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Frankness, Greek Culture, and the Roman Empire (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies)
by Dana FieldsFrankness, Greek Culture, and the Roman Empire discusses the significance of parrhēsia (free and frank speech) in Greek culture of the Roman empire. The term parrhēsia first emerged in the context of the classical Athenian democracy and was long considered a key democratic and egalitarian value. And yet, references to frank speech pervade the literature of the Roman empire, a time when a single autocrat ruled over most of the known world, Greek cities were governed at the local level by entrenched oligarchies, and social hierarchy was becoming increasingly stratified. This volume challenges the traditional view that the meaning of the term changed radically after Alexander the Great, and shows rather that parrhēsia retained both political and ethical significance well into the Roman empire. By examining references to frankness in political writings, rhetoric, philosophy, historiography, biographical literature, and finally satire, the volume also explores the dynamics of political power in the Roman empire, where politics was located in interpersonal relationships as much as, if not more than, in institutions. The contested nature of the power relations in such interactions - between emperors and their advisors, between orators and the cities they counseled, and among fellow members of the oligarchic elite in provincial cities - reveals the political implications of a prominent post-classical intellectual development that reconceptualizes true freedom as belonging to the man who behaves - and speaks - freely. At the same time, because the role of frank speaker is valorized, those who claim it also lay themselves open to suspicions of self-promotion and hypocrisy. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of rhetoric and political thought in the ancient world, and to anyone interested in ongoing debates about intellectual freedom, limits on speech, and the advantages of presenting oneself as a truth-teller.
Franks and Lombards in Italian Carolingian Texts: Memories of the Vanquished (Studies in Medieval History and Culture)
by Luigi Andrea BertoFranks and Lombards in Italian Carolingian Texts examines how historians of Carolingian Italy portrayed the history of the Lombards, Charlemagne’s conquest of the Lombard kingdom, and the presence of the Franks in the Italian Ppeninsula. The different contexts and periods in which these writers composed their works allows readers to focus on various aspects of this period and to highlight the different ways the vanquished remembered Carolingian rule in Italy. The ‘"memories’" of these authors are organized by topic, ranging from the origin of the Lombards to the conflicts that broke out among the Carolingians after Louis II died in 875. Besides presenting the English translation and the original Latin text of the excerpts from the Italian Carolingian historical works, the volume also contains the English translations of the same events recorded in Frankish and papal narrative texts. In this way it is possible to compare different memories about the same episode or topic. The book will appeal to scholars and students of the Lombards and Carolingians, as well as all those interested in medieval Europe.
Franks and Northmen: From Strangers to Neighbors
by Daniel MellenoFranks and Northmen explores the full spectrum of Franco-Scandinavian interaction, examining not just violence but also less well-known relationships centered on acts of diplomacy, commerce, and mission and demonstrating the transformative nature of cross-cultural encounter during the Viking Age.In the year 777, the Frankish sources mention the Northmen, better known to most as the Vikings, for the first time. By the tenth century these Northmen, once a mysterious people on the borders of the Carolingian Empire, would be a familiar presence in the Frankish world. As raiders and pillagers, the Vikings would fill the pages of Frankish authors, leaving a legacy that continues to fascinate even to the twenty-first century. But a closer look at sources, both textual and material, reveals that the relationships between Franks and Northmen were far more complex and multifaceted than a rigid focus on Viking violence might suggest. Merchants carried goods across the North Sea, missionaries encouraged new ways of understanding the world, and Franks and Northmen formed relationships and bonds even amidst conflict and violence.This study is a useful resource for both students and specialists of central and northern Europe in the early medieval period.
Franks and Saracens: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Crusades
by Avner FalkFranks and Saracens is the first and only book to examine the Crusades from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis, studying the hidden emotions and fantasies that drove the Crusaders and the Muslims to undertake their terrible wars.Using original documents as well as secondary sources, Avner Falk demonstrates that the deepest and most powerful motives for the Crusades were not only religious or territorial – or the quest for lands, wealth, or titles – but also unconscious emotions and fantasies about one's country, one's religion, one's enemies, God and the Devil, Us and Them. The book demonstrates the collective inability to mourn large-group losses, and the collective needs of large groups such as nations and religions to develop a clear identity, to have boundaries, and to have enemies and allies. Falk investigates the unconscious dynamics of the Crusades, both on the individual and on the collective level, to understand why the Crusading fantasies persisted for nearly two centuries, and why the “northern Crusades” went on until the early fifteenth century. This updated edition adds a new chapter on collective trauma both as cause and as consequence of the Crusades and has been fully revised to include literature on trauma and other psychological aspects of the Crusades.Franks and Saracens will be of great interest to historians, political scientists, medievalists, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, and sociologists interested in questions of conflict, fantasy, and identity, collective psychological processes, and to academics of the Crusades and military history.
