites of memory serve? What consolation did commemoration bring to those the dead left behind, and what conflicts did this relationship between the public and the private dimensions of remembrance give rise to?

Contesting home defence is a new history of the Home Guard, a novel national defence force of the Second World War composed of civilians who served as part-time soldiers: it questions accounts of the force and the war, which have seen them as symbols of national unity. It scrutinises the Home Guard's reputation and explores whether this 'people's army' was a site of social cohesion or of dissension by assessing the competing claims made for it at the time. It then examines the way it was represented during the war and has been since, notably in Dad's Army, and discusses the memories of men and women who served in it. The book makes a significant and original contribution to debates concerning the British home front and introduces fresh ways of understanding the Second World War. -- .