Download or read book The Antique Drums of War written by James H. McRandle and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historian McRandle contends that war is a deep-rooted human institution, like marriage and food sharing, that depends on ritual and myth. He began his inquiry after being struck by the similarity of letters from common soldiers as long as 2,000 years ago, and has mustered evidence from psychological concepts, literature, and studies of animal behavior. He suggests that soldiers raping conquered women, rather than an atrocious side effect of war, may be its fundamental purpose. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Conflicts Since World War II written by James Ciment and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-27 with total page 1334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoroughly revised to include 25 conflicts not covered in the previous edition, as well as expanded and updated information on previous coverage, this illustrated reference presents descriptions and analyses of more than 170 significant post-World War II conflicts around the globe. Organized by region for ease of access, "Encyclopedia of Conflicts Since World War II, Second Edition" provides clear, in-depth explanations of events not covered in such detail in any other reference source. Including more than 180 detailed maps and 150 photos, the set highlights the conflicts that dominate today's headlines and the events that changed the course of late twentieth-century history.
Download or read book How War Began written by Keith F. Otterbein and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-10 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have humans always fought and killed each other, or did they peacefully coexist until states developed? Is war an expression of human nature or an artifact of civilization? Questions about the origin and inherent motivations of warfare have long engaged philosophers, ethicists, anthropologists as they speculate on the nature of human existence. In How War Began, author Keith F. Otterbein draws on primate behavior research, archaeological research, data gathered from the Human Relations Area Files, and a career spent in research and reflection on war to argue for two separate origins. He identifies two types of military organization: one which developed two million years ago at the dawn of humankind, wherever groups of hunters met, and a second which developed some five thousand years ago, in four identifiable regions, when the first states arose and proceeded to embark upon military conquests. In carefully selected detail, Otterbein marshals the evidence for his case that warfare was possible and likely among early Homo sapiens. He argues from analogy with other primates, from Paleolithic rock art depicting wounded humans, and from rare skeletal remains with embedded weapon points to conclude that warfare existed and reached a peak in big game hunting societies. As the big game disappeared, so did warfare—only to reemerge once agricultural societies achieved a degree of political complexity that allowed the development of professional military organizations. Otterbein concludes his survey with an analysis of how despotism in both ancient and modern states spawns warfare. A definitive resource for anthropologists, social scientists and historians, How War Began is written for all who are interested in warfare and individuals who seek to understand the past and the present of humankind.
Download or read book The Drummer s Complete Vocabulary as Taught by Alan Dawson written by John Ramsay and published by Alfred Music Publishing. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Dawson was a legendary drummer and educator, known for his work with the top artists in jazz as well as for his 18-year association with Berklee College of Music. This new text and online audio combination was put together by John Ramsay, a prominent drummer in his own right and a former student of Dawson's. The book contains all the important techniques and concepts that Alan Dawson embraced in his own playing and subsequently taught to his students. The recordings include some remastered audio examples from actual lessons taught by Dawson himself over the years. This is a highly comprehensive textbook from a jazz master.
Download or read book Pale Horse at Plum Run written by Brian Leehan and published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Minnesota Book Award Winner! Now in paperback. The smoke had just cleared from the last volley of musketry at Gettysburg. Nearly 70 percent of the First Minnesota regiment lay dead or dying on the field--one of the greatest losses of any unit engaged in the Civil War. The significance of this July 2, 1863, battle at Gettysburg is widely known, but the harrowing details of the First's heroic stand that stopped a furious rebel assault have long been buried. In Pale Horse at Plum Run Brian Leehan brings the full story of the First at Gettysburg to light as he examines personal accounts, eyewitness reports, and official records to construct a remarkably detailed and compelling narrative. "Brian Leehan's account of the First Minnesota on Cemetery Ridge is the most detailed and complete I have read. His exhaustive research and compelling narrative are impressive and offer a much fuller understanding of the regiment's extraordinary feats." -- Richard Moe, author of The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers
Download or read book With Arrow Sword and Spear written by Alfred S. Bradford and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-11-30 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most studies of ancient warfare focus only on the Greeks and the Romans, but this sweeping study covers the whole of the ancient world from Greece and Rome to the Near East, then eastward to Parthia, India, and China. Bradford transports the reader into the midst of ancient battles behind such great leaders as Thutmose III, Ashurbanipal, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the First Emperor of China. He details the rise and fall of empires, the role of leadership, and the development of tactics and strategy. One sees the clash of peoples: nomads against agricultural societies, infantry against cavalry, as well as the greatest technological change in history—the combination of the composite bow and the chariot. This readable account analyzes ancient armies in terms of modern military doctrine, allowing the reader to make comparisons between the combatants. Recruitment, for example, varied tremendously with Romans drawing from a limited pool of recruits for service terms of twenty to thirty years and Chinese planners preferring a large pool with short-term service. While various types of governments prepared for and waged war in significantly different ways, Bradford finds that better organization led to success on the battlefield and that, for the most part, societal innovation was more important than technological innovation. The ongoing discussion of the lessons of ancient warfare around the globe will provide valuable insights for interested general readers and military professionals alike.
