David Pownall's Books

Writing 'Master Class'

By: David Pownall

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Writing ‘Master Class’ is a biography of David Pownall’s play, Master Class (1983), from conception to coming of age. Threaded through the account of the inception and development of the piece are twists of authorial life-story necessary for the telling. Whereas a novel or poem can be kept a secret until it is properly finished, a play has to go out to meet the people early. On the day the script is put into the hands of actors, the soul of the thing passes out of the author's control. It can be bent, battered, warped – or improved within its being far beyond expectations. As a drama of dictatorship in art and the cleverness needed to evade its worst manifestations, Master Class has been at large for thirty years, produced in twenty countries, in some several times. What has been done to it, how it has fared, is touched upon but the main story in this book is the making of the piece. A fascinating insight into the playwright’s craft.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

101

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1849434948

ISBN 13

9781849434942

Pownall: Plays Two

By: David Pownall

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Pownall: Plays Two

By: David Pownall

Includes the plays Beef, The Viewing, My Father’s House and Black Star Beef, a winner of the John Whiting Award, has so far only been published in radio form. In The Viewing a family buy a house which is haunted by God, while My Father’s House, commissioned by Birmingham Rep, looks at British politics through the eyes of Joseph Chamberlain and family. Black Star centres around the black American actor Ira Aldridge, touring in Shakespeare in Poland in 1865.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

431

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1783194065

ISBN 13

9781783194063

Flesh Becomes Word

A Lexicography of the Scapegoat or, the History of an Idea

By: David Dawson

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Flesh Becomes Word

A Lexicography of the Scapegoat or, the History of an Idea

By: David Dawson

Though its coinage can be traced back to a sixteenth-century translation of Leviticus, the term “scapegoat” has enjoyed a long and varied history of both scholarly and everyday uses. While WilliamTyndale employed it to describe one of two goats chosen by lot to escape the Day of Atonement sacrifices with its life, the expression was soon far more widely used to name victims of false accusation and unwarranted punishment. As such, the scapegoat figures prominently in contemporary theories of violence, from its elevation by Frazer to a ritual category in his ethnological opus The Golden Bough to its pivotal roles in projects as seemingly at odds as Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Western metaphysics and René Girard’s theory of cultural origins. A copiously researched and groundbreaking investigation of the expression in such wide use today, Flesh Becomes Word follows the scapegoat from its origins in Mesopotamian ritual across centuries of typological reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ death, to its first informal uses in the pornographic and plague literature of the 1600s, and finally into the modern era, where the word takes recognizable shape in the context of the New English Quaker persecution and proto-feminist diatribe at the close of the seventeenth century. The historical circumstances of its lexical formation prove rich in implications for current theories of the scapegoat and the making of the modern world alike.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

221

Publisher

MSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

160917349X

ISBN 13

9781609173494

Colonial America and the Earl of Halifax, 1748-1761

By: Andrew David Michael Beaumont

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Colonial America and the Earl of Halifax, 1748-1761

By: Andrew David Michael Beaumont

Colonial America and the Early of Halifax examines the governance of British America in the period prior to the American Revolution. Focusing upon the career of George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax and First Lord of the Board of Trade & Plantations (1716-1771), it explores colonial planners and policy-makers during the political hiatus between the age of Walpole and the subsequent age of imperial crisis. As ambitious metropolitan politicians vied for ministerial dominance, Halifax's board played a vital role in shaping British perceptions of its growing empire. A repository of information and intelligence, the board offered Halifax the opportunity to establish his own niche interest, for the good of the empire and himself alike. Challenging the view that Britain's attitude towards its American colonies was one of ignorance compounded by complacency, this study explores those charged directly with governing America, from the imperial centre to its westward peripheries: the governors entrusted with maintaining the royal prerogative, and implementing reform. Between 1748 and 1761, Halifax sought to reform the America from a motley assortment of territories into an ordered, uniform asset of the imperial nation-state. Exploring the governors themselves reveals a complex, modern network of professional and personal loyalties, bound together through mutual self-interest under Halifax's leadership. Confronted by the Seven Years' War, Halifax saw his plans and followers dissipate in the face of global conflict, the results of which established British America, and also sowed the seeds of its eventual destruction in 1776. Long overshadowed by the acknowledged 'great men' of his age, this study restores Halifax and his interest to its rightful place as a significant influence upon major historical events, illustrating his grand, elaborate vision for an alternative British America that never was.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

