In this political memoir, an American diplomat offers an insightful and personal account of the beginnings of U.S. relations with China. Diplomat Nicholas Platt was an integral part of President Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, as well as the creation of America’s first diplomatic office there. In China Boys, Platt candidly describes his experiences and observations throughout these historic accomplishments. He also describes some of the first encounters between Americans and Chinese, including Olympic athletes, orchestra maestros, Members of Congress, airplane manufacturers, bankers, scientists, and students. Platt sheds light on the forging of the first links between the Pentagon and the People’s Liberation Army following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He also examines the diplomatic role played by nongovernmental organizations like the Asia Society. As Platt demonstrates, these diverse practical ties later evolved into today’s crucial relationship between China and America.
In this political memoir, an American diplomat offers an insightful and personal account of the beginnings of U.S. relations with China. Diplomat Nicholas Platt was an integral part of President Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, as well as the creation of America’s first diplomatic office there. In China Boys, Platt candidly describes his experiences and observations throughout these historic accomplishments. He also describes some of the first encounters between Americans and Chinese, including Olympic athletes, orchestra maestros, Members of Congress, airplane manufacturers, bankers, scientists, and students. Platt sheds light on the forging of the first links between the Pentagon and the People’s Liberation Army following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He also examines the diplomatic role played by nongovernmental organizations like the Asia Society. As Platt demonstrates, these diverse practical ties later evolved into today’s crucial relationship between China and America.
The first part of David Nicholas's massive two-volume study of the medieval city, this book is a major achievement in its own right. (It is also fully self-sufficient, though many readers will want to use it with its equally impressive sequel which is being published simultaneously.) In it, Professor Nicholas traces the slow regeneration of urban life in the early medieval period, showing where and how an urban tradition had survived from late antiquity, and when and why new urban communities began to form where there was no such continuity. He charts the different types and functions of the medieval city, its interdependence with the surrounding countryside, and its often fraught relations with secular authority. The book ends with the critical changes of the late thirteenth century that established an urban network that was strong enough to survive the plagues, famines and wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The Later Medieval City, 1300-1500, the second part of David Nicholas's ambitious two-volume study of cities and city life in the Middle Ages, fully lives up to its splendid precursor, The Growth of the Medieval City. (Like that volume it is fully self-sufficient, though many readers will want to use the two as a continuum.) This book covers a much shorter period than the first. That traced the rise of the medieval European city system from late Antiquity to the early fourteenth century; this offers a portrait of the fully developed late medieval city in all its richness and complexity. David Nicholas begins with the economic and demographic realignments of the last two medieval centuries. These fostered urban growth, raising living standards and increasing demand for a growing range of urban manufactures. The hunger for imports and a shortage of coin led to sophisticated credit mechanisms that could only function through large cities. But, if these changes brought new opportunities to the wealthy, they also created a growing problem of urban poverty: violence became endemic in the later medieval city. Moreover, although more rebellions were sparked by taxes than by class conflict, class divisions were deepening. Most cities came to be governed by councils chosen from guild-members, and most guilds were dominated by merchants. The landowning elite that had dominated the early medieval cities of the first volume still retained its prestige, but its wealth was outstripped by the richer merchants; while craftsmen, who had little political influence, were further disadvantaged as access to the guilds became more restricted. The later medieval cities developed permanent bureaucracies providing a huge range of public services, and they were paid for by sophisticated systems of taxation and public borrowing. The survival of their fuller, richer records allow us not only to apply a more statistical approach, but also to get much closer, to the splendours and squalors of everyday city-life than was possible in the earlier volume. The book concludes with a set of vibrant chapters on women and children and religious minorities in the city, on education and culture, and on the tenor of ordinary urban existence. Like its predecessor, this book is massively, and vividly, documented. Its approach is interdisciplinary and comparative, and its examples and case studies are drawn from across Europe: from France, England, Germany, the Low Countries, Iberia and Italy, with briefer reviews of the urban experience elsewhere from Baltic to Balkans. The result is the most wide-ranging and up-to-date study of its multifaceted subject. It is a formidable achievement.