Franks, Muslims and Oriental Christians in the Latin Levant: Studies in Frontier Acculturation (Variorum Collected Studies)
by Benjamin Z. KedarSteven Runciman characterized intellectual life in the Frankish Levant as 'disappointing'; Joshua Prawer claimed that the Franks refused to open up to the East's intellectual achievements. The present collection, the second by Benjamin Kedar in the Variorum series, presents facts that require a modification of these still largely prevailing views. The earliest laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were influenced by Byzantine legislation; medical routine in the Jerusalem Hospital, unparalleled in Europe, had counterparts in Oriental hospitals; worshippers of different creeds repeatedly converged; multi-directional conversion recurred time after time. Several articles deal with groups that did abstain from intercultural contacts: Muslim villagers, Frankish clerics and hermits. One article dwells on the asymmetry of Frankish and Muslim mutual perceptions. The volume concludes with studies of specific locations: one argues that Acre was considerably larger than hitherto assumed, another compares its Venetian and Genoese quarters and attempts to locate the remains of a main street, a third reconstructs the history of Caymont.
Frantic Assembly (Routledge Performance Practitioners)
by Mark Smith Mark EvansFrantic Assembly have had a powerful and continuing influence on the popularisation of devising practices in contemporary theatre-making. Their work blends brave and bold physical theatre with exciting new writing, and they have collaborated with some of the leading theatre-makers in the UK. The company’s impact reaches throughout the world, particularly through their extensive workshop and education programmes, as well as their individual and collective impact as movement directors on landmark, internationally successful productions such as Black Watch and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. This volume reveals the background to, and work of, a major influence on twentieth and twenty-first century performance. Frantic Assembly is the first book to combine: an overview of the history of the company since its foundation in 1994 an analysis of the key ideas underpinning the company’s work a critical commentary on two key productions – Hymns by Chris O’Connell (1999) and Stockholm by Bryony Lavery (2007) a detailed description of a Frantic Assembly workshop, offering an introduction to how the company works. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today’s student.
Franz Boas among the Inuit of Baffin Island, 1883-1884: Journals and Letters
by William Barr Ludger Muller-WilleIn the summer of 1883, Franz Boas, widely regarded as one of the fathers of Inuit anthropology, sailed from Germany to Baffin Island to spend a year among the Inuit of Cumberland Sound. This was his introduction to the Arctic and to anthropological fieldwork. This book presents, for the first time, his letters and journal entries from the year that he spent among the Inuit, providing not only an insightful background to his numerous scientific articles about Inuit culture, but a comprehensive and engaging narrative as well. Using a Scottish whaling station as his base, Boas travelled widely with the Inuit, learning their language, living in their tents and snow houses, sharing their food, and experiencing their joys and sorrows. At the same time he was taking detailed notes and surveying and mapping the landscape and coastline. Ludger Müller-Wille has transcribed his journals and his letters to his parents and fiancé and woven these texts into a sequential narrative. The result is a fascinating study of one of the earliest and most successful examples of participatory observation among the Inuit. Originally published in German in 1994, the text has been translated into English by William Barr, who has also published translations of other important works on the history of the Arctic. Illustrated with some of Boas's own photos and with maps of his field area, Franz Boas among the Inuit of Baffin Island, 1883-1884 is a valuable addition to the historical and anthropological literature on southern Baffin Island.
