Download or read book Illuminating History A Retrospective of Seven Decades written by Bernard Bailyn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brilliance of a master historian shines through this “elegant and engaging memoir” of a lifetime’s work (Richard Aldous, Wall Street Journal). Over a remarkable career Bernard Bailyn has reshaped our understanding of the early American past. Inscribing his superb scholarship with passion and imagination honed by a commitment to rigor, Bailyn captures the particularity of the past and its broad significance in precise, elegant prose. His transformative work has ranged from a new reckoning with the ideology that powered the opposition to British authority in the American Revolution, to a sweeping account of the peopling of America, and the critical nurturing of a new field, the history of the Atlantic world. Illuminating History is the most personal of Bailyn’s works. It is in part an intellectual memoir of the significant turns in an immensely productive and influential scholarly career. It is also alive with people whose actions touched the long arc of history. Among the dramatic human stories that command our attention: a struggling Boston merchant tormented by the tensions between capitalist avarice and a constrictive Puritan piety; an ordinary shopkeeper who in a unique way feverishly condemned British authority as corrupt and unworthy of public confidence; a charismatic German Pietist who founded a cloister in the Pennsylvania wilderness famous for its strange theosophy, its spartan lifestyle, and its rich musical and artistic achievement. And the good townspeople of Petersham, whose response in 1780 to a draft Massachusetts constitution speaks directly to us through a moving insistence on individual freedoms in the face of an imposing central authority. Here is vivid history and an illuminating self-portrait from one of the most eminent historians of our time.
Download or read book The Darker Angels of Our Nature written by Philip Dwyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Better Angels of Our Nature Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that modern history has witnessed a dramatic decline in human violence of every kind, and that in the present we are experiencing the most peaceful time in human history. But what do top historians think about Pinker's reading of the past? Does his argument stand up to historical analysis? In The Darker Angels of our Nature, seventeen scholars of international stature evaluate Pinker's arguments and find them lacking. Studying the history of violence from Japan and Russia to Native America, Medieval England and the Imperial Middle East, these scholars debunk the myth of non-violent modernity. Asserting that the real story of human violence is richer, more interesting and incomparably more complex than Pinker's sweeping, simplified narrative, this book tests, and bests, 'fake history' with expert knowledge.
Download or read book Buzz Books 2020 Spring Summer written by and published by Publishers Lunch. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 819 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As booksellers gather for the annual Winter Institute convention, where they get to meet the season’s big authors and hope to cart home pre-publication review copies, Buzz Books 2020 presents passionate readers with some of the same insider’s look at 44 books on the way. As booksellers gather for the annual Winter Institute convention, where they get to meet the season’s big authors and hope to cart home pre-publication review copies, Buzz Books 2020 presents passionate readers with some of the same insider’s look at 44 books on the way. [Note our previously standalone young adult edition is now folded in to this edition, along with adult fiction and nonfiction.] Our “digital convention” features such major authors as bestsellers Brit Bennett, Sue Monk Kidd, and David Nicholls, along with Veronica Roth, of Divergent fame, with her first adult novel. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Amy Engel, Debra Jo Immergut, Anna Solomon, and Ellen Marie Wiseman. Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors. A legal thriller by Erica Katz has already been optioned by Netflix, and novels by Naoise Dolan and Kate Reed Petty were sold at auction. Kawai Strong Washburn has literary bona fides, as does Raven Leilani, Benjamin Nugent, and Ilana Masad. Our nonfiction selections range from comedian Mike Birbiglia’s account of becoming a father to transgender activist and author Jennifer Finney Boylan’s Good Boy: My Life In Seven Dogs. Benjamin Taylor shares his friendship with Philip Roth in Here We Are. Finally, we present early looks at new work from four up-and-coming young adult authors: Laura Bates, Brandy Colbert, Kim Johnson, and Court Stevens. And be sure to look for the next Buzz Books 2020: Fall/Winter in May, just in time for Book Expo.
Download or read book The Rector of Justin written by Louis Auchincloss and published by HMH. This book was released on 2002-07-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] certifiable masterpiece” from the acclaimed chronicler of New York City’s old money elite (The New York Observer). Widely considered Louis Auchincloss’s greatest novel, The Rector of Justin is an astute dissection of the social mores of the Northeast’s privileged establishment. The story centers on Rev. Frank Prescott, the charismatic founder and rector of a prestigious Episcopal school for boys. With laser-sharp insight, Auchincloss delivers a prismatic portrait of this commanding and complicated man through the eyes of those who knew—or thought they knew—him best. Seamlessly interweaving multiple points of view—from an adoring teacher to that of a rebellious daughter—The Rector of Justin presents a social history of the eighty years of his life: the sources of his virtues and failings, his successes, his love, and his crises of faith. As Jonathan Yardley put it in the Washington Post, “Auchincloss is one of the most accomplished and distinctive writers this country has known . . . [and] Frank Prescott is one of the great characters in American fiction.” “A daring and ambitious book . . . Its poise and taste and intelligence strike one on every page, as do its unerring knowledge and literary skill.” —The New Yorker “[The Rector of Justin] should sit on the shelf of any serious reader of American fiction.” —Jay Parini, The New York Observer “A taut and elegant study of a distinguished American whose closest friends cannot decide whether they like or detest him.” —The Times Literary Supplement “Fascinating . . . We do come to feel the reality, the complicated reality, of Francis Prescott.” —Saturday Review “My favorite of Auchincloss’s novels. Both decadent and demanding, high-hat and frank . . . A subversive in lace-up oxfords and rep tie.” —Amy Bloom
Download or read book Faces of Revolution written by Bernard Bailyn and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-06-29 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Bernard Bailyn brings us a book that combines portraits of American revolutionaries with a deft exploration of the ideas that moved them and still shape our society today.
