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Showing 1 - 20 of 2663 items
By Robin Stevenson. 2024
Triumphant, relatable, and totally true biographies tell the childhood stories of a diverse group of international athletes who have captured…
the world’s attention at the Summer Olympics and Paralympics, like Simone Biles, Jesse Owens, Naomi Osaka, Tatyana McFadden, and 12 other incredible olympians.Athletes throughout history have dreamed of competing in the Olympics—and some were kids themselves when those dreams and plans began! In Kid Olympians: Summer, discover the childhood stories of legends such as: Usain Bolt, who used to skip practices to go to the arcade and play video games.Serena Williams, who sometimes hit her tennis ball over the fence on purpose!Tatyana McFadden, who had to fight to be allowed on her school’s track teamFeaturing kid-friendly text and full-color illustrations, you’ll be inspired to dream bigger, faster, and higher than ever before! The diverse and inspiring group also includes Michael Phelps, Yusra Mardini, Dick Fosbury, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Gertrude Ederle, Nadia Comaneci, Ellie Simmonds, Tommie Smith, Wilma Rudolph, and Megan Rapinoe.By Donovan Bailey. 2023
A memoir of Olympic glory, the value of mentorship and the courage to champion your own excellence, from the long-reigning…
world's fastest man, Canadian sprinting legend Donovan Bailey.From the lush fields of his boyhood in Jamaica, to the basketball courts of Oakville, where he came of age in one of Canada’s most thriving cultural mosaics, to his sprint toward double Olympic gold for Canada in Atlanta in 1996, Donovan Bailey got a long way on natural talent. But he also learned that in the bureaucratic world of Canadian sports, an athlete who didn't come up in the system needed to take charge of his fate if he was going to become the world’s best. As he ascended from outsider to dominant athlete, others didn’t always understand the rigour at work behind Bailey’s confident demeanour. He’d learned from watching Muhammad Ali that a champion needed to act like a champion. But media grew fixated on the sprinter’s immodesty, the likes of which they never saw from Canadian athletes, especially track athletes in the wake of the Ben Johnson doping scandal at Seoul in 1988. Bailey was having none of it, and when he called out Canada's subtle racism and contradicted the prevailing idea most Canadians had of their country, he left in his wake a media uproar and cracked wide open the nation’s moral complacency. In addition to his unforgettable 100-metre and 4x100 relay gold-medal sprints in Atlanta, Bailey's track career was a litany of records and rare accomplishments, including his audacious 1997 race in Toronto's SkyDome against American 200-metre Olympic champion Michael Johnson to determine who was really the world’s fastest man. There was no disputing the result. Bailey had been coached in success before he was seriously coached in athletics. Following the lead of his father, a machinist-turned-real estate investor, Bailey became a millionaire by the age of 21, an experience he continues to draw on as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. Frank about his dominance on the track and unapologetic for expecting as much of those around him as he expects of himself, Undisputed is an athlete's story that refuses to settle for second best.By Felix Pomeranz. 2016
A distinctive, primary source reader with the same global emphasis as the full and concise editions of its companion survey…
text. The Second Edition of this global, comparative reader―newly edited by the co-authors of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, Concise Edition―features added textual and visual sources directly tied to developments discussed in the Worlds Together narrative, a new casebook on “Humans and the Environment in the Second Millennium BCE,” a deeply discounted package price, and a rich range of global perspectives that set this reader apart.&“A deep dive into the world of Flat Earth conspiracy theorists . . . that brilliantly reveals how people fall…
into illogical beliefs, reject reason, destroy relationships, and connect with a broad range of conspiracy theories in the social media age. Beautiful, probing, and often empathetic . . . An insightful, human look at what fuels conspiracy theories.&” —Science Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a centuries-old delusion: that the earth is flat. More and more people believe that we all live on a pancake-shaped planet, capped by a solid dome and ringed by an impossible wall of ice. How? Why? In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill draws a direct line from today&’s conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s. We learn the natural impulses behind these beliefs: when faced with a complicated world out of our control, humans have always sought patterns to explain the inexplicable. This psychology doesn&’t change. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century, something else has shifted. Powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing. At once a definitive history of the movement and an essential look at its unbelievable present, Off the Edge introduces us to a cast of larger-than-life characters. We meet historical figures like the nineteenth-century grifter who first popularized the theory, as well as the many modern-day Flat Earthers Weill herself gets to know, from moms on vacation to determined creationists to neo-Nazi rappers. We discover what, and who, converts people to Flat Earth belief, and what happens inside the rabbit hole. And we even meet a man determined to fly into space in a homemade rocket-powered balloon—whose tragic death is as senseless and absurd as the theory he sets out to prove. In this incisive and powerful story about belief, Kelly Weill explores how we arrived at this moment of polarized realities and explains what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.By Annalena Müller. 2024