Download or read book The Tao of Deception written by Ralph D. Sawyer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-02-13 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of China is a history of warfare. Wars have caused dynasties to collapse, fractured the thin fasade of national unity, and brought decades of alien occupation. But throughout Chinese history, its warfare has been guided by principles different from those that governed Europe. Chinese strategists followed the concept, first articulated by Sun-tzu in The Art of War, of qi (ch'i), or unorthodox, warfare. The concept of qi involves creating tactical imbalances in order to achieve victory against even vastly superior forces. Ralph D. Sawyer, translator of The Art of War and one of America's preeminent experts on Chinese military tactics, here offers a comprehensive guide to the ancient practice of unorthodox warfare. He describes, among many other tactics, how Chinese generals have used false rumors to exploit opposing generals' distrust of their subordinates; dressed thousands of women as soldiers to create the illusion of an elite attack force; and sent word of a false surrender to lure enemy troops away from a vital escape route. The Tao of Deception is the book that military tacticians and military historians will turn to as the definitive guide to a new, yet ancient, way of thinking about strategy.
Download or read book Pickett s Charge in History and Memory written by Carol Reardon and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If, as many have argued, the Civil War is the most crucial moment in our national life and Gettysburg its turning point, then the climax of the climax, the central moment of our history, must be Pickett's Charge. But as Carol Reardon notes, the Civil War saw many other daring assaults and stout defenses. Why, then, is it Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg--and not, for example, Richardson's Charge at Antietam or Humphreys's Assault at Fredericksburg--that looms so large in the popular imagination? As this innovative study reveals, by examining the events of 3 July 1863 through the selective and evocative lens of 'memory' we can learn much about why Pickett's Charge endures so strongly in the American imagination. Over the years, soldiers, journalists, veterans, politicians, orators, artists, poets, and educators, Northerners and Southerners alike, shaped, revised, and even sacrificed the 'history' of the charge to create 'memories' that met ever-shifting needs and deeply felt values. Reardon shows that the story told today of Pickett's Charge is really an amalgam of history and memory. The evolution of that mix, she concludes, tells us much about how we come to understand our nation's past.
Download or read book For Liberty and the Republic written by Ricardo A. Herrera and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early decades of the American Republic, American soldiers demonstrated and defined their beliefs about the nature of American republicanism and how they, as citizens and soldiers, were participants in the republican experiment through their service. In For Liberty and the Republic, Ricardo A. Herrera examines the relationship between soldier and citizen from the War of Independence through the first year of the Civil War. The work analyzes an idealized republican ideology as a component of soldiering in both peace and war. Herrera argues that American soldiers’ belief system—the military ethos of republicanism—drew from the larger body of American political thought. This ethos illustrated and informed soldiers’ faith in an inseparable connection between bearing arms on behalf of the republic, and earning and holding citizenship in it. Despite the undeniable existence of customs, organizations, and behaviors that were uniquely military, the officers and enlisted men of the regular army, states’ militias, and wartime volunteers were the products of their society, and they imparted what they understood as important elements of American thought into their service. Drawing from military and personal correspondence, journals, orderly books, militia constitutions, and other documents in over forty archives in twenty-three states, Herrera maps five broad, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing threads of thought constituting soldiers’ beliefs: Virtue; Legitimacy; Self-governance; Glory, Honor, and Fame; and the National Mission. Spanning periods of war and peace, these five themes constituted a coherent and long-lived body of ideas that informed American soldiers’ sense of identity for generations.
Download or read book American Studies Encounters the Middle East written by Alex Lubin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-08-24 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the field of American studies, attention is shifting to the long history of U.S. engagement with the Middle East, especially in the aftermath of war in Iraq and in the context of recent Arab uprisings in protest against economic inequality, social discrimination, and political repression. Here, Alex Lubin and Marwan M. Kraidy curate a new collection of essays that focuses on the cultural politics of America's entanglement with the Middle East and North Africa, making a crucial intervention in the growing subfield of transnational American studies. Featuring a diverse list of contributors from the United States, the Arab world, and beyond, American Studies Encounters the Middle East analyzes Arab-American relations by looking at the War on Terror, pop culture, and the influence of the American hegemony in a time of revolution. Contributors include Christina Moreno Almeida, Ashley Dawson, Brian T. Edwards, Waleed Hazbun, Craig Jones, Osamah Khalil, Mounira Soliman, Helga Tawil-Souri, Judith E. Tucker, Adam John Waterman, and Rayya El Zein.
