Robert B. Edgerton's Books

Sick Societies

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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Author and scholar Robert Edgerton challenges the notion that primitive societies were happy and healthy before they were corrupted and oppressed by colonialism. He surveys a range of ethnographic writings, and shows that many of these so-called innocent societies were cruel, confused, and misled.

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472

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451602324

ISBN 13

9781451602326

The Troubled Heart of Africa

A History of the Congo

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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The Troubled Heart of Africa

A History of the Congo

By: Robert B. Edgerton

Connecting a tumultuous past with an uncertain present, this is the complete story of a region whose fate will affect an entire continent. photo insert.

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Page Count

320

Publisher

Macmillan

Published Date

ISBN 10

0312304862

ISBN 13

9780312304867

The Cloak of Competence, Revised and Updated Edition

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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The Cloak of Competence, Revised and Updated Edition

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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Page Count

280

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520082265

ISBN 13

9780520082267

Africa's Armies

From Honor to Infamy : a History from 1791 to the Present

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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Africa's Armies

From Honor to Infamy : a History from 1791 to the Present

By: Robert B. Edgerton

Merging anthropology and history, describes the roots of civil-military imbalances in sub-Saharan Africa and suggests solutions for reducing poverty, crime, disease, and genocide.

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Page Count

356

Publisher

Westview Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813339472

ISBN 13

9780813339474

Mental Retardation

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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Mental Retardation

By: Robert B. Edgerton

Explains the causes of retardation, the prevention of retardation through such means as genetic counseling and prenatal care, and the methods of helping retarded children on the familial, social, and educational levels.

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140

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674568869

ISBN 13

9780674568860

The Fall of the Asante Empire

The Hundred-Year War For Africa'S Gold Coast

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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The Fall of the Asante Empire

The Hundred-Year War For Africa'S Gold Coast

By: Robert B. Edgerton

For the first time, anthropologist Robert Edgerton tells the story of the Hundred-Year War—from 1807 to 1900, between the British Empire and the Asante Kingdom—from the Asante point of view. In 1817, the first British envoy to meet the king of the Asante of West Africa was dazzled by his reception. A group of 5,000 Asante soldiers, many wearing immense caps topped with three foot eagle feathers and gold ram's horns, engulfed him with a "zeal bordering on phrensy," shooting muskets into the air. The envoy was escorted, as no fewer than 100 bands played, to the Asante king's palace and greeted by a tremendous throng of 30,000 noblemen and soldiers, bedecked with so much gold that his party had to avert their eyes to avoid the blinding glare. Some Asante elders wore gold ornaments so massive they had to be supported by attendants. But a criminal being lead to his execution - hands tied, ears severed, knives thrust through his cheeks and shoulder blades - was also paraded before them as a warning of what would befall malefactors. This first encounter set the stage for one of the longest and fiercest wars in all the European conquest of Africa. At its height, the Asante empire, on the Gold Coast of Africa in present-day Ghana, comprised three million people and had its own highly sophisticated social, political, and military institutions. Armed with European firearms, the tenacious and disciplined Asante army inflicted heavy casualties on advancing British troops, in some cases defeating them. They won the respect and admiration of British commanders, and displayed a unique willingness to adapt their traditional military tactics to counter superior British technology. Even well after a British fort had been established in Kumase, the Asante capital, the indigenous culture stubbornly resisted Europeanization, as long as the "golden stool," the sacred repository of royal power, remained in Asante hands. It was only after an entire century of fighting that resistance ultimately ceased.

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Page Count

316

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451603738

ISBN 13

9781451603736

Warriors of the Rising Sun

A History of the Japanese Military

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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Warriors of the Rising Sun

A History of the Japanese Military

By: Robert B. Edgerton

Throughout the Pacific theater of World War II, Allied prisoners were often starved, tortured, beheaded, even cannibalized by Japanese soldiers. Yet, during the Boxer Rebellion in China and the savage Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, the Western press lauded the Japanese for their kindness to the enemy wounded and imprisoned. "Warriors of the Rising Sun" chronicles the Japanese military's transformation from honorable "knights of Bushido" into men of historic cruelty. Photos.