This book aims to rewrite the narrative of women and power in medieval society. Based on a rich corpus of…
sources – systematically collected for the first time – it reveals female monasteries as central and economically able agents in feudal society.With a chronological focus on the late Middle Ages, this book focuses on four powerful convents located in modern-day France, Germany, and Switzerland. Three of these institutions were aristocratic convents founded in the early Middle Ages. They were endowed with far-ranging feudal prerogatives that were largely, but not exclusively, derived from landed possessions. The fourth convent originated in the thirteenth century and disposed of a primarily monetary economy.Observed from a longue-durée perspective, Monastic Women and Secular Economy in Later Medieval Europe reveals strategies of adaptations that allowed these different institutions to weather the significant economic changes of the late Middle Ages. Within the context of medieval feudal society, these abbesses and prioresses were authoritative figures. They ruled over territories, dispensed justice, appointed priests, and even sent soldiers to war. Late medieval convents acted as urban landlords and gave credits – they were thus major economic players in the rising cities. These observations of this monograph will force medievalists to reconsider the traditional image of both the “male” feudal Middle Ages and medieval monetary economy.By Wim Blockmans. 2024
Over the last two centuries, Europe has developed various forms of political representation from which democratic parliamentary systems gradually emerged.…
This book unravels the conditions, scale and impact under which political participation of common burghers and peasants emerged.Political participation in Europe before the Revolutions moved away from the traditional focus on ‘Three Estates’ which has often blurred the interpretation of popular participation’s role in societies. This book instead examines Europe’s key political variants such as high levels of commercialization and urbanization, combined with a balance of powers between competing categories of actors in society controlling relatively independent resources which lead to political participation forming across the continent. Instead of starting from any ideal type of political participation, this book focuses on the variation through time and space, its composition and activity, helps to explain the functions particular institutional settings fulfilled. The time frame 1100–1800 sheds light on the long-term evolutions such as institutional inertia and processes of oligarchizing. To reveal a correlation of economic and demographical growth with the claim of rising social classes to voice their interests. It also points to the opposite tendency: the formation of fiscalmilitary monarchical states.This book is essential reading for those interested in the formation of Europe’s political structures and students of premodern political history.By Seth Stein LeJacq. 2024
This volume is a collection of a variety of important records that will give readers insight into key themes into…
the history of what its criminal code called “the unnatural and detestable sin of buggery”- sex between males - in the Royal Navy. The richest sources are transcripts of trials, including ones that erupted into public scandals and ones that provide a vivid window into the sexual cultures of the navy. The book also provides lists of important records in the naval archive and will serve as a guide to finding and interpreting them. This important volume, accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, opens up this history and archive to researchers, teachers, and students studying queer history, the history of gender and sexuality, and naval and maritime history.By Nikolas Bakirtzis, Luca Zavagno. 2024
The Byzantine world contained many important cities throughout its empire. Although it was not ‘urban’ in the sense of the…
word today, its cities played a far more fundamental role than those of its European neighbors. This book, through a collection of twenty-four chapters, discusses aspects of, and different approaches to, Byzantine urbanism from the early to late Byzantine periods. It provides both a chronological and thematic perspective to the study of Byzantine cities, bringing together literary, documentary, and archival sources with archaeological results, material culture, art, and architecture, resulting in a rich synthesis of the variety of regional and sub-regional transformations of Byzantine urban landscapes. Organized into four sections, this book covers: Theory and Historiography, Geography and Economy, Architecture and the Built Environment, and Daily Life and Material Culture. It includes more specialized accounts that address the centripetal role of