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What We Did in Bed: A Horizontal History
By Brian Fagan, Nadia Durrani. 2019
Pulling back the covers on the fascinating, yet often forgotten, history of the bed Louis XIV ruled France from his…
bedchamber. Winston Churchill governed Britain from his during World War II. Travelers routinely used to bed down with complete strangers, and whole families shared beds in many preindustrial households. Beds were expensive items—and often for show. Tutankhamun was buried on a golden bed, wealthy Greeks were sent to the afterlife on dining beds, and deceased middle-class Victorians were propped up on a bed in the parlor. In this sweeping social history that covers the past seventy thousand years, Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani look at the endlessly varied role of the bed through time. This was a place for sex, death, childbirth, storytelling, and sociability as well as sleeping. But who did what with whom, why, and how could vary incredibly depending on the time and place. It is only in the modern era that the bed has transformed into a private, hidden zone, and its rich social history has largely been forgotten.Ghetto: The History of a Word
By Daniel B. Schwartz. 2019
Few words are as ideologically charged as “ghetto,” a term that has described legally segregated Jewish quarters, dense immigrant enclaves,…
Nazi holding pens, and black neighborhoods in the United States. Daniel B. Schwartz reveals how the history of ghettos is tied up with struggle and argument over the slippery meaning of a word.The Siege of Sarajevo: One Family’s Story of Separation, Struggle, and Strength
By Sanja Kulenovic. 2018
“In a world facing the worst refugee crisis in history, this is an important and timely book.”— John Zaritsky, Oscar-winning…
filmmaker “An epic tale. … Moving beyond words.”— Roy Gutman, Pulitzer Prize winner and Crimes of War Project chairman“A universal human story … and an invaluable historical source.”— Robert Donia, author of Sarajevo: A Biography “Sanja Kulenovic’s memoir captures courage and resilience … and shines a light on immigration crises everywhere.”— Foreword ReviewsIn 1992, Bosnian honeymooners in Southern California are suddenly stranded and homeless when their native Yugoslavia erupts into civil war. The stunned refugees must scrape together a new life in America with sporadic letters their sole, tenuous link to besieged family and loved ones back in Sarajevo.Sanja Kulenovic shares those precious letters—often written in darkness as bombs fell and gunfire rang out—to vividly capture the suffering her family and other Sarajevans endured through almost four years of daily bombardments, the perpetual threat of sniper fire, and three frozen, foodless winters.The Siege of Sarajevo searingly illustrates the human toll of war and the highly personal consequences of what often are dismissed as faraway conflicts. Highlighting the resilience and determination of immigrants, Kulenovic’s powerful story reminds us all that we are stronger than we’ve ever imagined.Patrias: Cuatro amigos, dos países y el destino de la gran migración mexicana
By Alfredo Corchado. 2019
Del premiado periodista y experto en inmigración Alfredo Corchado nos llega la extensa historia de la gran migración mexicana desde…
finales de los años ochenta hasta la actualidad. Cuando Alfredo Corchado se mudó a Filadelfia en 1987, se sintió como si fuera el único mexicano en la ciudad. Pero en un restaurant llamado Tequilas, conectó con otros dos mexicanos y un mexicano-estadounidense que igualmente se sentían aislados. Durante las tres décadas siguientes, los cuatro amigos continuaron reuniéndose para compartir sus raíces mexicanas y su amor por el tequila. Uno era un activista radical, otro un empresario de la restauración, el tercero un abogado y político. Alfredo, por su parte, era un joven reportero del Wall Street Journal. Patrias fusiona lo político y lo personal. Narra la historia de la última gran migración mexicana a través de los ojos de cuatro amigos en una época en que la población mexicana en los Estados Unidos fue de 700,000 personas durante los años setenta hasta más de 35 millones de personas en la actualidad. Es la historia de los Estados Unidos en una dolorosa transición política y económica.Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Race, Politics, and Culture in the United States and Brazil
By Jessica Lynn Graham. 2019
This book offers a historical analysis of one of the most striking and dramatic transformations to take place in Brazil…
and the United States during the twentieth century—the redefinition of the concepts of nation and democracy in racial terms. The multilateral political debates that occurred between 1930 and 1945 pushed and pulled both states towards more racially inclusive political ideals and nationalisms. Both countries utilized cultural production to transmit these racial political messages. At times working collaboratively, Brazilian and U.S. officials deployed the concept of “racial democracy” as a national security strategy, one meant to suppress the existential threats perceived to be posed by World War II and by the political agendas of communists, fascists, and blacks. Consequently, official racial democracy was limited in its ability to address racial inequities in the United States and Brazil. Shifting the Meaning of Democracy helps to explain the historical roots of a contemporary phenomenon: the coexistence of widespread antiracist ideals with enduring racial inequality.The Boundless Sea: Self and History
