Download or read book Marking Modern Times written by Alexis McCrossen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Marking Modern Times, Alexis McCrossen relates how the American preoccupation with time led people from across social classes to acquire watches and clocks, and expands our understanding of the ways we have standardized time and have made timekeepers serve as political, social, and cultural tools in a society that not merely values time, but regards access to it as a natural-born right.
Download or read book Marking Modern Times written by Alexis McCrossen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Tells a story of a period when the quest for accurate timekeeping became an obsession in the US.” —Choice The public spaces and buildings of the United States are home to many thousands of timepieces—bells, time balls, and clock faces—that tower over urban streets, peek out from lobbies, and gleam in store windows. And in the streets and squares beneath them, men, women, and children wear wristwatches of all kinds. Americans have decorated their homes with clocks and included them in their poetry, sermons, stories, and songs. And as political instruments, social tools, and cultural symbols, these personal and public timekeepers have enjoyed a broad currency in art, life, and culture. In Marking Modern Times, Alexis McCrossen relates how the American preoccupation with time led people from across social classes to acquire watches and clocks. While noting the difficulties in regulating and synchronizing so many timepieces, McCrossen expands our understanding of the development of modern time discipline, delving into the ways we have standardized time and describing how timekeepers have served as political, social, and cultural tools in a society that doesn’t merely value time but regards access to time as a natural-born right, a privilege of being an American. “A precise, acute, and well-measured monograph.” —Journal of Social History “Important and engaging.” —Journal of American History “ An innovative contribution on a key historical shift in modern life.” —Urban History “An authoritative narrative of how and where time and timepieces were distributed in the period.” —Reviews in American History
Download or read book Marking Time written by Nicole R. Fleetwood and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A powerful document of the inner lives and creative visions of men and women rendered invisible by America’s prison system. More than two million people are currently behind bars in the United States. Incarceration not only separates the imprisoned from their families and communities; it also exposes them to shocking levels of deprivation and abuse and subjects them to the arbitrary cruelties of the criminal justice system. Yet, as Nicole Fleetwood reveals, America’s prisons are filled with art. Despite the isolation and degradation they experience, the incarcerated are driven to assert their humanity in the face of a system that dehumanizes them. Based on interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated artists, prison visits, and the author’s own family experiences with the penal system, Marking Time shows how the imprisoned turn ordinary objects into elaborate works of art. Working with meager supplies and in the harshest conditions—including solitary confinement—these artists find ways to resist the brutality and depravity that prisons engender. The impact of their art, Fleetwood observes, can be felt far beyond prison walls. Their bold works, many of which are being published for the first time in this volume, have opened new possibilities in American art. As the movement to transform the country’s criminal justice system grows, art provides the imprisoned with a political voice. Their works testify to the economic and racial injustices that underpin American punishment and offer a new vision of freedom for the twenty-first century."
Download or read book Marking Time written by Duncan Steel and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2007-08-03 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you lie awake worrying about the overnight transition from December 31, 1 b.c., to January 1, a.d. 1 (there is no year zero), then you will enjoy Duncan Steel's Marking Time."--American Scientist "No book could serve as a better guide to the cumulative invention that defines the imaginary threshold to the new millennium."--Booklist A Fascinating March through History and the Evolution of the Modern-Day Calendar . . . In this vivid, fast-moving narrative, you'll discover the surprising story of how our modern calendar came about and how it has changed dramatically through the years. Acclaimed author Duncan Steel explores each major step in creating the current calendar along with the many different systems for defining the number of days in a week, the length of a month, and the number of days in a year. From the definition of the lunar month by Meton of Athens in 432 b.c. to the roles played by Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, and Isaac Newton to present-day proposals to reform our calendar, this entertaining read also presents "timely" tidbits that will take you across the full span of recorded history. Find out how and why comets have been used as clocks, why there is no year zero between 1 b.c. and a.d. 1, and why for centuries Britain and its colonies rang in the New Year on March 25th. Marking Time will leave you with a sense of awe at the haphazard nature of our calendar's development. Once you've read this eye-opening book, you'll never look at the calendar the same way again.
