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In Sight of America: Photography and the Development of U. S. Immigration Policy
By Anna Pegler-Gordon. 2009
This work is the first to take a comprehensive look at the history of immigration policy in the United States…
through the prism of visual culture. Anna Pegler-Gordon considers the role and uses of visual documentation at Angel Island for Chinese immigrants, at Ellis Island for European immigrants, and on the U.S.-Mexico border.The magnificent, unrivaled history of codes and ciphers -- how they're made, how they're broken, and the many and fascinating…
roles they've played since the dawn of civilization in war, business, diplomacy, and espionage -- updated with a new chapter on computer cryptography and the Ultra secret. Man has created codes to keep secrets and has broken codes to learn those secrets since the time of the Pharaohs. For 4,000 years, fierce battles have been waged between codemakers and codebreakers, and the story of these battles is civilization's secret history, the hidden account of how wars were won and lost, diplomatic intrigues foiled, business secrets stolen, governments ruined, computers hacked. From the XYZ Affair to the Dreyfus Affair, from the Gallic War to the Persian Gulf, from Druidic runes and the kaballah to outer space, from the Zimmermann telegram to Enigma to the Manhattan Project, codebreaking has shaped the course of human events to an extent beyond any easy reckoning. Once a government monopoly, cryptology today touches everybody. It secures the Internet, keeps e-mail private, maintains the integrity of cash machine transactions, and scrambles TV signals on unpaid-for channels. David Kahn's The Codebreakers takes the measure of what codes and codebreaking have meant in human history in a single comprehensive account, astonishing in its scope and enthralling in its execution. Hailed upon first publication as a book likely to become the definitive work of its kind, The Codebreakers has more than lived up to that prediction: it remains unsurpassed. With a brilliant new chapter that makes use of previously classified documents to bring the book thoroughly up to date, and to explore the myriad ways computer codes and their hackers are changing all of our lives, The Codebreakers is the skeleton key to a thousand thrilling true stories of intrigue, mystery, and adventure. It is a masterpiece of the historian's art.Titans of History
By Simon Sebag Montefiore. 2012
In Titans of History Simon Sebag Montefiore, one of our pre-eminent historians, presents the lives of the giants who have…
made our world. The cast varies from conquerors, poets, kings, empresses and whores to psychopaths, composers and explorers. Informative, entertaining, inspiring and sometimes horrifying, this is a history of the world that contains the stories and characters that everyone should know and no one should forget.Ancient People of the Andes
By Michael A. Malpass. 2016
In Ancient People of the Andes, Michael A. Malpass describes the prehistory of western South America from initial colonization to…
the Spanish Conquest. All the major cultures of this region, from the Moche to the Inkas, receive thoughtful treatment, from their emergence to their demise or evolution. No South American culture that lived prior to the arrival of Europeans developed a writing system, making archaeology the only way we know about most of the prehispanic societies of the Andes. The earliest Spaniards on the continent provided first-person accounts of the latest of those societies, and, as descendants of the Inkas became literate, they too became a source of information. Both ethnohistory and archaeology have limitations in what they can tell us, but when we are able to use them together they are complementary ways to access knowledge of these fascinating cultures. Malpass focuses on large anthropological themes: why people settled down into agricultural communities, the origins of social inequalities, and the evolution of sociopolitical complexity. Ample illustrations, including eight color plates, visually document sites, societies, and cultural features. Introductory chapters cover archaeological concepts, dating issues, and the region's climate. The subsequent chapters, divided by time period, allow the reader to track changes in specific cultures over time.The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office
By James A. Morone, David Blumenthal. 2009
David and James break new ground in our understanding of health policymaking in the White House, notably the tie between…
presidential policy actions and the personal medical problems that have faced each of our Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt.Ends of Enlightenment
By John Bender. 2012
Ends of Enlightenmentexplores three realms of eighteenth-century European innovation that remain active in the twenty-first century: the realist novel, philosophical…
thought, and the physical sciences, especially human anatomy. The European Enlightenment was a state of being, a personal stance, and an orientation to the world. Ways of probing experience and knowledge in the novel and in the visual arts were interleaved with methods of experimentation in science and philosophy. This book's fresh perspective considers the novel as an art but also as a force in thinking. The critical distance afforded by a view back across the centuries allows Bender to redefine such novelists as Defoe, Fielding, Goldsmith, Godwin, and Laclos by placing them along philosophers and scientists like Newton, Locke, and Hume but also alongside engravings by Hogarth and by anatomist William Hunter. His book probes the kinship among realism, hypothesis, and scientific fact, defining in the process the rhetorical basis of public communication during the Enlightenment.The Stillbirth of Capital: Enlightenment Writing and Colonial India
