DeVoto's West: History, Conservation, and the Public Good addresses many issues, including the plundering of resources by absentee eastern corporations, Westerners' conflicted relationship to exploitation, and the degradation of the national parks.DeVoto's West collects the best of Bernard DeVoto's conservation pieces for the first time. It will introduce a new generation to prose that has retained its relevance and remains a remarkably current and timely argument for protecting public lands.
This book is the fascinating record of DeVoto's crusade to save the West from itself. . . . His arguments, insights, and passion are as relevant and urgent today as they were when he first put them on paper."--Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., from the Foreword Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955) was, according to the novelist Wallace Stegner, "a fighter for public causes, for conservation of our natural resources, for freedom of the press and freedom of thought." A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, DeVoto is best remembered for his trilogy, The Year of Decision: 1846, Across the Wide Missouri, and The Course of Empire. He also wrote a column for Harper's Magazine, in which he fulminated about his many concerns, particularly the exploitation and destruction of the American West. This volume brings together ten of DeVoto's acerbic and still timely essays on Western conservation issues, along with his unfinished conservationist manifesto, Western Paradox, which has never before been published. The book also includes a foreword by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who was a student of DeVoto's at Harvard University, and a substantial introduction by Douglas Brinkley and Patricia Limerick, both of which shed light on DeVoto's work and legacy.
In our time, Bernard Leach has done for pottery what Henry Moore has done for scuplture. This... infinitely rewarding book is an account of his pilgrimage through life.' Times Bernard Leach (1887-1979) was as renowned in Japan and the East as in Europe and America, both as an artist-craftsman and as a thinker. His interpretation of the traditions of the Orient in the making of pots - and in evolving a philosophy of life - was a lodestar for many potters in the West. Beyond East and West, first published in 1978, is more than an autobiography. Full of sharply-etched and amusing recollections, it contains much of Leach's deeper thought and a great deal too about the practical application of his ideas. Its recurrent theme is the meeting of East and West at all levels - artistic, cultural, social, political.
Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis has been for half a century one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, the author of over two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe. Eminent French historian Robert Mantran has written of Lewis's work: "How could one resist being attracted to the books of an author who opens for you the doors of an unknown or misunderstood universe, who leads you within to its innermost domains: religion, ways of thinking, conceptions of power, culture--an author who upsets notions too often fixed, fallacious, or partisan." In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam. Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays. He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction--in war and peace, in commerce and culture--between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West. Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments to translating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language). And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews. A matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflicts today, Islam and the West presents the seasoned reflections of an eminent authority on one of the most intriguing and little understood regions in the world.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Saloutos Prize of the Immigration History Society Bailyn's Pulitzer Prize-winning book uses an emigration roster that lists every person officially known to have left Britain for America from December 1773 to March 1776 to reconstruct the lives and motives of those who emigrated to the New World. "Voyagers to the West is a superb book...It should be equally admired by and equally attractive to the general reader as to the professional historian."--R.C. Simmons, Journal of American Studies
From the memories of everyday experience, Living Atlanta vividly recreates life in the city during the three decades from World War I through World War II--a period in which a small, regional capital became a center of industry, education, finance, commerce, and travel. This profusely illustrated volume draws on nearly two hundred interviews with Atlanta residents who recall, in their own words, "the way it was"--from segregated streetcars to college fraternity parties, from moonshine peddling to visiting performances by the Metropolitan Opera, from the growth of neighborhoods to religious revivals. The book is based on a celebrated public radio series that was broadcast in 1979-80 and hailed by Studs Terkel as "an important, exciting project--a truly human portrait of a city of people." Living Atlanta presents a diverse array of voices--domestics and businessmen, teachers and factory workers, doctors and ballplayers. There are memories of the city when it wasn't quite a city: "Back in those young days it was country in Atlanta," musician Rosa Lee Carson reflects. "It sure was. Why, you could even raise a cow out there in your yard." There are eyewitness accounts of such major events as the Great Fire of 1917: "The wind blowing that way, it was awful," recalls fire fighter Hugh McDonald. "There'd be a big board on fire, and the wind would carry that board, and it'd hit another house and start right up on that one. And it just kept spreading." There are glimpses of the workday: "It's a real job firing an engine, a darn hard job," says railroad man J. R. Spratlin. "I was using a scoop and there wasn't no eight hour haul then, there was twelve hours, sometimes sixteen." And there are scenes of the city at play: "Baseball was the popular sport," remembers Arthur Leroy Idlett, who grew up in the Pittsburgh neighborhood. "Everybody had teams. And people--you could put some kids out there playing baseball, and before you knew a thing, you got a crowd out there, watching kids play." Organizing the book around such topics as transportation, health and religion, education, leisure, and politics, the authors provide a narrative commentary that places the diverse remembrances in social and historical context. Resurfacing throughout the book as a central theme are the memories of Jim Crow and the peculiarities of black-white relations. Accounts of Klan rallies, job and housing discrimination, and poll taxes are here, along with stories about the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, early black forays into local politics, and the role of the city's black colleges. Martin Luther King, Sr., historian Clarence Bacote, former police chief Herbert Jenkins, educator Benjamin Mays, and sociologist Arthur Raper are among those whose recollections are gathered here, but the majority of the voices are those of ordinary Atlantans, men and women who in these pages relive day-to-day experiences of a half-century ago.
As a body, these records are extracted from roughly 750 known Bibles and extend from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries, with the greatest concentration from the mid-19th century. Most of the entries refer to births, marriages, and deaths and in most cases indicate the name(s) of the principals, the date of the event, and, sometimes, such supplementary information as his/her age or address, the maiden name of a parent, etc. Each Bible record is identified by family name and followed by a reference to the Huguenot Society records where the original can be found. In all, the records refer to more than 2,500 main families named in the surname index at the back of the volume and embrace a staggering 25,000 individuals of Huguenot or possible Huguenot ancestry--connections and allied families that would otherwise be lost to us in the unpublished files of this august organization.
