Download or read book The Great Cat Massacre written by Robert Darnton and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-05-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landmark history of France and French culture in the eighteenth-century, a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730s held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously funny that they choked with laughter when they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the eighteenth-century version of Little Red Riding Hood did the wolf eat the child at the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpelier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions the distinguished Harvard historian Robert Darnton answers The Great Cat Massacre, a kaleidoscopic view of European culture during in what we like to call "The Age of Enlightenment." A classic of European history, it is an essential starting point for understanding Enlightenment France.
Download or read book The Great Cat Dog Massacre written by Hilda Kean and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tragedies of World War II are well known. But at least one has been forgotten: in September 1939, four hundred thousand cats and dogs were massacred in Britain. The government, vets, and animal charities all advised against this killing. So why would thousands of British citizens line up to voluntarily euthanize household pets? In The Great Cat and Dog Massacre, Hilda Kean unearths the history, piecing together the compelling story of the life—and death—of Britain’s wartime animal companions. She explains that fear of imminent Nazi bombing and the desire to do something to prepare for war led Britons to sew blackout curtains, dig up flower beds for vegetable patches, send their children away to the countryside—and kill the family pet, in theory sparing them the suffering of a bombing raid. Kean’s narrative is gripping, unfolding through stories of shared experiences of bombing, food restrictions, sheltering, and mutual support. Soon pets became key to the war effort, providing emotional assistance and helping people to survive—a contribution for which the animals gained government recognition. Drawing extensively on new research from animal charities, state archives, diaries, and family stories, Kean does more than tell a virtually forgotten story. She complicates our understanding of World War II as a “good war” fought by a nation of “good” people. Accessibly written and generously illustrated, Kean’s account of this forgotten aspect of British history moves animals to center stage—forcing us to rethink our assumptions about ourselves and the animals with whom we share our homes.
Download or read book The Great Cat Conspiracy written by Katie Davies and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Cat keeps bringing dead things into the house as presents for Tom. When he brings in the head of the vicar's very expensive Koi Carp and the Vicar makes Mum pay £200 for a replacement, Anna's Dad is so cross he locks the New Cat out of the cat-flap. Tom argues for the Cat to be let back in, but the flap is left shut overnight and when Dad finally concedes, the New Cat has disappeared altogether. Anna, Suzanne and Tom are convinced he has been kidnapped - but who is responsible? A new investigation begins…
Download or read book The Great Hamster Massacre written by Katie Davies and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A very natural and honest version of life's events from the perspective of a young girl - from her suspicions about her neighbours, to her rocky friendship with the girl next door; from the sudden death of her beloved granny to her relentless quest for a pet hamster, only to then find it mysteriously slaughtered - which kickstarts a local investigation of 'suspects'.
Download or read book The Great Cat Massacre A History of Britain in 100 Mistakes written by Gareth Rubin and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1914, a train pulled into a provincial British railway station. The porter, a curious chap, asked the regiment of soldiers where they were from. "Ross-shire," one called down, but the porter heard "Russia." And so began a rumor that led to Germany losing World War I. Often the history we learn at school is only half the story. We hear of heroic deeds and visionary leaders, but we never hear about the people who turned up late for court and thereby changed the law, or who stood in the wrong queue at university and accidentally won a Nobel Prize. "The Great Cat Massacre: A History of Britain in 100 Mistakes" demonstrates that the nation is as much a product of error as design. Through chapters on religion, law, culture, war, science, and politics, it reveals such things as how an edict from Pope Gregory IX helped spread the Black Death, how the sister of cricketer John Willes invented overarm bowling, and how, had a letter not been lost, Disraeli might never have become prime minister. This book is history told through human failings, schoolboy errors, bad luck, and extraordinary consequences; a history of mishearing, misdiagnosis, and misinterpretation a history that you won t find in the textbooks."
