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Lost Village of Delta, The (Images of America)
by Mary J. CentroHome to a community of hardworking farmers and mill workers, the village of Delta stood along the banks of the Mohawk River until it was evacuated by the state to raise the water in the Erie Canal. Before the flooding of the river, Delta was a small country village with the same postmaster for over 30 years and families farming the same land for generations. In order to raise the water, the state approved the construction of five reservoirs across New York. The town was evacuated soon after, and the land that generations of residents toiled over now sits at the bottom of Lake Delta.
Lost Villages of Scituate, The (Images of America)
by Raymond A. WolfIn 1915, the general assembly appointed the Providence Water Supply Board to condemn 14,800 acres of land in rural Scituate. The hardworking people of the five villages were devastated. By December 1916, notices were delivered to the villagers stating that the homes and land they had owned for generations were to be taken and destroyed. Construction was well under way by 1921, and water was being stored by November 10, 1925. On September 30, 1926, the treatment plant began operation. It now serves more than 60 percent of Rhode Islanders. The $21 million project was the largest ever undertaken in the state at the time. The dam that annihilated the villages is 3,200 feet long and 100 feet high and holds back more than 40 billion gallons of water. Today these quiet villages lie up to 87 feet beneath the cold, dark waters of the Scituate Reservoir.
The Lost World of DeMille (Hollywood Legends Series)
by John KobalLonglisted for the 2020 Moving Image Book Award by the Kraszna-Krausz FoundationAs only an accomplished author, consummate collector, and savvy insider can, John Kobal tells the story of the man who invented Hollywood, Cecil Blount DeMille (1881–1959). Kobal narrates the story of DeMille’s life and follows the director’s career from his first film, The Squaw Man, in 1914, through the seventy films he directed culminating with The Ten Commandments in 1956 before his death in 1959. Even that first film received an enthusiastic response from the public, and that popular enthusiasm would follow DeMille throughout his career. DeMille got his start by observing a film being shot—once standing for hours on a box looking through a window, watching every move made by the director, players, and cameraman. From that humble beginning, he soon mastered the craft of directing and created one of show business’s greatest careers. Autocrat and artist, DeMille immersed himself totally in each picture he directed and demanded complete fealty from his casts and crews. DeMille was said to know more about what the American public wanted than anyone else in Hollywood. He pushed the boundaries of censorship, and audiences responded by forming long lines at the box office. From the American West to ancient Egypt, he created such magical films as The Crusades and The Greatest Show on Earth that brought vividly to life fantasies perfectly suited to post–World War I and mid-century America. Kobal describes DeMille’s impact on Hollywood as a director and showman. He argues that this master filmmaker stands for something largely lost in American filmmaking, a sort of naïve, generous, big-thinking self-confidence—a belief that all things are possible. John Kobal wrote over thirty books on film and photography. His final manuscript, The Lost World of DeMille, was completed shortly before his death in 1991. It is published at last by University Press of Mississippi.
Lost Writings: Two Novels by Mina Loy
by Mina LoyTwo never-before-published novels by Mina Loy, the celebrated modernist poet, artist, and feminist Mina Loy (1882–1966) is an essential figure of the European and American modernist avant-garde. A groundbreaking writer of poetry, novels, essays, plays, and uncategorizable prose, she was also a fashion and lighting designer and an accomplished visual artist. As gallery agent for figures such as Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Giacometti, and Salvador Dalí, she was a significant conduit for art that traversed the Atlantic. Loy has been best known for the poetry she published in the little magazines of the late teens and early twenties, most notably the long poem &“Songs to Joannes&” and the autobiographical verse-epic &“Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose.&” Featuring two never-before-published manuscripts of Loy&’s autobiographical prose—The Child and the Parent and Islands in the Air—this remarkable book expands Loy&’s rich oeuvre. Interlinked texts written over twenty years, from the 1930s to the 1950s, these fascinating works narrate the feminist struggle of the creative spirit as it comes into consciousness and encounters indoctrinating social norms. The works are accompanied by an introduction and afterword by Karla Kelsey that frame Loy as a poet, prose writer, businesswoman, and visual artist and discuss the texts, their stylistic innovations, and their unique interconnectedness.
