As uncontrolled development forces crises in the natural world, deeply ingrained human connections with the earth are changing. Oral history's proven ability to explore issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality make it a uniquely effective methodology for bringing in new perspectives to our understanding of environments. This book brings together interviews with a global range of activists, farmers, water system managers, victims of catastrophe, tribal trustees, wilderness rangers, reindeer herders, and foresters, among others whose life experience gives them special insights into human-environmental interaction and adaption. Commentary by oral historians examines how these stories can be used to better understand our relationship with the natural world. Oral History and the Environment takes what could seem broad and impersonal forces such as climate change and environmentalismLand crystalizes their meaning through personal stories. It overturns narrow historical frameworks bounded artificially by national borders and instead portrays the issues facing our common ecosystems.

Modern languages like English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi as well as ancient languages like Greek, Latin and Sanskrit all belong to the Indo-European language family, which means that they all descend from a common ancestor. But how, more precisely, are the Indo-European languages related to each other? This book brings together pioneering research from a team of international scholars to address this fundamental question. It provides an introduction to linguistic subgrouping as well as offering comprehensive, systematic and up-to-date analyses of the ten main branches of the Indo-European language family: Anatolian, Tocharian, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic. By highlighting that these branches are saliently different from each other, yet at the same time display striking similarities, the book demonstrates the early diversification of the Indo-European language family, spoken today by half the world's population. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Nineteenth and early twentieth century Reading prospered from the canal, the railway, brewing and biscuit making, but massive population growth in the middle years of the nineteenth century brought with it many problems. Coley Talking lifts the lid on a dark aspect of Reading's, and England's, history. Memories, photographs, maps and archives, tell the story of how life was lived in one of its poorest communities. All the symptoms of extreme poverty - workhouses, chronic disease, insanitary back-to-back housing - are revealed in shocking, 'this is what life was like' detail. But change was on the way: ragged schools, sanitation, the work of socialist councillors Harry and Lorenzo Quelch, and the early days of the local Labour party, together with a strong and resilient community spirit all played their parts. Through the microcosm of Coley we are shown the transformations brought about by slum clearance, the NHS, state education and the work of trade unions, and can appreciate the initiatives which make life better today.

6 June, 1944. 156,000 troops from 12 different countries, 11,000 aircraft, 7,000 naval vessels, 24 hours. D-Day - the beginning of the Allied invasion of Hitler's formidable 'Fortress Europe' - was the largest amphibious invasion in history. There has never been a battle like it, before or since. But beyond the statistics and over sixty years on, what is it about the events of D-Day that remain so compelling? The courage of the men who fought and died on the beaches of France? The sheer boldness of the invasion plan? Or the fact that this, Rommel's 'longest day', heralded the beginning of the end of World War II? One of the defining battles of the war, D-Day is scored into the imagination as the moment when the darkness of the Third Reich began to be swept away. This is the story of D-Day, told through the voices of over 1,000 survivors - from high-ranking Allied and German officers, to the paratroopers who landed in Normandy before dawn, the infantry who struggled ashore and the German troops who defended the coast. Cornelius Ryan captures the horror and the glory of D-Day, relating in emotive and compelling detail the years of inspired tactical planning that led up to the invasion, its epic implementation and every stroke of luck and individual act of heroism that would later define the battle. In the words of its author, The Longest Day is a story not of war, but of the courage of men.

Practicing Critical Oral History: Connecting School and Community provides ways and words for educators to use critical oral history in their classroom and communities in order to put their students and the voices of people from marginalized communities at the center of their curriculum to enact change. Clearly and concisely written, this book offers a thought-provoking overview of how to use stories from those who have been underrepresented by dominant systems to identify a critical topic, engage with critical processes, and enact critical transformative-justice outcomes. Critical oral history both writes and rights history, so that participants-both interviewers and narrators-in critical oral history projects aim to contextualize stories and make the voices and perspectives of those who have been historically marginalized heard and listened to. Supplemented throughout with sample activities, lesson-plan outlines, tables, and illustrative figures, Practicing Critical Oral History: Connecting School and Community is an essential resource for all those interested in integrating the techniques of critical oral history into an educational setting.

A vivid historical account of the social world of Rome as it moved from republic to empire.

