Download or read book Civilized America written by Thomas Grattan and published by Applewood Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Englishman travels through the U.S. and finds it interesting but unsatisfactory in many ways. Charming discourses on the American national character, manners, customs, social institutions, as observed in New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Vol. 1 of 2

Download or read book Benjamin Franklin written by Phillips Russell and published by . This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new release of the original 1926 edition.

Download or read book Civilized America Second edition written by Thomas Colley Grattan and published by . This book was released on 1859 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Closing of the American Mind written by Allan Bloom and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.

Download or read book Civilized to Death written by Christopher Ryan and published by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Sex at Dawn explores the ways in which “progress” has perverted the way we live—how we eat, learn, feel, mate, parent, communicate, work, and die—in this “engaging, extensively documented, well-organized, and thought-provoking” (Booklist) book. Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending—balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Well, maybe we are and maybe we aren’t. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the “progress” defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease. Prehistoric life, of course, was not without serious dangers and disadvantages. Many babies died in infancy. A broken bone, infected wound, snakebite, or difficult pregnancy could be life-threatening. But ultimately, Christopher Ryan questions, were these pre-civilized dangers more murderous than modern scourges, such as car accidents, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and a technologically prolonged dying process? Civilized to Death “will make you see our so-called progress in a whole new light” (Book Riot) and adds to the timely conversation that “the way we have been living is no longer sustainable, at least as long as we want to the earth to outlive us” (Psychology Today). Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future.

Download or read book Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America written by Frank Joseph and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-12-21 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The examination of four great civilizations that existed before Columbus’s arrival in North America offers evidence of sustained contact between the Old and New Worlds • Describes the cultural splendor, political might, and incredibly advanced technology of these precursors to our modern age • Shows that North America’s first civilization, the Adena, was sparked by ancient Kelts from Western Europe and explores links between Hopewell Mound Builders and prehistoric Japanese seafarers Before Rome ruled the Classical World, gleaming stone pyramids stood amid smoking iron foundries from North America’s Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River. On its east bank, across from today’s St. Louis, Missouri, flourished a walled city more populous than London was one thousand years ago, with a pyramid larger--at its base--than Egypt’s Great Pyramid. During the 12th century, hydraulic engineers laid out a massive irrigation network spanning the American Southwest that, if laid end to end, would stretch from Phoenix, Arizona, to the Canadian border. On a scale to match, they built a five-mile-wide dam from ten million cubic yards of rock. While Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages, a metropolis of weirdly shaped, multistory superstructures, precisely aligned to the sun and moon, sprawled across the New Mexico Desert. Who was responsible for such colossal achievements? Where did their mysterious builders come from, and what became of them? These are some of the questions investigated by Frank Joseph in his examination of ancient influences at work on our continent. He reveals that modern civilization is not the first to arise in North America but was preceded instead by four high cultures that rose and fell over the past three thousand years: the Adena, Hopewell, Mississippian, and Anasazi-Hohokam. How they achieved greatness and why they vanished so completely are the intriguing enigmas explored by this unconventional prehistory of our country, Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America.

Download or read book America s First Civilization written by Michael D. Coe and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the story of America's oldest - and oddest - civilization, the Olmecs of the southern Mexican jungles. Virtually unknown to archaeologists until the early twentieth century, their true importance is only now being realized and shedding new light on how the Indian peoples of the Americas came to be here.

Download or read book Civilized Creatures written by Jennifer Mason and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2005-08-04 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Civilized Creatures, Jennifer Mason challenges some of our most enduring ideas about how encounters with nonhuman nature shaped American literature and culture. Mason argues that in the second half of the nineteenth century the most powerful influence on Americans' understanding of their affinities with animals was not increasing separation from the pastoral and the wilderness; instead, it was the population's feelings about the ostensibly civilized animals they encountered in their daily lives. Americans of diverse backgrounds, Mason shows, found it attractive as well as politic to imagine themselves as most closely connected to those creatures who shared humans' aptitude for civilized life. And to the minds of many in this period, national prosperity depended less on periodic exposure to untamed, wild nature than it did on the proper care and keeping of such animals within suburban and urban environments. Combining literary analysis with cultural histories of equestrianism, petkeeping, and the animal welfare movement, Civilized Creatures offers new readings of works by Susan Warner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charles W. Chesnutt. In each case, Mason demonstrates that understanding contemporary relationships between humans and animals is essential for understanding the debates about gender, race, and cultural power enacted in these texts.

