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Showing 226 through 250 of 64,987 results

Classical Victorians

by Edmund Richardson

Victorian Britain set out to make the ancient world its own. This is the story of how it failed. It is the story of the headmaster who bludgeoned his wife to death, then calmly sat down to his Latin. It is the story of the embittered classical prodigy who turned to gin and opium - and the virtuoso forger who fooled the greatest scholars of the age. It is a history of hope: a general who longed to be an Homeric hero, a bankrupt poet who longed to start a revolution. Victorian classicism was defined by hope - but shaped by uncertainty. Packed with forgotten characters and texts, with the roar of the burlesque-stage and the mud of the battlefield, this book offers a rich insight into nineteenth-century culture and society. It explores just how difficult it is to stake a claim on the past.

The “Colored Hero” of Harper's Ferry

by Steven Lubet

On the night of Sunday, October 16, 1859, hoping to bring about the eventual end of slavery, radical abolitionist John Brown launched an armed attack at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Among his troops, there were only five black men, who have largely been treated as little more than 'spear carriers' by Brown's many biographers and other historians of the antebellum era. This book brings one such man, John Anthony Copeland, directly to center stage. Copeland played a leading role in the momentous Oberlin slave rescue, and he successfully escorted a fugitive to Canada, making him an ideal recruit for Brown's invasion of Virginia. He fought bravely at Harpers Ferry, only to be captured and charged with murder and treason. With his trademark lively prose and compelling narrative style, Steven Lubet paints a vivid portrait of this young black man who gave his life for freedom.

Comic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England

by Jim Davis

The popularity of the comic performers of late-Georgian and Regency England and their frequent depiction in portraits, caricatures and prints is beyond dispute, yet until now little has been written on the subject. In this unique study Jim Davis considers the representation of English low comic actors, such as Joseph Munden, John Liston, Charles Mathews and John Emery, in the visual arts of the period, the ways in which such representations became part of the visual culture of their time, and the impact of visual representation and art theory on prose descriptions of comic actors. Davis reveals how many of the actors discussed also exhibited or collected paintings and used painterly techniques to evoke the world around them. Drawing particularly on the influence of Hogarth and Wilkie, he goes on to examine portraiture as critique and what the actors themselves represented in terms of notions of national and regional identity.

The Complete Guide to the Herschel Objects

by Mark Bratton

Sir William Herschel's contributions to astronomy during the late eighteenth century are unrivalled. His lasting legacy is his dedicated all-sky survey of star clusters and nebulae, and these objects continue to be among the most studied in the night sky. This unique book provides a complete re-examination of Herschel's entire catalogue of non-stellar discoveries, making it the most accurate and up-to-date reference of its kind. Retrace the footsteps of one of history's greatest astronomers and explore every one of Herschel's landmark discoveries, including those considered to be lost or non-existent. Read detailed notes about each object's appearance and physical characteristics, and view hundreds of photos of the most intriguing Herschel objects, along with dozens of sketches of what is visible at the eyepiece. This superb book is a must-have for amateur astronomers seeking new and exciting observing challenges, and as the ultimate reference on the Herschel objects.

Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Global and International History)

by Michele L. Louro

In this book Michele L. Louro compiles the debates, introduces the personalities, and reveals the ideas that seeded Jawaharlal Nehru's political vision for India and the wider world. Set between the world wars, this book argues that Nehru's politics reached beyond India in order to fulfill a greater vision of internationalism that was rooted in his experiences with anti-imperialist and anti-fascist mobilizations in the 1920s and 1930s. Using archival sources from India, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Russia, the author offers a compelling study of Nehru's internationalism as well as contributes a necessary interwar history of institutions and networks that were confronting imperialist, capitalist, and fascist hegemony in the twentieth-century world. Louro provides readers with a global intellectual history of anti-imperialism and Nehru's appropriation of it, while also establishing a history of a typically overlooked period.

Conservative but Not Republican

by Philpot Tasha S.

Conservative but Not Republican provides a clear and comprehensive framework for understanding the formation and structure of ideological self-identification and its relationship to party identification in the USA. Exploring why the increase in Black conservatives has not met with a corresponding rise in the number of Black Republicans, the book bridges the literature from a number of different research areas to paint a detailed portrait of African-American ideological self-identification. It also provides insight into a contemporary electoral puzzle facing party strategists, while addressing gaps in the current literature on public opinion and voting behavior. Further, it offers original research from previously untapped data. The book is primarily designed for political science, but is also relevant to African-American studies, communication studies, and psychology. Including easy to read tables and figures, it is accessible not only to academic audiences, but also to journalists and practitioners.