In 49 B.C., the seven hundred fifth year since the founding of Rome, Julius Caesar crossed a small border river called the Rubicon and plunged Rome into cataclysmic civil war. Tom Holland’s enthralling account tells the story of Caesar’s generation, witness to the twilight of the Republic and its bloody transformation into an empire.

From Cicero, Spartacus, and Brutus, to Cleopatra, Virgil, and Augustus, here are some of the most legendary figures in history brought thrillingly to life.

Combining verve and freshness with scrupulous scholarship, Rubicon is not only an engrossing history of this pivotal era but a uniquely resonant portrait of a great civilization in all its extremes of self-sacrifice and rivalry, decadence and catastrophe, intrigue, war, and world-shaking ambition.

In 2009, cabin crew in the BASSA union embarked on a historic, two-year battle against British Airways which was seeking to impose reduced crew levels and to transform working conditions. In the face of employer hostility, legal obstruction, government opposition and adverse media coverage, this workforce, diverse in terms of gender, sexuality, race and nationality undertook determined resistance against this offensive. Notably, their action included twenty-two days of strike action that saw mass participation in rallies and on picket lines. The dispute cost British Airways 150 million in lost revenue and its main outcome was the cabin crew's successful defence of their union and core conditions. Here, in their own words, Cabin Crew Conflict tells the strikers' story, focusing on cabin crew responses, perceptions of events, and their lived experiences of taking industrial action in a hostile climate. Foregrounding questions of class, gender and identity, and how these were manifest in the course of the dispute, the authors highlight the strike's significance for contemporary employment relations in and beyond the aviation industry. Lively and insightful, Cabin Crew Conflict explores the organisational and ideological role of the trade union, and shows how a 'non-traditional' workforce can organise and take effective action.

In this people's history of Ireland, John Creedon introduces a fascinating collection of stories from the Schools' Collection. This treasure trove of old stories, ways and wisdom, which could have been lost for ever, was collected by schoolchildren as part of a nationwide project set up in the 1930s to preserve Irish folklore. Published here for the first time, this 'best of' selection includes chapters on ghost stories, agriculture, forgotten trades, schooling and pastimes. The result is an incredible arc of folk history that tells us about ourselves and how we lived long ago.

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.

A "deeply moving book" (Studs Terkel) and the first ever oral history to document the experience of ordinary Japanese people during World War II "Hereafter no one will be able to think, write, or teach about the Pacific War without reference to [the Cooks'] work." -Marius B. Jansen, Emeritus Professor of Japanese History, Princeton University This pathbreaking work of oral history by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook was the first book ever to capture the experience of ordinary Japanese people during the war and remains the classic work on the subject. In a sweeping panorama, Japan at War takes us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese home front during the inhuman raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, offering glimpses of how the twentieth century's most deadly conflict affected the lives of the Japanese population. The book "seeks out the true feelings of the wartime generation [and] illuminates the contradictions between the official views of the war and living testimony" (Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan). For decades, American and Japanese readers have turned to Japan at War for a candid portrait of the Japanese experience during World War II in all its complexity. Featuring essays that contextualize the oral histories of each tumultuous period covered, Japan at War is appropriate both as an introduction to those war-ravaged decades and as a riveting reference for those studying the war in the Pacific.

"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.

The use of contemporary oral history to improve public policies and programs is a growing, transdisciplinary practice. Indispensable for students and practitioners, Practicing Oral History to Improve Public Policies and Programs is the first book to define the practice, explain how policy-makers use it, show how it relates to other types of oral history, and provide guidance on the ethics and legalities involved. Packed with case studies from disciplines as diverse as medicine, agriculture, and race relations, as well as many examples from the author's own work, this book provides an essential overview of the current state of the field within oral history for public policy and a complete methodology for the process of designing and implementing an oral history project. The comprehensive How To section demonstrates how to use the practice to advance the reader's career, their chosen discipline and the public interest, whether their field is in oral history or in public policy. This book is an important resource for oral historians, fledgling or experienced, who are keen to find new applications and funding for their work, as well as for professionals in the public and not-for-profit sectors who want to learn to use oral history to improve their own policies and programs.