In its early years the United States Consular Service was a relatively amateurish organization, often staffed by unsuitable characters whose appointments had been obtained as political favours from victorious presidential candidates—a practice known as the Spoils System. Most personnel changed every four years when new administrations came in. This compared unfavourably with the consular services of the European nations, but gradually by the turn of the twentieth century things had improved considerably—appointment procedures were tightened up, inspections of consuls and how they managed their consulates were introduced, and the separate Consular Service and Diplomatic Service were merged to form the Foreign Service. The first appointments to Britain were made in 1790, with James Maury becoming the first operational consul in the country, at Liverpool. At one point, there was a network of up to ninety US consular offices throughout the UK, stretching from the Orkney Islands to the Channel Islands. Nowadays, there is only the consular section in the embassy and the consulates general in Edinburgh and Belfast.
Formed from members of Free Forces who had escaped from German occupation, 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando was one of the most unusual units in WW2. All members had to pass the Green Beret commando course at Achnacarry in Scotland and the book begins by describing this training. With no less than six national troops, plus X Troop drawn from exiled Jews, 10 Commando never fought as an entity but loaned troops for specific operations, such as One Troop (French) taking part in the Dieppe Raid, 2 Troop (Dutch) fighting at Arnhem, 5 Troop (Norwegian) raiding the Lofoten Islands etc. At other times groups played a key intelligence role questioning POWs, translating captured documents, conducting reconnaissance patrols and intelligence gathering on the D-Day beaches. The history of X Commando, made up of escaped Jewish individuals is especially interesting.The book also reviews the growth of post-war national Commando forces.
Conflict in Cuba is not new. Since early in the Caribbean nation's colonial history a small elite has used centralized power to rule for what they viewed as the common good. Officials often created monopolies which limited accountability, social mobility, fair play and economic development. This work traces this ethos, efforts to change it, and its manifestations in present-day Cuba. The first of seven chapters discusses the history of Cuba's government and economy, and the ongoing conflict of monism and pluralism. Several chapters then detail the insights the author gained through his work in the country: Cubans are only too aware that, with very few exceptions, they have long been under one form of tyranny or another; they hate their chains but fear to lose them; Cubans and their friends and enemies both want and fear a pluralistic Cuba; and Cubans understand that though Cuban rightists in the United States hate Castro, they share many of his principles and methods. In a final chapter, the work explores various possibilities that the future may hold for the island.
This lively work of cultural history tells the stories of five young art patrons who, in the last 1920s and 1930s, were instrumental in bringing modern painting, sculpture, and dance to America. A combination of wealth, Harvard education privilege, and family connections enabled Lincoln Kirstein, Edward M. M. Warburg, Agnes Mongan, James Thrall Soby, and A. Everett (Chick) Austin, Jr., to introduce the work of Picasso, Balanchine, Calder, and other important artists to the United States.
Nicholas Barrington began his dramatic diplomatic career with a post in Afghanistan at a time the country was barely known to the world's headline writers. The narrative of his 37 year career in the British Foreign Office is woven with compelling insights on the countries to which he was posted and which are focal points of international attention: Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan. Serving in Iran during the political storm of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, he had to navigate his way through the drama of a new political order, while his time in Cairo coincided with the assassination of President Sadat. In his rich and varied career, Barrington served as High Commissioner to Pakistan, a subject on which he writes authoritatively. Exploring the complex power relations between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and examining the multifaceted conflicts in Kashmir and Afghanistan, this book sheds an invaluable new light on the interaction between Islam, the West and British Foreign Policy in the 20th Century. With erudition and wit, these unique memoirs will prove essential reading for those seeking to understand the political tensions and international issues of the post-war world.
Doing Applied Linguistics provides a concise, lively and accessible introduction to the field of applied linguistics for readers who have little or no prior knowledge of the subject. The book explores the basics of the field then goes on to examine in more depth what applied linguists actually do, and the types of research methods that are most frequently used in the field. By reading this book students will find the answers to four sets of basic questions: What is applied linguistics, and what do applied linguists do? Why do it? What is the point of applied linguistics? How and why might I get involved in applied linguistics? How to do it? What kinds of activities are involved in doing applied linguistic research? Written by teachers and researchers in applied linguistics Doing Applied Linguistics is essential reading for all students with interests in this area.