Download or read book Marking Time written by Paul Rabinow and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Marking Time, Paul Rabinow presents his most recent reflections on the anthropology of the contemporary. Drawing richly on the work of Michel Foucault, John Dewey, Niklas Luhmann, and, most interestingly, German painter Gerhard Richter, Rabinow offers a set of conceptual tools for scholars examining cutting-edge practices in the life sciences, security, new media and art practices, and other emergent phenomena. Taking up topics that include bioethics, anger and competition among molecular biologists, the lessons of the Drosophila genome, the nature of ethnographic observation in radically new settings, and the moral landscape shared by scientists and anthropologists, Rabinow shows how anthropology remains relevant to contemporary debates. By turning abstract philosophical problems into real-world explorations and offering original insights, Marking Time is a landmark contribution to the continuing re-invention of anthropology and the human sciences.
Download or read book Marking Time written by Rev. Barbara K. Lundblad and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The preacher is too often caught between biblical and contemporary time. Residing first in one, then in the other, the preacher must somehow find a way to bring the two times -- separate as they might seem -- together. The temptation of course is to capitulate to one side or the other of this tension. The preacher can reside solely in the biblical time, offering the congregation what amounts to weekly lectures on history and archeology, spiced up with the occasional moralistic conclusion. Or, setting up shop permanently in contemporary time, she or he can offer commentaries on society and culture that occasionally tip their hats in the direction of Scripture. A third way, contends Barbara Lundblad, lies in marking time, a way of allowing biblical time to speak to the contemporary world and vice versa. When the preacher marks time, he or she admits that there can be no one-to-one correspondence between the world of the text and the world of the congregation. Nevertheless, the preacher demonstrates that when the biblical text is let loose upon our day to day existence, it challenges and judges, redeems and sanctifies it, infusing it with new meaning. Likewise, contemporary situations, needs, and experiences open up new possibilities within Scripture, allowing the congregation to see truth in the text they had never before discovered there, allowing them to discern the leading of the Spirit through the text and into the present moment. In this volume, which grows out of Lundblad's 2000 Beecher Lectures delivered at Yale Divinity School, the author presents both an argument for the ongoing intersection of the biblical and contemporary worlds, and examples of how that intersection might take place.
Download or read book Used Books written by William H. Sherman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a recent sale catalog, one bookseller apologized for the condition of a sixteenth-century volume as "rather soiled by use." When the book was displayed the next year, the exhibition catalogue described it as "well and piously used [with] marginal notations in an Elizabethan hand [that] bring to life an early and earnest owner"; and the book's buyer, for his part, considered it to be "enlivened by the marginal notes and comments." For this collector, as for an increasing number of cultural historians and historians of the book, a marked-up copy was more interesting than one in pristine condition. William H. Sherman recovers a culture that took the phrase "mark my words" quite literally. Books from the first two centuries of printing are full of marginalia and other signs of engagement and use, such as customized bindings, traces of food and drink, penmanship exercises, and doodles. These marks offer a vast archive of information about the lives of books and their place in the lives of their readers. Based on a survey of thousands of early printed books, Used Books describes what readers wrote in and around their books and what we can learn from these marks by using the tools of archaeologists as well as historians and literary critics. The chapters address the place of book-marking in schools and churches, the use of the "manicule" (the ubiquitous hand-with-pointing-finger symbol), the role played by women in information management, the extraordinary commonplace book used for nearly sixty years by Renaissance England's greatest lawyer-statesman, and the attitudes toward annotated books among collectors and librarians from the Middle Ages to the present. This wide-ranging, learned, and often surprising book will make the marks of Renaissance readers more visible and legible to scholars, collectors, and bibliophiles.