Download or read book Blood Rites written by Barbara Ehrenreich and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable BookAn ALA Notable Book "Original and illuminating." --The Washington Post What draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to "become" men? Newly reissued in paperback, Blood Rites takes readers on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place -- not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experiences of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception and rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that continues to transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.
Download or read book The Military and Conflict Between Cultures written by James C. Bradford and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the twenty-first century approaches and the threat of war between the superpowers declines, our attention is drawn to conflicts between nations or ethnic groups with vastly different cultures. The United States, the last superpower, is divided in its motives to maintain its giant Cold War military structure or to create a new world police force that will react to and influence the outcome of intercultural conflict. Brought together by James C. Bradford, these essays by prominent military historians cover three thousand years and five continents in treating various examples of intercultural interaction.
Download or read book Gretsch Drums written by Chet Falzerano and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 1995 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miscellaneous Percussion Music - Mixed Levels
Download or read book The Painted Drum written by Louise Erdrich and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Haunted and haunting. . . . With fearlessness and humility, in a narrative that flows more artfully than ever between destruction and rebirth, Erdrich has opened herself to possibilities beyond what we merely see—to the dead alive and busy, to the breath of trees and the souls of wolves—and inspires readers to open their hearts to these mysteries as well.”— Washington Post Book World From the author of the National Book Award Winner The Round House, Louise Erdrich's breathtaking, lyrical novel of a priceless Ojibwe artifact and the effect it has had on those who have come into contact with it over the years. While appraising the estate of a New Hampshire family descended from a North Dakota Indian agent, Faye Travers is startled to discover a rare moose skin and cedar drum fashioned long ago by an Ojibwe artisan. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined. Compelling and unforgettable, Louise Erdrich's Painted Drum explores the often-fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author's finest work.
Download or read book Connecticut s Fife and Drum Tradition written by James Clark and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The state of Connecticut boasts an extensive and active community of fife and drum groups. This musical tradition has its origins in the small military bands maintained by standing armies in Britain and Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the drum was especially important as it helped officers train soldiers how to march, and was also used to communicate with troops across battlefields. Today fifers and drummers gather at conventions called "musters," which may include a parade and concerts featuring the various participating corps. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest muster ever was held in Deep River, Connecticut, in 1976. Musician and historian James Clark is the first to detail the colorful history of this unique music. This engaging book leads the reader through the history of the individual instruments and tells the story of this classic folk tradition through anecdotes, biographies, photographs, and musical examples.
Download or read book Gettysburg Unearthed written by John G. Sabol Jr. and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2007-09-27 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the third in a series of anthropological studies which analyze ghosts and haunting phenomena in their cultural context. A history of visitations to the Gettysburg landscape is linked to the presence or absence of anomalous sensory manifestations. The preliminary analysis of the data suggests that the hauntings at Gettysburg may be a product of sociocultural factors, in part related to the growth of heritage tourism, rather than any ghostly manifestations by civil war soldiers. Since this is a preliminary analysis, a research design is proposed to further excavate the Gettysburg landscape. This approach is based on the use of ethnographic context, spatial symmetry, cultural relativity, and performance-based investigative practices. The author proposes that through this methodology, acontrolled excavation of the landscape can be made, thus unearthing a more scientific analysis and evaluation of Gettysburg as a haunted cultural place.
Download or read book Vintage Snare Drums written by Michael Curotto and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2006 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Move over guitar collectors, it's time to give the drummers some ink. One of the world's most valuable collections of vintage snare drums is presented in this beautiful, full-color gift book. The snare drum collector's market is heating up, becoming the next area of interest for music historians and instrument collectors. Highlights: * The book features 84 of the rarest vintage snare drums from Curotto's collection of more than 420. The drums are gold plated/engraved, silver plated/engraved and black engraved snare drums, plus a "Future Collectable" section. * Every snare gets a complete historical description of all facets of its components and the back-story on its creation and where it was "found" before Curotto acquired it. * Brands covered include the most famous manufacturers - Ludwig, Slingerland, Gladstone, Leedy, Gretsch and Wurlitzer. * Photographed with the highest-quality digital camera, the images are gorgeous in detail and lighting. This will make a great gift book.