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Page Count

398

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393040852

ISBN 13

9780393040852

The Cloak of Competence, Revised and Updated Edition

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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The Cloak of Competence, Revised and Updated Edition

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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Page Count

275

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520082265

ISBN 13

9780520082267

The Cloak of Competence

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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The Cloak of Competence

By: Robert B. Edgerton

This new edition brings up to date a classic study of the everyday lives of previously institutionalized people with mental retardation. For the first time, the author allowed these people to speak about their own lives, their fears, and their hopes. He focused on the role of stigma in their lives and their efforts to pass as normal, as well as the need they had for normal benefactors. Now, using the same ethnographic methods, Robert Edgerton follows up the original population over a period of three decades. His new findings greatly expand our knowledge of these individuals, suggesting that as they grow older they increase their social competence, life satisfaction, independence, and ability to contribute to the lives of others. Human service professionals and others concerned with mental retardation will welcome Edgerton's discussion of current issues such as the role of environmental factors in modifying mental retardation and the need for new conceptual approaches. This new edition brings up to date a classic study of the everyday lives of previously institutionalized people with mental retardation. For the first time, the author allowed these people to speak about their own lives, their fears, and their hopes. He focused on the role of stigma in their lives and their efforts to pass as normal, as well as the need they had for normal benefactors. Now, using the same ethnographic methods, Robert Edgerton follows up the original population over a period of three decades. His new findings greatly expand our knowledge of these individuals, suggesting that as they grow older they increase their social competence, life satisfaction, independence, and ability to contribute to the lives of others. Human service professionals and others concerned with mental retardation will welcome Edgerton's discussion of current issues such as the role of environmental factors in modifying mental retardation and the need for new conceptual approaches.

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247

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520082257

ISBN 13

9780520082250

Sick Societies

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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Sick Societies

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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472

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451602324

ISBN 13

9781451602326

Hidden Heroism

Black Soldiers In America's Wars

By: Robert Edgerton

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Hidden Heroism

Black Soldiers In America's Wars

By: Robert Edgerton

In Hidden Heroism, Robert Edgerton investigates the history of Afro-American participation in American wars, from the French and Indian War to the present. He argues that blacks in American society have long-suffered from a "natural coward" stereotype that is implicit in the racism propagated from America's earliest days, and often intensified as blacks slowly received freedom in American society. For instance, blacks served admirably in various wars, returned home after their service to short-term recognition, and then soon found themselves even more seriously entrenched in a racist system because they were perceived as a threat to whites. This was true, Edgerton argues, until the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam, though the stereotypes have not been fully eradicated. In this book, Edgerton provides an accessible and well-informed tour through this little-known, but significant aspect of race in American military history.

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296

Publisher

Basic Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

081334025X

ISBN 13

9780813340258

Africa's Armies

From Honor To Infamy

By: Robert Edgerton

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Africa's Armies

From Honor To Infamy

By: Robert Edgerton

Africa's Armies traces the military history of sub-Saharan Africa from the pre-colonial era to the present. Robert Edgerton begins this sweeping chronicle by describing the role of African armies in pre-colonial times, when armed forces or militias were essential to the maintenance and prosperity of their societies. During the colonial era, African soldiers fought with death-defying courage, earning such respect as warriors that they were often recruited into the colonial armies not simply to enforce colonial rule in Africa, but to fight for the European homelands as well. After independence swept through Africa, African military men seized political power in country after country, ruling dictatorially for their own benefit and for that of their kinsmen and cronies. The author describes the post-colonial civil wars that have devastated much of sub-Saharan Africa -- catastrophes marked by genocide, famine, disease, economic collapse, and steadily declining life expectancy. He closes by describing the role that Africa's military forces can and must play if the future is to bring better times to the continent's many peoples.