Franz Boas: Shaping Anthropology and Fostering Social Justice (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology)
by Rosemary Lévy ZumwaltFranz Boas defined the concept of cultural relativism and reoriented the humanities and social sciences away from race science toward an antiracist and anticolonialist understanding of human biology and culture. Franz Boas: Shaping Anthropology and Fostering Social Justice is the second volume in Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt&’s two-part biography of the renowned anthropologist and public intellectual. Zumwalt takes the reader through the most vital period in the development of Americanist anthropology and Boas&’s rise to dominance in the subfields of cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics. Boas&’s emergence as a prominent public intellectual, particularly his opposition to U.S. entry into World War I, reveals his struggle against the forces of nativism, racial hatred, ethnic chauvinism, scientific racism, and uncritical nationalism. Boas was instrumental in the American cultural renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, training students and influencing colleagues such as Melville Herskovits, Zora Neale Hurston, Benjamin Botkin, Alan Lomax, Langston Hughes, and others involved in combating racism and the flourishing Harlem Renaissance. He assisted German and European émigré intellectuals fleeing Nazi Germany to relocate in the United States and was instrumental in organizing the denunciation of Nazi racial science and American eugenics. At the end of his career Boas guided a network of former student anthropologists, who spread across the country to university departments, museums, and government agencies, imprinting his social science more broadly in the world of learned knowledge.Franz Boas is a magisterial biography of Franz Boas and his influence in shaping not only anthropology but also the sciences, humanities, social science, visual and performing arts, and America&’s public sphere during a period of great global upheaval and democratic and social struggle.
Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology)
by Rosemary Lévy ZumwaltRosemary Lévy Zumwalt tells the remarkable story of Franz Boas, one of the leading scholars and public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first book in a two-part biography, Franz Boas begins with the anthropologist’s birth in Minden, Germany, in 1858 and ends with his resignation from the American Museum of Natural History in 1906, while also examining his role in training professional anthropologists from his berth at Columbia University in New York City. Zumwalt follows the stepping-stones that led Boas to his vision of anthropology as a four-field discipline, a journey demonstrating especially his tenacity to succeed, the passions that animated his life, and the toll that the professional struggle took on him. Zumwalt guides the reader through Boas’s childhood and university education, describes his joy at finding the great love of his life, Marie Krackowizer, traces his 1883 trip to Baffin Land, and recounts his efforts to find employment in the United States. A central interest in the book is Boas’s widely influential publications on cultural relativism and issues of race, particularly his book The Mind of Primitive Man (1911), which reshaped anthropology, the social sciences, and public debates about the problem of racism in American society.Franz Boas presents the remarkable life story of an American intellectual giant as told in his own words through his unpublished letters, diaries, and field notes. Zumwalt weaves together the strands of the personal and the professional to reveal Boas’s love for his family and for the discipline of anthropology as he shaped it.
Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy (Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook #24)
by Friedrich Stadler Denis Fisette Guillaume FréchetteThe book discusses Franz Brentano’s impact on Austrian philosophy. It contains both a critical reassessment of Brentano’s place in the development of Austrian philosophy at the turn of the 20th century and a reevaluation of the impact and significance of his philosophy of mind or ‘descriptive psychology’ which was Brentano's most important contribution to contemporary philosophy and to the philosophy in Vienna. In addition, the relation between Brentano, phenomenology, and the Vienna Circle is investigated, together with a related documentation of Brentano's disciple Alfred Kastil (in German). The general part deals with the ongoing discussion of Carnap's "Aufbau" (Vienna Circle Lecture by Alan Chalmers) and the philosophy of mind, with a focus on physicalism as discussed by Carnap and Wittgenstein (Gergely Ambrus). As usual, two reviews of recent publications in the philosophy of mathematics (Paolo Mancosu) and research on Otto Neurath's lifework (Jordi Cat/Adam Tuboly) are included as related research contributions. This book is of interest to students, historians, and philosophers dealing with the history of Austrian and German philosophy in the 19th and 20th century.
Franz Liszt, Volume 1
by Alan WalkerThe first volume in Alan Walker's magisterial biography of Franz Liszt.
Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar
by Oliver Hilmes Stewart SpencerAn engrossing new biography of the musical revolutionary who was the world's first international megastar Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was an anomaly. A virtuoso pianist and electrifying showman, he toured extensively throughout the European continent, bringing sold-out audiences to states of ecstasy while courting scandal with his frequent womanizing. Drawing on new, highly revealing documentary sources, including a veritable treasure trove of previously unexamined material on Liszt's Weimar years, best-selling author Oliver Hilmes shines a spotlight on the extraordinary life and career of this singularly dazzling musical phenomenon. Whereas previous biographies have focused primarily on the composer's musical contributions, Hilmes showcases Liszt the man in all his many shades and personal reinventions: child prodigy, Romantic eccentric, fervent Catholic, actor, lothario, celebrity, businessman, genius, and extravagant show-off. The author immerses the reader in the intrigues of the nineteenth-century European glitterati (including Liszt's powerful patrons, the monstrous Wagner clan) while exploring the true, complex face of the artist and the soul of his music. No other Liszt biography in English is as colorful, witty, and compulsively readable, or reveals as much about the true nature of this extraordinary, outrageous talent.
