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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history
It was nearly the turn of the century. Not only was the century
changing but the ways of life were changing. Many new inventions
were making life easier. Electricity was becoming more and more
available. Travel was becoming more comfortable and convenient. The
awareness of the plight of the Native American Indians was more
widely known. The Wounded Knee Massacre was a recent occurrence. As
more and more people were exposed to the manner in which Indians
were treated, attitudes changed. The Indian population had declined
to its lowest ebb at the turn of the century. The Trans-Mississippi
Exposition in Omaha was an opportunity to show off many of the new
inventions and to help the rest of the country be aware of the
riches West of the Mississippi. One Frank A. Rinehart, the premier
photographer in Omaha, was appointed the Official Photographer for
the Trans-Mississippi Expo. At the last minute, it was decided to
bring about 500 Indians to the Expo to show attendees the human
side of this misunderstood people. Rinehart had the unique
opportunity to produce photographic portraits of each of the Native
Americans in attendance. "The Edge of Extinction" not only
highlights some of those portraits of this handsome race, but also
gives a view of life in Omaha, the commentary of the national press
concerning the Trans-Mississippi, a look at the man who was
Rinehart and more so as to help understand this time in the history
of the Midwest.
This book examines the portrayal of the Palestinian-Israeli
'conflict' by looking at the language used in its reporting and how
this can, in turn, influence public opinion. The book explores how
language use helps frame an event to elicit a particular
interpretation from the reader and how this can be manipulated to
introduce bias. Sirhan begins the book by examining the history of
the 'conflict', and the many persistent myths that surround it. She
analyses how five events in the 'conflict' (two in which the
Palestinians are victims, two in which the Israelis are victims,
and Operation Cast Lead) are reported in five British newspapers:
The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph,
and The Times. By looking at these events across a range of
newspapers, the book investigates differences in the way that the
media report each side, before exploring what factors motivate
these differences - including issues of bias, censorship, lobbying,
and propaganda.
A fascinating portrait of gay men and women throughout time whose
lives have influenced society at large, as well as what we
recognize as today's varied gay culture. This book gives a voice to
more than eighty people from every major continent and from all
walks of life. It includes poets and philosophers, rulers and
spies, activists and artists. Alongside such celebrated figures as
Michelangelo, Frederick the Great and Harvey Milk are lesser-known
but no less surprising individuals: Dong Xian and the Chinese
emperor Ai, whose passion flourished in the 1st century BC; the
unfortunate Robert De Peronne, first to be burned at the stake for
sodomy; Katharine Philips, writing proto-lesbian poetry in
seventeenth-century England; and 'Aimee' and 'Jaguar', whose love
defied the death camps of wartime Germany. With many striking
illustrations, Gay Life Stories will entertain, give pause for
thought, and ultimately celebrate the diversity of human history.
Jeremy Bentham's law of marriage is firmly based on the principle
of utility, which claims that all human actions are governed by a
wish to gain pleasure and avoid pain, and on the proposition that
men and women are equal. He wrote in a late eighteenth century
context of Enlightenment debate about marriage and the family. As
such his contemporaries were Hume, Locke and Milton; Wollstonecraft
and More. These were the turbulent years leading to the French
Revolution and it is in this milieu that Mary Sokol seeks to
rediscover the historical Bentham. Instead of regarding his thought
as timeless, she considers Bentham's attitude to the reform of
marriage law and plans for the social reform of marriage, placing
both his life and work in the philosophical and historical context
of his time.
This is the first full-length biography of Frances Power Cobbe
(1822-1904), Anglo-Irish reformer, feminist, and
anti-vivisectionist Lori Williamson builds on original research,
Cobbe's autobiography, and the work of later historians to analyze
Cobbe's life as well as her ideological outlook.
A workhouse visitor, Cobbe campaigned strenuously against those
in power for rights of women, the poor and of animals. A prominent
critic of the Poor Law, she was also the first person to draw up a
petition to control cruelty to animals. Using Cobbe's thoughts and
activities as a catalyst, Power and Protest explores the issues of
protest, reform, hierarchy, power, and gender, the relationship
between men and women, humans and animals, and includes important
work on pressure-group dynamics.
