Download or read book American Apartheid written by Douglas S. Massey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful and disturbing book clearly links persistent poverty among blacks in the United States to the unparalleled degree of deliberate segregation they experience in American cities. American Apartheid shows how the black ghetto was created by whites during the first half of the twentieth century in order to isolate growing urban black populations. It goes on to show that, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies. In some urban areas the degree of black segregation is so intense and occurs in so many dimensions simultaneously that it amounts to "hypersegregation." The authors demonstrate that this systematic segregation of African Americans leads inexorably to the creation of underclass communities during periods of economic downturn. Under conditions of extreme segregation, any increase in the overall rate of black poverty yields a marked increase in the geographic concentration of indigence and the deterioration of social and economic conditions in black communities. As ghetto residents adapt to this increasingly harsh environment under a climate of racial isolation, they evolve attitudes, behaviors, and practices that further marginalize their neighborhoods and undermine their chances of success in mainstream American society. This book is a sober challenge to those who argue that race is of declining significance in the United States today.

Download or read book American Niceness written by Carrie Tirado Bramen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Epigraphs -- Contents -- Introduction: American Niceness and the Democratic Personality -- 1. Indian Giving and the Dangers of Hospitality -- 2. Southern Niceness and the Slave's Smile -- 3. The Christology of Niceness -- 4. Feminine Niceness -- 5. The Likable Empire from Plymouth Rock to the Philippines -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Download or read book American Madness written by Richard Noll and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-24 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1895 there was not a single case of dementia praecox reported in the United States. By 1912 there were tens of thousands of people with this diagnosis locked up in asylums, hospitals, and jails. By 1927 it was fading away . How could such a terrible disease be discovered, affect so many lives, and then turn out to be something else? In vivid detail, Richard Noll describes how the discovery of this mysterious disorder gave hope to the overworked asylum doctors that they could at last explain—though they could not cure—the miserable patients surrounding them. The story of dementia praecox, and its eventual replacement by the new concept of schizophrenia, also reveals how asylum physicians fought for their own respectability. If what they were observing was a disease, then this biological reality was amenable to scientific research. In the early twentieth century, dementia praecox was psychiatry’s key into an increasingly science-focused medical profession. But for the moment, nothing could be done to help the sufferers. When the concept of schizophrenia offered a fresh understanding of this disorder, and hope for a cure, psychiatry abandoned the old disease for the new. In this dramatic story of a vanished diagnosis, Noll shows the co-dependency between a disease and the scientific status of the profession that treats it. The ghost of dementia praecox haunts today’s debates about the latest generation of psychiatric disorders.

Download or read book American history art literature poetry and fiction expositions written by Delphian Society and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Papers and Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Library Association Held at written by American Library Association. Meeting and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Journal of Philology written by Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each number includes "Reviews and book notices."

Download or read book Papers and Proceedings of the General Meeting of the American Library Association Held at written by American Library Association. General Meeting and published by . This book was released on 1886 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Papers and Proceedings of the General Meeting of the American Library Association written by American Library Association and published by . This book was released on 1886 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Remaking the American Mainstream written by Richard D. Alba and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this age of multicultural democracy, the idea of assimilation--that the social distance separating immigrants and their children from the mainstream of American society closes over time--seems outdated and, in some forms, even offensive. But as Richard Alba and Victor Nee show in the first systematic treatment of assimilation since the mid-1960s, it continues to shape the immigrant experience, even though the geography of immigration has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Institutional changes, from civil rights legislation to immigration law, have provided a more favorable environment for nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the past. Assimilation is still driven, in claim, by the decisions of immigrants and the second generation to improve their social and material circumstances in America. But they also show that immigrants, historically and today, have profoundly changed our mainstream society and culture in the process of becoming Americans. Surveying a variety of domains--language, socioeconomic attachments, residential patterns, and intermarriage--they demonstrate the continuing importance of assimilation in American life. And they predict that it will blur the boundaries among the major, racially defined populations, as nonwhites and Hispanics are increasingly incorporated into the mainstream.

Download or read book Our American Israel written by Amy Kaplan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential account of America’s most controversial alliance that reveals how the United States came to see Israel as an extension of itself, and how that strong and divisive partnership plays out in our own time. Our American Israel tells the story of how a Jewish state in the Middle East came to resonate profoundly with a broad range of Americans in the twentieth century. Beginning with debates about Zionism after World War II, Israel’s identity has been entangled with America’s belief in its own exceptional nature. Now, in the twenty-first century, Amy Kaplan challenges the associations underlying this special alliance. Through popular narratives expressed in news media, fiction, and film, a shared sense of identity emerged from the two nations’ histories as settler societies. Americans projected their own origin myths onto Israel: the biblical promised land, the open frontier, the refuge for immigrants, the revolt against colonialism. Israel assumed a mantle of moral authority, based on its image as an “invincible victim,” a nation of intrepid warriors and concentration camp survivors. This paradox persisted long after the Six-Day War, when the United States rallied behind a story of the Israeli David subduing the Arab Goliath. The image of the underdog shattered when Israel invaded Lebanon and Palestinians rose up against the occupation. Israel’s military was strongly censured around the world, including notes of dissent in the United States. Rather than a symbol of justice, Israel became a model of military strength and technological ingenuity. In America today, Israel’s political realities pose difficult challenges. Turning a critical eye on the turbulent history that bound the two nations together, Kaplan unearths the roots of present controversies that may well divide them in the future.