259

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198723970

ISBN 13

9780198723974

In Command of History

Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War

By: David Reynolds

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

In Command of History

Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War

By: David Reynolds

Winston Churchill was one of the giants of the twentieth century. As Britain’s prime minister from 1940 to 1945, he courageously led his nation and the world away from appeasement, into war, and on to triumph over the Axis dictators. His classic six-volume account of those years, The Second World War, has shaped our perceptions of the conflict and secured Churchill’s place as its most important chronicler. Now, for the first time, a book explains how Churchill wrote this masterwork, and in the process enhances and often revises our understanding of one of history’s most complex, vivid, and eloquent leaders. In Command of History sheds new light on Churchill in his multiple, often overlapping roles as warrior, statesman, politician, and historian. Citing excerpts from the drafts and correspondence for Churchill’s magnum opus, David Reynolds opens our eyes to the myriad forces that shaped its final form. We see how Churchill’ s manuscripts were vetted by Whitehall to conceal secrets such as the breaking of the Enigma code by British spymasters at Bletchley Park, and how Churchill himself edited the volumes to avoid offending postwar statesmen such as Tito, Charles de Gaulle, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. We explore his confusions about the true story of the atomic bomb, learn of his second thoughts about Stalin, and watch him repackage himself as a consistent advocate of the D-Day landings. In Command of History is a major work that forces us to reconsider much received wisdom about World War II. It also peels back the covers from an unjustly neglected period of Churchill’s life, his “second wilderness” years, 1945—1951. During this time Churchill, now over seventy, wrote himself into history, politicked himself back into 10 Downing Street, and delivered some of the most vital oratory of his career, including his pivotal “iron curtain” speech. Exhaustively researched and dazzlingly written, this is a revelatory portrait of one of the world’s most profiled figures, a work by a historian in full command of his craft. “A fascinating account that accomplishes the impossible: [Reynolds] actually finds something new and interesting to say about one of the most chronicled characters of all time.” –The New York Times Book Review A New York Times NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A BEST HISTORY OF THE YEAR SELECTION –The New York Sun NOTE: This edition does not include photographs.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

1014

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307824802

ISBN 13

9780307824806

The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present

Narrating Japanese Nationality

By: David Chapman

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present

Narrating Japanese Nationality

By: David Chapman

This book is a collection of interwoven historical narratives that present an intriguing and little known account of the Ogasawara (Bonin) archipelago and its inhabitants. The narratives begin in the seventeenth century and weave their way through various events connected to the ambitions, hopes, and machinations of individuals, communities, and nations. At the center of these narratives are the Bonin Islanders, originally an eclectic mix of Pacific Islanders, Americans, British, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and African settlers that first landed on the islands in 1830. The islands were British sovereign territory from 1827 to 1876, when the Japanese asserted possession of the islands based on a seventeenth century expedition and a myth of a samurai discoverer. As part of gaining sovereign control, the Japanese government made all island inhabitants register as Japanese subjects of the national family register. The islanders were not literate in Japanese and had little experience of Japanese culture and limited knowledge of Japanese society, but by 1881 all were forced or coerced into becoming Japanese subjects. By the 1930s the islands were embroiled in the Pacific War. All inhabitants were evacuated to the Japanese mainland until 1946 when only the descendants of the original settlers were allowed to return. In the postwar period the islands fell under U.S. Navy administration until they were reverted to full Japanese sovereignty in 1968. Many descendants of these original settlers still live on the islands with family names such as Washington, Gonzales, Gilley, Savory, and Webb. This book explores the social and cultural history of these islands and its inhabitants and provides a critical approach to understanding the many complex narratives that make up the Bonin story.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

247

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1498516645

ISBN 13

9781498516648

The Composer Plays

By: David Pownall

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Composer Plays

By: David Pownall

Includes the plays Master Class, Elgar's Rondo, Music to Murder By and Elgar's Third The creative artist in conflict with destructive external pressures and corrosive internal tensions is a recurring theme in David Pownall’s meticulously crafted plays. Master Class was first performed at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester before transferring to the Old Vic; Elgar’s Rondo was performed by the RSC at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1993, and at the Barbican Centre. Elgar’s Third, winner of the Sony Gold Award, was first performed on BBC Radio 3 in 1994; Music to Murder By was first performed by the Paines Plough theatre company.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

228

Publisher

Oberon Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1870259416

ISBN 13

9781870259415

Citizens of the World

London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735-1785

By: David Hancock

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Citizens of the World

London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735-1785

By: David Hancock

Examines the business and social strategies of the men who developed the British empire in the eighteenth century.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

508

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

052162942X

ISBN 13

9780521629423

The Calais Garrison

War and Military Service in England, 1436-1558

By: David Grummitt

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Calais Garrison

War and Military Service in England, 1436-1558

By: David Grummitt

Definitive account of the English garrison at Calais - the largest contemporary force in Europe - in the wider context of European warfare in the middle ages.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