Given its wide-ranging scope, depiction of nineteenth-century
British society and culture, and its exploration of the symbiotic
relationships between ideology and the dynamics of protest, Power
and Protest will attract students of history, social policy, and
gender. Its emphasis on anti-vivisection activity provides a
powerful basis for understanding power relations and the historical
concept of rights.
This book reconsiders standard narratives regarding Austrian
emigres and exiles to Britain by addressing the seminal role of
Sigmund Freud and his writings, and the critical part played by his
contemporaries, in the construction of a method promoting humanized
relations between individual and society and subjectivity and
culture. This anthology presents groundbreaking examples of the
manners in which well-known personalities including psychoanalysts
Anna Freud and Ernst Kris, sociologist Marie Jahoda, authors Stefan
Zweig and Hilde Spiel, film director Berthold Viertel, architect
Ernst Freud, and artist Oskar Kokoschka, achieved a greater impact,
and contributed to the broadening of British and global cultures,
through constructing a psychologically effective language and
activating their emigre networks. They advanced a visionary
Viennese tradition through political and social engagements and
through promoting humanistic perspectives in their scientific,
educational and artistic works.
This book seeks to break new ground, both empirically and
conceptually, in examining discourses of identity formation and the
agency of critical social practices in Malaysia. Taking an
inclusive cultural studies perspective, it questions the
ideological narrative of 'race' and 'ethnicity' that dominates
explanations of conflicts and cleavages in the Malaysian context.
The contributions are organised in three broad themes. 'Identities
in Contestation: Borders, Complexities and Hybridities' takes a
range of empirical studies-literary translation, religion, gender,
ethnicity, indigeneity and sexual orientation-to break down
preconceived notions of fixed identities. This then opens up an
examination of 'Identities and Movements: Agency and Alternative
Discourses', in which contributors deal with counter-hegemonic
social movements-of anti-racism, young people, environmentalism and
independent publishing-that explicitly seek to open up greater
critical, democratic space within the Malaysian polity. The third
section, 'Identities and Narratives: Culture and the Media', then
provides a close textual reading of some exemplars of new cultural
and media practices found in oral testimonies, popular music, film,
radio programming and storytelling who have consciously created
bodies of work that question the dominant national narrative. This
book is a valuable interdisciplinary work for advanced students and
researchers interested in representations of identity and
nationhood in Malaysia, and for those with wider interests in the
fields of critical cultural studies and discourse analysis. "Here
is a fresh, startling book to aid the task of unbinding the
straitjackets of 'Malay', 'Chinese' and 'Indian', with which
colonialism bound Malaysia's plural inheritance, and on which the
postcolonial state continues to rely. In it, a panoply of unlikely
identities-Bajau liminality, Kelabit philosophy, Islamic feminism,
refugee hybridity and more-finds expression and offers hope for
liberation". Rachel Leow, University of Cambridge "This book shakes
the foundations of race thinking in Malaysian studies by expanding
the range of cases, perspectives and outcomes of identity. It
offers students of Malaysia an examination of identity and agency
that is expansive, critical and engaging, and its interdisciplinary
depth brings Malaysian studies into conversation with scholarship
across the world". Sumit Mandal, University of Nottingham Malaysia
"This is a much-needed work that helps us to take apart the
colonial inherited categories of race which informed the notion of
the plural society, the idea of plurality without multiculturalism.
It complicates the picture of identity by bringing in religion,
gender, indigeneity and sexual orientation, and helps us to imagine
what a truly multiculturalist Malaysia might look like". Syed Farid
Alatas, National University of Singapore
The stunning true story of the rise of Nazism in America in the years leading to WWII—and the fearless Jewish gangsters and crime families who joined forces to fight back. With an intense cinematic style, acclaimed nonfiction crime author Michael Benson reveals the thrilling role of Jewish mobsters like Bugsy Siegel in stomping out the terrifying tide of Nazi sympathizers during the 1930s and 1940s.