Talion". . . Retaliation . . . Revenge - a dish here served 118 years cold; grand child kidnaped by revenging grand child; retaliation sought for outrage inflicted; and in the swirl, Samuel F.B. Morse, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, injury, President Chester Arthur, Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt, revenge, Samuel Gompers, William Randolph Hearst manifest destiny, all butting up against a 20th Century Mafi a Don, a suave criminal lawyer, the New York City police, Wall Street, - a riveting story spanning America from the industrial revolution, the dawning of America as a world power, two presidential assassinations, the machinations that resulted in the Panama Canal, the sexual revolution, and a modern woman, head of a bustling Wall Street law firm, . . . buried alive.
On 26 April 1937, in the rubble of the bombed city of Guernica, the world's press scrambled to submit their stories. But one journalist held back, and spent an extra day exploring the scene. His report pointed the finger at secret Nazi involvement in the devastating aerial attack. It was the lead story in both The Times and the New York Times, and became the most controversial dispatch of the Spanish Civil War. Who was this Special Correspondent, whose report inspired Picasso's black-and-white painting Guernica - the most enduring single image of the twentieth century - and earned him a place on the Gestapo Special Wanted List? George Steer, a 27-year-old adventurer, was a friend and supporter of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I. He foresaw and alerted others to the fascist game-plan in Africa and all over Europe; initiated new techniques of propaganda and psychological warfare; saw military action in Ethiopia, Spain, Finland, Libya, Egypt, Madagascar and Burma; married twice and wrote eight books. Without Steer, the true facts about Guernica's destruction might never have been known. In this exhilarating biography, Nicholas Rankin brilliantly evokes all the passion, excitement and danger of an extraordinary life, right up to Steer's premature death in the jungle on Christmas Day 1944.
This is the first comprehensive study of all the plantations that were attempted in Ireland during the years 1580-1650. It examines the arguments advanced by successive political figures for a plantation policy, and the responses which this policy elicited from different segments of the population in Ireland. The book opens with an analysis of the complete works of Edmund Spenser who was the most articulate ideologue for plantation. The author argues that all subsequent advocates of plantation, ranging from King James VI and I, to Strafford, to Oliver Cromwell, were guided by Spenser's opinions, and that discrepancies between plantation in theory and practice were measured against this yardstick. The book culminates with a close analysis of the 1641 insurrection throughout Ireland, which, it is argued, steeled Cromwell to engage in one last effort to make Ireland British.
This is an essential purchase for all painting conservators and conservation scientists dealing with paintings and painted objects. It provides the first definitive manual dedicated to optical microscopy of historical pigments. Illustrated throughout with full colour images reproduced to the highest possible quality, this book is based on years of painstaking research into the visual and optical properties of pigments. Now combined with the Pigment Dictionary, the most thorough reference to pigment names and synonyms avaiable, the Pigment Compendium is a major addition to the study and understanding of historic pigments.
The Pigment Compendium Dictionary is a comprehensive information source for scientists, art historians, conservators and forensic specialists. Drawn together from extensive analystical research into the physical and chemical properties of pigments, this essential reference to pigment names and synonyms describes the inter-relationship of different names and terms. The Dictionary covers the field worldwide from pre-history to the present day, from rock art to interior decoration, from ethnography to contemporary art. Drawing on hundreds of hard-to-obtain documentary sources as well as modern scientific data each term is discussed in detail, giving both its context and composition. * Comprehensive list of pigment names and synonyms * Pigments used worldwide from pre-history to the present day * Contains information from hundreds of hard-to-obtain documentary sources
The Pigment Compendium Dictionary is a comprehensive information source for scientists, art historians, conservators and forensic specialists. Drawn together from extensive analystical research into the physical and chemical properties of pigments, this essential reference to pigment names and synonyms describes the inter-relationship of different names and terms. The Dictionary covers the field worldwide from pre-history to the present day, from rock art to interior decoration, from ethnography to contemporary art. Drawing on hundreds of hard-to-obtain documentary sources as well as modern scientific data each term is discussed in detail, giving both its context and composition.
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