While the massive flow of immigrants to the Northeast was taking place, a number of Jews were finding their way to America through the port of Galveston, Texas. The descendants of these immigrants, now scattered throughout the United States, are hardly aware that their ancestors participated in a unique attempt to organize and channel Jewish immigration. From their recruitment in Eastern Europe to their settlement in the American West, these immigrants were supervised by a network of agents and representatives. The project, known as the "Galveston Movement," brought over ten thousand Jews to the United States between the years 1907 and 1914. In Galveston: Ellis Island of the West, a thorough analysis of the various problems—promotional, organizational, political, ideological, anfinancial—besetting the Galveston Movement, and of the Movement's attempts to solve these problems, serves as the basis for an important case study of an experiment at channeling immigration. Accounts of individual immigrants, told in their own words or in the words of those who welcomed them, provide fascinating glimpses into a story which well deserves to be told.
In these articles Professor Bachrach starts by looking at aspects of the ’barbarian’ occupation of the land of the Roman Empire, from Britain to the Alan settlements in southern Gaul. His particular interest, however, is in the political and, above all, in the military structures that grew out of the Early Middle Ages. He has sought to demonstrate that there was a fundamental continuity in military organisation and tactics from the Merovingian through the Carolingian period. As he shows, there is no reason to connect the origins of ’feudalism’ with Charles Martel’s wish to create a force of cavalry, and it is a fallacy that he grasped the potential of the stirrup for enabling mounted shock combat. On the contrary, its use in the West progressed only slowly, and it had nothing to do with the origins or growth of feudalism. Le professeur Bachrach débute par l’analyse de certains aspects de l’occupation barbare des terres de l’empire romain, de la Grande-Bretagne aux campements alans en Gaule méridionale. Il s’attache en suite aux structures politiques et, surtout, militaires qui furent issues du Haut Moyen Age. Selon lui, et il tente d’en faire ici la démonstration, l’organisation et les tactiques militaires ont fait preuve d’une continuité fondamentale de l’époque mérovingienne à celle des Carolingiens. Comme il le demontre, il n’y a pas lieu d’établir de liens entre l’origine du féodalisme et le désir qu’avait Charles Martel de créer une cavalerie; il est également tout à fait erroné de dire que ce dernier s’était rendu compte du potentiel de l’étrier en tant que facteur de mener des combats à cheval de choc. Bien contraire, l’utilisation de l’étrier à l’Ouest ne fit que progresser lentement et aucun rapport n’existe entre cet instrument et l’origine ou la croissance de la féodalité.
For many centuries, the world of Islam was in the forefront of human achievement--the foremost military and economic power in the world, the leader in the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian Europe, a remote land beyond its northwestern frontier, was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed, as the previously despised West won victory after victory, first in the battlefield and the marketplace, then in almost every aspect of public and even private life. In this intriguing volume, Bernard Lewis examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to understand why things had changed--how they had been overtaken, overshadowed, and to an increasing extent dominated by the West. Lewis provides a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil. He shows how the Middle East turned its attention to understanding European weaponry and military tactics, commerce and industry, government and diplomacy, education and culture. Lewis highlights the striking differences between the Western and Middle Eastern cultures from the 18th to the 20th centuries through thought-provoking comparisons of such things as Christianity and Islam, music and the arts, the position of women, secularism and the civil society, the clock and the calendar. Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis is one of the West's foremost authorities on Islamic history and culture. In this striking volume, he offers an incisive look at the historical relationship between the Middle East and Europe.
As a body, these records are extracted from roughly 750 known Bibles and extend from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries, with the greatest concentration from the mid-19th century. Most of the entries refer to births, marriages, and deaths and in most cases indicate the name(s) of the principals, the date of the event, and, sometimes, such supplementary information as his/her age or address, the maiden name of a parent, etc. Each Bible record is identified by family name and followed by a reference to the Huguenot Society records where the original can be found. In all, the records refer to more than 2,500 main families named in the surname index at the back of the volume and embrace a staggering 25,000 individuals of Huguenot or possible Huguenot ancestry--connections and allied families that would otherwise be lost to us in the unpublished files of this august organization.
A History of the Alans in the West was first published in 1973. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The Alans, a nomadic people from the steppe lands of south Russia, were among the many invaders of the Roman empire who helped to bring about its fall. Unlike the majority of the invaders, they were not Germans — they were Indo-Iranians—and they were not, like most barbarians, organized in agricultural communities. This history traces their westward movement from the time of their first mention in sources of classical antiquity through the early Middle Ages. Professor Bachrach discusses the social and religious institutions of the Alans and especially their military customs. As he shows, they contributed much to the military repertoire of the West, especially the feigned retreat tactic and the role of the cavalry as the primary part of the army. In their westward movement the Alans were assimilated by people in Gaul and Italy and served the empire in a military capacity during the fourth and fifth centuries. IN addition to their military and political impact in several areas, the Alans also influenced early medieval artistic styles, literary developments, place names, and personal names. A number of illustrations provide examples of the artistic influence of the Alans, and there are maps pertinent to the history.
Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe was first published in 1977. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. This is the first study of early medieval Jewish policy in the West which examines the nature of this policy from the perspective and aims of its formulators. As the author points out, most specialists in Jewish history have been dominated by what the historian Salo Baron has called the "lachrymose conception,' a view which emphasized persecution and suffering as a fundamental theme of Jewish history. Professor Bachrach challenges this view and attacks what he calls the myth of Christian church domination of the early medieval world.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.