Download or read book The Civilized World written by Susi Wyss and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A glorious literary debut set in Africa about five unforgettable women—two of them haunted by a shared tragedy—whose lives intersect in unexpected and sometimes explosive ways When Adjoa leaves Ghana to find work in the Ivory Coast, she hopes that one day she'll return home to open a beauty parlor. Her dream comes true, though not before she suffers a devastating loss—one that will haunt her for years, and one that also deeply affects Janice, an American aid worker who no longer feels she has a place to call home. But the bustling Precious Brother Salon is not just the "cleanest, friendliest, and most welcoming in the city." It's also where locals catch up on their gossip; where Comfort, an imperious busybody, can complain about her American daughter-in-law, Linda; and where Adjoa can get a fresh start on life—or so she thinks, until Janice moves to Ghana and unexpectedly stumbles upon the salon. At once deeply moving and utterly charming, The Civilized World follows five women as they face meddling mothers-in-law, unfaithful partners, and the lingering aftereffects of racism, only to learn that their cultural differences are outweighed by their common bond as women. With vibrant prose, Susi Wyss explores what it means to need forgiveness—and what it means to forgive.

Download or read book The Price of Civilization Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity written by Jeffrey D. Sachs and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY “Succinct, humane, and politically astute . . . Sachs lays out a detailed path to reform, regulation, and recovery.”—The American Prospect In this forceful and impassioned book, Jeffrey D. Sachs offers a searing and incisive diagnosis of our country’s economic ills, and an urgent call for Americans to restore the core virtues of fairness, honesty, and foresight as the foundations of national prosperity. Sachs finds that both political parties—and many leading economists—have missed the big picture, profoundly underestimating globalization’s long-term effects and offering shortsighted solutions. He describes a political system that is beholden to big donors and influential lobbyists and a consumption-driven culture that suffers shortfalls of social trust and compassion. He bids readers to reclaim the virtues of good citizenship and mindfulness toward the economy and each one another. Most important, he urges each of us to accept the price of civilization, so that together we restore America to its great promise. The Price of Civilization is a masterly road map for prosperity, founded on America’s deepest values and on a rigorous understanding of the twenty-first-century world economy. With a new Preface by the author. “Half a century ago J. K. Galbraith’s The Affluent Society changed the political consciousness of a generation. . . . Jeffrey Sachs’s new book is a landmark in this great and essentially American tradition. . . . Sachs by his life and his writing goes far to restore one’s wavering faith in the informing inspiration of the post-1945 new dawn, faith in economics, faith in America and faith in humanity.”—The Spectator “Stimulating . . . a must-read for every concerned citizen . . . [a] hard-hitting brief for a humane economy.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Sachs’s book is loaded with information and anecdotes [and] proposals that would make it harder for the powerful to rig the system for their benefit.”—Scientific American “An eloquent call for American civic renewal based on moderation, compassion, and cooperation across the lines of class, ethnicity, and ideology.”—CNN Money “Compelling . . . This is an important book.”—Financial Times

Download or read book A History of the Indians of the United States written by Angie Debo and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1906 when the Creek Indian Chitto Harjo was protesting the United States government's liquidation of his tribe's lands, he began his argument with an account of Indian history from the time of Columbus, "for, of course, a thing has to have a root before it can grow." Yet even today most intelligent non-Indian Americans have little knowledge of Indian history and affairs those lessons have not taken root. This book is an in-depth historical survey of the Indians of the United States, including the Eskimos and Aleuts of Alaska, which isolates and analyzes the problems which have beset these people since their first contacts with Europeans. Only in the light of this knowledge, the author points out, can an intelligent Indian policy be formulated. In the book are described the first meetings of Indians with explorers, the dispossession of the Indians by colonial expansion, their involvement in imperial rivalries, their beginning relations with the new American republic, and the ensuing century of war and encroachment. The most recent aspects of government Indian policy are also detailed the good and bad administrative practices and measures to which the Indians have been subjected and their present situation. Miss Debo's style is objective, and throughout the book the distinct social environment of the Indians is emphasized—an environment that is foreign to the experience of most white men. Through ignorance of that culture and life style the results of non-Indian policy toward Indians have been centuries of blundering and tragedy. In response to Indian history, an enlightened policy must be formulated: protection of Indian land, vocational and educational training, voluntary relocation, encouragement of tribal organization, recognition of Indians' social groupings, and reliance on Indians' abilities to direct their own lives. The result of this new policy would be a chance for Indians to live now, whether on their own land or as adjusted members of white society. Indian history is usually highly specialized and is never recorded in books of general history. This book unifies the many specialized volumes which have been written about their history and culture. It has been written not only for persons who work with Indians or for students of Indian culture, but for all Americans of good will.

