Download or read book Inventing a Nation written by Gore Vidal and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-08-11 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the master stylists of American literature, Gore Vidal now provides us with his uniquely irreverent take on America's founding fathers, bringing them to life at key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation. “Pure Vidal. . . . Inventing a Nation is his edgy tribute to the way we were before the fall.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “[Vidal offers] details that enliven and . . . reflections on the past that point sharply to today.” —Richard Eder, New York Times “An engaging [and] . . . unblinking view of our national heroes by one who cherishes them, warts and all.”—Edmund S. Morgan, New York Review of Books “[Vidal's] quick wit flickers over the canonical tale of our republic's founding, turning it into a dark and deliciously nuanced comedy of men, manners, and ideas.”—Amanda Heller, Boston Sunday Globe “This entertaining and enlightening reappraisal of the Founders is a must for buffs of American civilization and its discontents.”—Booklist “Gore Vidal . . . still understands American history backwards and forwards as few writers ever have.”—David Kipen, National Public Radio

Download or read book The Invention of China written by Bill Hayton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-02 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] smart take on modern Chinese nationalism" (Foreign Policy), this provocative account shows that "China"--and its 5,000 years of unified history--is a national myth, created only a century ago with a political agenda that persists to this day China's current leadership lays claim to a 5,000-year-old civilization, but "China" as a unified country and people, Bill Hayton argues, was created far more recently by a small group of intellectuals. In this compelling account, Hayton shows how China's present-day geopolitical problems--the fates of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea--were born in the struggle to create a modern nation-state. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reformers and revolutionaries adopted foreign ideas to "invent' a new vision of China. By asserting a particular, politicized version of the past the government bolstered its claim to a vast territory stretching from the Pacific to Central Asia. Ranging across history, nationhood, language, and territory, Hayton shows how the Republic's reworking of its past not only helped it to justify its right to rule a century ago--but continues to motivate and direct policy today.

Download or read book Network Nation written by Richard R. John and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The telegraph and the telephone were the first electrical communications networks to become hallmarks of modernity. Yet they were not initially expected to achieve universal accessibility. In this pioneering history of their evolution, Richard R. John demonstrates how access to these networks was determined not only by technological imperatives and economic incentives but also by political decision making at the federal, state, and municipal levels. In the decades between the Civil War and the First World War, Western Union and the Bell System emerged as the dominant providers for the telegraph and telephone. Both operated networks that were products not only of technology and economics but also of a distinctive political economy. Western Union arose in an antimonopolistic political economy that glorified equal rights and vilified special privilege. The Bell System flourished in a progressive political economy that idealized public utility and disparaged unnecessary waste. The popularization of the telegraph and the telephone was opposed by business lobbies that were intent on perpetuating specialty services. In fact, it wasnÕt until 1900 that the civic ideal of mass access trumped the elitist ideal of exclusivity in shaping the commercialization of the telephone. The telegraph did not become widely accessible until 1910, sixty-five years after the first fee-for-service telegraph line opened in 1845. Network Nation places the history of telecommunications within the broader context of American politics, business, and discourse. This engrossing and provocative book persuades us of the critical role of political economy in the development of new technologies and their implementation.

Download or read book China written by Henrietta Harrison and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2001-08-31 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Chinese nationalism a vital ingredient of both the domestic politics of the People's Republic of China and its international relations, this book explores how China came to be a nation, arguing that from early times China had all the features of a nation state- a common language, culture, and bureaucracy- and that China as it exists today was invented through the construction of a modern state. The book describes the attitudes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese towards identity and ethnicity and how these factors affected the structure of the state. The Chinese efforts to build a modern nation state that could resist the Western imperial powers are also documented as are the efforts in the twentieth century to spread nationalism from the cities into rural China. The book argues that China has not been an exception to the process of the invention of nations. Instead, its differences arise from the complexities of the relationship between nationalism and imperialism. Moreover, the role of imperialism was not limited to Western empires: the Manchu Qing empire played quite as significant a role in the construction of the modern Chinese nation state as did imported European ideologies.

