Download or read book The Mansion of Happiness written by Jill Lepore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned Harvard scholar and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has written a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave. How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? “All anyone can do is ask,” Lepore writes. “That’s why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.” Lepore starts that history with the story of a seventeenth-century Englishman who had the idea that all life begins with an egg, and ends it with an American who, in the 1970s, began freezing the dead. In between, life got longer, the stages of life multiplied, and matters of life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, from the humanities to the sciences. Lately, debates about life and death have determined the course of American politics. Each of these debates has a history. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life—from board games to breast pumps—Lepore argues that the age of discovery, Darwin, and the Space Age turned ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. “New worlds were found,” she writes, and “old paradises were lost.” As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, The Mansion of Happiness is delightful, learned, and altogether beguiling.
Download or read book A House of Many Mansions written by Kamal Salibi and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Kamal Salibi is the foremost living historian of Lebanon, and his new book is even more important than his earlier one because it throws light on the present and future of the country as well as its past."—Albert Hourani, author of A History of the Arab Peoples "Among Lebanese historians only Kamal Salibi has the credibility to write such a book. Its timely appearance signals a new era in Lebanese history. It will undoubtedly become a classic."—Nadim Shehadi, Director, the Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford
Download or read book A History of the Mississippi Governor s Mansion written by David G. Sansing and published by . This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1842, when Governor Tilghman M. Tucker and his family occupied the mansion shortly after his inauguration on January 10, the Mississippi Governor's Mansion has served as the state's official executive residence. Designed by William Nichols in the popular classical style, the mansion soon became a Jackson landmark, and a legendary hospitality surrounded its early years. Mississippi's first families "threw open the doors" of the mansion and shared its hospitality with plain citizens as graciously and generously as they did with celebrities. This tradition was interrupted only during the Civil War when the state capital was moved to eastern Mississippi to escape the advance of Union troops. Although much of Jackson was burned during the Vicksburg campaign in the summer of 1863, the mansion was spared. General William T. Sherman used it briefly as a command post, and his troops bivouacked on its spacious grounds. At the beginning of the twentieth century, advancing real estate prices in Jackson caused the legislature to consider the disposal of the mansion to make its downtown location available for commercial development. This proposal promoted various civic and patriotic organizations throughout the state to wage a "Save the Mansion" campaign. The legislature was implored not to destroy "what Sherman would not burn." Sentiment prevailed over commerce, and the mansion was saved. However, structural deterioration over the next seventy years was left uncorrected, and by 1971 was so advanced that the first family was advised to vacate the building. During the following election campaign, Carroll Waller, wife of gubernatorial candidate Bill Waller, called upon the women of Mississippi to join her in an effort to preserve the "home of our heritage" and to restore it to its past splendor. Following his election, Governor Waller and the First Lady initiated a three-year project that restored the mansion to the historical period of its construction and guaranteed its continued use for many years to come. The mansion was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975.
Download or read book A Haunted History of Denver s Croke Patterson Mansion written by Ann Alexander Leggett and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-09 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step into this nineteenth-century Colorado landmark and discover its paranormal history . . . Photos included! An ominous air hangs about Capitol Hill’s historic Croke-Patterson Mansion. Rumors of spirits and strange events have cast a shadow across its elegant Gilded Age facade. The lonely halls are haunted with stories of a doctor’s wife who committed suicide and the ghostly figure of a young woman who appears to visitors. Tenants of the building have also claimed to hear the cries of children, and dark specters in the basement prevent even the hardiest souls from staying for too long. In this fascinating book, authors Ann Alexander Leggett and Jordan Alexander Leggett explore the mysteries that have plagued this Denver mansion for over a century.
Download or read book Domesticating History written by Patricia West and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating the lives of famous men and women, historic house museums showcase restored rooms and period furnishings, and portray in detail their former occupants' daily lives. But behind the gilded molding and curtain brocade lie the largely unknown, politically charged stories of how the homes were first established as museums. Focusing on George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and the Booker T. Washington National Monument, Patricia West shows how historic houses reflect less the lives and times of their famous inhabitants than the political pressures of the eras during which they were transformed into museums.
Download or read book Reynolds Mansion an Invitation to the Past written by Micah A. Hanks and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A writer and investigator of the unexplained seeks to unravel the mysteries associated with an antebellum southern mansion, believed by its owners to be haunted by spirits of the dead.