Download or read book A Literary Tour de France written by Robert Darnton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The publishing industry in France in the years before the Revolution was a lively and sometimes rough-and-tumble affair, as publishers and printers scrambled to deal with (and if possible evade) shifting censorship laws and tax regulations, in order to cater to a reading public's appetite for books of all kinds, from the famous Encyclop die, repository of reason and knowledge, to scandal-mongering libel and pornography. Historian and librarian Robert Darnton uses his exclusive access to a trove of documents-letters and documents from authors, publishers, printers, paper millers, type founders, ink manufacturers, smugglers, wagon drivers, warehousemen, and accountants-involving a publishing house in the Swiss town of Neuchatel to bring this world to life. Like other places on the periphery of France, Switzerland was a hotbed of piracy, carefully monitoring the demand for certain kinds of books and finding ways of fulfilling it. Focusing in particular on the diary of Jean-Fran ois Favarger, a traveling sales rep for a Swiss firm whose 1778 voyage, on horseback and on foot, around France to visit bookstores and renew accounts forms the spine of this story, Darnton reveals not only how the industry worked and which titles were in greatest demand, but the human scale of its operations. A Literary Tour de France is literally that. Darnton captures the hustle, picaresque comedy, and occasional risk of Favarger's travels in the service of books, and in the process offers an engaging, immersive, and unforgettable narrative of book culture at a critical moment in France's history.
Download or read book Sinews of War and Trade written by Laleh Khalili and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How shipping is central to the very fabric of global capitalism In our networked world, the realities governing the international movement of freight are easily forgotten. But maritime transport remains the bedrock of trade. Convoys perpetually crisscross the oceans, carrying gas, oil, ore – indeed, every type of consumable and commodity. These movements, though practically invisible, mean that control of the seas is vital in an age when no nation can survive on domestic products alone. Professor and author Laleh Khalili travelled the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean aboard gigantic container ships to investigate the secretive and sometimes dangerous world of maritime trade. What she discovered was strangely disturbing: brutally exploited seafarers enduring loneliness and risking injury to keep the cogs of trade turning. In the Arabian peninsula’s ports, forbidden places encircled by barbed wire and moats of highways, the dockers struggle for benefits and political rights, as they have for generations. Environmental catastrophes threaten with increasing intensity and frequency. Around the oil-trading nations of the Middle East, a history of British colonialism, modern US imperialism, and local autocracies combine to worsen the conditions of modern seafarers, and piracy persists near the Horn of Africa. From her research riding the sea lanes and visiting the major Middle Eastern ports, Khalili has produced a book that exposes the frayed and tense sinews of modern capital, a physical network without which none of our more abstracted webs and systems could operate.
Download or read book The Forbidden Best sellers of Pre revolutionary France written by Robert Darnton and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1996 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Darnton's work is one of the main reasons that cultural history has become an exciting study central to our understanding of the past.
Download or read book The Great Rabbit Rescue written by Katie Davies and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Joe goes to live with his father across town and must leave behind his beloved pet rabbit, his friends Anna and Suzanne try to take care of it for him, but when the rabbit becomes ill and then Joe follows suit, the girls are certain that both will die unless they are reunited. Illustrations.
Download or read book When the King Took Flight written by Timothy Tackett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-18 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a June night in 1791, King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette fled Paris in disguise, hoping to escape the mounting turmoil of the French Revolution. They were arrested by a small group of citizens a few miles from the Belgian border and forced to return to Paris. Two years later they would both die at the guillotine. It is this extraordinary story, and the events leading up to and away from it, that Tackett recounts in gripping novelistic style. The king's flight opens a window to the whole of French society during the Revolution. Each dramatic chapter spotlights a different segment of the population, from the king and queen as they plotted and executed their flight, to the people of Varennes who apprehended the royal family, to the radicals of Paris who urged an end to monarchy, to the leaders of the National Assembly struggling to control a spiraling crisis, to the ordinary citizens stunned by their king's desertion. Tackett shows how Louis's flight reshaped popular attitudes toward kingship, intensified fears of invasion and conspiracy, and helped pave the way for the Reign of Terror. Tackett brings to life an array of unique characters as they struggle to confront the monumental transformations set in motion in 1789. In so doing, he offers an important new interpretation of the Revolution. By emphasizing the unpredictable and contingent character of this story, he underscores the power of a single event to change irrevocably the course of the French Revolution, and consequently the history of the world.