Download or read book Civilization written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.
Download or read book Sometimes an Art written by Bernard Bailyn and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the most respected historians in America, twice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a new collection of essays that reflects a lifetime of erudition and accomplishments in history. The past has always been elusive: How can we understand people whose worlds were utterly different from our own without imposing our own standards and hindsight? What did things feel like in the moment, when outcomes were uncertain? How can we recover those uncertainties? What kind of imagination goes into the writing of transformative history? Are there latent trends that distinguish the kinds of history we now write? How unique was North America among the far-flung peripheries of the early British empire? As Bernard Bailyn argues in this elegant, deeply informed collection of essays, history always combines approximations based on incomplete data with empathic imagination, interweaving strands of knowledge into a narrative that also explains. This is a stirring and insightful work drawing on the wisdom and perspective of a career spanning more than five decades—a book that will appeal to anyone interested in history.
Download or read book Death Zones and Darling Spies written by Beverly Deepe Keever and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chosen for 2015 One Book One Nebraska In 1961, equipped with a master's degree from famed Columbia Journalism School and letters of introduction to Associated Press bureau chiefs in Asia, twenty-six-year-old Beverly Deepe set off on a trip around the world. Allotting just two weeks to South Vietnam, she was still there seven years later, having then earned the distinction of being the longest-serving American correspondent covering the Vietnam War and garnering a Pulitzer Prize nomination. In Death Zones and Darling Spies, Beverly Deepe Keever describes what it was like for a farm girl from Nebraska to find herself halfway around the world, trying to make sense of one of the nation's bloodiest and bitterest wars. She arrived in Saigon as Vietnam's war entered a new phase and American helicopter units and provincial advisers were unpacking. She tells of traveling from her Saigon apartment to jungles where Wild West-styled forts first dotted Vietnam's borders and where, seven years later, they fell like dominoes from communist-led attacks. In 1965 she braved elephant grass with American combat units armed with unparalleled technology to observe their valor--and their inability to distinguish friendly farmers from hide-and-seek guerrillas. Keever's trove of tissue-thin memos to editors, along with published and unpublished dispatches for New York and London media, provide the reader with you-are-there descriptions of Buddhist demonstrations and turning-point coups as well as phony ones. Two Vietnamese interpreters, self-described as "darling spies," helped her decode Vietnam's shadow world and subterranean war. These memoirs, at once personal and panoramic, chronicle the horrors of war and a rise and decline of American power and prestige.
Download or read book The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson written by Bernard Bailyn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paradoxical and tragic story of America's most prominent Loyalist - a man caught between king and country.
Download or read book Roman Power written by W. V. Harris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains the growth, durability and eventual shrinkage of Roman imperial power alongside the Roman state's internal power structures.
Download or read book An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution written by Mary Wollstonecraft and published by . This book was released on 1794 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution written by Bernard Bailyn and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Synagogues of New York s Lower East Side written by Gerard R. Wolfe and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic book on the Lower East Side's synagogues and their congregations, past and present-now back in print in a completely revised and expanded edition
Download or read book Balthus written by Nicholas Fox Weber and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-09-25 with total page 1047 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-scale biography of one of the most elusive and enigmatic painters of our time -- the self-proclaimed Count Balthus Klossowski de Rola -- whose brilliantly rendered, markedly sexualized portraits, especially of young girls, are among the most memorable images in contemporary art. The story of Balthus's life has been shrouded by contradiction and hearsay, most of it his own invention; over the years he created for himself a persona of mystery, aristocracy, and glamour. Now, in Nicholas Fox Weber's superb biography, Balthus, the man and the artist, stands revealed as never before. He was born in Paris in 1908 to Polish parents. At age twelve he first stepped into the spotlight with the publication of forty of his drawings illustrating a story about a cat by Rainer Maria Rilke, who was then Balthus's mother's lover and a crucial influence on the young boy. From that moment, Balthus has never been out of the public eye. In 1934 his first exhibition, in Paris, stunned the art world. The seven canvases drew attention to his extraordinary technique -- a mix of tradition and imagination informed by the work of Piero della Francesca, Courbet, and Joseph Reinhardt, but unique to the twenty-six-year-old artist -- and to their provocative content; one of the paintings, The Guitar Lesson, was so powerful in its sadomasochistic imagery that it was deemed necessary to remove it from public display. Continuously since then, Balthus's work has provoked both great opprobrium and profound admiration -- as has the artist himself, whether collaborating with Antonin Artaud on his Theater of Cruelty, transforming the Villa Medici into the social center of Fellini's Rome in the 1950s, or competing for the artistic limelight with his friends Picasso and André Derain. The artist's complexities are clarified and his genius understood in a book that derives its particular immediacy from Weber's long and intense conversations with Balthus -- who never previously consented to discuss his life and work with a biographer -- as well as his interviews with the painter's closest friends, members of his family, and many of the subjects of his controversial canvases. Weber's critical and human grasp (he acutely analyzes the paintings in terms of both their aesthetic achievement and what they reveal of their maker's psyche), combined with his rich knowledge of Balthus's life and his insight into the ideas and forces that have helped to shape Balthus's work over the past seven decades, gives us a striking, illuminating portrait of one of the most admired and outrageous artists of our time.
Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Download or read book The Death of Nature written by Carolyn Merchant and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: UPDATED 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH 2020 PREFACE An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.