236

Publisher

Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published Date

ISBN 10

1843833980

ISBN 13

9781843833987

The Nation's Nature

How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America

By: James David Drake

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Nation's Nature

How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America

By: James David Drake

In The Nation's Nature, James D. Drake examines how a relatively small number of inhabitants of the Americas, huddled along North America's east coast, came to mentally appropriate the entire continent and to think of their nation as America. Drake demonstrates how British North American colonists' participation in scientific debates and imperial contests shaped their notions of global geography. These ideas, in turn, solidified American nationalism, spurred a revolution, and shaped the ratification of the Constitution."--Publisher description.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

417

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813931223

ISBN 13

9780813931227

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly

By: David Meerman Scott

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly

By: David Meerman Scott

Scott analyses how the internet has revolutionised communications and promotions. Told with many compelling case studies and real-world examples, this is a practical guide to the new reality of PR and marketing.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

480

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

1119070481

ISBN 13

9781119070481

USS Princeton

The Life and Loss of "Sweet P"

By: David R. Leick

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

USS Princeton

The Life and Loss of "Sweet P"

By: David R. Leick

An in-depth history of the US Navy's light aircraft carrier the USS Princeton and its operational exploits in the Pacific Theater of World War II. This new history of the life and loss of USS Princeton tells the story of the new class of aircraft carrier that proved essential to the US Navy's victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War. USS Princeton (CVL-23) started life as the light cruiser Tallahassee before being converted while still under construction into a light carrier as part of the plan to ramp up the strength of US naval air power. The vessel joined the Pacific Fleet in August 1943 and was immediately put to work as the United States was assembling new ships and crews for the bitter struggle to come. Princeton played a key role in conducting multiple strikes against the Japanese bastion at Rabaul, and then joined Task Force 58/38 – the Fast Carrier Task Force – for the Central Pacific campaign, culminating in the invasion of the Philippines, where the ship was lost. David R. Leick skillfully uses first-hand accounts to examine the engagements, aircraft, tactics, command decisions and life on board during the Pacific campaign against Japan from early 1943 until Princeton's tragic demise in October 1944. He focuses closely on the ship's crew and embarked Naval Aviators, describing in detail the toll that prolonged combat operations took on the frontline sailor.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

338

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472868595

ISBN 13

9781472868596

Indigenous Governance

Clans, Constitutions, and Consent

By: David E. Wilkins,E Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in Leadership Studies David E Wilkins

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Indigenous Governance

Clans, Constitutions, and Consent

By: David E. Wilkins,E Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in Leadership Studies David E Wilkins

After decades of federal dominance and dependence, Native governments now command attention as they exercise greater degrees of political, economic, and cultural power. Given the weight and importance of many issues confronting Native peoples today, these governments arguably matter even more to their peoples and to the broader society than ever before. Native governments have become critically important as the chief providers of basic services and the authors of solutions to collective problems in their societies. As major actors within the realm of democratic politics, they increasingly wield their powers to educate and advocate regarding Indigenous concerns. For many communities (including non-Native neighbors) they are the largest spenders and employers. They have also become adept at negotiating intergovernmental agreements that protect their peoples and resources while strengthening their unique political status. Native peoples and governments are also navigating the devastating and lingering health and economic impact of COVID-19; the profound environmental problems that have been exacerbated by climate change; and jurisdictional conflicts with local, state, and federal actors. Indigenous Governance is a comprehensive, critical examination of Native political systems: the senior political sovereigns on the North American continent in terms of their origin, development, structures, and operation. Author David E. Wilkins provides the recognition and respect due Indigenous governments, while offering a considered critique of their shortcomings as imperfect, sovereign institutions. This appraisal will highlight their history, evolution, internal and intergovernmental issues, and diverse structures.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

505

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190096004

ISBN 13

9780190096007

The regulation of standards in British public life

Doing the right thing?

By: David Hine,Gillian Peele

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The regulation of standards in British public life

Doing the right thing?