Lost York County (Lost)
by Steven BurrOn October 17, 1947, a fire started near Newfield. It grew quickly and moved east, destroying Goose Rocks Beach, Fortune�s Rock and parts of Cape Porpoise. Thousands of historic buildings perished. The 1947 blaze was unique in the scope of its devastation, but fire has claimed countless York County landmarks over the years. Development projects, neglect and weather have doomed many more. Lost York County presents rare photos of many of these buildings, preserving the visual record of lost town halls, churches, schools, homes and hotels, from Kittery to Biddeford. In this collection of many never-before-seen images, Steven Burr offers a tribute to places and memories seized by time.
Lost Youngstown (Lost)
by Sean T. PoseyThe massive steel mills of Youngstown once fueled the economic boom of the Mahoning Valley. Movie patrons took in the latest flick at the ornate Paramount Theater, and mob bosses dressed to the nines for supper at the Colonial House. In 1977, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company announced the closure of its steelworks in a nearby city. The fallout of the ensuing mill shutdowns erased many of the city's beloved landmarks and neighborhoods. Students hurrying across a crowded campus tread on the foundations of the Elms Ballroom, where Duke Ellington once brought down the house. On the lower eastside, only broken buildings and the long-silent stacks of Republic Rubber remain. Urban explorer and historian Sean T. Posey navigates a disappearing cityscape to reveal a lost era of Youngstown.
Lost's Buried Treasures: The Unofficial Guide to Everything Lost Fans Need to Know
by Lynnette Porter David LaveryThe Ultimate Unauthorized Resource to the Stories Behind Lost Lost is a complex and mysterious tale, one that draws on many sources for its themes and ideas-sources you must understand to become an advanced Lost expert. Lost's Buried Treasures is the ultimate unauthorized guide to the ideas that have influenced the show and its writers-and is completely updated through Season Five. Explore: Books and movies important to the show and how they are connected Geographical clues New and old theories Musical references and the meaning behind the incredible soundtrack The best online resources The video and role-playing games and what they've revealed Cast, writer, and director biographies And much more NO TRUE LOST FAN SHOULD EVER WATCH AN EPISODE WITHOUT THIS CRUCIAL GUIDE IN HAND. Explore all the interconnected stories and mysterious references that make the show so fascinating. DISCLAIMER: This book is an independent work of commentary, criticism, and scholarship. Neither this book, nor its author and publisher, are authorized, endorsed or sponsored by, or affiliated in any way with the copyright and trademark owner of Lost and/or the creators of Lost.
Lot Six: A Memoir
by David Adjmi“David Adjmi has written one of the great American memoirs, a heartbreaking, hilarious story of what it means to make things up, including yourself. A wild tale of lack and lies, galling humiliations and majestic reinventions, this touching, coruscating joy of a book is an answer to that perennial question: how should a person be?” — Olivia Laing, author of Crudo and The Lonely CityIn a world where everyone is inventing a self, curating a feed and performing a fantasy of life, what does it mean to be a person? In his grandly entertaining debut memoir, playwright David Adjmi explores how human beings create themselves, and how artists make their lives into art. Brooklyn, 1970s. Born into the ruins of a Syrian Jewish family that once had it all, David is painfully displaced. Trapped in an insular religious community that excludes him and a family coming apart at the seams, he is plunged into suicidal depression. Through adolescence, David tries to suppress his homosexual feelings and fit in, but when pushed to the breaking point, he makes the bold decision to cut off his family, erase his past, and leave everything he knows behind. There's only one problem: who should he be? Bouncing between identities he steals from the pages of fashion magazines, tomes of philosophy, sitcoms and foreign films, and practically everyone he meets—from Rastafarians to French preppies—David begins to piece together an entirely new adult self. But is this the foundation for a life, or just a kind of quicksand? Moving from the glamour and dysfunction of 1970s Brooklyn, to the sybaritic materialism of Reagan’s 1980s to post-9/11 New York, Lot Six offers a quintessentially American tale of an outsider striving to reshape himself in the funhouse mirror of American culture. Adjmi’s memoir is a genre bending Künstlerroman in the spirit of Charles Dickens and Alison Bechdel, a portrait of the artist in the throes of a life and death crisis of identity. Raw and lyrical, and written in gleaming prose that veers effortlessly between hilarity and heartbreak, Lot Six charts Adjmi’s search for belonging, identity, and what it takes to be an artist in America.
