Tucked away in the northwestern corner of Bergen County, Oakland was for years a peacefully undiscovered outpost. Yet as Kevin Heffernan chronicles in A History of Oakland, the town's placid, easygoing character belies a fascinating and deeply engrossing history. From the interactions between the earliest Dutch settlers and the area's Lenape Indians, to the surprising pro-slavery attitudes of mid-nineteenth-century northern New Jersey, to the radical--and, to some, wrenching--changes wrought by late twentieth-century commercial development, Heffernan provides a definitive account of the life and times of this once-sleepy town.
The conductor announces Oakland Station resort, and the passenger cars quickly empty. It is summer in the late 1800s, and travelers from New York City and Paterson are eager to begin their vacations. They have come to enjoy a mountainous place of pristine beauty, cooled by a river, ponds, and springs. After two and a half centuries as a sleepy farming community within sight of New York City, Oakland had become a summer resort with its own railroad station and grand Victorian hotels. First settled nearly a century before the American Revolution by ten Dutch families, this Ramapo Mountain community has a rich heritage that includes the founding of the Ponds Dutch Reformed Church in 1710, George Washington's visit to the Van Allen House in 1777, and the establishment of the borough of Oakland in 1902.
Winner of the 2014 Christian Book of the Year Award "I'M TOO BUSY!" We've all heard it. We've all said it. All too often, busyness gets the best of us. Just one look at our jam-packed schedules tells us how hard it can be to strike a well-reasoned balance between doing nothing and doing it all. That's why award-winning author and pastor Kevin DeYoung addresses the busyness problem head on in his newest book, Crazy Busy — and not with the typical arsenal of time management tips, but rather with the biblical tools we need to get to the source of the issue and pull the problem out by the roots. Highly practical and super short, Crazy Busy will help you put an end to "busyness as usual.
The year is 1961, the place, Ireland. Inside a monastery is Brendan O'Kane who, at thirteen years of age, has been recruited into the Irish Christian Brothers. Does he have a true vocation? The recurring doubt causes him sleepless nights. Furthermore, he is confused about his awakening sexuality, repressed totally as it is by the Catholic Church in Ireland of the sixties and by his vow of chastity. Years later, he is faced with a momentous decision: he must decide once and for all if the price he has paid has really been worth it . . . INSIDE will strike a chord with many who grew up in the fifties and sixties, who remember the smells of the classroom and dancehall in those pre-deodorant days, the taste of fried bread and the sounds of the hymns and popular songs of the era - not to mention the swish of the leather strap. INSIDE is a must for those who have had their own experience of the Brothers - or who may have heard about them in recent news stories worldwide - and who would like to know what made them tick, what made them so successful in their heyday, and what made some of them, at least, dysfunctional. Other works on a similar theme: THE BOYS OF ST VINCENT'S (Canadian tv docudrama), THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND (Australian film), THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS (Australian one-man-play), and from Ireland, STATES OF FEAR (tv documentary), GIVE UP YER AULD SINS (animation), THE MAGDALENE SISTERS (film) and SONG FOR A RAGGY BOY (novel and film).
It’s the perfect antidote to Bloomsbury’s hit hair trilogy, Bad Hair, Big Hair, and The Mullet: Kevin Baldwin’s comprehensive book on the history and nature of baldness. Bald! takes us into the world of those whose heads are covered by more air than hair. Entertaining but also extensively researched, Bald! examines the cultural and sociological history of baldness—its varied significance (from wisdom to impending misfortune), the oddball theories on its cause (from too much cycling to excessive sex), and its outrageous “cures” (from rubbing the scalp with bat milk to the more extreme measure of castration). Baldwin goes on to tackle the finer points of drugs, plugs, snake-oil miracle cures, the pluses and perils of rugs and combovers, and psychological tricks for overcoming the stigma. Complete with a hairless history of the world and notes on shining contemporary examples, from Julius Caesar to Michael Jordan, Bald! is a fantastic tour through a subject that’s anything but barren.
