The idea of revising what is known of the past constitutes an essential procedure in historical scholarship, but revisionists are often hasty and argumentative in their judgments. Such, argues Robert H. Ferrell, has been the case with assessments of the presidency of Harry S. Truman, who was targeted by historians and political scientists in the 1960s and ’70s for numerous failings in both domestic and foreign policy, including launching the cold war—perceptions that persist to the present day. Widely acknowledged as today’s foremost Truman scholar, Ferrell turns the tables on the revisionists in this collection of classic essays. He goes below the surface appearances of history to examine how situations actually developed and how Truman performed sensibly—even courageously—in the face of unforeseen crises. While some revisionists see Truman as consumed by a blind hatred of the Soviet Union and adopting an unrestrainedly militant stance, Ferrell convincingly shows that Truman wished to get along with the Soviets and was often bewildered by their actions. He interprets policies such as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and support for NATO as prudent responses to perceived threats and credits the Truman administration for the ways in which it dealt with unprecedented problems. What emerges most vividly from Ferrell’s essays is a sense of how weak a hand the United States held from 1945 to1950, with its conventional forces depleted by the return of veterans to civil pursuits after the war and with its capacity for delivery of nuclear weapons in a sorry state. He shows that Truman regarded the atomic bomb as a weapon of last resort, not an instrument of policy, and that he took America into a war in Korea for the good of the United States and its allies. Although Truman has been vindicated on many of these issues, there still remains a lingering controversy over the use of atomic weapons in Japan—a decision that Ferrell argues is understandable in light of what Truman faced at the start of his presidency. Ferrell argues that the revisionists who attacked Truman understood neither the times nor the man—one of the most clearheaded, farsighted presidents ever to occupy the Oval Office. Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists shows us that Truman’s was indeed a remarkable presidency, as it cautions historians against too quickly appraising the very recent past.
First published in 1992, Medieval Military Technology has become the definitive book in its field, garnering much praise and a large readership. This thorough update of a classic book, regarded as both an excellent overview and an important piece of scholarship, includes fully revised content, new sections on the use of horses, handguns, incendiary weapons, and siege engines, and eighteen new illustrations. The four key organizing sections of the book still remain: arms and armor, artillery, fortifications, and warships. Throughout, the authors connect these technologies to broader themes and developments in medieval society as well as to current scholarly and curatorial controversies.
Frontcover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Part One: Travels and Travellers -- 1 Introduction: Life Before Departure -- 2 Athens, Aegina and the Morea -- 3 Asia Minor, Sicily, Albania and Italy -- 4 Visions of Hellas -- 5 The Spirit of the Time -- 6 Homecomings -- Part Two: Letters -- Introduction to the Letters -- The Letters -- Appendix 1: Sources -- Appendix 2: Biographical Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
This unique study draws on biographical dictionaries as a collective portrait of the emerging Canadian middle class in the last half of the nineteenth century. The works compiled by Henry James Morgan, George MacLean Rose, and William Cochrane, and published between 1862 and 1903, reveal not only the life-course patterns of "representative" Canadians, but personal and social motivations driving the selection process. The complex of occupation, mobility and opportunity, networking, the meaning of success, and contrasts between the representation of men and women, are analyzed with an eye to the "structure of feeling" that characterized Canadian culture and national consciousness in this period.The National Album is a major contribution to Canadian studies, particularly to the flourishing interest in biography and autobiography, and to the interdisciplinary field of historical sociology.
In prehistoric times, the Santa Cruz River in what is now southern Arizona saw many ebbs, flows, and floods. It flowed on the surface, meandered across the floodplain, and occasionally carved deep channels or arroyos into valley fill. Groundwater was never far from the surface, in places outcropping to feed marshlands or ciénegas. In these wet places, arroyos would heal quickly as the river channel revegetated, the thriving vegetation trapped sediment, and the channel refilled. As readers of Requiem for the Santa Cruz learn, these aridland geomorphic processes also took place in the valley as Tucson grew from mud-walled village to modern metropolis, with one exception: historical water development and channel changes proceeded hand in glove, each taking turns reacting to the other, eventually lowering the water table and killing a unique habitat that can no longer recover or be restored. Authored by an esteemed group of scientists, Requiem for the Santa Cruz thoroughly documents this river—the premier example of historic arroyo cutting during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when large floodflows cut down through unconsolidated valley fill to form deep channels in the major valleys of the American Southwest. Each chapter provides a unique opportunity to chronicle the arroyo legacy, evaluate its causes, and consider its aftermath. Using more than a collective century of observations and collections, the authors reconstruct the circumstances of the river’s entrenchment and the groundwater mining that ultimately killed the marshlands, a veritable mesquite forest, and a birdwatcher's paradise. Today, communities everywhere face this conundrum: do we manage ephemeral rivers through urban areas for flood control, or do we attempt to restore them to some previous state of perennial naturalness? Requiem for the Santa Cruz carefully explores the legacies of channel change, groundwater depletion, flood control, and nascent attempts at river restoration to give a long-term perspective on management of rivers in arid lands. Tied together by authors who have committed their life’s work to the study of aridland rivers, this book offers a touching and scientifically grounded requiem for the Santa Cruz and every southwestern river.
In this fifth edition all chapters have been revised and updated. The chapters on Polymer and Fiber Integrated Optics, Optical Amplifiers, Micro-Optical-Electro-Mechanical Devices, and Photonic and Microwave Wireless Systems are completely new. Problems help the students to deepen their knowledge.