Download or read book A Brief History of Timekeeping written by Chad Orzel and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARDS WINNER — HISTORY: GENERAL ". . . inherently interesting, unique, and highly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, college, and academic library Physics of Time & Scientific Measurement history collections, and supplemental curriculum studies lists.” —Midwest Book Review "A wonderful look into understanding and recording time, Orzel’s latest is appropriate for all readers who are curious about those ticks and tocks that mark nearly every aspect of our lives." —Booklist “A thorough, enjoyable exploration of the history and science behind measuring time.” —Foreword Reviews It’s all a matter of time—literally. From the movements of the spheres to the slipperiness of relativity, the story of science unfolds through the fascinating history of humanity’s efforts to keep time. Our modern lives are ruled by clocks and watches, smartphone apps and calendar programs. While our gadgets may be new, however, the drive to measure and master time is anything but—and in A Brief History of Timekeeping, Chad Orzel traces the path from Stonehenge to your smartphone. Predating written language and marching on through human history, the desire for ever-better timekeeping has spurred technological innovation and sparked theories that radically reshaped our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Orzel, a physicist and the bestselling author of Breakfast with Einstein and How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog continues his tradition of demystifying thorny scientific concepts by using the clocks and calendars central to our everyday activities as a jumping-off point to explore the science underlying the ways we keep track of our time. Ancient solstice markers (which still work perfectly 5,000 years later) depend on the basic astrophysics of our solar system; mechanical clocks owe their development to Newtonian physics; and the ultra-precise atomic timekeeping that enables GPS hinges on the predictable oddities of quantum mechanics. Along the way, Orzel visits the delicate negotiations involved in Gregorian calendar reform, the intricate and entirely unique system employed by the Maya, and how the problem of synchronizing clocks at different locations ultimately required us to abandon the idea of time as an absolute and universal quantity. Sharp and engaging, A Brief History of Timekeeping is a story not just about the science of sundials, sandglasses, and mechanical clocks, but also the politics of calendars and time zones, the philosophy of measurement, and the nature of space and time itself. For those interested in science, technology, or history, or anyone who’s ever wondered about the instruments that divide our days into moments: the time you spend reading this book may fly, and it is certain to be well spent.
Download or read book The End of Marking Time written by C. J. West and published by . This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gifted housebreaker, Michael O'Connor, awakens inside an ultramodern criminal justice system where prison walls are replaced by surveillance equipment and a host of actors hired to determine if he is worthy of freedom. While he was sleeping, the Supreme Court declared long term incarceration to be cruel and unusual punishment and ordered two million felons released. The result was utter chaos and the backlash from law-abiding citizens and police departments reshaped the United States. Felons now enter reeducation programs where they live freely among the population. At least that's what they think. In reality they are enslaved to an army of counselors and a black box that teaches them everything they failed to learn from kindergarten through adulthood. Michael believes he's being tested by the black box, but what he slowly begins to realize is that everything he does is evaluated to determine whether he lives or dies.
Download or read book English in Modern Times written by Joan C Beal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-24 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English in Modern Times describes the development of the English language from 1700 until 1945, and argues that it is in the course of this later modern English period that the characteristics of 'modern' English evolved. This is the first undergraduate text to cover the whole of this important period, which has been called the 'Cinderella' of English historical linguistics because of its lack of representation in scholarly literature. This book is sociohistorical in orientation, arguing that social changes in the Anglophone world need to be taken into account if we are to understand the linguistic changes that occurred during this period. Further chapters deal with changes in vocabulary, syntax and morphology and phonology and with the attempts of lexicographers, grammarians and elocutionists to arrest and control these changes by codifying the language. Unlike many earlier histories of English, 'English in Modern Times' does not define 'English' as confined to Standard (English) English, but also considers the development of extraterritorial Englishes and non-standard varieties of British English in the Later Modern period.
Download or read book History of the Hour written by Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text provides an overview of the history of the mechanical clock and its effects on European society from the late Middle Ages to the industrial revolution. The book provides a discussion of how mechanical clocks functioned in cities and dispels many
Download or read book The Origins of the Modern World written by Robert Marks and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the modern world get to be the way it is? How did we come to live in a globalized, industrialized, capitalistic set of nation-states? Moving beyond Eurocentric explanations and histories that revolve around the rise of the West, distinguished historian Robert B. Marks explores the roles of Asia, Africa, and the New World in the global story. He defines the modern world as marked by industry, the nation state, interstate warfare, a large and growing gap between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the world, and an escape from environmental constraints. Bringing the saga to the present, Marks considers how and why the United States emerged as a world power in the 20th century and the sole superpower by the 21st century; the powerful resurgence of Asia; and the vastly changed relationship of humans to the environment.
Download or read book Marking the Hours written by Eamon Duffy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PT 3: Catholic books in a Protestant world.
Download or read book Jews Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-03-27 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together articles on the cultural, religious, social and commercial interactions among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the medieval and early modern periods. Written by leading scholars in Jewish studies, Islamic studies, medieval history and social and economic history, the contributions to this volume reflect the profound influence on these fields of the volume’s honoree, Professor Mark R. Cohen.