Franz Rosenzweig's Conversions: World Denial and World Redemption
by Benjamin PollockFranz Rosenzweig's near-conversion to Christianity in the summer of 1913 and his subsequent decision three months later to recommit himself to Judaism is one of the foundational narratives of modern Jewish thought. In this new account of events, Benjamin Pollock suggests that what lay at the heart of Rosenzweig's religious crisis was not a struggle between faith and reason, but skepticism about the world and hope for personal salvation. A close examination of this important time in Rosenzweig's life, the book also sheds light on the full trajectory of his philosophical development.
Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs
by Graham JohnsonThis three-volume boxed set is the definitive work on Franz Schubert’s vocal music with piano. A richly illustrated encyclopedia, these substantial volumes contain more than seven hundred song commentaries with parallel text and translations (by Richard Wigmore), detailed annotations on the songs’ poetic sources, and biographies of one hundred and twenty poets, as well as general articles on accompaniment, tonality, transcriptions, singers, and more. Written by Graham Johnson—celebrated accompanist, author, and the first pianist ever to record all of Schubert’s songs and part-songs—this sumptuous work is a must for performers, scholars, and all lovers of Schubert lieder.
Französische Bücher in deutschen Fürstinnenbibliotheken: Konjunkturen des Französischen 1550‒1800
by Andrea Grewe Helga MeiseDie Beiträge des Bandes verbinden auf innovative Weise genderwissenschaftliche Perspektiven mit bibliotheks- und literaturwissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen und liefern neue Einsichten in die Bedingungen des deutsch-französischen Kulturtransfers zwischen dem 16. und 18. Jahrhundert. Ausgehend vom Konzept der 'Living Library' (Sherman) und der Bibliothek als 'Organismo vivente' (Eco) analysieren die Beiträge einerseits die Prägung der Fürstinnenbibliotheken durch die spezifische Lebenssituation und die dynastische Einbindung ihrer Besitzerinnen; andererseits arbeiten sie gruppen- und zeitspezifische Gründe für das Sammeln von Büchern in französischer Sprache heraus. Die Bibliothek wird damit als ein zentraler Ort des deutsch-französischen Kulturtransfers erkennbar, ein Prozess, der von so unterschiedlichen Faktoren wie der Rezeption calvinistischer Literatur an den reformierten Höfen des Reichs, dem Interesse an moderner französischer Romanliteratur und der Funktion des Französischenals Mittlersprache für Literatur aus anderen Sprachen geprägt wird. Indem die Bibliotheken als Zeugnisse einer 'Literaturgeschichte des Gelesenen' (Paul Raabe) analysiert werden, zeichnet sich ein zeitgenössischer Lektürekanon ab, der den Kanon moderner Literaturgeschichtsschreibung in Frage stellt und die Vorreiterrolle französischer Autorinnen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts in der Lektürepraxis der Zeit sichtbar werden lässt.
Französischer Kuss: Wie sich Amerikaner und Franzosen während des Kalten Krieges verliebten und wieder trennten
by Steve BassettDie Geschichte von Châteauroux ist geprägt von den unauslöschlichen Spuren der amerikanischen Präsenz. Als die ersten Piloten der amerikanischen Armee 1917, kurz vor dem Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs, zur La Martinerie Air Base in Châteauroux kamen, hätten sie zweifellos nie gedacht, dass sie der Beginn einer Liebesbeziehung zwischen Berry und dem Star sein würden, die ein halbes Jahrhundert dauerte -Geschmücktes Spruchband. Als die Amerikaner 50 Jahre später zusammen mit allen anderen NATO-Truppen aus Frankreich abzogen, verursachte dies ein echtes Trauma in der Stadt, sowohl im Geiste als auch im Alltag. Seitdem hat sich vieles verändert. Der Schmerz verging mühsam, bei manchen eitern die Wunden noch, aber das Jahrhundert hat sich geändert. Châteauroux baute sich neu auf und entwickelte sich weiter, um endlich eine wichtige Stadt im neuen Europa zu werden. Steve Bassetts Buch zeigt, dass jenseits des Atlantiks in einer Provinzstadt Frankreichs die Erinnerung an diese amerikanische Zeit sehr langlebig ist, ein Beweis unserer unbestreitbaren Liebe zu dieser großartigen Nation, die die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika sind.
