Focusing on top civilian and military advisors within the national security establishment, this significant book looks at four case studies with a focus on civil-military relations within the US Department of Defense. Destined to influence US strategic thinking, it should be added to the syllabus of courses in civil-military relations, strategic studies and military history.
A smart and surprising political inventory for how America can reunite and revitalize in a time of crisis. Written by an admired leader of the Republican party, RALLY POINT: Five Tasks to Unite the Country and Revitalize the American Dream looks past the 2016 election, past the finger pointing and conventional political thinking, to focus on clear, primary principles that conservatives must debate and defend to protect the future of America. Raised in a working-class family in upstate New York, the first in his family to go to college, paid for in part by his service in the National Guard, Chris Gibson rose from Private to Colonel in the Army, including combat command in the storied 82nd Airborne Division. RALLY POINT is his story: what he's learned from the "School of Hard Knocks" and how he's applied those precious life lessons during his service in Iraq and in Congress. Drawn from a deep appreciation of history and American exceptionalism, Gibson provides incisive and frank analysis of the current political environment, including President Trump, and provides a roadmap based on time-tested Founding principles to help unite our country and revitalize the American Dream. RALLY POINT is a thoughtful, compelling, enjoyable read - a must for serious-minded Americans looking for answers in this challenging political environment"--
Focusing on top civilian and military advisors within the national security establishment, this significant book looks at four case studies with a focus on civil-military relations within the US Department of Defense. Destined to influence US strategic thinking, it should be added to the syllabus of courses in civil-military relations, strategic studies and military history.
This book sets a new standard as a work of reference. It covers British and Irish art in public collections from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, and it encompasses nearly 9,000 painters and 90,000 paintings in more than 1,700 separate collections. The book includes as well pictures that are now lost, some as a consequence of the Second World War and others because of de-accessioning, mostly from 1950 to about 1975 when Victorian art was out of fashion. By listing many tens of thousands of previously unpublished works, including around 13,000 which do not yet have any form of attribution, this book becomes a unique and indispensable work of reference, one that will transform the study of British and Irish painting.
Edgar Allan Poe has had a busy afterlife. The author of "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" might have died back in 1849, but some claim that did not stop him from composing poetry for another four decades. Others say he still makes appearances in no fewer than five cities, and that his ghost is a regular at a couple of different taverns, one of which saves a seat for him. Like a character from one of his short stories, Poe refuses to stay buried. Author Christopher Semtner explores the ghost stories and hauntings associated with his life--from the supernatural legends that inspired his writing to the alleged paranormal activity inspired by those terror tales.
Selected Book for the Louisiana Bicentennial Celebration, 2012 In the year 1860, Jean-Pierre Cenac sailed from the sophisticated French city of Bordeaux to begin his new life in the city with the second busiest port of debarkation in the U.S. Two years before, he had descended the Pyrenees to Bordeaux from his home village of Barbazan-Debat, a terrain in direct contrast to the flatlands of Louisiana. He arrived in 1860, just when the U.S. Civil War began with the secession of the Southern states, and in New Orleans, just where there would be placed a prime military target as the war developed. Neither Creole nor Acadian, Pierre took his chances in the rural parish of Terrebonne on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Pierre's resolute nature, unflagging work ethic, steadfast determination, and farsighted vision earned him a place of respect he could never have imagined when he left his native country. How he forged his place in this new landscape echoes the life journeys of countless immigrants--yet remains uniquely his own. His story and his family's story exemplify the experiences of many nineteenth century immigrants to Louisiana and the experiences of their twentieth century descendants.
Mississippi represented the Old South and all that it stood for--perhaps more so than any other state. Tracing its long histories of economic, social, and cultural evolution, Morris takes a close and richly detailed look at a representative Southern community: Jefferson Davis's Warren County, in the state's southwestern corner. Drawing on many wills, deeds, court records, and manuscript materials, he reveals the transformation of a loosely knit, typically Western community of pioneer homesteaders into a distinctly Southern society based on plantation agriculture, slavery, and a patriarchal social order. "This thoughtful, well-written study doubtless will be widely read and deservedly influential."--American Historical Review.