The #1 New York Times Bestseller A bestselling book that is inspiring the nation: “We have written here about terrible things that we never wanted to think about again . . . Now we want the world to know: we survived, we are free, we love life.” Two women kidnapped by infamous Cleveland school-bus driver Ariel Castro share the stories of their abductions, captivity, and dramatic escape On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry made headlines around the world when she fled a Cleveland home and called 911, saying: “Help me, I’m Amanda Berry. . . . I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for ten years.” A horrifying story rapidly unfolded. Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight to his home, where he kept them chained. In the decade that followed, the three were raped, psychologically abused, and threatened with death. Berry had a daughter—Jocelyn—by their captor. Drawing upon their recollections and the diary kept by Amanda Berry, Berry and Gina DeJesus describe a tale of unimaginable torment, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan interweave the events within Castro’s house with original reporting on efforts to find the missing girls. The full story behind the headlines—including details never previously released on Castro’s life and motivations—Hope is a harrowing yet inspiring chronicle of two women whose courage, ingenuity, and resourcefulness ultimately delivered them back to their lives and families.
This is not a "grand narrative" tracking incremental changes in the nature of insecurity over time. It is, instead, a book of big ideas that wraps its spine around the phenomenon of Creative Destruction and the insecurity it induces.
Charles "Charlie" Bird has had a long and distinguished career in Irish Journalism. He joined RTE – The National Broadcaster– in 1974. He has been at the heart of every big news event for over thirty years, breaking exclusive stories and interviewing presidents and prime ministers. He made his name as a front of camera reporter covering the news as it happened not only at home in Ireland but also on the International scene. During his career as a news journalist he reported on the upheavals of the Haughey/Fitzgerald years: Irish prime minister Charlie Haughey even once said jokingly that he was his favourite reporter. He also covered the formation of the Progressive Democrats; Labour's Spring tide in 1992 and the governments of Albert Reynolds, John Bruton and Bertie Ahern. For over ten years from the start of the peace process in Northern Ireland Charlie Bird was RTE's contact with the IRA. He was one of a number of journalists who met with leading republicans in the lead-up to the 1994 and 1997 ceasefire declarations. In 1998 Charlie Bird along with his colleague George Lee were awarded Journalist of the Year for their work in exposing wrong doing at National Irish Bank. In a landmark Supreme Court Judgment (Friday 20th March 1998) in the lead up to the Broadcast of the NIB stories, by a majority of three to two, the Supreme Court decided the public's right to know was judged more important then National Irish Bank's right to protect the confidential relationship with its customers. An editorial in the Irish Times newspaper welcomed the court decision which, it said, represented: 'A significant tilt by the courts in favour of press freedom.... An encouraging signal that it (the Supreme Court) also recognises that the public interest can be served by investigative journalism... The Supreme Court ruling should concentrate the minds of policy makers. They have obdurately refused to amend the State's penal libel laws and seem content with a situation in which journalists operate within one of the most restrictive legal environments in the developed world.' Charlie was subsequently involved in Ireland's longest libel case. RTE and Charlie Bird won the case which had been taken by the Fianna Fail TD, Beverley Cooper Flynn. After that Charlie investigated a number of other bankings scandals including one involving foreign exchange over charging at Allied Irish Bank (AIB). In January 2009 he took up the post of Washington Correspondent with RTE News. He covered the election of President Obama and his historic inauguration in Washington which was attended by over two million people.