Download or read book The Invention of a Nation written by Alain Dieckhoff and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive overview of the various ideologies that constitute Zionism, ranging from Marxist-Zionism to National Religious Zionism to that of the far-right Abba Achimeir. This book makes explicit the debt the Zionists owed to French thinkers and European ideologues, notably those associated with the French Revolution and the Enlightenment.

Download or read book Inventing Iraq written by Toby Dodge and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dodge offers a sobering look back at the first attempt by a Western power to remake Iraq in its own image.

Download or read book One Nation Under God written by Kevin M. Kruse and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The provocative and authoritative history of the origins of Christian America in the New Deal era We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the belief that America is fundamentally and formally Christian originated in the 1930s. To fight the "slavery" of FDR's New Deal, businessmen enlisted religious activists in a campaign for "freedom under God" that culminated in the election of their ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The new president revolutionized the role of religion in American politics. He inaugurated new traditions like the National Prayer Breakfast, as Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and made "In God We Trust" the country's first official motto. Church membership soon soared to an all-time high of 69 percent. Americans across the religious and political spectrum agreed that their country was "one nation under God." Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how an unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day.

Download or read book MICRONATIONS written by Kathy Ceceri and published by Nomad Press. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For anyone who's ever dreamed of ruling over their own empire, here's your chance! Micronations are imaginary countries that have a lot of the same things as real ones: laws, customs, history, and their own flags, coins, and postage stamps. Micronations: Invent Your Own Country and Culture takes readers step-by-step to create their own unique realm, using examples from real nations, micronations, and fictional lands. What makes a country a country? What symbols and systems define a country and help it function? Learn about geography and government, technology and the environment, art and culture, and the literary device of "world-building" used in works like The Hobbit and Harry Potter. Kids get to invent their own language, music, games, clothing, food, and holidays to fit their micronation's tradition. Whether they create a land of time travel where every city exists in a different epoch or an underwater monarchy whose chief export is fish, Micronations: Invent Your Own Country and Culture will engage kids' imagination and teach make-believe rulers how the real world works. This title meets Common Core State Standards for literacy in language arts, history and social studies; Guided Reading Levels and Lexile measurements indicate grade level and text complexity.

Download or read book Creating Country Music written by Richard A. Peterson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Creating Country Music, Richard Peterson traces the development of country music and its institutionalization from Fiddlin' John Carson's pioneering recordings in Atlanta in 1923 to the posthumous success of Hank Williams. Peterson captures the free-wheeling entrepreneurial spirit of the era, detailing the activities of the key promoters who sculpted the emerging country music scene. More than just a history of the music and its performers, this book is the first to explore what it means to be authentic within popular culture. "[Peterson] restores to the music a sense of fun and diversity and possibility that more naive fans (and performers) miss. Like Buck Owens, Peterson knows there is no greater adventure or challenge than to 'act naturally.'"—Ken Emerson, Los Angeles Times Book Review "A triumphal history and theory of the country music industry between 1920 and 1953."—Robert Crowley, International Journal of Comparative Sociology "One of the most important books ever written about a popular music form."—Timothy White, Billboard Magazine

Download or read book Trust written by Tarun Khanna and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Harvard Business School professor and international entrepreneur explains the crucial ingredient for success in the developing world. Entrepreneurial ventures often fail in the developing world because of the lack of something taken for granted in the developed world: trust. Over centuries the developed world has built up customs and institutions like enforceable contracts, an impartial legal system, credible regulatory bodies, even unofficial but respected sources of information like Yelp or Consumer Reports that have created a high level of what scholar and entrepreneur Tarun Khanna calls “ambient trust.” If a product is FDA-approved we feel confident it’s safe. If someone makes an untrue claim or breaks an agreement we can sue. Police don’t demand bribes to do their jobs. Certainly there are exceptions, but when brought to light they provoke a scandal, not a shrug. This is not the case in the developing world. But rather than become casualties of mistrust, Khanna shows that smart entrepreneurs adopt the mindset that, like it or not, it’s up to them to weave their own independent web of trust—with their employees, partners, clients, and customers—and with society as a whole. This can requires innovative approaches in places where the level of societal mistrust is so high that, as in one example Khanna provides, an official certification of quality simply arouses suspicion—and lowers sales! Using vivid examples from Brazil, China, India, Mexico and elsewhere, Khanna shows how entrepreneurs can build on existing customs and practices instead of trying to push against them. He highlights the role new technologies can play (but cautions that these are not panaceas), and explains how entrepreneurs can find dependable partners in national and local governments to create impact at scale