Download or read book Foreigners in Latin America and relations with foreign governments written by George Washington Crichfield and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Price of Civilization written by Jeffrey D. Sachs and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, Jeffrey Sachs, the pre-eminent economist of our times, turns his attention to his homeland, the United States, to reveal the stunning inadequacy of American-style capitalism and to offer a bold and ambitious plan to change it. Jeffrey Sachs has visited more than a hundred countries on five continents, invited to help diagnose and cure seemingly intractable economic problems. Now, in the wake of the worst recession in recent history, Sachs turns his focus on the United States. The complexity of the world economy means that the American form of capitalism, which has been exported around the globe, brought the world to the brink of the precipice--and it will do so again, if measures aren't taken to fix it. This will require not only government action but for US citizens to reach a consensus on their government's role in everyday life and on their basic values--hugely controversial issues in recent years. The scary thing is if they don't, it will affect us all. The good news is that Sachs, in this book, clearly and persuasively leads his readers to an understanding of what the common ground of reform can and should--indeed, must--be.

Download or read book Manliness Civilization written by Gail Bederman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-04-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries came out of retirement on the fourth of July, 1910 to fight current black heavywight champion Jack Johnson in Reno, Nevada, he boasted that he was doing it "for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a negro." Jeffries, though, was trounced. Whites everywhere rioted. The furor, Gail Bederman demonstrates, was part of two fundamental and volatile national obsessions: manhood and racial dominance. In turn-of-the-century America, cultural ideals of manhood changed profoundly, as Victorian notions of self-restrained, moral manliness were challenged by ideals of an aggressive, overtly sexualized masculinity. Bederman traces this shift in values and shows how it brought together two seemingly contradictory ideals: the unfettered virility of racially "primitive" men and the refined superiority of "civilized" white men. Focusing on the lives and works of four very different Americans—Theodore Roosevelt, educator G. Stanley Hall, Ida B. Wells, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman—she illuminates the ideological, cultural, and social interests these ideals came to serve.

Download or read book Civilizing Torture written by W. Fitzhugh Brundage and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize Finalist Silver Gavel Award Finalist “A sobering history of how American communities and institutions have relied on torture in various forms since before the United States was founded.” —Los Angeles Times “That Americans as a people and a nation-state are violent is indisputable. That we are also torturers, domestically and internationally, is not so well established. The myth that we are not torturers will persist, but Civilizing Torture will remain a powerful antidote in confronting it.” —Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell “Remarkable...A searing analysis of America’s past that helps make sense of its bewildering present.” —David Garland, author of Peculiar Institution Most Americans believe that a civilized state does not torture, but that belief has repeatedly been challenged in moments of crisis at home and abroad. From the Indian wars to Vietnam, from police interrogation to the War on Terror, US institutions have proven far more amenable to torture than the nation’s commitment to liberty would suggest. Civilizing Torture traces the history of debates about the efficacy of torture and reveals a recurring struggle to decide what limits to impose on the power of the state. At a time of escalating rhetoric aimed at cleansing the nation of the undeserving and an erosion of limits on military power, the debate over torture remains critical and unresolved.

Download or read book American Arabesque written by Jacob Rama Berman and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-06-11 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series American Arabesque examines representations of Arabs, Islam and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two cultural traditions that will alter how we understand them today. Moving from the period of America's engagement in the Barbary Wars through the Holy Land travel mania in the years of Jacksonian expansion and into the writings of romantics such as Edgar Allen Poe, the book argues that not only were Arabs and Muslims prominently featured in nineteenth-century literature, but that the differences writers established between figures such as Moors, Bedouins, Turks and Orientals provide proof of the transnational scope of domestic racial politics. Drawing on both English and Arabic language sources, Berman contends that the fluidity and instability of the term Arab as it appears in captivity narratives, travel narratives, imaginative literature, and ethnic literature simultaneously instantiate and undermine definitions of the American nation and American citizenship.

Download or read book The United States and Latin America written by Fredrick B. Pike and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lazy greaser asleep under a sombrero and the avaricious gringo with money-stuffed pockets are only two of the negative stereotypes that North Americans and Latin Americans have cherished during several centuries of mutual misunderstanding. This unique study probes the origins of these stereotypes and myths and explores how they have shaped North American impressions of Latin America from the time of the Pilgrims up to the end of the twentieth century. Fredrick Pike's central thesis is that North Americans have identified themselves with "civilization" in all its manifestations, while viewing Latin Americans as hopelessly trapped in primitivism, the victims of nature rather than its masters. He shows how this civilization-nature duality arose from the first European settlers' perception that nature—and everything identified with it, including American Indians, African slaves, all women, and all children—was something to be conquered and dominated. This myth eventually came to color the North American establishment view of both immigrants to the United States and all our neighbors to the south.