Download or read book Endangered Dreams written by Kevin Starr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-11 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: California, Wallace Stegner observed, is like the rest of the United States, only more so. Indeed, the Golden State has always seemed to be a place where the hopes and fears of the American dream have been played out in a bigger and bolder way. And no one has done more to capture this epic story than Kevin Starr, in his acclaimed series of gripping social and cultural histories. Now Starr carries his account into the 1930s, when the political extremes that threatened so much of the Depression-ravaged world--fascism and communism--loomed large across the California landscape. In Endangered Dreams, Starr paints a portrait that is both detailed and panoramic, offering a vivid look at the personalities and events that shaped a decade of explosive tension. He begins with the rise of radicalism on the Pacific Coast, which erupted when the Great Depression swept over California in the 1930s. Starr captures the triumphs and tumult of the great agricultural strikes in the Imperial Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, Stockton, and Salinas, identifying the crucial role played by Communist organizers; he also shows how, after some successes, the Communists disbanded their unions on direct orders of the Comintern in 1935. The highpoint of social conflict, however, was 1934, the year of the coastwide maritime strike, and here Starr's narrative talents are at their best, as he brings to life the astonishing general strike that took control of San Francisco, where workers led by charismatic longshoreman Harry Bridges mounted the barricades to stand off National Guardsmen. That same year socialist Upton Sinclair won the Democratic nomination for governor, and he launched his dramatic End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign. In the end, however, these challenges galvanized the Right in a corporate, legal, and vigilante counterattack that crushed both organized labor and Sinclair. And yet, the Depression also brought out the finest in Californians: state Democrats fought for a local New Deal; California natives helped care for more than a million impoverished migrants through public and private programs; artists movingly documented the impact of the Depression; and an unprecedented program of public works (capped by the Golden Gate Bridge) made the California we know today possible. In capturing the powerful forces that swept the state during the 1930s--radicalism, repression, construction, and artistic expression--Starr weaves an insightful analysis into his narrative fabric. Out of a shattered decade of economic and social dislocation, he constructs a coherent whole and a mirror for understanding our own time.

Download or read book America Before Welfare written by Franklin Folsom and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1996-10 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of Impatient Armies of the Poor; the Story of Collective Action of the Unemployed, 1808-1942. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Prince Marko written by Tanya Popovic and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1988-09-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most popular of the south European epic heroes—a counterpart of the French Roland or Spain’s El Cid—Prince Marko has not been well known in America. The historical Marko headed a small kingdom in Macedonia in the fourteenth century. A vassal of the Turkish sultans, he was a relatively minor historical figure. Yet in the oral tradition he was transmuted into a figure of legend, the great hero who protected the South Slavic people from injustice and oppression. In Prince Marko, Popovic traces the epic hero’s themes, over time and across countries. She looks at the factual and fictional images of Marko, especially as he was presented in epic poetry and popular lore. Popovic also examines the legend and history of the Prince as revealed in many epic songs. Prince Marko is a compelling account of a medieval king transformed by epic bards into a legend that will appeal to historians, anthropologists, and folklorists.

Download or read book Artie Shaw written by Vladimir Simosko and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2000-01-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artie Shaw, the world famous clarinet-playing bandleader who became popular during the Swing Era, was immersed in the music business as a performer for 30 years, from the summer of 1924, when he began to study saxophone, until the summer of 1954, when he stopped performing. This period of activity is the focus of this musical biography and discography, a detailed account of Shaw's musical career and recorded output. The book begins with a summary of Shaw's career in the contexts of jazz history and social setting, then moves into more detail. The chronologically arranged sections, mirroring each phase of his career, incorporate contemporary reviews and interview quotes to create an insightful narrative. The discography lists all known recordings and is separate from the text to facilitate easy reference. Includes appendixes and index.