By Siraj Ahmed. 2012
This book targets one of the humanities' most widely held premises: namely, that the European Enlightenment laid the groundwork for…
modern imperialism. It argues instead that the Enlightenment's vision of empire calls our own historical and theoretical paradigms into question. While eighteenth-century British India has not received nearly the same attention as nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires, it is the place where colonial rule and Enlightenment reason first became entwined. The Stillbirth of Capital makes its case by examining every work about British India written by a major author from 1670 to 1815, a period that coincides not only with the Enlightenment but also with the institution of a global economy. In contrast to both Marxist and liberal scholars, figures such as Dryden, Defoe, Voltaire, Sterne, Smith, Bentham, Burke, Sheridan, and Scott locate modernity's roots not in the birth of capital but rather in the collusion of sovereign power and monopoly commerce, which used Indian Ocean wealth to finance the unfathomable costs of modern war. Ahmed reveals the pertinence of eighteenth-century writing to our own moment of danger, when the military alliance of hegemonic states and private corporations has become even more far-reaching than it was in centuries past.Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
By Grace Pe a Delgado. 2012
Making the Chinese Mexicanis the first book to examine the Chinese diaspora in the U. S. -Mexico borderlands. It presents…
a fresh perspective on immigration, nationalism, and racism through the experiences of Chinese migrants in the region during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Navigating the interlocking global and local systems of migration that underlay Chinese borderlands communities, the author situates the often-paradoxical existence of these communities within the turbulence of exclusionary nationalisms. The world of Chinesefronterizos(borderlanders) was shaped by the convergence of trans-Pacific networks and local arrangements: against a backdrop of national unrest in Mexico and in the era of exclusionary immigration policies in the United States, Chinesefronterizoscarved out vibrant, enduring communities that provided a buffer against virulent Sinophobia. This book challenges us to reexamine the complexities of nation-making, identity formation, and the meaning of citizenship. It represents an essential contribution to our understanding of the U. S. -Mexico borderlands.The Revolt of the Whip
By Joseph L. Love. 2012
This short book brings to life a unique and spectacular set of events in Latin American history. In November 1910,…
shortly after the inauguration of Brazilian President Hermes da Fonseca, ordinary sailors killed several officers and seized control of major new combat vessels, including two of the most powerful battleships ever produced, and commenced bombing Rio de Janeiro. The mutineers, led by an Afro-Brazilian and mostly black themselves, demanded greater rights-above all the abolition of flogging in the Brazilian navy, the last Western navy to tolerate it. This form of torture was closely associated in the sailors' minds with slavery, which had only been prohibited in Brazil in 1888. These events and the scandals that followed initiated a sustained debate about the role of race and class in Brazilian society and the extent to which Brazil could claim to be a modern nation. The commemoration of the centenary of the mutiny in 2010 saw the country still divided about the meaning of the Revolt of the Whip.A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica
By Aron Rodrigue, Sarah Abrevaya Stein. 2012
This book presents for the first time the complete text of the earliest known Ladino-language memoir, transliterated from the original…
script, translated into English, and introduced and explicated by the editors. The memoirist, Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi (1820–1903), wrote about Ottoman Jews' daily life at a time when the long-ascendant fabric of Ottoman society was just beginning to unravel. His vivid portrayal of life in Salonica, a major port in the Ottoman Levant with a majority-Jewish population, thus provides a unique window into a way of life before it disappeared as a result of profound political and social changes and the World Wars. Sa'adi was himself a prominent journalist and publisher, one of the most significant creators of modern Sephardic print culture. He was also a rebel, accusing the Jewish leadership of Salonica of being corrupt, abusive, and fanatical; that leadership, in turn, excommunicated him from the Jewish community. The experience of excommunication pervades Sa'adi's memoir, which documents a world that its author was himself actively involved in changing.Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation
By Michael Laurence Miller. 2011
The Habsburg province of Moravia straddled a complicated linguistic, cultural, and national space, where German, Slavic, and Jewish spheres overlapped,…