As Adolph Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in major American cities, and by 1933, there were more than one-hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States. Few Americans dared to speak out or fight back—until an organized resistance of notorious Jewish mobsters (Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Red Levine, and others) waged their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst, gangland-style . . .
Packed with surprising, little-known facts, graphic details, and unforgettable personalities, Gangsters vs. Nazis chronicles the mob’s most ruthless tactics in taking down fascism—inspiring ordinary Americans to join them in their fight. The book culminates in one of the most infamous events of the pre-war era—the 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden—in which law-abiding citizens stood alongside hardened criminals to fight against the Nazis for the soul of America.
This is the story of the mob that’s rarely told—one of the most fascinating chapters in American history and American organized crime.
A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative
survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes
covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social,
spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the
Human Body in Antiquity (1300 BCE - 500 CE) Edited by Daniel
Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of
the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda
Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of
the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda
Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University
College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in
the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome
Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College
London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age
of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library
of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College
of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in
the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier,
University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of
Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters:
1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex and Sexuality 4.
Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and
Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age,
Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine
and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The
Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad
overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through
history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly
illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most
authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body
through history.
"This monograph is an important contribution to our understanding
of the varied fortunes of British Christianity during the twentieth
century." - Rev Dr Andrew Atherstone, Tutor in Church History and
Latimer Research Fellow, Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, UK
"This book is an important and original work. Anyone interested in
twentieth-century Christianity in Britain will learn much from it.
Grant Masom enables the reader to make sense of the new urban
spaces that became a key part of British life in the last hundred
years." - Rev Dr David Goodhew, Visiting Fellow of St Johns
College, Durham University, UK "This ground-breaking study adds new
depth to our understanding of the importance of religion in English
life and the role of the churches in shaping their own destiny in
the first three-quarters of the twentieth century." - Dr Mark
Smith, Associate Professor in History, University of Oxford, UK
This book contributes to the ongoing academic debates on
secularisation-or the marginalisation of mainstream religious
beliefs and practices-in twentieth-century British society. It
addresses three areas in which the current literature is weak: the
'agency' of organised religion in the outcomes described as
secularisation, rather than explanations based on external
challenges (such as the 'modernisation' of society and thought,
increased affluence, and more leisure choices); a focus on urban
areas transformed by twentieth-century industrialisation and
suburbanisation; and an extended time period to the end of the
third quarter of the twentieth century, allowing proper
consideration of long-term trends alongside short-term upheavals
such as the World Wars, the Great Depression, and the social
changes of the 1960s. Further, the book employs a distinctly
different, highly data-driven approach, considers all religious
movements, and sets its conclusions within the wider social and
cultural context of a representative community.
This volume, bringing together work by scholars from Europe, East
Asia, North America, and West Africa, investigates transnational
religious spaces in a comparative manner by juxtaposing East Asian
and African examples. It highlights flows of ideas, actors, and
organizations out of, into, or within a given continental space.
These flows are patterned mainly by colonialism or migration. The
book also examines cases where the transnational space in question
encompasses both East Asia and Africa, notably in the development
of Japanese new religions in Africa. Most of the studies are
located in the present; a few go back to the late nineteenth
century. The volume is rounded off by Thomas Tweed's systematic
reflections on categories for the study of transnationalism; his
chapter "Flows and Dams" critically weighs the metaphorical
language we use to think, speak, and write about transnational
religious spaces.
The Anatomy of the Book of Esther is the first commentary on the
Biblical book that includes, not only classic scriptural and
midrashic commentary, but also historical comments that are based
on Persian, Greek, archaeological and other historical sources. The
book includes the complete Hebrew text and English translation, its
unique commentary, and both preliminary blessings and post reading
blessings and hymns. An introduction that places this more than two
millenia-old book historically makes this edition fascinating
reading, an indispensible educational tool and a necessary text for
synagogue observance.
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