François Blondel: Architecture, Erudition, and the Scientific Revolution (The Classical Tradition in Architecture)
by Anthony GerbinoFirst director of the Académie royale d’architecture, François Blondel established a lasting model for architectural education that helped transform a still largely medieval profession into the one we recognize today. Most well known for his 1676 urban plan of Paris, Blondel is also celebrated as a mathematician, scientist, and scholar. Few figures are more representative of the close affinity between architecture and the "new science" of the seventeenth century. The first full-length study in English to appear on this polymath, this book adds to the scholarship on early modern architectural history and particularly on French classicism under Louis XIV and his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. It studies early modern science and technology, Baroque court culture, and the development of the discipline of architecture.
François Truffaut: The Lost Secret
by Anne Gillain&“Truffaut fans will love this English translation of Gillain&’s work drawing on the psychology and cinematography of the acclaimed filmmaker.&” —Booklist For François Truffaut, the lost secret of cinematic art is in the ability to generate emotion and reveal repressed fantasies through cinematic representation. Available in English for the first time, Anne Gillain&’s François Truffaut: The Lost Secret is considered by many to be the best book on the interpretation of Truffaut&’s films. Taking a psycho-biographical approach, Gillain shows how Truffaut&’s creative impulse was anchored in his personal experience of a traumatic childhood that left him lonely and emotionally deprived. In a series of brilliant, nuanced readings of each of his films, she demonstrates how involuntary memories arising from Truffaut&’s childhood not only furnish a succession of motifs that are repeated from film to film, but also govern every aspect of his mise en scène and cinematic technique. &“Brilliant . . . A delicious reexamination . . . that will make us want to sit down and take in all of Truffaut&’s wonderful filmography at once.&” —PopMatters
François Valentijn’s Description of Ceylon: (Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, 1726) (Hakluyt Society, Second Series)
by S. ArasaratnamFrançois Valentijn's Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien (Old and New East Indies) has for long been regarded as a primary source of information on a number of regions of maritime Asia. It is a veritable encyclopaedia, bringing together an array of facts, trivial and vital, from a wide range of contemporary and earlier literature, acknowledged and unacknowledged, and contains valuable excerpts from contemporary documents of the Dutch East India Company and from private papers. It is indeed a public archive. Despite this historic character of the work, it was never republished in full in a critical edition or made available in English translation. It has therefore remained relatively unknown and little read, except by the specialist wanting to quarry this mine of information for his particular purpose. This edition of Valentijn embraces the part dealing with Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the fifth volume of Old and New East Indies. The island of Ceylon is one of three areas that has received the most detailed treatment in the work, with substantial sections devoted to geography, topography, society, natural history and the record of historical tradition. He also provides an almost contemporaneous account of the Dutch conquest of the island. For his description of Ceylon, Valentijn has had access to a variety of sources - Sinalese, Portuguese and Dutch - and has presented this material to us with his characteristic attention to detail. The volume now published with an introduction and explanatory notes is many things for many people: a geographer's manual, a naturalist's handbook, an anthropologist's collection of caste and custom, an antiquarian's record of tradition and a chronicler's narrative of history. One of the most informative writings on Ceylon is made available, for the first time, to the English-reading public.
Fraser Valley, The
by Charles ClaytonThe 1859 gold rush brought swift change to the Colorado region, but it had little impact on the Fraser Valley. Hemmed in by mountains, hammered by cold winters, and lacking in mineral wealth, the valley resisted all but the hardiest settlers. The railroad arrived in 1904 via a torturous crossing of the Continental Divide, ending the isolation and ushering in a ranching and logging boom. Towns sprang up overnight, and the forest filled with logging camps and sawmills. Hard times in the 1920s and 1930s were tempered by the construction of US Highway 40, a major coast-to-coast route that bisected the valley, as well as the completion of the Moffat Tunnel, a six-mile bore that eased the passage of trains and the diversion of precious valley water. During the 1950s and 1960s, tourism grew in popularity. Logging gave way to lodging, and log cabins morphed into condominiums. By 1970, outdoor recreation dominated the local economy.