Download or read book Lure of the Mountains written by Michael D. Lowes and published by Vertebrate Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lure of the Mountains is the first published biography of accomplished photographer, ornithologist, teacher and 1924 Everest expedition member Bentley Beetham (1886-1963). Written by the late Michael D. Lowes, a pupil of Beetham's at Barnard Castle School in County Durham, and with a foreword by Graham Ratcliffe MBE, the first Briton to have summited Everest from both the North and South sides, and also a pupil of Barnard Castle School. Lure of the Mountains charts Beetham's life from childhood in Darlington, to rock climbing in the Lake District, to his selection by the Mount Everest Committee as a member of the infamous and ill-fated 1924 Everest Expedition on which George Mallory and Sandy Irvine disappeared high on the mountain. Many of Beetham's images, including those made on the 1924 expedition, were for over 25 years curated by Michael Lowes and are reproduced in this book with the kind permission of the Bentley Beetham Trust and Durham University. His images of Tibet are 'an important historical record of Tibetan culture and a way of life that in modern times has rapidly begun to disappear'. Beetham was a highly skilled rock climber and a pioneer of new routes in the Borrowdale Valley, where he established such notable climbs as Little Chamonix on Shepherd's Crag, and Corvus on Raven Crag. The author, like many other pupils Beetham inspired, was introduced to climbing by his teacher in the Lake District on club trips, and over the years he became a valuable source of information and expert on Beetham's life and work.

Download or read book Southern California Quarterly written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Boys in the Boat Movie Tie In written by Daniel James Brown and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for the Major Motion Picture Directed by George Clooney—exclusively in theaters December 25, 2023! The #1 New York Times bestselling true story about the American rowing triumph of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—from the author of Facing the Mountain For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.

Download or read book Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth written by Stephen F. Knott and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2002-02-15 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth explores the shifting reputation of our most controversial founding father. Since the day Aaron Burr fired his fatal shot, Americans have tried to come to grips with Alexander Hamilton's legacy. Stephen Knott surveys the Hamilton image in the minds of American statesmen, scholars, literary figures, and the media, explaining why Americans are content to live in a Hamiltonian nation but reluctant to embrace the man himself. Knott observes that Thomas Jefferson and his followers, and, later, Andrew Jackson and his adherents, tended to view Hamilton and his principles as "un-American." While his policies generated mistrust in the South and the West, where he is still seen as the founding "plutocrat," Hamilton was revered in New England and parts of the Mid-Atlantic states. Hamilton's image as a champion of American nationalism caused his reputation to soar during the Civil War, at least in the North. However, in the wake of Gilded Age excesses, progressive and populist political leaders branded Hamilton as the patron saint of Wall Street, and his reputation began to disintegrate. Hamilton's status reached its nadir during the New Deal, Knott argues, when Franklin Roosevelt portrayed him as the personification of Dickensian cold-heartedness. When FDR erected the beautiful Tidal Basin monument to Thomas Jefferson and thereby elevated the Sage of Monticello into the American Pantheon, Hamilton, as Jefferson's nemesis, fell into disrepute. He came to epitomize the forces of reaction contemptuous of the "great beast"-the American people. In showing how the prevailing negative assessment misrepresents the man and his deeds, Knott argues for reconsideration of Hamiltonianism, which rightly understood has much to offer the American polity of the twenty-first century. Remarkably, at the dawn of the new millennium, the nation began to see Hamilton in a different light. Hamilton's story was now the embodiment of the American dream-an impoverished immigrant who came to the United States and laid the economic and political foundation that paved the way for America's superpower status. Here in Stephen Knott's insightful study, Hamilton finally gets his due as a highly contested but powerful and positive presence in American national life.

Download or read book The American Way of Life written by Lawrence R. Samuel and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Telling the full story of the American Way of Life (or more simply the American Way) in the United States over the course of the last century reveals key insights that add to our understanding of American culture. Lawrence R. Samuel argues that since the term was popularized in the 1930s, the American Way has served as the primary guiding mythology or national ethos of the United States. More than that, however, this work shows that the American Way has represented many things to many people, making the mythology a useful device for anyone wishing to promote a particular agenda that serves his or her interests. A consumerist lifestyle supported by a system based in free enterprise has been the ideological backbone of the American Way, but the term has been attached to everything from farming to baseball to barbecue. There really is no single, identifiable American Way and never has been—it becomes clear after tracing its history—making it a kind of Zelig of belief systems. If our underlying philosophy or set of values is amorphous and nebulous, then so is our national identity and character, Samuel concludes, implying that the meaning of America is elastic and accommodating to many interpretations. This unique thesis sets off this work from other books and helps establish it as a seminal resource within the fields of American history and American studies.