The Correspondence of Charles Darwin

by Frederick Burkhardt James A. Secord

Over 850 letters between Darwin and worldwide correspondents, as he gathered information on human origins and the expression of emotion.

The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: VOLUME 24

by Frederick Burkhardt James A. Secord

This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers. Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person. The letters are published chronologically: volume 24 includes letters from 1876, the year in which Darwin published Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom, and started writing Forms of Flowers. In 1876, Darwin's daughter-in-law, Amy, died shortly after giving birth to a son, Bernard Darwin, an event that devastated the family. The volume includes a supplement of 182 letters from earlier years, including a newly discovered collection of letters from William Darwin, Darwin's eldest son.

The Correspondence Of Charles Darwin: Volume 20 1872

by Frederick Burkhardt James A. Secord Janet Browne Samantha Evans Shelley Innes Francis Neary Alison M. Pearn Anne Secord Paul White

This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers. Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person. The letters are published chronologically: volume 20 includes letters from 1872, the year in which The expression of the emotions in man and animals was published, making ground-breaking use of photography. Also in this year, the sixth and final edition of On the origin of species was published, and Darwin resumed his work on carnivorous plants and plant movement, finding unexpected similarities between the plant and animal kingdoms.

The Correspondence of Charles Darwin 1877: VOLUME 25 (The Correspondence of Charles Darwin)

by Frederick Burkhardt James A. Secord

This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers. Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person. The letters are published chronologically: volume 25 includes letters from 1877, the year in which Darwin published Forms of Flowers and with his son Francis carried out experiments on plant movement and bloom on plants. Darwin was awarded an honorary LL. D. by Cambridge University, and appeared in person to receive it. The volume contains a number of appendixes, including two on the albums of photograph sent to Darwin by his Dutch, German, and Austrian admirers.

The Creation of Eve and Renaissance Naturalism

by Greenstein Jack M.

Depicting the Creation of Woman presented a special problem for Renaissance artists. The medieval iconography of Eve rising half-formed from Adam's side was hardly compatible with their commitment to the naturalistic representation of the human figure. At the same time, the story of God constructing the first woman from a rib did not offer the kind of dignified, affective pictorial narrative that artists, patrons, and the public prized. Jack M. Greenstein takes this artistic problem as the point of departure for an iconographic study of this central theme of Christian culture. His book shows how the meaning changed along with the form when Lorenzo Ghiberti, Andrea Pisano, and other Italian sculptors of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries revised the traditional composition to accommodate a naturalistically depicted Eve. At stake, Greenstein argues, is the role of the artist and the power of image-making in reshaping Renaissance culture and religious thought.

The Creation of the Zulu Kingdom, 1815-1828

by Elizabeth A. Eldredge

This scholarly account traces the emergence of the Zulu Kingdom in South Africa in the early nineteenth century, under the rule of the ambitious and iconic King Shaka. In contrast to recent literary analyses of myths of Shaka, this book uses the richness of Zulu oral traditions and a comprehensive body of written sources to provide a compelling narrative and analysis of the events and people of the era of Shaka's rule. The oral traditions portray Shaka as rewarding courage and loyalty and punishing failure;

Crisis Management during the Roman Republic

by Gregory K. Golden

'Crisis' is the defining word for our times and it likewise played a key role in defining the scope of government during the Roman Republic. This book is a comprehensive analysis of key incidents in the history of the Republic that can be characterized as crises, and the institutional response mechanisms that were employed by the governing apparatus to resolve them. Concentrating on military and other violent threats to the stability of the governing system, this book highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of the institutional framework that the Romans created. Looking at key historical moments, Gregory K. Golden considers how the Romans defined a crisis and what measures were taken to combat them, including declaring a state of emergency, suspending all non-war-related business, and instituting an emergency military draft, as well as resorting to rule by dictator in the early Republic.

The Crisis of Russian Democracy

by Richard Sakwa

The view that Russia has taken a decisive shift towards authoritarianism may be premature, but there is no doubt that its democracy is in crisis. In this original and dynamic analysis of the fundamental processes shaping contemporary Russian politics, Richard Sakwa applies a new model based on the concept of Russia as a dual state. Russia's constitutional state is challenged by an administrative regime that subverts the rule of law and genuine electoral competitiveness. This has created a situation of permanent stalemate: the country is unable to move towards genuine pluralist democracy but, equally, its shift towards full-scale authoritarianism is inhibited. Sakwa argues that the dual state could be transcended either by strengthening the democratic state or by the consolidation of the arbitrary power of the administrative system. The future of the country remains open.