Fraternity: In 1968, a visionary priest recruited 20 black men to the College of the Holy Cross and changed their lives and the course of history.
by Diane BradyThe inspiring true story of a group of young men whose lives were changed by a visionary mentor On April 4, 1968, the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., shocked the nation. Later that month, the Reverend John Brooks, a professor of theology at the College of the Holy Cross who shared Dr. King's dream of an integrated society, drove up and down the East Coast searching for African American high school students to recruit to the school, young men he felt had the potential to succeed if given an opportunity. Among the twenty students he had a hand in recruiting that year were Clarence Thomas, the future Supreme Court justice; Edward P. Jones, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature; and Theodore Wells, who would become one of the nation's most successful defense attorneys. Many of the others went on to become stars in their fields as well. In Fraternity, Diane Brady follows five of the men through their college years. Not only did the future president of Holy Cross convince the young men to attend the school, he also obtained full scholarships to support them, and then mentored, defended, coached, and befriended them through an often challenging four years of college, pushing them to reach for goals that would sustain them as adults. Would these young men have become the leaders they are today without Father Brooks's involvement? Fraternity is a triumphant testament to the power of education and mentorship, and a compelling argument for the difference one person can make in the lives of others.From the Hardcover edition.
Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876
by Roy Morris Jr.The bitter 1876 contest between Ohio Republican Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and New York Democratic Governor Samuel Tilden was the most sensational and corrupt presidential election in American history. It was also, in many ways, the final battle of the Civil War. Although Tilden received some 265,000 more popular votes than his opponent, and needed only one more electoral vote for victory, contested returns in three southern states still under Republican-controlled Reconstruction governments ultimately led to Hayes's being declared the winner after four tense months of brazen political intrigue and threats of violence that brought armed troops into the streets of the nation's capital. In this major work of popular history and scholarship, Roy Morris, Jr., takes readers to Philadelphia in America's centennial year, where millions celebrated the nation's industrial might and democratic ideals; to the nation's heartland, where Republicans refought the Civil War by waging a cynical "bloody shirt" campaign to tar the Democrats as the party of disunion and rebellion; and finally into the smoke-filled back rooms of Washington, D.C., where the will of the people was thwarted and the newly won rights of four million former slaves were ignored, leading to nearly ninety years of legalized segregation in the South.
Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff
by Edward J. BalleisenThe United States has always proved an inviting home for boosters, sharp dealers, and outright swindlers. Worship of entrepreneurial freedom has complicated the task of distinguishing aggressive salesmanship from unacceptable deceit, especially on the frontiers of innovation. At the same time, competitive pressures have often nudged respectable firms to embrace deception. As a result, fraud has been a key feature of American business since its beginnings. In this sweeping narrative, Edward Balleisen traces the history of fraud in America—and the evolving efforts to combat it—from the age of P. T. Barnum through the eras of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff. Starting with an early nineteenth-century American legal world of "buyer beware," this unprecedented account describes the slow, piecemeal construction of modern regulatory institutions to protect consumers and investors, from the Gilded Age through the New Deal and the Great Society. It concludes with the more recent era of deregulation, which has brought with it a spate of costly frauds, including the savings and loan crisis, corporate accounting scandals, and the recent mortgage-marketing debacle. By tracing how Americans have struggled to foster a vibrant economy without enabling a corrosive level of fraud, this book reminds us that American capitalism rests on an uneasy foundation of social trust.
Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You
by Paul WaldmanAnalysis of the man and his first administration.
Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology
by Kenneth L. FederFrauds, myths, and supposed mysteries about humanity's past are moving targets for anyone committed to the scientific investigation of human antiquity. It is important for anyone interested in the human past to know, for example, that there is no evidence for a race of giant human beings in antiquity and no broken shards of laser guns under Egyptian pyramids. Debunking such nonsense is fun and useful in its own way, but more important is the process by which we determine that such claims are bunk. <p><p> Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, Tenth Edition, uses interesting--and often humorous--archaeological hoaxes, myths, and mysteries to show how we can truly know things about the past through science. It is not just a book about how we know what isn't true about the human past--it's also about how we know what is true.