Ronald Fraser, the internationally renowned oral historian, turns his attention to his own origins in this remarkable memoir. In Search of a Past gathers the recollections of the servants who worked at the manor house outside London where Fraser grew up. It was the place where his parents-one American, the other Scottish-learned to embrace the lifestyle of the idle local gentry. Fraser paints a vivid picture of a vanished interwar world. Sensitively recorded, the words of his family's former employees capture the texture of English "county" life as seen from below, woven into a background of their personal lives, their work and the social antagonisms they experienced. Beneath their stories, however, the author glimpses another unspoken narrative-that of his own childhood. He submits to a course of psychoanalysis and delves into a past riven by confusing emotions and conflicting class allegiances. The result is an innovative, honest, and beautifully written account of the search for lost time, one that defies literary categorization.
He turned his back on the old man to mourn in silence this unnecessary death and his part in it; but the sight of the coffin brought anger instead ..." In 1957, a burned-out British journalist leaves London to recuperate in the idyllic Andalusian village of Benalamar, a place little changed since the tumult of Spain's civil war. But when a foreign businessman arrives with plans to develop the area, the community is thrown into turmoil. During a time of drought, the promise of a reservoir is meant to allay the fears of the local populace, but the developer has little idea what he is playing with. A local farmer commits suicide, and the investigation that follows leads back into recent history, lost love and civil war - all a far cry from the tranquil retreat that once promised respite from a world of lurid headlines and backroom shenanigans. Drought is a keenly felt novel about memory, love and the clash between the old world and the new.
A magisterial history of “Napoleon’s Vietnam”, by the highly acclaimed historian of Spain In this definitive account of the Peninsular War (1808–14), Napoleon’s six-year war against Spain, Ronald Fraser examines what led to the emperor’s devastating defeat against the popular opposition—the guerrillas—and their British and Portuguese allies. As well as relating the histories of the great political and military figures of the war, Fraser brings to life the anonymous masses—the artisans, peasants and women who fought, suffered and died—and restores their role in this barbaric war to its rightful place while overturning the view that this was a straightforward military campaign. This vivid, meticulously researched book offers a distinct and profound vision of “Napoleon’s Vietnam” and shows the reality of the disasters of war: the suffering, discontents and social upheaval that accompanied the fighting. With a new Introduction by Tariq Ali.
In Hiding is the spellbinding story of a man who spent thirty years holed up in his own home to escape execution. Manuel Cortés was a Socialist Party member, an activist in the Republic’s land reform movement, and an organizer in the farm workers’ unionization struggles. As Mayor of Mijas in Andalusia, he became caught up in the ferment of revolutionary Spain in the late 1930s. A marked man, he evaded Franco’s execution squads to survive in hiding through a generation of persecution and terror until amnesty was decreed in 1969—a period of thirty years. With his wife and daughter, he attempted to escape to France, but failed. In this absorbing narrative, based on numerous interviews with the mayor conducted by Ronald Fraser, a master of oral history, Cortés’s truly awe-inspiring ordeal is supplemented by his family’s life histories and experiences during the Civil War. A haunting tale and a monument to the art of the oral historian, In Hiding reminds us what the Spanish Civil War was really about.
We discover what civil war, revolution and counter-revolution actually felt like from inside both camps. The contours of the war take shape through the words of the eyewitnesses. The atmosphere of events is vividly recaptured. And though the lived experience of the participants is revealed the uniquely tragic essence of all civil war. 'Fascinating and brilliantly unorthodox. ' Hugh Thomas, author of THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO.
In 2012 officials in the Town of Colden, a small, New York town near Buffalo, set in motion a policy-making process to decide whether or not to allow gas and oil drilling in their town using the controversial drilling technique known as "fracking." In 2015 this policy-making process collapsed without a decision one way or the other. What went wrong? The town's struggle to deal with a complex public issue broke down due to its failure to observe fundamental governing principles -including the rule of law, workforce training and political responsiveness. This book, an excellent case study for college classroom use, will also help small town officials and citizens take a hard look at their own governing procedures.
Originally published in 1931, this book is concerned with the task of furthering the development of the physical method of molecular rays and was intended for the general reader. Written from an experimental standpoint, the book is a user-friendly survey, which could only be otherwise obtained by extensive reading of original papers. Chapters are broad in scope and range from 'The Diffraction of molecular rays' to 'Chemical equilibria, ionisation and spectroscopic applications'. Notably, chapter one, which deals with the technique of the production and measurement of the rays, has been written in more detail and serves as a laboratory manual for beginners in experimental work in molecular rays. Diagrams and plate sections are included for reference. This book includes almost every problem of surface chemistry and will be of great value to scholars in the field as well as to anyone with an interest in the history of physical chemistry.
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