Lothario's Corpse: Libertine Drama and the Long-Running Restoration, 1700-1832 (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850)
by Daniel GustafsonLothario’s Corpse unearths a performance history, on and off the stage, of Restoration libertine drama in Britain’s eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While standard theater histories emphasize libertine drama’s gradual disappearance from the nation’s acting repertory following the dispersal of Stuart rule in 1688, Daniel Gustafson traces its persistent appeal for writers and performers wrestling with the powers of the emergent liberal subject and the tensions of that subject with sovereign absolutism. With its radical, absolutist characters and its scenarios of aristocratic license, Restoration libertine drama became a critical force with which to engage in debates about the liberty-loving British subject’s relation to key forms of liberal power and about the troubling allure of lawless sovereign power that lingers at the heart of the liberal imagination. Weaving together readings of a set of literary texts, theater anecdotes, political writings, and performances, Gustafson illustrates how the corpse of the Restoration stage libertine is revived in the period’s debates about liberty, sovereign desire, and the subject’s relation to modern forms of social control. Ultimately, Lothario’s Corpse suggests the “long-running” nature of Restoration theatrical culture, its revived and revised performances vital to what makes post-1688 Britain modern. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Lottie's School of Dance
by Annette HannahLottie Daniels is dancing up the altar in Canada when she realises her whirlwind wedding is a big mistake. Chad isn't the right person for her at all! And, in that moment, Lottie goes from dancing bride to runaway bride.Much to her brother's relief, Lottie decides to return to Bramblewood in the UK. But life has more surprises in store for her. After rescuing both a donkey and a little old lady called Doris - all with the help of a handsome stranger! - Lottie suddenly becomes a big part of Doris's life. From broken dreams to second chances, Lottie finally has a chance to rebuild her life. When her friends suggest she takes part in a dance audition she refuses point blank but it soon becomes clear that destiny has other plans.You are guaranteed to fall head over heels with this sweet and charming romance.
Lottie's School of Dance
by Annette HannahLottie Daniels is dancing up the altar in Canada when she realises her whirlwind wedding is a big mistake. Chad isn't the right person for her at all! And, in that moment, Lottie goes from dancing bride to runaway bride.Much to her brother's relief, Lottie decides to return to Bramblewood in the UK. But life has more surprises in store for her. After rescuing both a donkey and a little old lady called Doris - all with the help of a handsome stranger! - Lottie suddenly becomes a big part of Doris's life. From broken dreams to second chances, Lottie finally has a chance to rebuild her life. When her friends suggest she takes part in a dance audition she refuses point blank but it soon becomes clear that destiny has other plans.You are guaranteed to fall head over heels with this sweet and charming romance.