By Gary Y. Okihiro. 2019
The last book in a trilogy of explorations on space and time from a preeminent scholar, The Boundless Sea is…
Gary Y. Okihiro’s most innovative yet. Whereas Okihiro’s previous books, Island World and Pineapple Culture, sought to deconstruct islands and continents, tropical and temperate zones, this book interrogates the assumed divides between space and time, memoir and history, and the historian and the writing of history. Okihiro uses himself—from Okinawan roots, growing up on a sugar plantation in Hawai'i, researching in Botswana, and teaching in California—to reveal the historian’s craft involving diverse methodologies and subject matters. Okihiro’s imaginative narrative weaves back and forth through decades and across vast spatial and societal differences, theorized as historical formations, to critique history’s conventions. Taking its title from a translation of the author’s surname, The Boundless Sea is a deeply personal and reflective volume that challenges how we think about time and space, notions of history.The Hispanic-Mapuche Parlamentos: Interethnic Geo-politics And Concessionary Spaces In Colonial America (Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology)
By Tom D. Dillehay, José Manuel Zavala, Gertrudis Payàs. 2020
Anthropological histories and historical geographies of colonialism both have examined the material and discursive processes of colonization and have identified…
the opportunities for different kinds of relationships to emerge between Europeans and the indigenous people they encountered and in different ways colonized. These studies have revealed complex, differentiated, colonializing and colonialized identities, shifting and ambiguous political relations, social pluralities, and mutating and distinctive modes of colonization. This book focuses on the complementary historical, linguistic, and archaeological evidence for indigenous resistance and resilience in the specific form of parlamento political negotiations or attempted treaties between the Spanish Crown and the Araucanians in south-central Chile from the late 1600s to the early 1800s. Armed conflict, the rejection of most Spanish material culture, and the use of the indigenous Mapundungun language at parlamentos were obvious forms of Araucanian resistance. From a bigger picture, the book is based on an interdisciplinary perspective and asserts that historical archeology can provide better interpretations of past societies only if combined with other disciplines experienced by the treatment of existing data for historical periods, such as those provided by the written documents and which can be subjected to an anthropological, ethnohistorical, and linguistic reading by these disciplines. This creates tension because complementarity but also requires a questioning of the methods themselves as an offset look in order to include the other disciplinary perspectives.Flora of the Voynich Codex: An Exploration of Aztec Plants
By Jules Janick, Arthur O. Tucker. 2019
The Voynich Codex is one the most fascinating and bizarre manuscripts in the world. The manuscript (potentially equivalent to 232…
pages), or more properly a codex, consists of many foldout pages. It has been divided by previous researchers into sections known as Herbal/Botanical/Pharmacology; Balenological/Biological; Cosmology; one page known as The Rosette; and a final Recipe section. All the sections contain text in an unknown writing system, yet to be deciphered. Cryptological analyses by modern computer programs nevertheless have determined that the language is real and not a hoax, as has been suggested by some. Despite the fact that this codex is largely an herbal, the interpreters of this manuscript with two exceptions, have not been botanists. To this end, our recent research suggests that the Voynich is a 16th century codex associated with indigenous Indians of Nueva España educated in schools established by the Spanish. This is a breakthrough in Voynich studies. We are convinced that the Voynich codex is a document produced by Aztec descendants that has been unfiltered through Spanish editors. The flora of New Spain is vast, and the medicinal and culinary herbs used by the Aztecs were equally as copious. Even though it is our hypothesis that the Voynch Codex was written as a private herbal in 16th century New Spain, many of these herbs have relevance today because they or closely related species have been noted to be medicinal or have culinary value. The Voynich Codex has an estimated 359 illustration of plants (phytomorphs), 131 in the Herbal Section (large images) and 228 in the Pharmaceutical Section (small images of plant parts). In our book “Unraveling of the Voynich Codex”, to be published by Springer this summer, Tucker and Janick have partially identified species in the Herbal Section. In this proposed work, all of the plants of the Herbal Section will be identified along with those plants of the Pharmacology Section where identification is feasible. Each plant identification will include subdivisions to include descriptors (formal botanical identification), names in English, Spanish, and Mesoamerican names where known, ecology and range, and properties (medicinal and culinary) of these and related species. Photographs of the phytomorphs and contemporary plants will be included. These identifications represent hard evidence that the Voynich Codex is a 16th Century Mexican manuscript. Exploring the herbs of the Aztecs through the Voynich Codex will be a seminal work for all Voynich researchers and also of interest to a wider audience in medicinal and culinary herbs, artists, and historians. In summary, our new book project Flora of the Voynich Codex will provide a photo-illustrated guide to complete the botanical evidence related to the Voynich Codex, one of the most valuable historic texts of the 16th century.Losing Heaven: Religion in Germany since 1945