Italy Invades, full of restless adventurers, canny generals, and the occasional scoundrel, is a fast-paced and compelling read, the perfect sequel to America Invades. Recreating their success with America Invades, Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock take another global tour, this time starting from Italy and exploring that country's military involvements throughout the ancient and modern worlds. From the empire building of the Romans, through the globe-spanning Age of Exploration, to the multinational cooperation of NATO, Italy has conquered and explored countries as diverse and far-ranging as Cape Verde and Mongolia and Uruguay. With the additional guide of maps and photographs, the reader can visually follow the Italians as they conquer the world. The book also contains an excerpt from the never before published An Adventure in 1914, written by Christopher Kelly's maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Tileston Wells. Wells served as the American consul general to Romania each summer; and in the summer of 1914, as war exploded across Europe, he was there with his wife and two children.
How plausible is it to examine the medium of film through a Christian lens? Are there any grounds for supposing that, in 'going to the movies', one is participating in a religious activity? Faith in Film identifies and explores these key questions. From the unprecedented and innovative perspective of Christian theology, this book investigates how cinema audiences wrestle with religious beliefs and values. Through a reading of films as diverse as Groundhog Day, Billy Liar, Fight Club, Nobody's Fool and The Passion of the Christ, Deacy reveals that the movies raise vital questions about the spiritual landscape and normative values of western society today.
The authors of religious scriptures had little difficulty enhancing sacred narratives with the rhetoric of violence. The phenomenon continues in the habitual linkage of violence and religion in contemporary film, music and literature. 'Holy Terror' brings together scholars of religious studies, biblical studies, film studies and sociology to examine the social function of violence in popular discourse. The book questions how violent rhetoric shapes belief and values, how audience empathy with violent protagonists can be understood, and the significance of the association of violence with particular religious groups and ideas. A range of phenomena are analysed, including terrorism in Scripture, apocalyptic texts in film and violence in sport.
On December 7th, 1955, Kitty McInerney lay dying in a New York hospital bed. The forty-seven year-old Irish immigrant, suffering from severe toxemia, was preparing for an emergency c-section to give birth to her 17th child. As a Catholic priest performed her last rites, Kitty succumbed to a rare moment of quiet reflection. While her thoughts centered on the fate of her many young children, Kitty found no solace in contemplating her improbable tale of survival... her impoverished youth in rural Ireland, her courageous journey from a small Irish village to the largest city in the world, and her tireless devotion to an ever-expanding family amidst impossible hardships in the impoverished South Bronx. Nor did Kitty realize how her modest life rode a wave of social and political transformation that would come to define modern America. Poor, burdened, and uncelebrated, Kitty McInerney is remarkable for her unrelenting faith, her unique, individual struggle and for exemplifying the American immigrant experience.
This book traces the background to the Treaty of Union of 1707, explains why it happened and assesses its impact on Scottish society, including the bitter struggle with the Jacobites for acceptance of the union in the two decades that followed its inaugur
Winner of a 2017 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award This book represents the first time that the known history and a significant amount of new information has been compiled into a single written record about one of the most important eras in the south-central coastal bayou parish of Terrebonne. The book makes clear the unique geographical, topographical, and sociological conditions that beckoned the first settlers who developed the large estates that became sugar plantations. This first of four planned volumes chronicles details about founders and their estates along Bayou Terrebonne from its headwaters in the northern civil parish to its most southerly reaches near the Gulf of Mexico. Those and other parish plantations along important waterways contributed significantly to the dominance of King Sugar in Louisiana. The rich soils and opportunities of the area became the overriding reason many well-heeled Anglo-Americans moved there to join Francophone locals in cultivating the crop. From that nineteenth century period up to the twentieth century’s side effects of World Wars I and II, Hard Scrabble to Hallelujah, Volume I: Bayou Terrebonne describes important yet widely unrecognized geography and history. Today, cultural and physical legacies such as ex-slave-founded communities and place names endure from the time that the planter society was the driving economic force of this fascinating region.
