The Lower East Side of Manhattan is rich in stories -- of poor immigrants who flocked there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of beatniks, hippies, and artists who peopled it mid-century; and of the real estate developers and politicians who have always shaped what is now termed the "East Village". Today, the musical Rent plays on Broadway to a mostly white and suburban audience, MTV exploits the neighborhood's newly trendy squalor in a film promotion, and on the Internet a cyber soap opera and travel-related Web pages lure members of the middle class to enjoy a commodified and sanitized version of the neighborhood. In this sweeping account, Christopher Mele analyzes the political and cultural forces that have influenced the development of this distinctive community. He describes late nineteenth-century notions of the Lower East Side as a place of entrenched poverty, ethnic plurality, political activism, and "low" culture that elicited feelings of revulsion and fear among the city's elite and middle classes. The resulting -- and ongoing -- struggle between government and residents over affordable and decent housing has in turn affected real estate practices and urban development policies. Selling the Lower East Side recounts the resistance tactics used by community residents, as well as the impulse on the part of some to perpetuate the image of the neighborhood as dangerous, romantic, and bohemian, clinging to the marginality that has been central to the identity of the East Village and subverting attempts to portray it as "new and improved". Ironically, this very image of urban grittiness has been appropriated by a cultural marketplace hungry for new fodder.Mele explores the ways that developers, media executives, and others have coopted the area's characteristics -- analyzing the East Village as a "style provider" where what is being marketed is "difference". The result is a visionary look at how political and economic actions transform neighborhoods and at what happens when a neighborhood is what is being "consumed".
First Published in 2015. This text holds four volumes of essays and entries on the early Republic and Antebellum era in America spanning the end of the American Revolution in 1781 to the outbreak of Civil War in 1861. The Americans forged a new government in theory and then in practice, with the beginnings of industrialisation and the effects of urbanisation, widespread poverty, labour strife, debates around slavery and sectional discord. By the end of the nineteenth century American had a powerhouse economy, new technologies and the emergence of major social reform movements, creation of uniquely American art and literature and the conquest of the West. This encyclopaedia offers a historic reference.
All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting," the late, great jazz critic Whitney Balliett once wrote. By that measure, the essays of Christopher Hitchens are in the first tier. For nearly four decades, Hitchens has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we grapple with first principles-the principles of reason and tolerance and skepticism that define and inform the foundations of our civilization-principles that, to endure, must be defended anew by every generation. "A short list of the greatest living conversationalists in English," said The Economist, "would probably have to include Christopher Hitchens, Sir Patrick Leigh-Fermor, and Sir Tom Stoppard. Great brilliance, fantastic powers of recall, and quick wit are clearly valuable in sustaining conversation at these cosmic levels. Charm may be helpful, too." Hitchens-who staunchly declines all offers of knighthood-hereby invites you to take a seat at a democratic conversation, to be engaged, and to be reasoned with. His knowledge is formidable, an encyclopedic treasure, and yet one has the feeling, reading him, of hearing a person thinking out loud, following the inexorable logic of his thought, wherever it might lead, unafraid to expose fraudulence, denounce injustice, and excoriate hypocrisy. Legions of readers, admirers and detractors alike, have learned to read Hitchens with something approaching awe at his felicity of language, the oxygen in every sentence, the enviable wit and his readiness, even eagerness, to fight a foe or mount the ramparts. Here, he supplies fresh perceptions of such figures as varied as Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Rebecca West, George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, and Philip Larkin are matched in brilliance by his pungent discussions and intrepid observations, gathered from a lifetime of traveling and reporting from such destinations as Iran, China, and Pakistan. Hitchens's directness, elegance, lightly carried erudition, critical and psychological insight, humor, and sympathy-applied as they are here to a dazzling variety of subjects-all set a standard for the essayist that has rarely been matched in our time. What emerges from this indispensable volume is an intellectual self-portrait of a writer with an exemplary steadiness of purpose and a love affair with the delights and seductions of the English language, a man anchored in a profound and humane vision of the human longing for reason and justice.
Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation’s least effective heads of state. In President without a Party—the first full-scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight decades—Christopher J. Leahy explores the life of the tenth chief executive of the United States. Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler’s early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his vice-presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler’s ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later. Leahy also examines the president’s personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a “traitor president.” The most complete accounting of Tyler’s life and career, Leahy’s biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South’s dominant ideology of states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-of-the-road, bipartisan approach to the nation’s problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president—the annexation of Texas—exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.