Constantinople and its broader influence across the empire. Such new perspectives help to challenge the historiographical balance between ‘margins and metropolis,’ and also to include geographical areas often regarded as peripheral, like the coastal urban centers of the Byzantine Mediterranean as well as cities on islands, such as Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily which have more recently yielded well-excavated and stratigraphically sound urban sites. The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City provides both an overview and detailed study of the Byzantine city to specialist scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike and, therefore, will appeal to all those interested in Byzantine urbanism and society, as well as those studying medieval society in general.By Molefi Kete Asante. 2024
The new edition of this comprehensive survey of African history provides an accessible overview of the continent’s narrative, focusing on…
the autonomy and achievements of the African people. The book brings readers closer to an authentic Africa by paying close attention to the lives of everyday people and highlighting insights and ideas that are often missed in typical survey texts. The fourth edition offers expanded coverage of smaller linguistic and ethnic groups in Africa in order to provide a more inclusive history, noting a few individual groups while also analyzing their contributions to the overall narrative and African culture. Liberia’s hidden history is given greater attention in this updated volume, as well as the ethnic and religious tensions in Nigeria and Sudan. While the book emphasizes that African history is always being made, the fourth edition brings the record up to date and grapples with contemporary issues in culture and politics. The History of Africa is an indispensable text for students and researchers in African history, cultural studies, philosophy, and politics.By Carey Blackerby Hanson. 2024
Early American Children’s Clothing and Textiles: Clothing a Child 1600–1800 explores the life experiences of Indigenous, Anglo-European, African, and mixed-race…
children in colonial America, their connections to textile production, the process of textile production, the textiles created, and the clothing they wore. The book examines the communities and social structure of early America, the progression of the colonial textile industry, and the politics surrounding textile production beginning in the 1600's, with particular focus on the tasks children were given in the development of the American textile industry. The book discusses the concept of childhood in society during this time, together with documented stories of individual children. The discussion of early American childhood and textile production is followed by extant clothing samples for both boys and girls, ranging from Upper-class children's wear to children's wear of those with more humble means. With over 180 illustrations, the book includes images of textile production tools, inventions, and practices, extant textile samples, period portraits of children, and handmade extant clothing items worn by children during this time period. Early American Children’s Clothing and Textiles: Clothing a Child 1600–1800 will be of interest to working costume designers and technicians looking for primary historical and visual information for Early American productions, costume design historians, early American historians, students of costume design, and historical re-enactment costume designers, technicians, and hobbyists.By Richard Legay. 2023
This book focuses on two commercial radio stations, Radio Luxembourg and Europe n°1, which were popular institutions in Western Europe…
throughout the Long Sixties, working across media and broadcasting transnationally. It argues that the existence of an overarching ‘dispositif ’ of commercial radio stations enabled them to operate on various dimensions and differentiated them from other broadcasters. The book therefore answers current calls in media history to look beyond national and single-medium borders and contributes to the cultural and media history of Western Europe.By Leslie Page Moch. 2009
Praise for the first edition:"By far the best general book on its subject. . . . Moving Europeans will remain…
a standard reference for some time to come." –Charles Tilly "Moch has reconceived the social history of Europe." —David LevineMoving Europeans tells the story of the vast movements of people throughout Europe and examines the links between human mobility and the fundamental changes that transformed European life. This update of a classic text describes the Western European migration from the pre-industrial era to the year 2000. For this new edition, Leslie Page Moch reconsiders the 20th century in light of fundamental changes in labor, years of conflict, and the new migrations following the end of colonial empires, the fall of communism, and globalization. This new edition also features a greatly expanded and up-to-date bibliography.By Simon Bacon, Katarzyna Bronk-Bacon. 2024
This book is an original and innovative study of how Gothic nostalgia and toxic memory are used to underpin and…
