Download or read book Rufus Porter s Curious World written by Laura Fecych Sprague and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of Rufus Porter, an enigmatic but astonishingly productive American artist, inventor, and publisher. Presents his life and work in the context of the cultural, social, and technological networks that shaped innovation and democracy during the antebellum era.
Download or read book Thomas Hart Benton written by Justin Wolff and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in Missouri at the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas Hart Benton would become the most notorious and celebrated painter America had ever seen. The first artist to make the cover of Time, he was a true original: an heir to both the rollicking populism of his father's political family and the quiet life of his Appalachian grandfather. In his twenties, he would find his calling in New York, where he was drawn to memories of his small-town youth—and to visions of the American scene. By the mid-1930s, Benton's heroic murals were featured in galleries, statehouses, universities, and museums, and magazines commissioned him to report on the stories of the day. Yet even as the nation learned his name, he was often scorned by critics and political commentators, many of whom found him too nationalistic and his art too regressive. Even Jackson Pollock, his once devoted former student, would turn away from him in dramatic fashion. A boxer in his youth, Benton was quick to fight back, but the widespread backlash had an impact—and foreshadowed many of the artistic debates that would dominate the coming decades. In this definitive biography, Justin Wolff places Benton in the context of his tumultuous historical moment—as well as in the landscapes and cultural circles that inspired him. Thomas Hart Benton—with compelling insights into Benton's art, his philosophy, and his family history—rescues a great American artist from myth and hearsay, and provides an indelibly moving portrait of an influential, controversial, and often misunderstood man.
Download or read book The Travelers written by Regina Porter and published by Hogarth. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “American history comes to vivid, engaging life in this tale of two interconnected families (one white, one black) that spans from the 1950s to Barack Obama’s first year as president. . . . The complex, beautifully drawn characters are unique and indelible.”—Entertainment Weekly “An astoundingly audacious debut.”—O: The Oprah Magazine • “A gorgeous generational saga.”—New York Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE • FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL Meet James Samuel Vincent, an affluent Manhattan attorney who shirks his modest Irish American background but hews to his father’s meandering ways. James muddles through a topsy-turvy relationship with his son, Rufus, which is further complicated when Rufus marries Claudia Christie. Claudia’s mother—Agnes Miller Christie—is a beautiful African American woman who survives a chance encounter on a Georgia road that propels her into a new life in the Bronx. Soon after, her husband, Eddie Christie, is called to duty on an air craft carrier in Vietnam, where Tom Stoppard’s play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” becomes Eddie’s life anchor, as he grapples with mounting racial tensions on the ship and counts the days until he will see Agnes again. These unforgettable characters’ lives intersect with a cast of lovers and friends—the unapologetic black lesbian who finds her groove in 1970s Berlin; a moving man stranded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during a Thanksgiving storm; two half-brothers who meet as adults in a crayon factory; and a Coney Island waitress whose Prince Charming is too good to be true. With piercing humor, exacting dialogue, and a beautiful sense of place, Regina Porter’s debut is both an intimate family portrait and a sweeping exploration of what it means to be American today. Praise for The Travelers “[A] kaleidoscopic début . . . Porter deftly skips back and forth through the decades, sometimes summarizing a life in a few paragraphs, sometimes spending pages on one conversation. As one character observes, ‘We move in circles in this life.’” —The New Yorker “Porter’s electric debut is a sprawling saga that follows two interconnected American families. . . . Readers will certainly be drawn in by Porter’s sharp writing and kept hooked by the black-and-white photographs interspersed throughout the book, which give faces to the evocative voices.”—Booklist
Download or read book Ancient Curious and Famous Wills written by Virgil M. Harris and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-09-04 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Ancient, Curious, and Famous Wills" by Virgil M. Harris. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Download or read book Why Fish Don t Exist written by Lulu Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.
Download or read book Efficiency Equity and Legitimacy written by Roger B. Porter and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its widely acknowledged contribution to global prosperity over the past half century, the movement toward further liberalization has increasingly been challenged. This collection of essays examine several key issues at the heart of the debate over the multilateral trading system.
Download or read book Secret City written by James Kirchick and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 Named one of Vanity Fair's “Best Books of 2022” “Not since Robert Caro’s Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history.” —George Stephanopoulos Washington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick’s Secret City. For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secret “too loathsome to mention” held enormous, terrifying power. Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over one hundred people, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives around the country, Secret City is a chronicle of American politics like no other. Beginning with the tragic story of Sumner Welles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s brilliant diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of “the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States,” James Kirchick illuminates how homosexuality shaped each successive presidential administration through the end of the twentieth century. Cultural and political anxiety over gay people sparked a decades-long witch hunt, impacting everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the struggle for Black civil rights, and the rise of the conservative movement. Among other revelations, Kirchick tells of the World War II–era gay spymaster who pioneered seduction as a tool of American espionage, the devoted aide whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexuality was discovered, and how allegations of a “homosexual ring” controlling Ronald Reagan nearly derailed his 1980 election victory. Magisterial in scope and intimate in detail, Secret City will forever transform our understanding of American history.