Louder Than Words
by Ashley Woodfolk Lexi UnderwoodThis amazing collaboration brings together two inspirational Black artists, NYT bestselling author Ashley Woodfolk and actress Lexi Underwood, for a story about the transformative power of art as protest and its capacity to change the world.When Jordyn Jones transfers to Edgewood High, it's her opportunity to forget everything that happened at her old school. To forget what she and her friends did. To forget who she used to be. That was a different person — this is a fresh start. Now she's someone new, someone better.Except it's the very first day of school, and somehow everyone already seems to know who she is. But Jordyn soon finds a group of friends, and she even starts talking to Izaiah, a soccer star who shares her love of art. Life is good. That's until an anonymous podcast called Tomcat Tea begins revealing humiliating secrets about Edgewood students, ruining their reputations and in some cases their futures. Jordyn and her friends know they have to do something—and this is Jordyn's chance to prove to herself that she's changed.Jordyn's plan to take down the podcast throws her into the spotlight, and as the momentum builds, so do the risks—because Jordyn has a secret of her own, one that could ruin everything . . . and that a mysterious harasser online is threatening to expose.With riveting prose, New York Times bestselling author Ashley Woodfolk and acclaimed actress Lexi Underwood balance an insightful depiction of the power of art as protest with asking some of the biggest questions facing teenagers today—in an era where mistakes can be picked over endlessly online, who is worthy of forgiveness? Can someone ever really change?
The Loudest Silence
by Sydney LangfordTwo disabled queer teens find belonging in this poignant platonic love story about singing, signing, and solidarity.Casey Kowalski once dreamed of becoming a professional singer. Then the universe threw her a life-altering curveball—sudden, permanent, and profound hearing loss—just before her family&’s move from Portland to Miami. Now, she&’s learning to navigate the world as a Deaf-Hard of Hearing person while trying to conceal her hearing loss from her new schoolmates. Hayden González-Rossi is also keeping secrets. Three generations of González men have risen to stardom on the soccer field, and Hayden knows his family expects him to follow in their footsteps, but he wants to quit soccer and pursue a career on Broadway. If only his Generalized Anxiety Disorder didn&’t send him into a debilitating spiral over the thought of telling the truth.Casey and Hayden are both determined to hide who they really are. But when they cross paths at school, they bond over their shared love of music and their mutual feeling that they don&’t belong, and the secrets come spilling out. Their friendship is the beating heart of this dual-perspective story featuring thoughtful disability representation, nuanced queer identities, and a lovably quirky supporting cast.
Loudoun County: People and Places
by Mary FishbackAlthough geography plays a significant role in a place's identity, it is the people and their stories that make an area special. Loudoun County is one such place, a county known for its charm and uniquepersonality. Over the past 250 years, the county has drawn a truly eclectic population from across the world, and these different immigrant groups have shaped the county's history with their churches, schools, and businesses--all still clearly visible into the twenty-first century. Loudoun County: People and Places highlights the everyday life of itscitizens throughout the county, capturing in word and image the local flavor of Leesburg and the county's many historic towns and villages. Possessing a strong religious presence, Loudoun County is dotted with many old churches, representing a wide network of beliefs and faiths,and this volume takes readers on an extraordinary visual tour showcasing their beautiful exteriors and diverse architectural styles. Throughout the rest of the work, readers will encounter scenes of forgotten one-room schoolhouses, posed snapshots of early faculty members and students, and different views around the county that capture early businesses, local celebrations, and famous homes. This book also features a chapter on the photographs of Winslow Williams, a prolific local studio photographer whose work has preserved many scenes and familiar facesaround the county.
Loudoun County: A Family Album (Images of America)
by Mary FishbackIn the fast-paced world in which we live, the relationships among families and friends continue to be the bonds that hold our complex communities together. Located in the flourishing region of Northern Virginia, Loudoun County has experienced significant growth in recent years, but it is those essential ties, the determined character of the region's first inhabitants, and the importance ofheritage to the generations that have followed that have truly shaped the area's singular personality. Documented in the contents of leather-bound picturealbums, cardboard boxes, and dusty attic trunks, the most touching stories of the region are found in the collected everyday memories of its people. Loudoun County: A Family Album takes readers on an intimate tour of the county's major towns and small villages through the eyes of the people who lived and worked in these communities. From candid snapshots taken on family vacations and school outings to early photographs of the town's first farmers and entrepreneurs, this volume of over 200 vintage images captures the everyday lives of the citizens who have persevered to make their home the beautiful, diverse, and charming place it has become. Showcasing the work of both Winslow Williams, one of Loudoun's best and most prolific photographers, as well as the efforts of doting parents and grandparents, friendly neighbors, and enthusiastic playmates from throughout the area, this book provides a one-of-a-kind glimpse at the county from a uniquely personal perspective.