From farm to fork, the conventional food chain is under enormous pressure to respond to a whole series of new challenges - food scares in rich countries, food security concerns in poor countries, and a burgeoning problem of obesity in all countries. As more and more people demand to know where their food comes from, and how it is produced, issues of place, power, and provenance assume increasing significance for producers, consumers, and regulators, challenging the corporate forces that shape the 'placeless foodscape'. Far from being confined to niche products, questions about the origins of food are also surfacing in the conventional sector, where labelling has become a major political issue. Drawing on theories of multi-level governance, three leading scholars in the field explore the geo-politics of the food chain in different spatial arenas: the World Trade Organization, where free trade principles clash with fair trade concerns in the debate about agricultural reform; the European Union, where producers are under pressure from environmentalists for a more traceable and sustainable food system; and the US, where there is a striking contradiction between the rhetoric of free markets and the reality of a heavily subsidised farming sector. To understand the local impact of these global trends, the authors explore three different regional worlds of food: the traditional world of localised quality in Tuscany, the peripheral world of commodity production in Wales, and the frontier world of agri-business in California.
Kevin Starr is the foremost chronicler of the California dream and indeed one of the finest narrative historians writing today on any subject. The first two installments of his monumental cultural history, "Americans and the California Dream," have been hailed as "mature, well-proportioned and marvelously diverse (and diverting)" (The New York Times Book Review) and "rich in details and alive with interesting, and sometimes incredible people" (Los Angeles Times). Now, in Material Dreams, Starr turns to one of the most vibrant decades in the Golden State's history, the 1920s, when some two million Americans migrated to California, the vast majority settling in or around Los Angeles. In a lively and eminently readable narrative, Starr reveals how Los Angeles arose almost defiantly on a site lacking many of the advantages required for urban development, creating itself out of sheer will, the Great Gatsby of American cities. He describes how William Ellsworth Smyth, the Peter the Hermit of the Irrigation Crusade, the self-educated, Irish engineer William Mulholland (who built the main aquaducts to Los Angeles), and George Chaffey (who diverted the Colorado River, transforming desert into the lush Imperial Valley) brought life-supporting water to the arid South. He examines the discovery of oil, the boosters and land developers, the evangelists (such as Bob Shuler, the Methodist Savanarola of Los Angeles, and Aimee Semple McPherson), and countless other colorful figures of the period. There are also fascinating sections on the city's architecture the impact of the automobile on city planning, the Hollywood film community, the L.A. literati, and much more. By the end of the decade, Los Angeles had tripled in population and become the fifth largest city in the nation. In Material Dreams, Starr captures this explosive growth in a narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose.
The question of what it takes "to be a man" comes under scrutiny in this sharp, often playful, cultural critique of the German duel--the deadliest type of one-on-one combat in fin-de-siécle Europe. At a time when dueling was generally restricted to swords or had been abolished altogether in other nations, the custom of fighting to the death with pistols flourished among Germany's upper-class males, who took perverse comfort in defying their country's weakly enforced laws. From initial provocation to final death agony, Kevin McAleer describes with ironic humor the complex protocol of the German duel, inviting his reader into the disturbing mindset of its practitioners and the society that valued this socially important but ultimately absurd pastime. Through a narrative that cannot restrain itself from poking fun at the egos and prejudices that come to the fore in the pursuit of "manliness," McAleer offers both an entertaining and thought-provoking portrait of a cultural phenomenon that had far-reaching effects. The author employs a wealth of anecdotes to re-create the dueling event in all its variety, from the level of insult--which could range from loudly ridiculing a man's choice of entrée in an upscale restaurant to, more commonly, bedding his wife--to such intricacies as the time and place of the duel, the guest list, the selection of weapons and number of paces, dress options, and the decision regarding when to let the attending physician set up his instruments on the field. As he exposes the reader to the fierce mentality behind these proceedings, McAleer describes the duel as a litmus test of courage, the masculine apotheosis, which led its male practitioners to lay claim to both psychic and legal entitlements in Wilhelmine society. The aristocratic nature of the duel, with its feudal ethos of chivalry, gave its upper-middle-class practitioners even more opportunity to distinguish themselves from the underclasses and other marginalized groups--such as Socialists, Jews, left-liberals, Catholics, and pacifists, who, for various reasons, were stigmatized as incapable of "giving satisfaction." The duel, according to McAleer, was thus a social mirror, and the dueling issue political dynamite. Throughout these accounts, the author sustains a personal voice to convey the horror and fascination of what at first appears to be simply a curious fringe activity, but which he goes on to reveal as an integral element of German society's consciousness in the late nineteenth century. In so doing, he strengthens the argument that Germany followed a path of development separate from the rest of Europe, leading to World War I and ultimately to Hitler and the Nazis. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Sport has a huge social and cultural significance in contemporary Britain. This insightful study provides the first exploration of the causes and consequences of the increased interaction between sport and the state since 1945. Kevin Jefferys sets policy towards sport within the evolving socio-political context of post-war Britain and balances an appreciation of continuity and change from the 'austerity Games' of 1948 through to the multi-billion pound extravaganza of the London 2012 Olympics. Ideal for students, historians, social scientists and sport enthusiasts alike, Sport and Politics in Modern Britain provides the fullest assessment yet of this important topic, bringing sport sharply into focus as a contested domain in public and political debate.