A Critical Introduction to Khomeini

by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

As the architect of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini remains one of the most inspirational and enigmatic figures of the twentieth century. The revolution placed Iran at the forefront of Middle East politics and of the Islamic revival. Twenty years after his death, Khomeini is revered as a spiritual and political figurehead in Iran and in large swathes of the Islamic world, while in the West he is remembered by many as a dictator and as the instigator of Islamist confrontation. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam brings together both distinguished and emerging scholars in this comprehensive volume, which covers all aspects of Khomeini's life and critically examines Khomeini the politician, the philosopher, and the spiritual leader. The book details Khomeini's early years in exile from Iran, the revolution itself, and events that took place thereafter including the hostage crisis and the Iran-Iraq war. Lastly, the book considers his legacy in Iran where Khomeini's image has been used by both reformist and conservative politicians to develop their own agendas and further afield in other parts of the Islamic world and in the West. Written by scholars from varying disciplinary backgrounds, the book will prove invaluable to students and general readers interested in the life and times of Khomeini and the politics of Islam that he inspired.

Critical Perspectives on Empire: Colonial Relations

by Perry Adele

A study of the lived history of nineteenth-century British imperialism through the lives of one extended family in North America, the Caribbean and the United Kingdom. The prominent colonial governor James Douglas was born in 1803 in what is now Guyana, probably to a free woman of colour and an itinerant Scottish father. In the North American fur-trade, he married Amelia Connolly, the daughter of a Cree mother and an Irish-Canadian father. Adele Perry traces their family and friends over the course of the 'long' nineteenth-century, using careful archival research to offer an analysis of the imperial world that is at once intimate and critical, wide-ranging and sharply focused. Perry engages feminist scholarship on gender and intimacy, critical analyses about colonial archives, transnational and postcolonial history and the 'new imperial history' to suggest how this period might be rethought through one powerful family located at the British Empire's margins.

David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Renaissance

by Shlomo Aronson Naftali Greenwood

This book offers a reappraisal of David Ben-Gurion's role in Jewish-Israeli history from the perspective of the twenty-first century, in the larger context of the Zionist "renaissance," of which he was a major and unique exponent. Some have described Ben-Gurion's Zionism as a dream that has gone sour, or a utopia doomed to be unfulfilled. Now - after the dust surrounding Israel's founding father has settled, archives have been opened, and perspective has been gained since Ben-Gurion's downfall - this book presents a fresh look at this statesman-intellectual and his success and tragic failures during a unique period of time that he and his peers described as the "Jewish renaissance. " The resulting reappraisal offers a new analysis of Ben-Gurion's actual role as a major player in Israeli, Middle Eastern, and global politics.

David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory

by Jacob L. Wright

Of all the Bible's personalities, David is the most profoundly human. Courageous, cunning, and complex, he lives life to the hilt. Whatever he does, he does with all his might, exuding both vitality and vulnerability. No wonder it has been said that Israel revered Moses yet loved David. But what do we now know about the historical David? Why does his story stand at the center of the Bible? Why didn't the biblical authors present him in a more favorable light? And what is the special connection between him and Caleb - the Judahite hero remembered for his valor during the wars of conquest? In this groundbreaking study, Jacob L. Wright addresses all these questions and presents a new way of reading the biblical accounts. His work compares the function of these accounts to the role war memorials play over time. The result is a rich study that treats themes of national identity, statehood, the exercise of power, and the human condition.

Democratic Dynasties

by Kanchan Chandra

Dynastic politics, usually presumed to be the antithesis of democracy, is a routine aspect of politics in many modern democracies. This book introduces a new theoretical perspective on dynasticism in democracies, using original data on twenty-first-century Indian parliaments. It argues that the roots of dynastic politics lie at least in part in modern democratic institutions - states and parties - which give political families a leg-up in the electoral process. It also proposes a rethinking of the view that dynastic politics is a violation of democracy, showing that it can also reinforce some aspects of democracy while violating others. Finally, this book suggests that both reinforcement and violation are the products, not of some property intrinsic to political dynasties, but of the institutional environment from which those dynasties emerge.