Loudoun County: 250 Years of Towns and Villages
by Mary Fishback Thomas Balch Library CommissionLoudoun County, one of Virginia's most charming areas, is truly a picturesque region, balanced with sweeping pastoral landscapes along the Potomac and many lovely small towns and villages. Over the pastseveral hundred years, this county has enjoyed an ethnic-rich past, meaning that many diverse cultures--the American Indian, European, and African--have called this place home. These different civilizations have left an indelible mark on Loudoun County's character and architectural appearance, from traditional churches and shops to the more ornate and lavish homes scattered across the countryside. Fortunately, many of these buildings still stand, serving as fitting reminders to these different people's struggles and lives. In this volume of over 200 photographs, many never before published, you will experience the Loudoun County of yesteryear--a time when wagons and early automobiles competed for space on the same dusty highways, when homes and schools were made of cobblestone and woodframing, and when life seemed, overall, slower and less complicated. This book takes us on a wonderful journey through the county's major towns, such as Leesburg, Hamilton, Hillsboro, Lovettsville, Middleburg, Purcellville, and Round Hill, and to the smaller villages, such as Waterford, Broad Run Farms, and Taylorstown. From the turn of the twentieth century to more contemporary times, you will see your "home county" as you have never seen it before or as you remembered it as a child.
Loudoun County Fair
by Stephanie Briley FidlerDating back to 1936, the Loudoun County Fair has been a place for the community to celebrate the agriculture of the area. Established for 4-H members to have a fair of their own, the Loudoun County Fair has provided a place, along with volunteers and the support of the community, for the children to exhibit their animals, home economics projects, and produce. After moving from Purcellville to Middleburg and then to Lincoln, the fair found a permanent home in 1956 on donated land in the Clarke's Gap area of Loudoun County. Since the 1957 fair, a livestock auction has been added, an auditorium has been built, and new barns have been erected. Take a step back, slow down, and enjoy the history and beauty of one of Loudoun's longest-running events, the Loudoun County Fair.
Loudoun County Fire and Rescue Apparatus Heritage (Images of America)
by Mike SandersThe formation of the volunteer fire and rescue departments were a central part of Loudoun County's rich history. In the beginning, residents rallied to provide fire protection and emergency medical care to their neighbors. As more communities wereestablished, fire and rescue departments worked together to provide assistance to each other during an emergency. As Loudoun County experiences incredible growth, volunteers from the communitywork side-by-side with career personnel to ensure that citizens are well protected. The images in this volume capture the history of Loudoun's fire and rescue apparatus, from the earliest trucks to today's modern fire and rescue vehicles. The photographs depict a time when departments struggled to raise funds and provide protection to their communities. This Images of America book shows how far fire and rescue departments have come to ensure the protection of life and property in Loudoun County.
Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation (Jewish Lives)
by Kenneth TuranKenneth Turan brings to life the extraordinary partnership of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg and their role in creating the film industry as we know it &“Sharply observant.&”—Farran Smith Nehme, Wall Street Journal One was a tough junkman&’s son, the other a cosseted mama&’s boy, but they dreamed the same mighty dream: that the right movies could make a profit and change both the culture and individual lives. Sharing a religion and an evangelical zeal for film, Louis B. Mayer (1884–1957) and Irving Thalberg (1899–1936) were unlikely partners in one of the most significant collaborations in movie history. Over the course of their decade-long relationship, as key players at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and major players in Hollywood, they joined forces in redefining and mastering the template for the film industry. Mayer, older by more than a dozen years, was the business-minded face of the studio, while Thalberg worked closely with the creative corps, especially writers; together they rarely set a foot wrong. And while Mayer initially viewed Thalberg as the son he never had, the two would go from passionate friends to near enemies before Thalberg&’s shocking death at the age of thirty-seven. In the first joint biography of the two men in fifty years, film critic Kenneth Turan traces their fraught relationship while examining the complicated history of Jewish identity in Hollywood.