By: David Hine,Gillian Peele

This is an analysis of the revolution of the last two decades that has built an extensive new regulatory apparatus governing British public ethics. The book sets the new machinery in the wider institutional framework of British government. Its main purpose is to understand the dilemmas of regulatory design that have emerged in each area examined.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

279

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1784996467

ISBN 13

9781784996468

A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485-1714, Volumes I and II

By: David Lasocki

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485-1714, Volumes I and II

By: David Lasocki

Compiled by scholars with unrivalled knowledge of the sources, this dictionary provides biographies of all musicians and instrument makers employed by the English court from 1485-1714. A number of the musicians featured here have never previously received a dictionary entry. Coverage of these minor figures helps to flesh out the picture of musical life in the court in a way which individual studies of more major composers cannot. In addition to basic biographical details, entries feature information on: appointments; probate material; family background; heraldry; signatures and holograph documents; subscriptions to books; bibliographic references. A finding-list of variant names, details of the succession of court places assumed by musicians and an index of subjects and place names completes this comprehensive reference work.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

1305

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351578227

ISBN 13

9781351578226

The Government of Victorian London, 1855-1889

The Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries, and the City Corporation

By: David Edward Owen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Government of Victorian London, 1855-1889

The Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries, and the City Corporation

By: David Edward Owen

Of all the major cities of Britain, London, the world metropolis, was the last to acquire a modern municipal government. Its antiquated administrative system led to repeated crises as the population doubled within a few decades and reached more than two million in the 1840s. Essential services such as sanitation, water supply, street paving and lighting, relief of the poor, and maintenance of the peace were managed by the vestries of ninety-odd parishes or precincts plus divers ad hoc authorities or commissions. In 1855, with the establishment of the Metropolitan Board of Works, the groundwork began to be laid for a rational municipal government. Owen tells in absorbing detail the story of the operations of the Metropolitan Board of Works, its political and other problems, and its limited but significant accomplishments--including the laying down of 83 miles of sewers and the building of the Thames Embankments--before it was replaced in 1889 by the London County Council. His account, based on extensive archival research, is balanced, judicious, lucid, often witty and always urbane.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

500

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674358856

ISBN 13

9780674358850

Calvin's Crusaders in the Wars That Made America

The Story of Nathaniel and Isabella Scudder--Princeton Patriots of the Revolutionary Era

By: David T. Fisher

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Calvin's Crusaders in the Wars That Made America

The Story of Nathaniel and Isabella Scudder--Princeton Patriots of the Revolutionary Era

By: David T. Fisher

Nathaniel Scudder, a well-educated Presbyterian physician, was an idealistic early advocate of the rebellion. Like many of his fellow graduates of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) he believed in the Calvinist vision of a pious republic. His wife, Isabella Anderson Scudder, a wealthy heiress and granddaughter of a royal governor, reluctantly accepted her husband’s radical political inclinations while fearing the tragic consequences that might result. After a brilliant career as a physician and elder of the Presbyterian Church, he was elected to represent New Jersey in the Continental Congress, where he became one of the signatories of the Articles of Confederation. He eventually grew so frustrated by the blatant corruption he experienced that he abandoned politics and helped form an extra-legal vigilante organization, the Retaliators. Nathaniel’s inner journey to the abandonment of his congressional mandate in favor of participation in violent retaliation was driven by his friendship and admiration for David Forman, the main architect of the retribution strategy. On October 16, 1781, Nathaniel Scudder became the only person who served in the Continental Congress to die in action in the War of American Independence. In a skirmish between Retaliators and Loyalists, he was struck by a bullet meant for David Forman.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

472

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1666730858

ISBN 13

9781666730852

Tropical Bioproductivity

Origins and Distribution in a Globalized World

By: David Hammond

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Tropical Bioproductivity

Origins and Distribution in a Globalized World

By: David Hammond

This book investigates the fundamental role that tropical bioproductivity - or more specifically net primary productivity - has played in shaping the global geographies of food, finance, governance and people. The book examines the basic astronomical and thermal properties of our planet to illustrate the dynamic nature of the tropics and how the region resides at the very heart of global energetics, driving the environmental flows that shape planetary climate and bioproductivity. The author explores how the region’s relatively small, but hyper-productive, land area provided the groundswell for the economic, social, political and demographic changes that fuelled empires, European colonialism and nation-building. Also covered are discussions on how the critical intake of capital needed to fuel the industrial and technological revolutions driving modern globalization was first expropriated from the tropics by harnessing the region’s natural productivity and biological crop diversity and then transforming it into tradeable commodities using the inhabitants' labour and knowledge. With modern tropical nations accounting for the bulk of people living in poverty and registering some of the highest income disparities, the author presents cross-cutting evidence showing that their histories and the persistence of expropriating institutions have fostered anocratic tendencies, poor governance, unorthodox financial flows and mass migration. Tropical Bioproductivity cuts across vast geographies, topics and histories to deliver a readable narrative that links people, places and events with the environmental mechanics of our planet. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of environmental studies, economics, history, agriculture, anthropology and geography.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