In 'History's Babel', Townsend takes us from the beginning of this professional shift to a state of microprofessionalization that continues to define the field. Townsend traces the slow fragmentation of the field from 1880 to the divisions of the 1940s manifest today in the diverse professions of academia, teaching, and public history.
Despite the considerable attention given to 'power' by foundational sources such as Machiavelli, Hobbs, Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, and those social theorists who have built on their works, surprisingly little attention has been given to the study of power as an enacted feature of community life. Locating power more directly within a symbolic interactionist framework, Beyond the Power Mystique not only enables scholars to permeate much of the mystique shrouding power but, explicitly viewing power as intersubjective accomplishment, the material presented here fosters a research agenda that is highly attentive to the collectively articulated aspects of power relations. Consideration is given to the ways in which power is brought into existence, implemented, experienced, sustained, objectified, resisted, dissipated, and reconstituted in actual practice. Addressing the full range of associations occurring in all human arenas, from small group settings to large scale theaters of operations, this volume provides a conceptually viable means of synthesizing so-called "macro" and "micro" realms of power. Prus considers people's definitions of, and routings into, situations of power, as well as the dilemmas they face, the strategies they assume, and the limitations they encounter as they enter into interchanges with others on both more individualized and collectively coordinated bases and in both long-term and more situated instances.
Ministers of Reform vividly depicts the spiritual odyssey of an entire generation and shows how Protestant roots and a common "climate of creativity" nurtured a host of Progressive leaders from all walks of life. Crunden demonstrates that the same spirit of nnovation and moral rectitude so typical of the era's politics also characterized its artistic endeavors.
Think gunfighter, and Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid may come to mind, but what of Jim Moon? Joel Fowler? Zack Light? A host of other figures helped forge the gunfighter persona, but their stories have been lost to time. In a sequel to his Deadly Dozen, celebrated western historian Robert K. DeArment now offers more biographical portraits of lesser-known gunfighters—men who perhaps weren’t glorified in legend or song, but who were rightfully notorious in their day. DeArment has tracked down stories of gunmen from throughout the West—characters you won’t find in any of today’s western history encyclopedias but whose careers are colorfully described here. Photos of the men and telling quotations from primary sources make these characters come alive. In giving these men their due, DeArment takes readers back to the gunfighter culture spawned in part by the upheavals of the Civil War, to a time when deadly duels were part of the social fabric of frontier towns and the Code of the West was real. His vignettes offer telling insights into conditions on the frontier that created the gunfighters of legend. These overlooked shooters never won national headlines but made their own contributions to the blood and thunder of the Old West: people less than legends, but all the more fascinating because they were real. Readers who enjoyed DeArment’s Deadly Dozen will find this book equally captivating—as gripping as a showdown, twelve times over.
Trask’s Historical Linguistics provides an accessible introduction to historical linguistics – the study of language change over time. This engaging book is illustrated with language examples from all six continents, and covers the fundamental concepts of language change, methods for historical linguistics, linguistic reconstruction, sociolinguistic aspects of language change, language contact, the birth and death of languages, language and prehistory, and the issue of very remote relations. The fourth edition of this renowned textbook is fully revised and updated and covers the most recent developments in historical linguistics, including: A thorough reworking of sections on morphological and syntactic change, incorporating progress in areas such as grammaticalization and the discussion of the Indo-European ‘homeland’ Discussion and analysis of ‘folk’ historical linguistics and its connection with some of the more eccentric views of professional linguists An expanded discussion of language contact, historical sociolinguistics, and language planning, including a discussion of contemporary competing views on the genesis and nature of creoles, and their importance in our understanding of radical linguistic change Updated support material including suggestions for essay questions and a larger number of supporting examples of the phenomena described in the book Trask’s Historical Linguistics is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of historical linguistics as well as any student looking for a grounded introduction to the English language.
The book aims to revitalise the interdisciplinary debate about evolutionary ethics and substantiate the idea that evolution science can provide a rational and robust framework for understanding morality. It also traces pathways for knowledge-based choices to be made about directions for future long-term biological evolution and cultural development in view of adaptation to the expected, probable and possible future and the ecological sustainability of our planetary environment The authors discuss ethical challenges associated with the major biosocial sources of human variation: individual variation, inter-personal variation, inter-group variation, and inter-generational variation. This book approaches the long-term challenges of the human species in a holistic way. Researchers will find an extensive discussion of the key theoretical scientific aspects of the relationship between evolution and morality. Policy makers will find information that can help them better understand from where we are coming and inspire them to make choices and take actions in a longer-term perspective. The general public will find food for thoughts.
Inflammation: Mediators and Pathways reviews key developments in the field of inflammation. It focuses on novel pathways of inflammation that have only recently surfaced. All the topics covered are currently the subject of intense investigation, and all contributors are established investigators in the field.
This volume spans the whole field of computational logic seen from the point of view of logic programming. The topics addressed range from issues concerning the development of programming languages in logic and the application of computational logic to real-life problems, to philosophical studies of the field at the other end of the spectrum. The articles presented cover the contributions of computational logic to databases and artificial intelligence with particular emphasis on automated reasoning, reasoning about actions and change, natural languages, and learning. Together with its companion volume, LNAI 2407, this book commemorates the 60th birthday of Bob Kowalski as one of the founders of and contributors to computational logic.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.