Download or read book American Apocalypse written by Matthew Avery Sutton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2015 The first comprehensive history of modern American evangelicalism to appear in a generation, American Apocalypse shows how a group of radical Protestants, anticipating the end of the world, paradoxically transformed it. “The history Sutton assembles is rich, and the connections are startling.” —New Yorker “American Apocalypse relentlessly and impressively shows how evangelicals have interpreted almost every domestic or international crisis in relation to Christ’s return and his judgment upon the wicked...Sutton sees one of the most troubling aspects of evangelical influence in the spread of the apocalyptic outlook among Republican politicians with the rise of the Religious Right...American Apocalypse clearly shows just how popular evangelical apocalypticism has been and, during the Cold War, how the combination of odd belief and political power could produce a sleepless night or two.” —D. G. Hart, Wall Street Journal “American Apocalypse is the best history of American evangelicalism I’ve read in some time...If you want to understand why compromise has become a dirty word in the GOP today and how cultural politics is splitting the nation apart, American Apocalypse is an excellent place to start.” —Stephen Prothero, Bookforum

Download or read book American Homicide written by Randolph Roth and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In American Homicide, Randolph Roth charts changes in the character and incidence of homicide in the U.S. from colonial times to the present. Roth argues that the United States is distinctive in its level of violence among unrelated adults—friends, acquaintances, and strangers. America was extraordinarily homicidal in the mid-seventeenth century, but it became relatively non-homicidal by the mid-eighteenth century, even in the slave South; and by the early nineteenth century, rates in the North and the mountain South were extremely low. But the homicide rate rose substantially among unrelated adults in the slave South after the American Revolution; and it skyrocketed across the United States from the late 1840s through the mid-1870s, while rates in most other Western nations held steady or fell. That surge—and all subsequent increases in the homicide rate—correlated closely with four distinct phenomena: political instability; a loss of government legitimacy; a loss of fellow-feeling among members of society caused by racial, religious, or political antagonism; and a loss of faith in the social hierarchy. Those four factors, Roth argues, best explain why homicide rates have gone up and down in the United States and in other Western nations over the past four centuries, and why the United States is today the most homicidal affluent nation.

Download or read book The Two Faces of American Freedom written by Aziz Rana and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.

Download or read book The Great American Housing Bubble written by Adam J. Levitin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive account of the housing bubble that caused the Great Recession—and earned Wall Street fantastic profits. The American housing bubble of the 2000s caused the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression. In this definitive account, Adam Levitin and Susan Wachter pinpoint its source: the shift in mortgage financing from securitization by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to “private-label securitization” by Wall Street banks. This change set off a race to the bottom in mortgage underwriting standards, as banks competed in laxity to gain market share. The Great American Housing Bubble tells the story of the transformation of mortgage lending from a dysfunctional, local affair, featuring short-term, interest-only “bullet” loans, to a robust, national market based around the thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage, a uniquely American innovation that served as the foundation for the middle class. Levitin and Wachter show how Fannie and Freddie’s market power kept risk in check until 2003, when mortgage financing shifted sharply to private-label securitization, as lenders looked for a way to sustain lending volume following an unprecedented refinancing wave. Private-label securitization brought a return of bullet loans, which had lower initial payments—enabling borrowers to borrow more—but much greater back-loaded risks. These loans produced a vast oversupply of underpriced mortgage finance that drove up home prices unsustainably. When the bubble burst, it set off a destructive downward spiral of home prices and foreclosures. Levitin and Wachter propose a rebuild of the housing finance system that ensures the widespread availability of the thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage, while preventing underwriting competition and shifting risk away from the public to private investors.

Download or read book Greek Rhetoric of the 4th Century BC written by Evangelos Alexiou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The interaction between orator and audience, the passions and distrust held by many concerning the predominance of one individual, but also the individual’s struggle as an advisor and political leader, these are the quintessential elements of 4th century rhetoric. As an individual personality, the orator draws strength from his audience, while the rhetorical texts mirror his own thoughts and those of his audience as part of a two-way relationship, in which individuality meets, opposes, and identifies with the masses. For the first time, this volume systematically compares minor orators with the major figures of rhetoric, Demosthenes and Isocrates, taking into account other findings as well, such as extracts of Hyperides from the Archimedes Palimpsest. Moreover, this book provides insight into the controversy surrounding the art of discourse in the rhetorical texts of Anaximenes, Aristotle, and especially of Isocrates who took up a clear stance against the philosophy of the 4th century.

Download or read book American Oracle written by David W. Blight and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The ghosts of the Civil War never leave us, as David Blight knows perhaps better than anyone, and in this superb book he masterfully unites two distant but inextricably bound events.”―Ken Burns Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared, “One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” He delivered this speech just three years after the Virginia Civil War Commission published a guide proclaiming that “the Centennial is no time for finding fault or placing blame or fighting the issues all over again.” David Blight takes his readers back to the centennial celebration to determine how Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. Amid cold war politics and civil rights protest, four of America’s most incisive writers explored the gulf between remembrance and reality. Robert Penn Warren, the southern-reared poet-novelist who recanted his support of segregation; Bruce Catton, the journalist and U.S. Navy officer who became a popular Civil War historian; Edmund Wilson, the century’s preeminent literary critic; and James Baldwin, the searing African-American essayist and activist—each exposed America’s triumphalist memory of the war. And each, in his own way, demanded a reckoning with the tragic consequences it spawned. Blight illuminates not only mid-twentieth-century America’s sense of itself but also the dynamic, ever-changing nature of Civil War memory. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the war, we have an invaluable perspective on how this conflict continues to shape the country’s political debates, national identity, and sense of purpose.

Download or read book American Tragedy written by David E. Kaiser and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A re-creation of the deliberations, actions, and deceptions that brought two decades of post-World War II confidence to an end, this book offers an insight into the Vietnam War at home and abroad - and into American foreign policy in the 1960s.