322

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

0429949782

ISBN 13

9780429949784

The Orpheus Deception

By: David Stone

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Orpheus Deception

By: David Stone

A testosterone-fueled thriller."—Publishers Weekly In his New York Times bestselling debut, The Echelon Vendetta, David Stone introduced covert operative Micah Dalton. Once, it was his job to take care of other agents’ mistakes. Coldly, cleanly—and permanently. Now, Micah is on the outs with his former employers, staying off the radar and hopefully out of firing range. When an attempt is made on his life in the rainy streets of Venice, he knows his best chance of survival is under the shadowy wings of the CIA. To prove his worth, he accepts their mission: an agent and old associate of Micah's has been taken in the China Sea, the only survivor of a brutal pirate attack. He's to find the man and find him fast. But Micah's mission is not about a man. It's about an elusive ship known only as The Mingo Dubai that is already under way, heading toward the West. And its cargo is death.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

482

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

144063775X

ISBN 13

9781440637759

Peace Pact

The Lost World of the American Founding

By: David C. Hendrickson

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Peace Pact

The Lost World of the American Founding

By: David C. Hendrickson

That New England might invade Virginia is inconceivable today. But interstate rivalries and the possibility of intersectional war loomed large in the thinking of the Framers who convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to put on paper the ideas that would bind the federal union together. At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin rejoiced that the document would "astonish our enemies, who are waiting to hear with confidence . . . that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats." Usually dismissed as hyperbole, this and similar remarks by other Founders help us to understand the core concerns that shaped their conception of the Union. By reexamining the creation of the federal system of the United States from a perspective that yokes diplomacy with constitutionalism, Hendrickson's study, according to Karl Walling, "introduces a new way to think about what is familiar to us." This ground breaking book, then, takes a fresh look at the formative years of American constitutionalism and diplomacy. It tells the story of how thirteen colonies became independent states and found themselves grappling with the classic problems of international cooperation, and it explores the intellectual milieu within which that problem was considered. The founding generation, Hendrickson argues, developed a sophisticated science of international politics relevant both to the construction of their own union and to the foreign relations of "the several states in the union of the empire." The centrality of this discourse, he contends, must severely qualify conventional depictions of early American political thought as simply "liberal" or "republican." Hendrickson also takes issue with conventional accounts of early American foreign policy as "unilateralist" or "isolationist" and insists that the founding generation belonged to and made distinguished contributions to the constitutional tradition in diplomacy, the antecedent of twentieth-century internationalism. He describes an American system of states riven by deep sectional animosities and powerful loyalties to colonies and states (often themselves described as "nations") and explains why in such a milieu the creation of a durable union often appeared to be a quixotic enterprise. The book culminates in a consideration of the making of the federal Constitution, here styled as a peace pact or experiment in international cooperation. Peace Pact is an important book that promises to revolutionize our understanding of the era of revolution and constitution-making. Written in a lucid and accessible style, the book is an excellent introduction to the American founding and its larger significance in American and world history.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

416

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

0700614931

ISBN 13

9780700614936

William Alexander, Lord Stirling

By: Paul David Nelson

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

William Alexander, Lord Stirling

By: Paul David Nelson

Nelson's William Alexander, Lord Stirling, (1726-83) is the biographical account of a man who served 18th-century American society as a prominent citizen in peacetime and as a soldier in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

260

Publisher

University of Alabama Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0817350837

ISBN 13

9780817350833

Deterrence, Coercion, and Appeasement

British Grand Strategy, 1919-1940

By: David French

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Deterrence, Coercion, and Appeasement

British Grand Strategy, 1919-1940

By: David French

Deterrence, Coercion, and Appeasement presents a compelling and original survey of British grand strategy in the inter-war period. Whereas most existing accounts privilege either diplomacy and foreign affairs, intelligence, or military affairs more narrowly, this study underlines the inexorable relationships between foreign policy, grand strategy, military force, intelligence, finance and not least, domestic politics and public opinion. Britain was the world's only global power in the inter-war period, and it confronted problems on a global scale. Policy-makers sought two goals: peace with security. They did so successfully in the 1920s, partly due to favourable circumstances that made their task relatively easy, and partly because they understood the strengths and limitations of British power and knew how to wield them. The situation deteriorated rapidly in the 1930s, however, as the international system became increasingly unfavourable to Britain. Policy-makers proved less adept than their predecessors at meeting these new challenges, partly because those challenges were more formidable, but also because they lacked the self-confidence of their predecessors, who had held high office during the most difficult years of the First World War and who lacked their understanding of how to wield the lever of international power. The study ends by providing a new and more sophisticated account of how and why Neville Chamberlain appeased the fascist powers in the late 1930s, and why Winston Churchill opposed him and eventually supplanted him in May 1940.

Average ratings

N/A