Download or read book Gadget Nation written by Steve Greenberg and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether you're a would-be entrepreneur, a hard-core geek, or just a gadget lover, it is hard to imagine a bigger thrill than inventing something and sharing your creation with the world--and maybe even making a profit somewhere along the way. Gadget Nation celebrates that spirit through the irresistible, often quirky stories of more than 100 amateur inventors and their gizmos, from lighted slippers to an alarm clock that rolls away from you when you reach for the snooze button.

Download or read book Glen Canyon Dammed written by Jared Farmer and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Focusing on the saddening, maddening example of Glen Canyon, Jared Farmer traces the history of exploration and development in the Four Corners region, discusses the role of tourism in changing the face of the West, and shows how the "invention" of Lake Powell has served multiple needs. He also seeks to identify the point at which change becomes loss: How do people deal with losing places they love? How are we to remember or restore lost places?"--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Start up Nation written by Dan Senor and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2011-09-07 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What the world can learn from Israel's meteoric economic success. Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel -- a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK? With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality-- all backed up by government policies focused on innovation. In a world where economies as diverse as Ireland, Singapore and Dubai have tried to re-create the "Israel effect", there are entrepreneurial lessons well worth noting. As America reboots its own economy and can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressive, surprising clues.

Download or read book Inventing Freedom written by Daniel Hannan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does the world speak English? Why does every country at least pretend to aspire to representative government, personal freedom, and an independent judiciary? In The New Road to Serfdom, British politician Daniel Hannan exhorted Americans not to abandon the principles that have made our country great. Inventing Freedom is a much more ambitious account of the historical origin and spread of those principles, and their role in creating a sphere of economic and political liberty that is as crucial as it is imperiled. According to Hannan, the ideas and institutions we consider essential to maintaining and preserving our freedoms—individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and the institutions of representative government—are not broadly "Western" in the usual sense of the term. Rather they are the legacy of a very specific tradition, one that was born in England and that we Americans, along with other former British colonies, inherited. The first English kingdoms, as they emerged from the Dark Ages, already had unique characteristics that would develop into what we now call constitutional government. By the tenth century, a thousand years before most modern countries, England was a nation-state whose people were already starting to define themselves with reference to inherited common-law rights. The story of liberty is the story of how that model triumphed. How, repressed after the Norman Conquest, it reasserted itself; how it developed during the civil wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into the modern liberal-democratic tradition; how it was enshrined in a series of landmark victories—the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the U.S. Constitution—and how it came to defeat every international rival. Yet there was nothing inevitable about it. Anglosphere values could easily have been snuffed out in the 1940s. And they would not be ascendant today if the Cold War had ended differently. Today we see those ideas abandoned and scorned in the places where they once went unchallenged. The current U.S. president, in particular, seems determined to deride and traduce the Anglosphere values that the Founders took for granted. Inventing Freedom explains why the extraordinary idea that the state was the servant, not the ruler, of the individual evolved uniquely in the English-speaking world. It is a chronicle of the success of Anglosphere exceptionalism. And it is offered at a time that may turn out to be the end of the age of political freedom.

Download or read book Inventing Europe written by G. Delanty and published by Springer. This book was released on 1995-04-19 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical analysis of the idea of Europe and the limits and possibilities of a European identity in the broader perspective of history. This book argues that the crucial issue is the articulation of a new identity that is based on post-national citizenship rather than ambivalent notions of unity.

Download or read book My Invented Country written by Isabel Allende and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly personal memoir of exile and homeland by bestselling author Isabel Allende In My Invented Country Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country, a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today. The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. My Invented Country, whose structure mimics the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance accrued between the author’s past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us, who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.

Download or read book Re inventing Japan written by Tessa Morris-Suzuki and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text rethinks the contours of Japanese history, culture and nationality. Challenging the mythology of a historically unitary, even monolithic Japan, it offers a different perspective on culture and identity in modern Japan.