intermingled, and sometimes clashed. Situated in the heart of Central Europe, Moravia was exposed to major Jewish movements from the East and West, including Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment), Hasidism, and religious reform. Moravia's rooted and thriving rabbinic culture helped moderate these movements, and in the case of Hasidism, keep it at bay. During the Revolution of 1848, Moravia's Jews took an active part in the prolonged and ultimately successful struggle for Jewish emancipation in the Habsburg lands. The revolution ushered in a new age of freedom, but it also precipitated demographic, financial, and social transformations, disrupting entrenched patterns that had characterized Moravian Jewish life since the Middle Ages. These changes emerged precisely when the Czech-German conflict began to dominate public life, throwing Moravia's Jews into the middle of the increasingly virulent nationality conflict. For some, a cautious embrace of Zionism represented a way out of this conflict, but it also represented a continuation of Moravian Jewry's distinctive role as mediator-and often tamer-of the major ideological movements that pervaded Central Europe in the Age of Emancipation.New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq
By Orit Bashkin. 2012
Although Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi patriots, their communitywhich had existed in Iraq for more than 2,500 yearswas displaced…
following the establishment of the state of Israel. New Babylonianschronicles the lives of these Jews, their urban Arab culture, and their hopes for a democratic nation-state. It studies their ideas about Judaism, Islam, secularism, modernity, and reform, focusing on Iraqi Jews who internalized narratives of Arab and Iraqi nationalisms and on those who turned to communism in the 1940s. As the book reveals, the ultimate displacement of this community was not the result of a perpetual persecution on the part of their Iraqi compatriots, but rather the outcome of misguided state policies during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sadly, from a dominant mood of coexistence, friendship, and partnership, the impossibility of Arab-Jewish coexistence became the prevailing narrative in the regionand the dominant narrative we have come to know today.The Social Conscience of the Early Victorians
By F. Roberts. 2002
In 1830, the dominant social outlook of the early Victorians was a paternalism that looked to property, the Church, and…
local Justices of the Peace to govern society and deal with its ills. By 1860, however, the dominant social outlook had become a vision of a laissez faire society that relied on economic laws, self-reliance, and the vigorous philanthropy of voluntary societies. This book describes and analyzes these changes, which arose from the rapid growth of industry, towns, population, and the middle and working classes. Paternalism did not entirely fade away, however, just as a laissez faire vision had long antedated 1830. Both were part of a social conscience also defined by a revived philanthropy, a new humanitarianism, and a grudging acceptance of an expanded government, all of which reflected a strong revival of religion as well as the growth of rationalism. The new dominance of a laissez faire vision was dramatically evident in the triumph of political economy. By 1860, only a few doubted the eternal verities of the economists' voluminous writings. Few also doubted the verities of those who preached self-reliance, who supported the New Poor Law's severity to persons who were not self-reliant, and who inspired education measures to promote that indispensable virtue. If economic laws and self-reliance failed to prevent distress, the philanthropists and voluntary societies would step in. Such a vision proved far more buoyant and effective than a paternalism whose narrow and rural Anglican base made it unable to cope with the downside of an industrial-urban Britain. But the vision of a laissez faire society was not without its flaws. Its harmonious economic laws and its hope in self-reliance did not prevent gross exploitation and acute distress, and however beneficent were its philanthropists, they fell far short of mitigating these evils. This vision also found a rival in an expanded government. Two powerful ideas--the idea of a paternal government and the idea of a utilitarian state--helped create the expansion of government services. A reluctant belief in governmental power thus joined the many other ideas that defined the Victorian's social conscience.Ottoman Ulema, Turkish Republic: Agents of Change and Guardians of Tradition
By Amit Bein. 2011
This study explores the neglected role of the late Ottoman ulema (Islamic religious scholars) in the shaping of the modern…
Turkish republic. Bein (history, Clemson U.) examines how the ulema and their associated institutions reacted to societal change, describing their differing views of political reform, religious education, the nature of the state, political activism, and Turkish republicanism and showing how despite their suppression by the secular Kemalist republic their institutions and debates over the relationship between religion and the state have ongoing relevance for contemporary Turkish society and politics. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Science and Conscience: The Life of James Franck