Written by experts from various fields, this edited collection explores a wide range of issues pertaining to how computers evoke human social expectations. The book illustrates how socially acceptable conventions can strongly impact the effectiveness of human-computer interactions and how to consider such norms in the design of human-computer inter
Asthe daughter of a British Captain, Felicity Crown had always been protected from the harsh world. But her life was savagely changed when barbary pirates over-ran the ship that was taking her to her family in Gibraltar and sold her into degrading slavery. Toby MacGann had met Felicity when she was but fifteen and her beauty had lingered in his memory. And when he learned of her terrible fate, he realised that he could not rest until he found her....
Numerous polls show that Americans want to reduce our military presence abroad, allowing our allies and other nations to assume greater responsibility both for their own defense and for enforcing security in their respective regions. In The Power Problem, Christopher A. Preble explores the aims, costs, and limitations of the use of this nation's military power; throughout, he makes the case that the majority of Americans are right, and the foreign policy experts who disdain the public's perspective are wrong. Preble is a keen and skeptical observer of recent U.S. foreign policy experiences, which have been marked by the promiscuous use of armed intervention. He documents how the possession of vast military strength runs contrary to the original intent of the Founders, and has, as they feared, shifted the balance of power away from individual citizens and toward the central government, and from the legislative and judicial branches of government to the executive. In Preble's estimate, if policymakers in Washington have at their disposal immense military might, they will constantly be tempted to overreach, and to redefine ever more broadly the "national interest." Preble holds that the core national interest—preserving American security—is easily defined and largely immutable. Possessing vast military power in order to further other objectives is, he asserts, illicit and to be resisted. Preble views military power as purely instrumental: if it advances U.S. security, then it is fulfilling its essential role. If it does not—if it undermines our security, imposes unnecessary costs, and forces all Americans to incur additional risks—then our military power is a problem, one that only we can solve. As it stands today, Washington's eagerness to maintain and use an enormous and expensive military is corrosive to contemporary American democracy.
Evidence is the most complete reference on evidence law available, written at a level that makes it an accessible, indispensible resource for students. The text emphasizes contemporary judicial interpretations of the Federal Rules of Evidence, making the law relevant to students. Organization around the Federal Rules of Evidence makes the text particularly understandable, with common-law coverage given where an issue is not codified. Throughout the text, Evidence features straightforward explication of the rules, analysis of leading case law, and thorough coverage of both the Federal Rules and state evidence codes. Pedagogical features include helpful marginal headings, mini-summaries of contents at the beginning of each chapter, generous footnotes, and useful case citations. The authors strong reputations as casebook authors and authors of Aspen's practitioner Evidence treatise continue to attract users to this book.
For 178 years, the United States Naval Academy has trained and educated young men and women to be commissioned officers in the US Navy and US Marine Corps. The Naval Academy is the second oldest of the five service academies in the United States. The nearly-340-acre campus is located on the grounds of the old Fort Severn in Annapolis, Maryland. The entire campus, known as the Yard, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Admission to the Naval Academy is highly competitive. Since the curriculum leans heavily on science, engineering, and mathematics, all graduates--no matter their major--earn a bachelor of science degree. After completing their coursework, midshipmen enter either the Navy or Marine Corps for a five-year commitment.
Christopher Hyde continues to carve an indelible niche in the world of international thrillers. This WWII story is filled with actual events, historical figures, and a true-to-life atmosphere and intrigue that pull the reader in and don’t let go. November 1941. Freelance news photographer Jane Todd and Scotland Yard detective inspector Morris Black are recruited by Wild Bill Donovan of the OSS. Their orders are to trace an artifact rumored to exist from the bloody days of the Bolshevik Revolution. The missing relic may hold the key to forging or destroying the balance of power in the war that is sure to involve the U.S. As the long-cold trail heats up for Jane and Black, close on their heels are a brutal Nazi assassin, a mysterious countess with a very shady past, and the lethally charming head of NKVD operations in America. “Hyde’s storytelling is pure genius.”—New York Daily News “[Hyde] draws tension with the skill of a surgeon.”—New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly
If we want our students to be prepared for a life involved with artificial intelligence, global awareness, cultural understanding, racial, religious and lifestyle diversity, and changing economic and political realities, then we have to change what we are doing in our schools from pre-school to graduate school. We can no longer wait for large-scale reforms to develop, because those reforms will only occur due to some kind of tragedy. If schools are going to reform proactively, educators in each school and in each district have to lead the way.