Voices and Books in the English Renaissance offers a new history of reading that focuses on the oral reader and the voice- or performance-aware silent reader, rather than the historical reader, who is invariably male, silent, and alone. It recovers the vocality of education for boys and girls in Renaissance England, and the importance of training in pronuntiatio (delivery) for oral-aural literary culture. It offers the first attempt to recover the voice-and tones of voice especially-from textual sources. It explores what happens when we bring voice to text, how vocal tone realizes or changes textual meaning, and how the literary writers of the past tried to represent their own and others' voices, as well as manage and exploit their readers' voices. The volume offers fresh readings of key Tudor authors who anticipated oral readers including Anne Askew, William Baldwin, and Thomas Nashe. It rethinks what a printed book can be by searching the printed page for vocal cues and exploring the neglected role of the voice in the printing process. Renaissance printed books have often been misheard and a preoccupation with their materiality has led to a focus on them as objects. However, Renaissance printed books are alive with possible voices, but we will not understand this while we focus on the silent reader.

In 1948, shortly after settling with his family in the village of Blaxhall, Suffolk, George Ewart Evans started recording the conversations he had with neighbours, many of whom were born in the nineteenth century and had worked on farms before the arrival of mechanisation. He soon realised that below the surface of their stories were the remnants of an ancient, rural culture previously ignored by historians. In the detail of village architecture, the of superstitions of tree-planting and rituals house-building, in the esoteric practices of horse cults or the pagan habit of 'telling the bees', The Pattern Under the Plough unearths the rich seam of customs and beliefs that this old culture has brought to our communities. Even in modern societies, governed by science and technology, there are still traces of a civilisation whose beliefs were bound to the soil and whose reliance on the seasons was a matter of life or death.

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.

In addition to the problem of language, conducting oral histories with immigrant narrators often requires special considerations: past violence, cultural sensitivity, and lack of trust. Yet, these narrators are often witnesses to, or participants in, important historical events, or can describe otherwise-undocumented social phenomena. The first book to focus specifically on oral history practices with immigrant narrators, it -gives both the novice and experienced oral historian insights into their narrators' needs;-provides the tools to effectively plan and execute an oral history project in an immigrant community;-includes case studies, additional resources, and templates of important oral history processes.

In the early years of the 21st century, a number of Muslim women have achieved positions of influence. Women who care about the society in which they live and bring up their children are increasingly finding a voice and working together to make things happen. There's some way to go in harnessing the potential that lies at the heart of this change, but there is plenty of evidence that Muslim women are paving the way forward in new dynamic, challenging and creative ways. This book is all about women who have shown courage, dignity and strength; pioneers who have recognized their potential in the public and private realms of society, who have struggled, made sacrifices, taken pride in their multiple identities and who are committed to positive and peaceful change in the UK. This book presents the stories of 20 women from Bradford between the ages of 14 and 80, from their own perspectives. Based on a broader project called OurLives, which was designed to explore the insights and experiences of over a hundred women in Bradford, it belongs to a long tradition of oral history, where practical knowledge is passed from generation to generation. The book offers an intricate mosaic of the experiences, views and hopes of these women and in so doing emphasises the power of people's lives to aid deeper debate and understanding and gives voice to an important and often marginalised group. It will be fascinating to a range of people with an interest in Muslim women's lives and views and of wider interest to students, academics, policy-makers and professionals .

The second book in the five-volume Community Oral History Toolkit walks you through all the planning steps to travel from an idea to a completed collection of oral history interviews. Informed by an extensive survey of oral historians from across the country, this guide will get you started on firm ground so you don't get mired in unforeseen problems in the middle of your project. Designed especially for project administrators, it identifies participants and responsibilities that need to be covered, and details planning needs for everything from budgeting to technology, and from legal issues to ethics. Planning a Community Oral History Project sets the stage for the implementation steps outlined in Volume 3, Managing a Community Oral History Project.

The third book in the five-volume Community Oral History Toolkit takes the planning steps outlined in Volume 2 and puts them into action. It provides the practical details for turning your plans into reality and establishes the basis for guiding your project through the interviews to a successful conclusion. Project directors are given concrete, useful advice on how to manage people, money, technology, publicity, and administrative tasks from the beginning to the end of the project. Volume 3 outlines details for developing the necessary forms to properly administer a community oral history project (sample forms provided). The authors advise how to recruit volunteers and interviewees and provide helpful tips for conducting thorough interview and transcription training sessions and how to make arrangements for the life and safety of the project once the interviews are complete.