By Jost Lemmerich. 2011
James Franck (1882-1964) was one of the twentieth century's most respected scientists, known both for his contributions to physics and…
for his moral courage. During the 1920s, Franck was a prominent figure in the German physics community. His research into the structure of the atom earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Franck resigned his professorship at Gottingen in protest against anti-Jewish policies. He soon emigrated to the United States, where, at the University of Chicago, he began innovative research into photosynthesis.Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s
By Holly Case, Norman Naimark. 2003
Most of what has been written about the recent history of Yugoslavia and the fierce wars that have plagued that…
country has been produced by journalists, political analysts, diplomats, human rights organization, the United Nations, and other government and intergovernmental organizations. Professional historians of Yugoslavia, however, have been strangely silent about the wars and the breakup of the country. This book is an effort to end that silence. The goal of this volume is to bring together insights from a distinguished group of American and European scholars of Yugoslavia to add depth to our historical understanding of that country's recent struggles. The first part of the volume examines the ways in which images of the Yugoslav past have shaped current understandings of the region. The second part deals more directly with the events of the recent past and also looks forward to some of the problems and future prospects for Yugoslavia's successor states.The Roots, Rituals, and Rhetorics of Change: North American Business Schools After the Second World War
By Mie Augier, James G March. 2011
Some rather remarkable changes took place in North American business schools between 1945 and 1970, altering the character of these…
institutions, the possibilities for their future, and the terms of discourse about them. This period represents a minor revolution, during which business schools became more academic, more analytic, and more quantitative. The Roots, Rituals, and Rhetorics of Change considers these changes and explores their roots. It traces the origins of this quiet revolution to a diffuse community of like-mindedness forged by the depression and the Second World War, the reform of medical schools after the Flexner Report, the ideology of intellectuality championed by Robert Maynard Hutchins at the University of Chicago, and the experience of interdisciplinary collaboration at the RAND Corporation. It shows how these roots shaped discussions about management education and led to a shift in the rhetorical balance that weakened the place of business cases and experiential knowledge and strengthened support for a concept of professionalism that applied to management. The text considers at least three core questions: Should business schools concern themselves primarily with experiential knowledge or with academic knowledge? What vision of managers and management should be reflected by business schools? Finally, how does managerial education connect its teaching to some version of reality?Why do racial and ethnic groups discriminate against each other? The most common sociological answer is that they want to…
monopolize scarce resources--good jobs or top educations--for themselves. This book offers a different answer, showing that racial and ethnic discrimination can also occur to preserve particular group identities. Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel focuses on the early period of Israeli statehood to examine how the European Jewish founders treated Middle Eastern Jewish immigrants. The author argues that, shaped by their own unique encounter with European colonialism, the European Jews were intent on producing Israel as part of the West. To this end, they excluded and discriminated against those Middle Eastern Jews who threatened the goal of Westernization. Blending quantitative and qualitative evidence, Aziza Khazzoom provides a compelling rationale for the emergence of ethnic identity and group discrimination, while also suggesting new ways to understand Israeli-Palestinian relations.Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt
By Yoav Di-Capua. 2009
The first comprehensive analysis of a Middle Eastern intellectual tradition, it examines a system of knowledge that replaced the intellectual…
and methodological conventions of Islamic historiography only at the very end of the nineteenth century.Rebellion Now and Forever
By Terry Rugeley. 2009
This book explores the origins, process, and consequences of forty years of nearly continual political violence in southeastern Mexico. Rather…
than recounting the well-worn narrative of the Caste War, it focuses instead on how four decades of violence helped shape social and political institutions of the Mexican southeast. Rebellion Now and Foreverlooks at Yucatán's famous Caste War from the perspective of the vast majority of Hispanics and Maya peasants who did not join in the great ethnic rebellion of 1847. It shows how the history of nonrebel territory was as dramatic and as violent as the front lines of the Caste War, and of greater significance for the larger evolution of Mexican society. The work explores political violence not merely as a method and process, but also as a molder of subsequent institutions and practices.