Download or read book Untimely Democracy written by Gregory Laski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the abolition era to the Civil Rights movement to the age of Obama, the promise of perfectibility and improvement resonates in the story of American democracy. But what exactly does racial "progress" mean, and how do we recognize and achieve it? Untimely Democracy: The Politics of Progress After Slavery uncovers a surprising answer to this question in the writings of American authors and activists, both black and white. Conventional narratives of democracy stretching from Thomas Jefferson's America to our own posit a purposeful break between past and present as the key to the viability of this political form--the only way to ensure its continual development. But for Pauline E. Hopkins, Frederick Douglass, Stephen Crane, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sutton E. Griggs, Callie House, and the other figures examined in this book, the campaign to secure liberty and equality for all citizens proceeds most potently when it refuses the precepts of progressive time. Placing these authors' post-Civil War writings into dialogue with debates about racial optimism and pessimism, tracts on progress, and accounts of ex-slave pension activism, and extending their insights into our contemporary period, Laski recovers late-nineteenth-century literature as a vibrant site for doing political theory. Untimely Democracy ultimately shows how one of the bleakest periods in American racial history provided fertile terrain for a radical reconstruction of our most fundamental assumptions about this political system. Offering resources for moments when the march of progress seems to stutter and even stop, this book invites us to reconsider just what democracy can make possible.
Download or read book Marking Time written by Fred Brown and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The roadside historical markers of East Tennessee highlight the fascinating personalities and significant events of a culturally and historically rich region. Forthree years, Knoxville News Sentinel columnist Fred Brown presented the storiesbehind the local markers placed by the Tennessee Historical Commission. He searchedthe highways and back roads of East Tennessee, tracking down markers with directionsthat were sometimes no more specific than ?Highway 11, Greene County.'Arranged by county, the entries link East Tennessee's past and present and highlightthe enormous diversity of the state's history from its prehistoric past through its involvement in World War II. The markers detail bitter struggles with Native Americans in the eighteenth century, but also explain the unique contribution of Cherokee culture and civilization, such as Sequoyah's development of the Cherokee syllabary. Brown commemorates the numerous Civil War sites throughout the region, but he also includes the service of East Tennesseans in later wars. One marker commemorates Kiffin Yates Rockwell, a founding pilot of the Lafayete Escadrille, a famed squadron of aviators in World War I. Another marker details the achievements of Sgt. Elbert L. Kinser of Greene County, who was posthumously decorated for his leadership of a First Marine Division Rifle Platoon on Okinawa.The markers also showcase East Tennessee's unique political history. They tell thestory of the ?lost state? of Franklin in the 1780s and record the region's efforts to secede from the state when Tennessee left the Union in 1861. Brown's narrative also explains the nature of opposing political factions throughout the decades through the biographies of their leaders, such as Elihu Embree, a Quaker abolitionist who founded an antislavery paper in East Tennessee.From the vantage of the armchair or out on the road, Marking Time is a surprisingand engaging trip on the byways of East Tennessee's politics, culture, and history through the stories of the men and women who shaped the state.
Download or read book Marking the Land written by Laurel Reuter and published by Center for American Places. This book was released on 2007 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The demanding frontier life of My Ántonia or Little House on the Prairie may be long gone, but the idyllic small town still exists as a cherished icon of American community life. Yet sprawl and urban density, rather than small towns and farms, are the predominant features of our modern society, agribusiness and other commercial forces have rapidly taken over family farms and ranches, and even the open spaces we think of as natural retreats only retain the barest façade of their former frontier austerity. The fading communities, social upheaval, and enduring heritage of the Northern Plains are the subject of Jim Dow's Marking the Land, a stirring photographic tribute to the complex and unyielding landscape of North Dakota. Jim Dow began making pilgrimages to this remote territory in 1981 and, with a commission from the North Dakota Museum of Art, he took photographs of the passing human presence on the land. The simple, stolid pieces of architecture carved out against the Dakota skies--whether the local schoolhouse, car wash, prison, homes, hunting lodge, or churches--evoke in their spare lines and weather-battered frames the stoic and toughened spirit of the people within their walls. Folk art is also an integral part of the landscape in Dow's visual study, and he examines the subtle evolution of local craftsmanship from homemade sculptures, murals, and carvings to carefully crafted pieces aimed at tourists. Anchoring all of these explorations is the raw and striking landscape of the North Dakota plains. Marking the Land is a moving reflection by a leading American photographer on the state of the Northern Plains today, forcing us all to rethink our conceptions of America's forgotten frontier.