Mussolini in myth and memory. Paul Corner looks at the brutal reality of the Italian dictator's fascist regime and confronts the nostalgia for dictatorial rule evident today in many European countries. Mussolini has rarely been taken seriously as a totalitarian dictator; Hitler and Stalin have always cast too long a shadow. But what was a negative judgement on the Duce, considered innocuous and ineffective, has begun to work to his advantage. As has occurred with many other European dictators, present-day popular memory of Mussolini is increasingly indulgent; in Italy and elsewhere he is remembered as a strong, decisive leader and people now speak of the 'many good things' done by the regime. After all, it is said, Mussolini was not like 'the others'. Mussolini in Myth and Memory argues against this rehabilitation, documenting the inefficiencies, corruption, and violence of a highly repressive regime and exploding the myths of Fascist good government. But this short study does not limit itself to setting the record straight; it seeks also to answer the question of why there is nostalgia - not only in Italy - for dictatorial rule. Linking past history and present memory, Corner's analysis constructs a picture of the realities of the Italian regime and examines the more general problem of why, in a moment of evident crisis of western democracy, people look for strong leadership and take refuge in the memory of past dictatorships. If, in this book, Fascism is placed in its totalitarian context and Mussolini emerges firmly in the company of his fellow dictators, the study also shows how a memory of the past, formed through reliance on illusion and myth, can affect the politics of the present.

Community projects often falter after the interviews are completed. This final book of the five-volume Community Oral History Toolkit explains the importance of processing and archiving oral histories and takes the reader through all the steps required for good archiving and for concluding the oral history project so that it is preserved and accessible for future generations. The authors give special attention to record-keeping systems and repositories, and provide several examples from actual projects to ground the information in practical terms. Charts, checklists, and sample forms also help the reader apply concepts to practice. Volume 5 finishes with examples of creative ways community projects have used oral histories, such as performances, exhibitions, celebrations, websites, and more, in order to promote history and engage the community.

The Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937 led some thirty million Chinese to flee their homes in terror, and live in the words of artist and writer Feng Zikai in a sea of bitterness as refugees. Keith Schoppa paints a comprehensive picture of the refugee experience in one province Zhejiang, on the central Chinese coast where the Japanese launched major early offensives as well as notorious later campaigns. He recounts stories of both heroes and villains, of choices poorly made amid war s bewildering violence, of risks bravely taken despite an almost palpable quaking fear.

As they traveled south into China s interior, refugees stepped backward in time, sometimes as far as the nineteenth century, their journeys revealing the superficiality of China s modernization. Memoirs and oral histories allow Schoppa to follow the footsteps of the young and old, elite and non-elite, as they fled through unfamiliar terrain and coped with unimaginable physical and psychological difficulties. Within the context of Chinese culture, being forced to leave home was profoundly threatening to one s sense of identity. Not just people but whole institutions also fled from Japanese occupation, and Schoppa considers schools, governments, and businesses as refugees with narratives of their own.

Local governments responded variously to Japanese attacks, from enacting scorched-earth policies to offering rewards for the capture of plague-infected rats in the aftermath of germ warfare. While at times these official procedures improved the situation for refugees, more often as Schoppa describes in moving detail they only deepened the tragedy.

The Land Speaks explores the intersection of two vibrant fields, oral history and environmental studies. Ranging across farm and forest, city and wilderness, river and desert, this collection of fourteen oral histories gives voice to nature and the stories it has to tell. These essays consider topics as diverse as environmental activism, wilderness management, public health, urban exploring, and smoke jumping. They raise questions about the roles of water, neglected urban spaces, land ownership concepts, protectionist activism, and climate change. Covering almost every region of the United States and part of the Caribbean, Lee and Newfont and their diverse collection of contributors address the particular contributions oral history can make toward understanding issues of public land and the environment. In the face of global warming and events like the Flint water crisis, environmental challenges are undoubtedly among the most pressing issues of our time. These essays suggest that oral history can serve both documentary and problem-solving functions as we grapple with these challenges.