Download or read book Pirating and Publishing written by Robert Darnton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of how book piracy in pre-Revolutionary France expanded the reach of the works that would inspire momentous change.
Download or read book History A Very Short Introduction written by John Arnold and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 2000-02-24 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with an examination of how historians work, this "Very Short Introduction" aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.
Download or read book The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals written by Edward Payson Evans and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poetry and the Police written by Robert Darnton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Listen to "An Electronic Cabaret: Paris Street Songs, 1748–50" for songs from Poetry and the PoliceAudio recording copyright © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. In spring 1749, François Bonis, a medical student in Paris, found himself unexpectedly hauled off to the Bastille for distributing an “abominable poem about the king.” So began the Affair of the Fourteen, a police crackdown on ordinary citizens for unauthorized poetry recitals. Why was the official response to these poems so intense? In this captivating book, Robert Darnton follows the poems as they passed through several media: copied on scraps of paper, dictated from one person to another, memorized and declaimed to an audience. But the most effective dispersal occurred through music, when poems were sung to familiar tunes. Lyrics often referred to current events or revealed popular attitudes toward the royal court. The songs provided a running commentary on public affairs, and Darnton brilliantly traces how the lyrics fit into song cycles that carried messages through the streets of Paris during a period of rising discontent. He uncovers a complex communication network, illuminating the way information circulated in a semi-literate society. This lucid and entertaining book reminds us of both the importance of oral exchanges in the history of communication and the power of “viral” networks long before our internet age.
Download or read book A Social and Cultural History of Early Modern France written by William Beik and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-14 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial history of French society between the end of the middle ages and the Revolution by one of the world's leading authorities on early modern France. Using colorful examples and incorporating the latest scholarship, William Beik conveys the distinctiveness of early modern society and identifies the cultural practices that defined the lives of people at all levels of society. Painting a vivid picture of the realities of everyday life, he reveals how society functioned and how the different classes interacted. In addition to chapters on nobles, peasants, city people, and the court, the book sheds new light on the Catholic church, the army, popular protest, the culture of violence, gendered relations, and sociability. This is a major new work that restores the ancien régime as a key epoch in its own right and not simply as the prelude to the coming Revolution.
Download or read book The Kiss of Lamourette written by Robert Darnton and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1990 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about history, the media, and the history of the media.In four parts this book will go through how the past operates as an undercurrent in the present, analyze the operation of the media by specific case studies, outline a particular discipline; the history of the book, which provides a historical dimension to media studies, and lastly, to move outward from those considerations to a broad discussion of history itself and of history's neighbors within the human sciences.
Download or read book Miracles at the Jesus Oak written by Craig Harline and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selected history of religious miracles from seventeenth-century Belgium, offering insight to the beliefs of Catholic Europeans in the Age of Reformation. In the tradition of The Return of Martin Guerre and The Great Cat Massacre, Miracles at the Jesus Oak is a rich, evocative journey into the past and the extraordinary events that transformed the lives of ordinary people. In the musty archive of a Belgian abbey, historian Craig Harline happened upon a vast collection of documents written in the seventeenth century by people who claimed to have experienced miracles and wonders. In Miracles at the Jesus Oak, Harline recasts these testimonies into engaging vignettes that open a window onto the believers, unbelievers, and religious movements of Catholic Europe in the Age of Reformation. Written with grace and charm, Miracles at the Jesus Oak is popular history at its most informative and enlightening. Praise for Miracles at the Jesus Oak "In his usual manner, lively and fresh, [Harline] not only brings ordinary people front and center but also offers startling insight into the political and religious dynamic of the time. His approach and writing style, although historically responsible, are enjoyable for non-specialists as well. . . . His work makes clear what professional historians alas sometimes forget an enjoyable story need not be taboo.” —Tertio (Belgium) “More than simply a collection of delightful tales. . . . Miracles still enthrall.” —Commonweal