Louis C.K. and Philosophy
by Mark RalkowskiCharlie Rose has called Louis C.K. "the philosopher-king of comedy," and many have detected philosophical profundity in Louis's comedy, some of which has been watched tens of millions of times on YouTube and elsewhere. Louis C.K. and Philosophy is designed to help Louis's fans connect the dots between his pronouncements and living philosophical themes.Twenty-five philosophers examine the wisdom of Louis C.K. from a variety of philosophical perspectives. The chapters draw upon C.K.'s standup comedy, the show Louie, and C.K.'s other writings. There is no attempt to fit Louis into one philosophical school; instead the authors bring out the diverse aspects of the thought of Louis C.K.One writer looks at the different meanings of C.K.'s statement, "You're gonna be dead way longer than you were alive." Another explores how Louis knows when he's awake and when he's dreaming, taking a few tips from Descartes. One chapter shows the affinity of C.K.'s "sick of living this bullshit life" with Kierkegaard's "sickness unto death." Another pursues Louis's thought that we may by our lack of moral concern "live a really evil life without thinking about it." C.K.'s religion is "apathetic agnostic," conveyed in his thought experiment that God began work in 1982.
Louis I. Kahn in Rome and Venice: Tangible Forms (Routledge Research in Architecture)
by Elisabetta BarizzaThis book examines the idea of organism in the work of Louis I. Kahn, from the turning point of Rome to the project for Venice. It presents an original interpretation of the work of Kahn during one of the most fruitful periods of his career, when he was working on a particular design method based on an entirely novel way of interacting with the past. Beginning with a meticulous documentation and analysis of Kahn’s experiences in the twenty years from 1930 to 1950, the book sheds new light on the relationship between Kahn’s work and the modern movement. The arguments are supported by case studies, including that of the Palazzo dei Congressi in Venice based on Kahn’s words (like his lessons in Venice at IUA, International University of Art, in 1971) and others as the Trenton Bath House, the Salk Institute (La Jolla), the Kimbell Museum (Fort Worth), the Yale Gallery and the Mellon Center for British Art (New Haven) and more. Unlike much of the by now well-established literature on Kahn’s work, Louis I. Kahn in Rome and Venice suggests that the basic premise of Kahn’s invention is the idea of spatial, constructive organism, which explains how he created forms that were inextricably anchored in the past, without imitating any one kind of ancient architecture. The main objective of the book is to explain Kahn’s methodology to architects and students, showing how he was able to design an architectural object with the characteristics of the best designed objects: organisms, in which each part contributes, with the whole, to creating "something made of indivisible parts".
Louis Kahn: A Life in Architecture
by Carter WisemanThe man who envisioned and realized such landmark buildings as the Salk Institute, the Kimbell Art Museum, and the National Assembly complex in Bangladesh, Louis Kahn was born in what is now Estonia, immigrated to America, and became one of the towering figures in his adopted country’s built world. His works are unmistakable in their elegance, monolithic power, and architectural honesty.Written by Carter Wiseman, one of Kahn’s most respected commentators, this book offers a succinct, accessible examination of the life and work of one of America’s greatest architects. It traces the influence of his immigrant origins, his upbringing in poverty, his education, the impact of the Great Depression, and the arrival of Modernism on his life and work. Finally, it provides insight into why, as the legacy of many of his contemporaries has receded in importance, Kahn’s has remained so durably influential. Louis Kahn: A Life in Architecture provides the best concise introduction available to this singular life and achievement.