By Thomas Großbölting. 2016
As the birthplace of the Reformation, Germany has been the site of some of the most significant moments in the…
history of European Christianity. Today, however, its religious landscape is one that would scarcely be recognizable to earlier generations. This groundbreaking survey of German postwar religious life depicts a profoundly changed society: congregations shrink, private piety is on the wane, and public life has almost entirely shed its Christian character, yet there remains a booming market for syncretistic and individualistic forms of “popular religion.” Losing Heaven insightfully recounts these dramatic shifts and explains their consequences for German religious communities and the polity as a whole.This monograph traces the history of the dissident as a transnational phenomenon, exploring Soviet dissidents in Communist Central Europe from…
the mid-1960s until 1989. It argues that our understanding of the transnational activist would not be what it is today without the input of Central European oppositionists and ties the term to the global emergence and evolution of human rights. The book examines how we define dissidents and explores the association of political resistance to authoritarian regimes, as well as the impact of domestic and international recognition of the dissident figure. Turning to literature to analyse the meaning and impact of the dissident label, the book also incorporates interviews and primary accounts from former activists. Combining a unique theoretical approach with new empirical material, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary history, politics and culture in Central Europe.On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic…
Christians, representing over sixty percent of the community. In this collective biography, nine Catholic survivors share personal and compelling stories about the aftermath of the bomb and their lives since that day. Examining the Catholic community’s interpretation of the A-bomb, this book not only uses memory to provide a greater understanding of the destruction of the bombing, but also links it to the past experiences of religious persecution, drawing comparisons with the ‘Secret Christian’ groups which survived in the Japanese countryside after the banning of Christianity. Through in-depth interviews, it emerges that the memory of the atomic bomb is viewed through the lens of a community which had experienced suffering and marginalisation for more than 400 years. Furthermore, it argues that their dangerous memory confronts Euro-American-centric narratives of the atomic bombings, whilst also challenging assumptions around a providential bomb. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki presents the voices of Catholics, many of whom have not spoken of their losses within the framework of their faith before. As such, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese history, religion and war history.Stanley's Dream: The Medical Expedition to Easter Island (Carleton Library Series #247)
By Jacalyn Duffin. 2019
In 1964–65, an international team of thirty-eight scientists and assistants, led by Montreal physician Stanley Skoryna, sailed to the mysterious…
Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to conduct an unprecedented survey of its biosphere. Born of Cold War concerns about pollution, overpopulation, and conflict, and initially conceived as the first of two trips, the project was designed to document the island's status before a proposed airport would link the one thousand people living in humanity's remotest community to the rest of the world – its germs, genes, culture, and economy. Based on archival papers, diaries, photographs, and interviews with nearly twenty members of the original team, Stanley's Dream sets the expedition in its global context within the early days of ecological research and the understudied International Biological Program. Jacalyn Duffin traces the origins, the voyage, the often-complicated life within the constructed camp, the scientific preoccupations, the role of women, the resultant reports, films, and publications, and the previously unrecognized accomplishments of the project, including a goodwill tour of South America, the delivery of vaccines, and the discovery of a wonder drug. For Rapa Nui, the expedition coincided with its rebellion against the colonizing Chilean military, resulting in its first democratic election. For Canada, it reflected national optimism as the country prepared for its centennial and adopted its own flag. Ending with Duffin's own journey to the island to uncover the legacy of the study and the impact of the airport, and to elicit local memories, Stanley's Dream is an entertaining and poignant account of a long-forgotten but important Canadian-led international expedition.Latin American Soldiers: Armed Forces in the Region's History (Latin American Tópicos)
By John R. Bawden. 2020
In this accessible volume, John R. Bawden introduces readers to the study of armed forces in Latin American history through…