Download or read book History and Mystery of the Whaley House written by Dean Glass and published by Save Our Heritage Organization. This book was released on 2016-06 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dozens of fascinating historic photographs, many never before seen or published, illustrate this compelling guide to the famously haunted Whaley House Museum in San Diego. The History & Mystery of the Whaley House illuminates the history of the pioneer Whaley family and their magnificent 1850s brick mansion, dispelling myths and providing heretofore unknown facts and information about this popular tourist destination, and of the spirits known to inhabit this historic haunt. Culled from the Whaley House archives, journals, letters, historical documents, photographs, and other ephemera help relate the legend of this remarkable historic house museum.San Diego was just a sleepy little town when pioneer merchant and civic leader Thomas Whaley first arrived in 1851. Surrounded mostly by small adobe houses, his imposing residence quickly became a center of social activity for the community upon its completion in 1857. Though tragedy often visited the family, they persevered to become a well-known and respected staple of San Diego society, with youngest daughter Lillian residing in the house until shortly before her death in 1953.Since taking over operations of the museum in 2000, Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) has done an impressive job restoring the house to its nineteenth century appearance, with period furnishings, decorative treatments, and many actual Whaley family pieces on display throughout. Historic uses of the building, beyond being home to the Whaley family, include the San Diego County Courthouse, the Whaley & Crosthwaite General Store, and the Tanner Troupe Theater, all of which have been restored to the Whaley House. The restoration is showcased in this publication through stunning color photographs and engaging room descriptions.
Download or read book A Mansion in the Mountains written by Philip T. Noblitt and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The History and Haunting of Lemp Mansion written by Rebecca F Pittman and published by . This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thought to be one of the most bizarre stories in history, this saga of one of America's wealthiest families, and the leading Beer Barons in the Gilded Age, is one stranger than fiction. The story of the Lemp family is one of privilege, opulence, fame, and tragedy. Four members of the family died by gunshot wounds--three by suicide, a fourth under mysterious circumstances that has St. Louis tongues still waging today--95 years after the event took place. Take a peek through the keyhole of Lemp Mansion and discover her darkest secrets, and what makes her today one of the most-haunted houses, not only in St. Louis, but in the world.
Download or read book The Women s House of Detention written by Hugh Ryan and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This singular history of a prison, and the queer women and trans people held there, is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the twentieth century. The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates—Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur—were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women’s prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher. Historian Hugh Ryan explores the roots of this crisis and reconstructs the little-known lives of incarcerated New Yorkers, making a uniquely queer case for prison abolition—and demonstrating that by queering the Village, the House of D helped defined queerness for the rest of America. From the lesbian communities forged through the Women’s House of Detention to the turbulent prison riots that presaged Stonewall, this is the story of one building and much more: the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired. Winner, 2023 Stonewall Book Award—Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Book Award CrimeReads, Best True Crime Books of the Year
Download or read book Empty Mansions written by Bill Dedman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms. Praise for Empty Mansions “An amazing story of profligate wealth . . . an outsized tale of rags-to-riches prosperity.”—The New York Times “An evocative and rollicking read, part social history, part hothouse mystery, part grand guignol.”—The Daily Beast “Fascinating . . . [a] haunting true-life tale.”—People “One of those incredible stories that you didn’t even know existed. It filled a void.”—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “Thrilling . . . deliciously scandalous.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book Segregation written by Carl H. Nightingale and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we think of segregation, what often comes to mind is apartheid South Africa, or the American South in the age of Jim Crow—two societies fundamentally premised on the concept of the separation of the races. But as Carl H. Nightingale shows us in this magisterial history, segregation is everywhere, deforming cities and societies worldwide. Starting with segregation’s ancient roots, and what the archaeological evidence reveals about humanity’s long-standing use of urban divisions to reinforce political and economic inequality, Nightingale then moves to the world of European colonialism. It was there, he shows, segregation based on color—and eventually on race—took hold; the British East India Company, for example, split Calcutta into “White Town” and “Black Town.” As we follow Nightingale’s story around the globe, we see that division replicated from Hong Kong to Nairobi, Baltimore to San Francisco, and more. The turn of the twentieth century saw the most aggressive segregation movements yet, as white communities almost everywhere set to rearranging whole cities along racial lines. Nightingale focuses closely on two striking examples: Johannesburg, with its state-sponsored separation, and Chicago, in which the goal of segregation was advanced by the more subtle methods of real estate markets and housing policy. For the first time ever, the majority of humans live in cities, and nearly all those cities bear the scars of segregation. This unprecedented, ambitious history lays bare our troubled past, and sets us on the path to imagining the better, more equal cities of the future.