promote the ongoing culture wars and populist politics in contemporary popular culture. The essays collected here cover topics from the spectral to the ecological, deep fakes to toxic ableism, Mary Poppins to John Wick to reveal how the use of an imaginary past to shape the present, creates truly Gothic times that we can never escape. These ‘hungry ghosts’ from the past find resonance with the Gothic which speaks equally of a past that often not only haunts the present but will not let it escape its grasp. This collection will look at the confluence between various kinds of toxic nostalgia and popular culture to suggest the ways in which contemporary populism has resurrected ideological monsters from the grave to gorge on the present and any possibility of change that the future might represent.“Sportswriter Sullivan takes readers on a propulsive ride in his tour-de-force debut. . . . Sullivan’s detailed account will intrigue…
anyone who cares about sports and the role it plays in social justice today.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)"More than a basketball book, this helps explain race relations, celebrity power, and personal choice in a changed world." — Kirkus Reviews"A must-read for its in-depth look at the mental, economic, and political tribulations of NBA players." — Library Journal (starred review)"Only a brilliantly audacious book could begin to make sense of the weirdly brilliant audacity of the new Brooklyn Nets. One writer on Earth could have written this book this way — with the profundity of a sage baller and acuity of a seasoned journalist — and that writer is Matt Sullivan." — Kiese Laymon, New York Times best-selling author of Heavy“With Can't Knock The Hustle, Matt Sullivan correctly positions the basketball games we love as both a prism through which to understand our culture, and a battlefield on which to fight for the better angels of that culture. On the surface, it's a story about the unending march of 2020. But once you finish it, you understand that it's also an essential document about the decades that led us to this moment, and about the future decades yet unspooled." — Wright Thompson, ESPN senior writer and New York Times bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams“In the dueling eras of unprecedented athlete empowerment and the coarse ugliness of 'shut up and dribble,' Matt Sullivan's Can't Knock the Hustle offers a can't-look-away sampling of not merely the NBA's most fascinating franchise, but a frozen period in time that will leave historians both horrified and riveted." — Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Three-Ring Circus and Showtime “Matt Sullivan is one helluva social anthropologist, and as a result, his Can't Knock the Hustle amounts to way more than a journey with the Brooklyn Nets, or an examination of the modern-day athlete. This is an astute, ambitious book about the glory and torment of talent itself. Basketball? That's just the starting point, and what a trip Sullivan's remarkable odyssey turns out to be.” — James Andrew Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Those Guys Have All the Fun, Live From New York, and Powerhouse“Can't Knock the Hustle is a terrific book because it gives us something in woefully short supply: real journalism. Matt Sullivan has discovered the ground zero of a player revolution—and it's in Brooklyn. Is anybody ready for it?" — Howard Bryant, ESPN senior writer and author of Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field“The superstar-studded Brooklyn Nets are basketball's most captivating team, and Can't Knock the Hustle delivers a fascinating secret history of their journey to the pantheon of player activism and empowerment. With brilliant reporting and breakneck prose, this is our generation's Moneyball.” — Don Van Natta Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning ESPN investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author of First Off the Tee and Wonder Girl“No narrative has captured the dynamics of the ‘player empowerment’ movement quite like Can’t Knock the Hustle. Sullivan has written about as revealing a basketball book as there's been in a long time: an insider’s account with an outsBy Alessandro Marzo Magno. 2013
This early history of printed literature “delves into the delectable intrigues of Renaissance Venice with a degree of detail that…
will mesmerize readers” (La Repubblica).This accessible yet erudite history traces the incredible rise of publishing in the Republic of Venice, the Renaissance’s era of global capital of culture and trade. While a number of Venetian innovators drove this new enterprise, one in particular, Aldus Manutius, stands head and shoulders above the rest. Manutius tirelessly promoted the concept of reading for pleasure, and his Aldine Press commissioned the first modern typeface.Beginning in Venice and subsequently across much of the civilized world, bound printed editions of the Talmud, the Koran, the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, and classics of Greek and Latin poetry and theater began to circulate for the first time, leading to an unprecedented diffusion of human knowledge, and bringing about the birth of the modern world.By Alex Von Tunzelmann. 2016
A revelatory popular history that tells the story of the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956—a tale of…