Christopher Harvie, one of Scotland's leading historians and political writers, takes a long view of Scotland: its land, people, and culture. Scotland: A History sweeps from the earliest settlements to the new Parliament of 1999 and beyond. It describes the unique multi-ethnic kingdom which emerged from the Dark Ages, the small, proud nation manoeuvring among the great powers of medieval Europe, and the radical reformation which forced a compromise with its mighty southern neighbour. Harvie follows Scotland's tense partnership with England for over 400 years, through dual monarchy and union, enlightenment and empire, industrialization and de-industrialization. First published over a decade ago, this new edition has been extended - at both ends - to include recent discoveries about Scotland's early pre-historic settlements, through to a new final chapter covering the history, politics, and economics of the country under the Holyrood Parliament - and the background to the controversy over the Independence Referendum of 2014.
In The Big Muddy, the first long-term environmental history of the Mississippi, Christopher Morris offers a brilliant tour across five centuries as he illuminates the interaction between people and the landscape, from early hunter-gatherer bands to present-day industrial and post-industrial society. Morris shows that when Hernando de Soto arrived at the lower Mississippi Valley, he found an incredibly vast wetland, forty thousand square miles of some of the richest, wettest land in North America, deposited there by the big muddy river that ran through it. But since then much has changed, for the river and for the surrounding valley. Indeed, by the 1890s, the valley was rapidly drying. Morris shows how centuries of increasingly intensified human meddling--including deforestation, swamp drainage, and levee construction--led to drought, disease, and severe flooding. He outlines the damage done by the introduction of foreign species, such as the Argentine nutria, which escaped into the wild and are now busy eating up Louisiana's wetlands. And he critiques the most monumental change in the lower Mississippi Valley--the reconstruction of the river itself, largely under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers. Valley residents have been paying the price for these human interventions, most visibly with the disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina. Morris also describes how valley residents have been struggling to reinvigorate the valley environment in recent years--such as with the burgeoning catfish and crawfish industries--so that they may once again live off its natural abundance. Morris concludes that the problem with Katrina is the problem with the Amazon Rainforest, drought and famine in Africa, and fires and mudslides in California--it is the end result of the ill-considered bending of natural environments to human purposes.
This introductory history takes Scotland through two world wars and subsequent social exhaustion, through the re-energising adjustments loosely referred to as 'the sixties' to a final endgame of Union versus Independence. The novel structure of Harvie's history mirrors that of a grand engineering project, or a structure as complex as the Forth Railway Bridge: 'three periods of change rendered as towers, and two great cantilevered arches of life-in-common, over which day-to-day life proceeds'.
The inspiration for the primetime ITV series on Great Britain, this is the ultimate journey around Scotland from bestselling author Christopher Winn. Travelling county by county, this irresistible miscellany unearths the enthralling stories, firsts, birthplaces, legends and inventions that shape the country's rich and majestic history. To uncover the spellbinding tales that lie hidden within Scotland's wild and romantic shores, to experience what inspired the country's powerful literature and towering castles, and to tread in the footsteps of her villains and victors, is to capture the spirit of this fascinating country and bring every place you visit to life. You will discover the story of the original 'sweetheart', John Balliol, whose embalmed heart is buried beside his devoted wife Devorgilla at Sweetheart Abbey in Kirkcudbrightshire. In Aberdeen you will find the only granite cathedral in the world. And you will hear the haunting echo of the Bear Gates of Traquair House in Peeblesshire were slammed shut when Bonnie Prince Charlie left Scotland in 1746 - legend has it that they will never be re-opened until a Stuart King once more sits on the throne. This beautifully illustrated treasure trove of interesting facts about the history of Scotland is the perfect gift, and will act as an eye-opening guide to this thrilling, alluring and ever-bewitching country.