Download or read book Essays in European History written by June K. Burton and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays explore various topics in European history ranging from a study of the medieval Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds to an essay on the issue of the restoration of the Kaiser prior to Hitler's assumption of power. Enno Kraeh contributes a personal narrative of philosophical journey through the study of history. Three of the essays address literary and cultural themes dealing with German theatre politics, belle epoque opera, and Polish drama. The volume has strong representation on Austrian history, including essays on diplomacy, the Anschluss, and Austrian anti-Semitism.

Download or read book Maryland Wits and Baltimore Bards written by Frank R. Shivers and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1998-01-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first comprehensive literary history of Baltimore and Maryland, Frank R. Shivers, Jr., explores the region's long-overlooked but substantial contribution to American letters. In picture and story, Shivers's lively account ranges from the colonial satire of Ebenezer Cook to the national anthem of Francis Scott Key to the acclaimed works of Poe, Mencken, Fitzgerald, and more. 48 illustrations. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Download or read book Death Representations in Literature written by Adriana Teodorescu and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the academic field of death studies is a prosperous one, there still seems to be a level of mistrust concerning the capacity of literature to provide socially relevant information about death and to help improve the anthropological understanding of how culture is shaped by the human condition of mortality. Furthermore, the relationship between literature and death tends to be trivialized, in the sense that death representations are interpreted in an over-aestheticized manner. As such, this approach has a propensity to consider death in literature to be significant only for literary studies, and gives rise to certain persistent clichés, such as the power of literature to annihilate death. This volume overcomes such stereotypes, and reveals the great potential of literary studies to provide fresh and accurate ways of interrogating death as a steady and unavoidable human reality and as an ever-continuing socio-cultural construction. The volume brings together researchers from various countries – the USA, the UK, France, Poland, New Zealand, Canada, India, Germany, Greece, and Romania – with different academic backgrounds in fields as diverse as literature, art history, social studies, criminology, musicology, and cultural studies, and provides answers to questions such as: What are the features of death representations in certain literary genres? Is it possible to speak of an homogeneous vision of death in the case of some literary movements? How do writers perceive, imagine, and describe their death through their personal diaries, or how do they metabolize the death of the “significant others” through their writings? To what extent does the literary representation of death refer to the extra-fictional, socio-historically constructed “Death”? Is it moral to represent death in children’s literature? What are the differences and similarities between representing death in literature and death representations in other connected fields? Are metaphors and literary representations of death forms of death denial, or, on the contrary, a more insightful way of capturing the meaning of death?

Download or read book The Physical City written by Neil L. Shumsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1996. Part of a series that brings together more than 200 scholarly articles pertaining to the history and development of urban life in the United States during the past two centuries. The physical development of cities and their infrastructure is considered in Volume 2, which focuses on city planning and its origins in the Rural Cemetery Movement, the City Beautiful Movement, and the role of business in advocating more rational and efficient urban places. Volume 2 also contains articles about essential aspects of the urban infra structure and the provision of basic services essential for urban survival—water, sewer, and transportation systems.

Download or read book Atat rk written by Andrew Mango and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2002-08-26 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “superlative [and] exhaustively researched” biography of “one of the most complex and controversial figures in twentieth-century world history” (Library Journal). Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was virtually unknown until 1919, when he took the lead in thwarting the victorious Allies’ plan to partition the Turkish core of the Ottoman Empire. He divided the Allies, defeated the last Sultan, and secured the territory of the Turkish national state, becoming the first president of the new republic in 1923, fast creating his own legend. This revealing portrait of Atatürk throws light on matters of great importance today—resurgent nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and the reality of democracy. “One of the world’s most respected specialists on Turkey.” —The New York Times “Mango gives this man, one of the least-known nation-builders of the last century, full treatment, from his earliest days to his ascension to power and his death, from cirrhosis at the age of 57. Few leaders have so modernized an ancient society, instituting radical changes in dress, religion, government, education—even the alphabet . . . Mango’s admiration for Ataturk doesn’t keep him from displaying the dictator’s arrogance, ruthlessness and authoritarianism; his Turkish expertise enables him to flesh out Ataturk’s complex life via sources he translated himself . . . a rounded, finely detailed portrait.” —Publishers Weekly “Thanks to Andrew Mango’s new biography, the best in the English language, a man both demonized and idolized appears to us in three dimensions.” —The Washington Post “A superb biography.” —Dallas Morning News “The best concise account I have ever seen of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The narrative is gripping.” —Geoffrey Lewis, author of Modern Turkey