vivid narratives about four very different countries: Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, and Chile. Latin America has faced many of the challenges common to postcolonial states such as civil war, poorly defined borders, and politically fractured societies. Studying its militaries offers a powerful lens through which to understand major events, eras, and problems. Bawden draws on stories about the men and women who served in conventional armed forces and guerrilla armies to examine the politics and social structure of each country, the state’s evolution, and relationships between soldiers and the global community. Designed as an introductory text for undergraduates, Latin American Soldiers identifies major concepts, factors, and trends that have shaped modern Latin America. It is an essential text for students of Latin American Studies or History and is particularly useful for students focusing on the military, revolutions, and political history.The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth
By Josh Levin. 2019
Named one of the New York Times' 14 books to watch out for in May Slate editor Josh Levin's masterful…
account of the life and crimes of America's original welfare queen is "an invaluable work of nonfiction." (David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon) On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship-after Taylor came into their lives, all three ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. But nobody-not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not presidential candidate Ronald Reagan-seemed to care about anything but her welfare thievery. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Taylor was made an outcast because of the color of her skin. As she rose to infamy, the press and politicians manipulated her image to demonize poor black women. Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Josh Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is a fascinating account of American racism, and an expose of the "welfare queen" myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day. The Queen tells, for the first time, the fascinating story of what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name.Lightships, Lighthouses, and Lifeboat Stations: A Memoir and History
By Bernie Webber. 2016
"Lightships, Lighthouses and Lifeboat Stations" is part history book, part memoir, written by Bernie Webber, recipient of the Coast Guard's…
highest award, the Gold Life-saving Medal, and hero of the Disney movie The Finest Hours. While the public will recognize Webber's name from the movie and the bestselling book by the same name, few people know that during his lengthy Coast Guard career he served on lightships (ships anchored in dangerous areas to warn other vessels of hazards) in addition to lifeboat stations (small boat rescue stations) and lighthouses. Webber poses the following question: "How did the lightship men cope with the isolation, constant loneliness, boredom, fear, or just sheer terror? All were part of life on board a lightship. Rough seas tossed the ship about, rearing up and down the anchor chain. This was a world of isolation, noise from operating machinery, and blasts from the powerful foghorn that went on for hours, sometimes days, at a time." Webber answers that question in this book, drawing on a combination of personal experience and meticulous historical research. Discussions of men going mad, lightships being run down by larger ships, anchor chains breaking, and lightships cast upon shoals are offset with humorous stories and the author's reflections on his best days at sea. Webber also explains some of the heroic actions of a few lightship men over the years, and points out that they received no recognition at the time. The isolation these men faced was intense, but they learned to make do with what they had. Fourteen historic photos are included, as well as a Foreword by Michael Tougias.From Fascism to Populism in History
By Federico Finchelstein. 2017
What is fascism and what is populism? What are their connections in history and theory, and how should we address…
their significant differences? What does it mean when pundits call Donald Trump a fascist, or label as populist politicians who span left and right such as Hugo Chávez, Juan Perón, Rodrigo Duterte, and Marine Le Pen? Federico Finchelstein, one of the leading scholars of fascist and populist ideologies, synthesizes their history in order to answer these questions and offer a thoughtful perspective on how we might apply the concepts today. While they belong to the same history and are often conflated, fascism and populism actually represent distinct political trajectories. Drawing on an expansive record of transnational fascism and postwar populist movements, Finchelstein gives us insightful new ways to think about the state of democracy and political culture on a global scale. This new edition includes an updated preface that brings the book up to date, midway through the Trump presidency and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.A Diminished Roar: Winnipeg in the 1920s
By Jim Blanchard. 2019
The third instalment in Jim Blanchard’s popular history of early Winnipeg, "A Diminished Roar" presents a city in the midst…