This book illustrates the cyclical pattern in the kinds of dilemmas that confront political leaders and, in particular, disjunctive political leaders affiliated with vulnerable political regimes. The volume covers three major episodes in disjunction: the interwar crisis between 1923 and 1940, afflicting Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain; the collapse of Keynesian welfarism between 1970 and 1979, dealt with by Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan; and the ongoing crisis of neoliberalism beginning in 2008, affecting Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May. Based on this series of case studies of disjunctive prime ministers, the authors conclude that effective disjunctive leadership is premised on judicious use of the prime ministerial toolkit in terms of deciding whether, when and where to act, effective diagnostic and choice framing, and the ability to manage both crises and regimes.
Modern Irish history was determined by the rise, expansion, and decline of the British Empire. And British imperial history, from the age of Atlantic expansion to the age of decolonization, was moulded in part by Irish experience. But the nature of Ireland's position in the Empire has always been a matter of contentious dispute. Was Ireland a sister kingdom and equal partner in a larger British state? Or was it, because of its proximity and strategic importance, the Empire's mostsubjugated colony? Contemporaries disagreed strongly on these questions, and historians continue to do so. Questions of this sort can only be answered historically: Ireland's relationship with Britain and the Empire developed and changed over time, as did the Empire itself. This book offers the firstcomprehensive history of the subject from the early modern era through the contemporary period. The contributors seek to specify the nature of Ireland's entanglement with empire over time: from the conquest and colonization of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through the consolidation of Ascendancy rule in the eighteenth, the Act of Union in the period 1801-1921, the emergence of an Irish Free State and Republic, and eventual withdrawal from the British Commonwealth in 1948. They alsoconsider the participation of Irish people in the Empire overseas, as soldiers, administrators, merchants, migrants, and missionaries; the influence of Irish social, administrative, and constitutional precedents in other colonies; and the impact of Irish nationalism and independence on the Empire atlarge. The result is a new interpretation of Irish history in its wider imperial context which is also filled with insights on the origins, expansion, and decline of the British Empire.This book offers the first comprehensive history of Ireland and the British Empire from the early modern era through the contemporary period. The contributors examine each phase of Ireland's entanglement with the Empire, from conquest and colonisation to independence, along with the extensive participation of Irish people in the Empire overseas, and the impact of Irish politics and nationalism on other British colonies. The result is a new interpretation of Irish history in its wider imperialcontext which is also filled with insights on the origins, expansion, and decline of the British Empire.SERIES DESCRIPTIONThe purpose of the five volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire was to provide a comprehensive study of the Empire from its beginning to end, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history. The volumes in the Companion Series carry forward this purpose by exploring themes that were not possible to cover adequately in the main series, and to provide fresh interpretations of significanttopics.
A spirited and lively introduction to American literature, this book acquaints readers with the key authors, works, and events in the nation's rich and ecclectic literary tradition.
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