Download or read book The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales written by Justin Everett and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the pulp magazine Weird Tales appeared on newsstands in 1923, it proved to be a pivotal moment in the evolution of speculative fiction. Living up to its nickname, “The Unique Magazine,” Weird Tales provided the first real venue for authors writing in the nascent genres of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Weird fiction pioneers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Catherine L. Moore, and many others honed their craft in the pages of Weird Tales in the 1920s and 1930s, and their work had a tremendous influence on later generations of genre authors. In The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror, Justin Everett and Jeffrey Shanks have assembled an impressive collection of essays that explore many of the themes critical to understanding the importance of the magazine. This multi-disciplinary collection from a wide array of scholars looks at how Weird Tales served as a locus of genre formation and literary discourse community. There are also chapters devoted to individual authors—including Lovecraft, Howard, and Bloch—and their particular contributions to the magazine. As the literary world was undergoing a revolution and mass-produced media began to dwarf high-brow literature in social significance, Weird Tales managed to straddle both worlds. This collection of essays explores the important role the magazine played in expanding the literary landscape at a very particular time and place in American culture. The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales will appeal to scholars and aficionados of fantasy, horror, and weird fiction and those interested in the early roots of these popular genres.

Download or read book Classics for the Masses written by Pauline Fairclough and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-28 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musicologist Pauline Fairclough explores the evolving role of music in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an unbending, unchanging state policy of repression, censorship, and dissonance that existed in all areas of Soviet artistic endeavor. Newly opened archives from the Leninist and Stalinist eras have shed new light on Soviet concert life, demonstrating how the music of the past was used to help mold and deliver cultural policy, how “undesirable” repertoire was weeded out during the 1920s, and how Russian and non-Russian composers such as Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Bach, and Rachmaninov were “canonized” during different, distinct periods in Stalinist culture. Fairclough’s fascinating study of the ever-shifting Soviet musical-political landscape identifies 1937 as the start of a cultural Cold War, rather than occurring post-World War Two, as is often maintained, while documenting the efforts of musicians and bureaucrats during this period to keep musical channels open between Russia and the West.

Download or read book The Complete Works of W H Auden written by W. H. Auden and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains Auden and Christopher Isherwood's dramatic extravaganzas The Dog Beneath the Skin, the Ascent of F 6, and On the Frontier. It also includes the two versions of Paid on Both Sides--which are so different as to constitute two works--and Auden's satiric revue The Dance of Death. Two plays appear in print for the first time, Auden and Isherwood's The Enemies of a Bishop and Auden's The Chase. Also included are Auden's prose and verse written for doucmentary films, a cabaret sketch, and an unpublished radio script. Many of the texts include poems by the young Auden that have never been published before. The extensive historical and textual notes trace the complex history of the production and revision of these plays, including full texts and rewritten scenes. During the years when these works were created, Auden moved from a "poetry of isolation" to more expansive and public writing. After he left Oxford at age twenty-one, during the summer of 1928, he wrote the tragicomic charade Paid on Both Sides. During the next ten years, until he left England for America, he created the increasingly ambitious works for stage, film, and broadcast that appear in this volume. The most important of these plays were written in collaboration with Isherwood. As the world political situation worsened, Isherwood and Auden's style combined the energy of popular entertainment with the urgency of sacramental ritual. Edard Mendelson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and the author of Early Auden (Viking). He is the editor of two volumes of Aduen's poetry, Collected Poems (Random House) and The English Auden (Random House). Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.