Forces shaping human history are complex, but the course of history is undeniably changed on many occasions by conscious acts. These may be premeditated or responsive, calmly calculated or performed under great pressure. They may also be successful or catastrophic, but how are historians to make such judgements and appeal to evidence in support of their conclusions? Further, and crucially, how exactly are we to distinguish probable unrealized alternatives from improbable ones? This book describes some of the modern statistical techniques that can begin to answer this question, as well as some of the difficulties in doing so. Using simple, wellquantified cases drawn from military history, we claim that statistics can now help us to navigate the near-truths, the envelope around the events with which any meaningful historical analysis must deal, and to quantify the basis of such analysis. Quantifying Counterfactual Military History is intended for a general audience who are interested in learning more about statistical methods both in military history and for wider applications. Key Features: This book demonstrates how modern statistical techniques can measure the impact of counterfactual decisions. It examines the importance of counterfactual reasoning for both modern scholars and historical actors. It combines historical narrative, mathematical precision and data to create a straightforward presentation of both factual and counterfactual military history. It provides an original contribution to the debate over the validity and rigour of works of counterfactual history. It is written in a manner accessible to readers who have no formal training in History or Statistics.
Many Americans believe that foreign military intervention is central to protecting our domestic freedoms. But Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall urge engaged citizens to think again. Overseas, our government takes actions in the name of defense that would not be permissible within national borders. Emboldened by the relative weakness of governance abroad, the U.S. government is able to experiment with a broader range of social controls. Under certain conditions, these policies, tactics, and technologies are then re-imported to America, changing the national landscape and increasing the extent to which we live in a police state. Coyne and Hall examine this pattern—which they dub "the boomerang effect"—considering a variety of rich cases that include the rise of state surveillance, the militarization of domestic law enforcement, the expanding use of drones, and torture in U.S. prisons. Synthesizing research and applying an economic lens, they develop a generalizable theory to predict and explain a startling trend. Tyranny Comes Home unveils a new aspect of the symbiotic relationship between foreign interventions and domestic politics. It gives us alarming insight into incidents like the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri and the Snowden case—which tell a common story about contemporary foreign policy and its impact on our civil liberties.
History is dramatic—and the renowned, award-winning authors Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier demonstrate this in a compelling series aimed at young readers. Covering American history from the founding of Jamestown through present day, these volumes explore far beyond the dates and events of a historical chronicle to present a moving illumination of the ideas, opinions, attitudes and tribulations that led to the birth of this great nation. The Jeffersonian Republicans examines various events between 1800 and 1823 that helped to shape the United States. The Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and important Supreme Court decisions are among the discussed events.
The U.S. government's prime enemy in the War on Terror is not a shadowy mastermind dispatching suicide bombers. It is the informed American citizen. With Manufacturing Militarism, Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall detail how military propaganda has targeted Americans since 9/11. From the darkened cinema to the football field to the airport screening line, the U.S. government has purposefully inflated the actual threat of terrorism and the necessity of a proactive military response. This biased, incomplete, and misleading information contributes to a broader culture of fear and militarism that, far from keeping Americans safe, ultimately threatens the foundations of a free society. Applying a political economic approach to the incentives created by a democratic system with a massive national security state, Coyne and Hall delve into case studies from the War on Terror to show how propaganda operates in a democracy. As they vigilantly watch their carry-ons scanned at the airport despite nonexistent threats, or absorb glowing representations of the military from films, Americans are subject to propaganda that, Coyne and Hall argue, erodes government by citizen consent.
In a provocative book about American hegemony, Christopher Layne outlines his belief that U.S. foreign policy has been consistent in its aims for more than sixty years and that the current Bush administration clings to mid-twentieth-century tactics--to no good effect. What should the nation's grand strategy look like for the next several decades? The end of the cold war profoundly and permanently altered the international landscape, yet we have seen no parallel change in the aims and shape of U.S. foreign policy. The Peace of Illusions intervenes in the ongoing debate about American grand strategy and the costs and benefits of "American empire." Layne urges the desirability of a strategy he calls "offshore balancing": rather than wield power to dominate other states, the U.S. government should engage in diplomacy to balance large states against one another. The United States should intervene, Layne asserts, only when another state threatens, regionally or locally, to destroy the established balance. Drawing on extensive archival research, Layne traces the form and aims of U.S. foreign policy since 1940, examining alternatives foregone and identifying the strategic aims of different administrations. His offshore-balancing notion, if put into practice with the goal of extending the "American Century," would be a sea change in current strategy. Layne has much to say about present-day governmental decision making, which he examines from the perspectives of both international relations theory and American diplomatic history.