of enormous change. Once the fastest growing city in Canada, by 1920 Winnipeg was losing its dominant position in western Canada. As the decade began, Winnipeggers were reeling from the chaos of the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But it was the divisions exposed by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike which left the deepest marks. As Winnipeg wrestled with its changing fortunes, its citizens looked for new ways to imagine the city’s future and identity. Beginning with the opening of the magnificent new provincial legislature building in 1920, A Diminished Roar guides readers through this decade of political and social turmoil. At City Hall, two very different politicians dominated the scene. Winnipeg’s first Labour mayor, S.J. Farmer, pushed for more public services. His rival, Ralph Webb, would act as the city’s chief “booster” as mayor, encouraging U.S. tourists with the promise of“snowballs and highballs.” Meanwhile, promoters tried to rekindle the city’s spirits with plans for new public projects, such as a grand boulevard through the middle of the city, a new amusement park, and the start of professional horse racing. In the midst of the Jazz Age, Winnipeg’s teenagers grappled with “problems of the heart,” and social groups like the Gyro Club organized masked balls for the city’s elite.Inuit, Oblate Missionaries, and Grey Nuns in the Keewatin, 1865-1965
By Jarich G. Oosten, Frédéric B. Laugrand. 1999
Over the century between the first Oblate mission to the Canadian central Arctic in 1867 and the radical shifts brought…
about by Vatican II, the region was the site of complex interactions between Inuit, Oblate missionaries, and Grey Nuns – interactions that have not yet received the attention they deserve. Enriching archival sources with oral testimony, Frédéric Laugrand and Jarich Oosten provide an in-depth analysis of conversion, medical care, education, and vocation in the Keewatin region of the Northwest Territories. They show that while Christianity was adopted by the Inuit and major transformations occurred, the Oblates and the Grey Nuns did not eradicate the old traditions or assimilate the Inuit, who were caught up in a process they could not yet fully understand. The study begins with the first contact Inuit had with Christianity in the Keewatin region and ends in the mid-1960s, when an Inuk woman joined the Grey Nuns and two Inuit brothers became Oblate missionaries. Bringing together many different voices, perspectives, and experiences, and emphasizing the value of multivocality in understanding this complex period of Inuit history, Inuit, Oblate Missionaries, and Grey Nuns in the Keewatin, 1865–1965 highlights the subtle nuances of a long and complex interaction, showing how salvation and suffering were intertwined.The Lesser-known World of Mughal Emperor Jahangir
By Som Prakash Verma. 2020
This volume depicts the life and times of the Mughal emperor Jahangir in the light of his memoirs, Jahangirnama, popularly…
known as Tuzuk-i Jahangiri. With its fresh treatment of source material and a vivid account of historical events, the book tells the history of Jahangir’s India through his intimate and confessional memoirs incorporated in the genre of Mughal manuscript painting. The work is noteworthy for its historical portraits as well as Jahangir’s visual realism, his remarkable knowledge of natural history, and the perceptive and detailed descriptions of the world around him. Moving away from conventional historical writing, the book is a psychological study of an individual, his innate qualities, behavioural moves and instinctive affinities. Jahangir’s memoirs reveal deeper facets of him as a person as well as a poet, aesthete, connoisseur of painting and a keen observer of nature, both human and that of the natural world. The author also includes other contemporary literature of the period that narrate Jahangir’s life, such as Akbarnama, Ma’asir-i Jahangiri, Iqbalnama-i Jahangiri, Intikhab-i Jahangiri, Tatimma-i Waqi’at-i Jahangiri and Zakhirat-ul Khwanin, as well as Jesuits accounts and travelogues. He further analyses the influence of European Renaissance art on the history of Mughal paintings. A first of its kind, this book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of medieval history, Indian history, Mughal history, art history, popular culture and South Asian studies, as well as the general reader.Gaudete
By Ted Hughes. 1977
Uno de los libros más revolucionarios de la poesía del siglo XX. Ted Hughes, uno de los grandes poetas ingleses…
de nuestro tiempo -poeta laureado, famoso por su tormentosa relación con la escritora Sylvia Plath-, escribió Gaudete, uno de los libros más singulares y experimentales de la poesía del siglo XX, en la cúspide de su madurez poética y volcó en la obra toda su experiencia y su capacidad de riesgo. Gaudete logra rebasar las fronteras de la poesía para convertirse en un libro indefinible, poliédrico. Es a un tiempo un guion cinematográfico, una novela y una secuencia de poemas que además experimenta una transformación estilística, desde el alucinado poema en prosa del prólogo, pasando por los poemas narrativos centrales, hasta los últimos, breves y oscuros poemas del epílogo. Se trata sin duda de una obra maestra, capital, inclasificable, ahora por primera vez traducida al castellano. Críticas:«Una escritura de una fuerza y energía verbal difíciles de imitar. Fue un poeta prodigioso, y hoy más que nunca el genio y grandeza de sus textos resuenan con feroz actualidad. [...] Gaudete es un largo poema épico, cuya riqueza de imágenes Juan Elías Tovar ha trasvasado al castellano con sorprendente solvencia. Una de las mayores innovaciones poéticas de su época, su lenguaje es empujado más allá de los límites, sumergiéndose en un mundo enigmático y visionario.»Antonio Ortega, Babelia (El País) «Un libro considerado revolucionario de la lírica del XX, por su singularidad, complejidad y riesgo.»ABC