conspiracy and revolutions, spies and terrorists, kidnappings and assassination plots, the fall of the British Empire and rise of American hegemony under the heroic leadership of President Dwight D. Eisenhower—which shaped the Middle East and Europe we know today.The year 1956 was a turning point in history. Over sixteen extraordinary days in October and November, the twin crises of Suez and Hungary pushed the world to the brink of a nuclear conflict and what many at the time were calling World War III. Blood and Sand relates this story hour-by-hour, through an international cast of characters: Anthony Eden, the British prime minister, caught in a trap of his own making; Gamal Abdel Nasser, the bold young populist leader of Egypt; David Ben-Gurion, the strong-willed founding prime minister of Israel; Guy Mollet, the bellicose French prime minister; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American president, torn between an old world order and a new one in the very same week that his own fate as president was to be decided by the American people.This is a fresh new account of these dramatic events and people, one that for the first time sets both crises in the context of the global Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the treacherous power politics of imperialism and oil. Blood and Sand resonates strikingly with the problems of oil control, religious fundamentalism, and international unity that face the world today, and is essential reading for anyone concerned with the state of the modern Middle East and Europe.By Brian Kilmeade. 2004
What do Henry Kissinger, Jack Welch, Condoleezza Rice, and Jon Bon Jovi have in common? They have all reached the…
top of their respective professions, and they all credit sports for teaching them the lessons that were fundamental to their success. In his years spent interviewing and profiling celebrities, politicians, and top businesspeople, popular sportscaster and Fox & Friends cohost Brian Kilmeade has discovered that nearly everyone shares a love of sports and has a story about how a game, a coach, or a single moment of competition changed his or her life.These vignettes have entertained, surprised, and inspired readers nationwide with their insight into America's most respected and well-known personalities. Kilmeade presents more than seventy stories straight from the men and women themselves and those who were closest to them. From competition to camaraderie, individual achievement to teamwork, failure to success, the world of sports encompasses it all and enriches our lives. The Games Do Count reveals this simple and compelling truth: America's best and brightest haven't just worked hard -- they've played hard -- and the results have been staggering!By Erin Duvall. 2016
“...this collection is a fabuously illustrated sociocultural commentary on how the Nashville sound is reflected through its hair.” — Elle“The…
men and women of country music have rocked some interesting hair over the years, and we get to see the best of it...Country Music Hair has mullets, beehives, and wigs, plus interviews with famous hairstylists.” — BustleBy David M. Friedman. 2007
“Fascinating and deeply disturbing. I love this book. — Simon Winchester (bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman)David M.…
Friedman’s The Immortalists reads like riveting historical fiction but raises provocative questions about the shape of the future. — Ron Rosenbaum, best-selling author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler“Difficult to put down...this is the book to read.” — New York TimesBy Jeff Benedict. 2004
Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence, and Crime is a searing indictment of professional basketball players…
who live in a world where criminal laws and social norms don't exist, a world where they are given license to act above the law.On the court, they dazzle us with their spectacular physical feats. They generate millions of dollars of revenue for the NBA and their teams. They inspire adulation. But underneath all the glitz, the money, and alley-oops is a seamy underbelly, a rash of lawlessness that is gripping the NBA.Based on a first-of-its-kind investigation into the criminal histories of 177 NBA players from the 2001–2002 season, Out of Bounds shows that an alarming four out of every ten NBA players have a police record involving a serious crime. They are All-Stars and they are journeymen, involved in crimes ranging from armed robbery to domestic violence to gun possession to rape.Out of Bounds takes a hard look at shocking cases, with graphic accounts of physical and sexual violence and other outrageous conduct by players. In all, more than 250 people are named, including many prominent NBA players. It exposes the environment and culture that encourages such criminal behavior. It also explains the unique challenges these cases pose for law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors. And Out of Bounds takes readers inside the hidden yet critically vital role that lawyers, agents, and fame play in insulating criminally accused players from accountability.Author Jeff Benedict, an expert on athletes and crime, draws his conclusions from exhaustive research. In addition to his criminal-background checks, the author retrieved documents from law-enforcement agencies, courts, and private attorneys. He conducted more than 400 interviews with police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, players, agents, victims, witnesses, and coaches. What emerges is a disturbing and appalling picture of men who live above the law. A seminal and important work, Out of Bounds will forever change how we look at the NBA and its stars' lives of excess and privilege.