Divining Slavery and Freedom: The Story of Domingos Sodré, an African Priest in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (New Approaches to the Americas)

by João José Reis

Since its original publication in Portuguese in 2008, this first English translation of Divining Slavery has been extensively revised and updated, complete with new primary sources and a new bibliography. It tells the story of Domingos Sodré, an African-born priest who was enslaved in Bahia, Brazil in the nineteenth century. After obtaining his freedom, Sodré became a slave owner himself, and in 1862 was arrested on suspicion for receiving stolen goods from slaves in exchange for supposed 'witchcraft.' Using this incident as a catalyst, the book discusses African religion and its place in a slave society, analyzing its double role as a refuge to blacks as well as a bridge between classes and ethnic groups (such as whites who attended African rituals and sought help from African diviners and medicine men). Ultimately, Divining Slavery explores the fluidity and relativity of conditions such as slavery and freedom, African and local religions, personal and collective experience and identities in the lives of Africans in the Brazilian diaspora. Revised and updated for the English edition (utilizes new primary sources and a new bibliography). Uses Sodré's life as a means of exploring the fluidity and relativity of conditions such as slavery and freedom, African and local religions, personal and collective experience and identities in the lives of Africans in the Brazilian diaspora. Addresses historical problems, concepts, and methods that are at the center of contemporary academic discussion.

Dynasties

by Jeroen Duindam

For thousands of years, societies have fallen under the reign of a single leader, ruling as chief, king, or emperor. In this fascinating global history of medieval and early modern dynastic power, Jeroen Duindam charts the rise and fall of dynasties, the rituals of rulership, and the contested presence of women on the throne. From European, African, Mughal, Ming-Qing and Safavid dynasties to the Ottoman Empire, Tokugawa Japan and Chosŏn Korea, he reveals the tension between the ideals of kingship and the lives of actual rulers, the rich variety of arrangements for succession, the households or courts which catered to rulers' daily needs, and the relationship between the court and the territories under its control. The book integrates numerous African examples, sets dynasties within longer-term developments such as the rise of the state, and examines whether the tensions inherent in dynastic power led inexorably to cycles of ascent and decline.

Edward I and the Governance of England, 1272-1307

by Caroline Burt

This important exploration of the reign of Edward I – one of England's most lionised, feared and successful monarchs – presents his kingship in a radical new light. Through detailed case studies of Shropshire, Warwickshire and Kent, Caroline Burt examines how Edward's governance at a national level was reflected in different localities. She employs novel methodology to measure levels of disorder and the effects of government action, and uncovers a remarkably sophisticated approach to governance. This study combines an empirical examination of government with an understanding of developing political ideas and ideological motivation and contributes towards a greater understanding of the development of local government and politics in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Edward emerges as a king with a coherent set of ideas about the governance of his realm, both intellectually and practically, whose achievements were even more remarkable than has previously been recognised.

Einstein's Opponents

by Milena Wazeck Geoffrey S. Koby

This detailed account of the controversy surrounding the publication of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity explores the ferocious popular and academic opposition which at one time encircled one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival research, this fascinating discourse includes a compelling and entertaining examination of the contemporary literature created by Einstein's detractors. Exploring the arguments and strategies, social contexts, and motivations of Einstein's detractors, and providing unique insights into the dynamics of scientific controversies, this book is ideal for anyone interested in the history and philosophy of physics, popular science, and the public understanding of science.

Einstein's Unification

by Jeroen Van Dongen

Why did Einstein tirelessly study unified field theory for more than 30 years? In this book, the author argues that Einstein believed he could find a unified theory of all of nature's forces by repeating the methods he thought he had used when he formulated general relativity. The book discusses Einstein's route to the general theory of relativity, focusing on the philosophical lessons that he learnt. It then addresses his quest for a unified theory for electromagnetism and gravity, discussing in detail his efforts with Kaluza-Klein and, surprisingly, the theory of spinors. From these perspectives, Einstein's critical stance towards the quantum theory comes to stand in a new light. This book will be of interest to physicists, historians and philosophers of science.

Election Administration in the United States

by R. Michael Alvarez Bernard Grofman

This book tells the story of how the way in which we conduct elections has changed after the Florida recount litigation of 2000. Some of the nation's leading experts look at various aspects of election administration, including issues of ballot format, changes in registration procedures, the growth in the availability of absentee ballot rules and other forms of "convenience voting," and changes in the technology used to record our votes. They also look at how the Bush v. Gore decision has been used by courts that monitor the election process and at the consequences of changes in practice for levels of invalid ballots, magnitude of racial disparities in voting, voter turnout, and access to the ballot by those living outside the United States. The editors, in their introduction, also consider the normative question of exactly what we want a voting system to do. An epilogue by two leading election law specialists looks at how election administration and election contest issues played out in the 2012 presidential election.

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