Ungentle Goodnights uses the records of the United States Naval Asylum (later the United States Naval Home), a residence for disabled and elderly sailors and Marines established by the U.S. government, to recover the lives of the 541 men who were admitted there as lifetime residents between 1831 and 1866. The records of the Naval Asylum are an especially rich source for discovering these lower-deck lives because would-be residents were required to submit summaries of their naval careers as part of the admission process. Using these and related records, published and manuscript, it is possible to reconstruct the veterans' lives from their teenage years (and sometimes earlier) until their deaths. Previous historians who have written about the pre-Civil War naval enlisted force have depended on published nineteenth-century sailor and Marine autobiographies, which may not accurately reflect the realities of enlisted life. Ungentle Goodnights seeks to discover the life experiences of real Marines and naval sailors, not a few of whom were misbehaving, crafty, and engaging individuals who feature prominently in the book.
This fascinating tale of the rise and fall of mini-computer-based integrated library systems (ILS) offers both an explanation of the technical workings—still being used daily—and a historical investigation. Parents of Invention: The Development of Library Automation Systems in the Late 20th Century traces the rise and fall of mini-computer-based ILS. In doing so, it offers an insider's view of the process of creation, the technical challenges, and the lasting contributions of librarians and programmers at a time when librarians and their automation needs forced computer companies to innovate. Organized around a series of interviews with computer programmers, librarians, and salespeople, the book discusses developments from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, focusing on the 1980s when both ILS and the mini-computer were dominant. It documents the time when a small group of computing vendors joined with large libraries around the world to perfect systems that automated functions such as circulation, acquisitions, cataloging, and online public access catalogs. A concluding chapter, contributed by Louise O'Neill, brings the story up to date with a discussion of current developments in library automation, including the adoption of open-source systems, open-access principles, and the Semantic Web.
A prizewinning poet and nature writer weaves together natural history, biology, sociology, and personal narrative to tell the story of the lives, habitats, and deaths of six extinct bird species.
The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed by regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies--from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations--and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students and professional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.
Based on three seasons of field research in the Canadian Arctic, Christopher Norment’s exquisitely crafted meditation on science and nature, wildness and civilization, is marked by bottomless prose, reflection on timeless questions, and keen observations of the world and our place in it. In an era increasingly marked by cutting-edge research at the cellular and molecular level, what is the role for scientists of sympathetic observation? What can patient waiting tell us about ourselves and our place in the world? His family at home in the American Midwest, Norment spends months on end living in isolation in the Northwest Territories, studying the ecology of the Harris’s Sparrow. Although the fourteenth-century German mystic Meister Eckhardt wrote, “God is at home, we are in the far country,” Norment argues that an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual “far country” can be found in the lives of animals and arctic wilderness. For Norment, “doing science” can lead to an enriched aesthetic and emotional connection to something beyond the self and a way to develop a sacred sense of place in a world that feels increasingly less welcoming, certain, and familiar.
History is dramatic—and the renowned, award-winning authors Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier demonstrate this in a compelling series aimed at young readers. The volumes in this collection explore far beyond the dates and events of a historical chronicle to present a moving illumination of the ideas, attitudes, and tribulations that led to the birth of this great nation. This collection features six books in the Drama of American History series, covering American history from prehistoric Native American life and culture through the Federalist era of the late eighteenth century: Pilgrims and Puritans: 1620–1676 The French and Indian War: 1660–1763 The Paradox of Jamestown: 1585–1700 Clash of Cultures: Prehistory–1638 The American Revolution: 1763–1783 Building a New Nation: The Federalist Era, 1789–1801
First published in 1987, The Compendium of Armaments and Military Hardware provides, within a single volume, the salient technical and operational details of the most important weapons. The complete range of hardware used in land, sea and air forces throughout the world at the time of publication is covered, from tanks to rocket systems, helicopters to cruise missiles, alongside full details of size, weight and operational range. The book’s main strength lies in the detail it gives of armament and associated ammunition capabilities, and of the sensors and other electronics required for the weapons to be used effectively. A key title amongst Routledge reference reissues, Christopher Chant’s important work will be of great value to students and professionals requiring a comprehensive and accessible reference guide, as well as to weapons ‘buffs’.
Discusses how deeply held beliefs guide American foreign policy and identifies the foundations of those beliefs, explaining how they have inspired poor strategic decisions in Washington.
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