Download or read book Great American Mansions written by Merrill Folsom and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ghetto at the Center of the World written by Gordon Mathews and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 4e de couv.: Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong's tourist district, is home to a remarkably motley group of people. Traders, laborers, and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there, and even backpacking tourists rent rooms in what is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet. But as Ghetto at the center of the world shows us, the Mansions is a world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations -instead it epitomizes the way globalization actually works for most of the world's people. Through candid stories that both instruct and enthrall, Gordon Mathews lays bare the building's residents' intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas.
Download or read book The History of Belle Meade written by Ridley Wills and published by Vanderbilt University Press (TN). This book was released on 1991 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ridley Wills traces the history of Belle Meade from a log cabin alongside a buffalo trail to one of the South's grand plantations and horse nurseries to its demise and eventual development into Nashville's premier residential community. In the process, he provides a fully documented account of the origins and evolution of the plantation, its grand mansion, and its Thoroughbred breeding farm. Along the way, he tells the story of the Harding and Jackson families, who carved Belle Meade from a wilderness and brought it to international fame both for its excellence in horse breeding and for its hospitality in the Southern tradition." "On the small scale of human events, Wills focuses on the details of farming practices, the expansions and renovations of the mansion, the education and personalities of children, and the problems of daily living in the midst of war. On the large scale of nineteenth-century American history, Belle Meade becomes a viewing point for the comings and goings of people and events so easily described as historical - Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston, Generals Johnston and Grant, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the visits and deaths of presidents. Weaving together family and regional history, Wills provides his reader with the most substantial account ever written of the land, people, buildings, and Thoroughbreds that for a century made Belle Meade the "Queen of Tennessee plantations.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Gracie Mansion written by Ellen Stern and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tribute to the unique, historic home and New York City treasure--a classic volume first published in 2005 is here revised and updated for today, with a new foreword by Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray. In this handsomely illustrated paean to New York City's mayoral residence, author Ellen Stern charts the history of Gracie Mansion from its construction as Archibald Gracie's country home in 1799, to its importance as the home of New York City's mayors and their families, to its splendid restoration in 2002, to its new role today as a center of diversity and openness--the people's house. Blending the mansion's architectural and decorative progress with anecdotal portraits of the mayoral families, exclusive interviews with many of those who have lived and worked here, and over 200 paintings and watercolors, letters and maps, invitations and elevations, designers sketches, and before and after photos, this beautiful volume, written with the cooperation of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, is the definitive account of a beloved New York landmark that is more popular today than ever before.
Download or read book Spectral Mansions written by Timothy Murtagh and published by . This book was released on 2023-05-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1800, Dublin was one of the largest and most impressive cities in Europe. The city's townhouses and squares represented the pinnacle of Georgian elegance. Henrietta Street was synonymous with this world of cultural refinement, being one of the earliest and grandest residential districts in Dublin. At the end of the eighteenth century, the street was home to some of the most powerful members of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy. Yet, less than a century later, Dublin had been transformed from the playground of the elite into a city renowned for its deprivation and vast slums. Despite once being 'the best address in town, ' by 1900 almost every house on Henrietta Street was in use as tenements, some shockingly overcrowded. How did this happen? How did a location like Henrietta Street go from a street of mansions to one of tenements? And what was life like for those who lived within the walls of these houses? This is a story of adaptation, not only of buildings but of people. It is a story of decline but also of resilience. Spectral Mansions charts the evolution of Henrietta Street over the period 1800 to 1914. Commencing with the Act of Union and finishing on the eve of the First World War, the book investigates the nature and origins of Dublin's housing crisis in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Commissioned by Dublin City Council Heritage Office in conjunction with the 14 Henrietta Street Museum, the book uses the story of one street to explore the history of an entire city.