Take the ultimate trip around Ireland Bestselling author Christopher Winn takes us on a fascinating journey around Ireland, to discover the tales buried deep in Irish history. Packed full of myths and legends, firsts, birthplaces, inventions and adventures, this fact book visits each of the four provinces - Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connaught - and unearths the hidden gems that each county in these provinces holds. Discover where people and ideas were born, where dreams were inspired and where the unforgettable figures of Ireland's past now slumber. You'll be able to visit the holy mountain, Croagh Patrick in Country Mayo, where St Patrick is said to have driven all the snakes in Ireland into the sea. At Lismore Castle in County Waterford you will uncover the bathroom dedicated to Fred Astaire, whose sister Adele was the hugely popular Chatelaine of Lismore in the 1930s and 40s. On the winter solstice you can bathe in the sunlight that fills the burial chamber at Newgrange, County Meath - the oldest solar observatory in the world. This irresistible compendium of facts and stories will give you a captivating insight into the Irish, and the ideas and events that have shaped the individual identity of every place you visit, and will have you exclaiming again and again: 'Well, I never knew that!
The UK is said to have been one of the most prolific reformers of its public administration. Successive reforms have been accompanied by claims that the changes would make the world a better place by transforming the way government worked. Despite much discussion and debate over government makeovers and reforms, however, there has been remarkably little systematic evaluation of what happened to cost and performance in UK government during the last thirty years. A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? aims to address that gap, offering a unique evaluation of UK government modernization programmes from 1980 to the present day. The book provides a distinctive framework for evaluating long-term performance in government, bringing together the 'working better' and 'costing less' dimensions, and presents detailed primary evidence within that framework. This book explores the implications of their findings for widely held ideas about public management, the questions they present, and their policy implications for a period in which pressures to make government 'work better and cost less' are unlikely to go away.
The story of how hip-hop created, and came to dominate, the twenty-first century. In Dead Precedents, Roy Christopher traces the story of how hip-hop invented the twenty-first century. Emerging alongside cyberpunk in the 1980s, the hallmarks of hip-hop - allusion, self-reference, the use of new technologies, sampling, the cutting and splicing of language and sound - would come to define the culture of the new millennium. Taking in the groundbreaking work of DJs and MCs, alongside writers like Dick and Gibson, as well as graffiti and DIY culture, Dead Precedents is a counter-culture history of the twentieth century, showcasing hip-hop's role in the creation of the world we now live in.
This book challenges conventional wisdom and provides new insights into Scottish social and economic history. Christopher A. Whatley argues that the Union of 1707 was vital for Scottish success, but in ways which have hitherto been overlooked. He proposes that the central place of Jacobitism in the historiography of the period should be revised. Comprehensive in its coverage, the book is based not only on an exhaustive reading of secondary material but also incorporates a wealth of new evidence from previously little-used or unused primary sources.
The most celebrated French storyteller of the nineteenth century, Guy de Maupassant was a master of the modern short story. Offering an intriguing picture of French life, his stories derive their enduring appeal from understated artistry, extreme craftsmanship, and the universality of his characters and their aspirations and misfortunes. His career as a professional writer lasted only twelve years before it was brutally cut short by the dreadful consequences of untreatable syphilis: chronic sickness, a failed suicide attempt, insanity, paralysis, and death after eighteen months’ confinement in a clinic. In this insightful and compelling biography, the only one in English currently available, Christopher Lloyd situates Maupassant’s life and work in the literary and social context of nineteenth-century France. He skillfully introduces the reader to Maupassant’s most famous works, such as Boule de suif, Bel-Ami, and Pierre et Jean, as well as highlights the important stages and achievements of his life and legacy.
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.