Download or read book When Audrey Met Alice written by Rebecca Behrens and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living in the White House is like being permanently grounded. Only with better security. First Daughter Audrey Rhodes can't wait for the party she has planned. The decorations are all set and the pizza is on its way. But the Secret Service must be out to ruin her life, because they cancel at the last minute, squashing Audrey's chances for making any new friends. What good is having your own bowling alley if you don't have anyone to play with? Audrey is ready to give up and spend the next four years totally friendless—until she discovers Alice Roosevelt's hidden diary. The former First Daughter's outrageous antics give Audrey a ton of ideas for having fun...and get her into more trouble than she can handle. A fun, smart middle grade debut that brings a fascinating historical character to vibrant life in an accessible, modern context Praise for When Audrey Met Alice: "The combination of humor, history, light romance and social consciousness make Rebecca Behrens' debut novel a winner."—BookPage "Rebecca Behrens combines charming and quirky characters from two different centuries, creating a believable, engaging story that tugs at the heart and tickles the funny bone."—Nikki Loftin, award-winning author of The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy "Outrageous and riveting. ...this book aims to inspire and stir young girls to unearth their inner Alice Roosevelt and to 'eat up the world.'"—School Library Journal
Download or read book My ntonia written by Willa Cather and published by Modernista. This book was released on 2023-12-20 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 19th century, orphaned Jim Burden is sent to the wilderness in Nebraska to live with his grandparents. He arrives at the same time as the Shimerda family, including the eldest daughter Ántonia, who becomes his closest neighbors. Life in the American West is tough, especially for the impoverished Shimerda family, and pioneers must struggle for survival. A friendship blossoms between Jim and Ántonia as they explore nature and have adventures together, a friendship that will last a lifetime. My Ántonia became an immediate success when first published and is today considered Willa Cather's first masterpiece. It is praised for its depiction of the American West and its ability to highlight the aspirations of ordinary, poor people in a time when it was customary to write about the elite. WILLA CATHER [1873-1947] was an American author. After studying at the University of Nebraska, she worked as a teacher and journalist. Cather's novels often focus on settlers in the USA with a particular emphasis on female pioneers. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours, and in 1943, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Download or read book By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and the Assumption of the Rogues Rascals written by Elizabeth Smart and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Holocaust written by David E. Stannard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-11-18 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book, the European and white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finally out across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people, he asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. At once sweeping in scope and meticulously detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical and moral debate.
Download or read book Prominent Families of New York written by Lyman Horace Weeks and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book July Crisis written by T. G. Otte and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive new account of the catalytic events of July 1914 that led to the outbreak of the First World War.
Download or read book Every Root an Anchor written by R. Bruce Allison and published by Wisconsin Historical Society. This book was released on 2005-04-13 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Every Root an Anchor, writer and arborist R. Bruce Allison celebrates Wisconsin's most significant, unusual, and historic trees. More than one hundred tales introduce us to trees across the state, some remarkable for their size or age, others for their intriguing histories. From magnificent elms to beloved pines to Frank Lloyd Wright's oaks, these trees are woven into our history, contributing to our sense of place. They are anchors for time-honored customs, manifestations of our ideals, and reminders of our lives' most significant events. For this updated edition, Allison revisits the trees' histories and tells us which of these unique landmarks are still standing. He sets forth an environmental message as well, reminding us to recognize our connectedness to trees and to manage our tree resources wisely. As early Wisconsin conservationist Increase Lapham said, "Tree histories increase our love of home and improve our hearts. They deserve to be told and remembered."
Download or read book The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republic of Holland written by Pieter de la Court and published by . This book was released on 1746 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A True American written by Wendy Jean Katz and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that nativism, the hostility especially to Catholic immigrants that led to the organization of political parties like the Know-Nothings, affected the meaning of nineteenthcentury American art in ways that have gone unrecognized. In an era of industrialization, nativism’s erection of barriers to immigration appealed to artisans, a category that included most male artists at some stage in their careers. But as importantly, its patriotic message about the nature of the American republic also overlapped with widely shared convictions about the necessity of democratic reform. Movements directed toward improving the human condition, including anti-slavery and temperance, often consigned Catholicism, along with monarchies and slavery, to a repressive past, not the republican American future. To demonstrate the impact of this political effort by humanitarian reformers and nativists to define a Protestant character for the country, this book tracks the work and practice of artist William Walcutt. Though he is little known today, in his own time his efforts as a painter, illustrator and sculptor were acclaimed as masterly, and his art is worth reconsidering in its own right. But this book examines him as a case study of an artist whose economic and personal ties to artisanal print culture and cultural nationalists ensured that he was surrounded by and contributed to anti-Catholic publications and organizations. Walcutt was not anti immigrant himself, nor a member of a nativist party, but his kin, friends, and patrons publicly expressed warnings about Catholic and foreign political influence. And that has implications for better-known nineteenth-century historical and narrative art. Precisely because Walcutt’s profile and milieu were so typical for artists in this period, this book is able to demonstrate how central this supposedly fringe movement was to viewers and makers of American art.
Download or read book Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World written by Nükhet Varlik and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.