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349

Publisher

Basic Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786740094

ISBN 13

9780786740093

The Troubled Heart of Africa

A History of the Congo

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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The Troubled Heart of Africa

A History of the Congo

By: Robert B. Edgerton

This book serves as a basic primer on how one of the world's most mineral-rich countries was turned into one of its greatest tragedies." - Publishers Weekly Written over a century ago, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness continues to dominate our vision of the Congo, unlikely as it might seem that a late-Victorian novella could encapsulate a country roughly equal in size to the United States east of the Mississippi. Conrad's Congo is hell itself, a place where civilization won't take, where literal and metaphor darknesses converge, and where human conduct, unmoored from social (Western, in other words) norms, turns barbaric. As Robert Edgerton shows in this crisply narrated yet sweeping work of history, the Congo is still trying to awaken from the nightmare of its past, struggling to pull free from the grip of the "heart of darkness" cliche. Plundered for centuries for its natural resources (which remain Africa's most abundant), the Congo was not always a place of horror. Before the Portuguese landed on its shores at the end of the 15th century, it was a prosperous and thriving region. The Congo River, the world's second longest as well as the deepest, and one of the only routes to the continent's interior, provided indigenous populations with ample means for living and trading. What the Portuguese found first to exploit were people, and with the slave trade began a dizzying downward spiral of conquest and degradation that continued for centuries. By the 19th century the race to explore the full length of the legendary river masked a fight for territorial and moral control among the French, Arabs, British, Germans, as well as American missionaries, all of whom dreamed of possessing Africa's very heart. When King Leopold of Belgium managed to solidify control in 1885, the Congo "question" seemed solved. His reign, of course, was almost pathological in its cruelty-the true source of Conrad's "horror"-and its grim legacy endures to this day. Edgerton documents the Congo's long, sad history with a sense of empathy with and admiration for the character of the land and its inhabitants. Since independence in June 1960, the country has endured the machinations and disappointments of one dictator after another, beginning with Patrice Lumumba, and continuing through Joseph Mobutu, Laurent Kabila, and today Kabila's son, Joseph, who assumed power after his father was assassinated in January 2001. Whether called the "Congo Free State," or "Zaire," or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the country remains perilously unstable. The Troubled Heart of Africa is the only book to give a complete history of the Congo, filling in the blanks in the country's history before the advent of Henry Stanley, David Livingstone, King Leopold, and other figures, and carrying us straight into today's headlines. The Congo continues today to be the subject of intense speculation and concern, and with good reason: upon it hangs the fate of sub-Sahara Africa as a whole. Here is a book that helps us face the stark truths of the Congo's past and appreciate both the enormous potential and uncertainty of its future.

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Page Count

318

Publisher

Macmillan + ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

1429973323

ISBN 13

9781429973328

Death Or Glory

The Legacy of the Crimean War

By: Robert B. Edgerton

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Death Or Glory

The Legacy of the Crimean War

By: Robert B. Edgerton

A social history of one of the most tragically botched military campaigns in modern European history--and the most immediate precedent to the American Civil War.

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Page Count

304

Publisher

Basic Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813337895

ISBN 13

9780813337890

Book's by Robert B. Edgerton

Sick Societies

Sick Societies

The Troubled Heart of Africa

The Troubled Heart of Africa

The Cloak of Competence, Revised and Updated Edition

The Cloak of Competence, Revised and Updated Edition

Africa's Armies

Africa's Armies

Mental Retardation

Mental Retardation

The Fall of the Asante Empire

The Fall of the Asante Empire

Warriors of the Rising Sun

Warriors of the Rising Sun

The Cloak of Competence, Revised and Updated Edition

The Cloak of Competence, Revised and Updated Edition

The Cloak of Competence

The Cloak of Competence

Sick Societies

Sick Societies

Hidden Heroism

Hidden Heroism

Africa's Armies

Africa's Armies

The Troubled Heart of Africa

The Troubled Heart of Africa

Death Or Glory

Death Or Glory

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