Louis Malle: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
by Christopher BeachA filmmaker whose work exhibits a wide range of styles and approaches, Louis Malle (1932–1995) was the only French director of his generation to enjoy a significant career in both France and the United States. Although Malle began his career alongside members of the French New Wave like François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol, he never associated himself with that group. Malle is perhaps best known for his willingness to take on such difficult or controversial topics as suicide, incest, child prostitution, and collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. His filmography includes narrative films like Zazie dans le Métro, Murmur of the Heart, Atlantic City, My Dinner with Andre, and Au revoir les enfants, as well as several major documentaries. In the late 1970s, Malle moved to the United States, where he worked primarily outside of the Hollywood studio system. The films of his American period display his keen outsider’s eye, which allowed him to observe diverse aspects of American life in settings that ranged from turn-of-the-century New Orleans to present-day Atlantic City and the Texas Gulf Coast. Louis Malle: Interviews covers the entirety of Malle’s career and features seventeen interviews, the majority of which are translated into English here for the first time. As the collection demonstrates, Malle was an extremely intelligent and articulate filmmaker who thought deeply about his own choices as a director, the ideological implications of those choices, and the often-controversial themes treated in his films. The interviews address such topics as Malle’s approach to casting and directing actors, his attitude toward provocative subject matter and censorship, his understanding of the relationship between documentary and fiction film, and the differences between the film industries in France and the US. Malle also discusses his sometimes-challenging work with such actors as Brigitte Bardot, Pierre Blaise, and Brooke Shields, and sheds new light on the making of his films.
Louis Sébastien Mercier: Revolution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850)
by Michael J. MulryanFrench playwright, novelist, activist, and journalist Louis Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814) passionately captured scenes of social injustice in pre-Revolutionary Paris in his prolific oeuvre but today remains an understudied writer. In this penetrating study—the first in English devoted to Mercier in decades—Michael Mulryan explores his unpublished writings and urban chronicles, Tableau de Paris (1781–88) and Le Nouveau Paris (1798), in which he identified the city as a microcosm of national societal problems, detailed the conditions of the laboring poor, encouraged educational reform, and confronted universal social ills. Mercier’s rich writings speak powerfully to the sociopolitical problems that continue to afflict us as political leaders manipulate public debate and encourage absolutist thinking, deepening social divides. An outcast for his polemical views during his lifetime, Mercier has been called the founder of modern urban discourse, and his work a precursor to investigative journalism. This sensitive study returns him to his rightful place among Enlightenment thinkers.
Louis XIV Outside In: Images of the Sun King Beyond France, 1661-1715 (Politics and Culture in Europe, 1650-1750)
by Tony Claydon Charles-Édouard LevillainLouis XIV - the ’Sun King’ - casts a long shadow over the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. Yet while he has been the subject of numerous works, much of the scholarship remains firmly rooted within national frameworks and traditions. Thus in France Louis is still chiefly remembered for the splendid baroque culture his reign ushered in, and his political achievements in wielding together a strong centralised French state; whereas in England, the Netherlands and other protestant states, his memory is that of an aggressive military tyrant and persecutor of non-Catholics. In order to try to break free of such parochial strictures, this volume builds upon the approach of scholars such as Ragnhild Hatton who have attempted to situate Louis’ legacy within broader, pan-European context. But where Hatton focused primarily on geo-political themes, Louis XIV Outside In introduces current interests in cultural history, integrating aspects of artistic, literary and musical themes. In particular it examines the formulation and use of images of Louis XIV abroad, concentrating on Louis' neighbours in north west Europe. This broad geographical coverage demonstrates how images of Louis XIV were moulded by the polemical needs of people far from Versailles, and distorted from any French originals by the particular political and cultural circumstances of diverse nations. Because the French regime’s ability to control the public image of its leader was very limited, the collection highlights how - at least in the sphere of public presentation - his power was frequently denied, subverted, or appropriated to very different purposes, questioning the limits of his absolutism which has also been such a feature of recent work.