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Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903
by Anthony P. HatchThe Iroquois Theater in Chicago, boasting every modern convenience, advertised itself proudly as “absolutely fireproof” when it opened in November, 1903. Mr. Bluebeard, a fairy tale musical imported from the Drury Lane Theatre in London was the opening production. And leading the troupe of nearly 400 was one of the most popular comedians of the time, Eddie Foy. None of the many socialites and journalists who flocked to the shows were aware that city building inspectors and others had been bribed to certify that the theater was in good shape. In fact, the building was without a sprinkler system or even basic fire fighting equipment; there was no backstage telephone, fire alarm box, exit signs, a real asbestos curtain or ushers trained for emergencies. A month later, at a Christmas week matinee, the theater was illegally overcrowded with a standing room only crowd of mostly women and children. During the second act, a short circuit exploded a back stage spotlight touching off a small fire which spread in minutes throughout the theater. Panic set in as people clawed at each other to get out, but they could not find the exits, which were draped. The doorways, locked against gate-crashers, were designed to open in instead of out, creating almost impossible egress. The tragedy, which claimed more than 600 lives, became a massive scandal and it remains the worst theater fire in the history of the country.
Tinderbox: The Untold Story Of The Up Stairs Lounge Fire And The Rise Of Gay Liberation
by Robert W. FieselerAn essential work of American civil rights history, Tinderbox mesmerizingly reconstructs the 1973 fire that devastated New Orleans’ subterranean gay community. <P>Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. <P>Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue- collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community. <P>The aftermath was no less traumatic—families ashamed to claim loved ones, the Catholic Church refusing proper burial rights, the city impervious to the survivors’ needs—revealing a world of toxic prejudice that thrived well past Stonewall. Yet the impassioned activism that followed proved essential to the emergence of a fledgling gay movement. <P>Tinderbox restores honor to a forgotten generation of civil-rights martyrs.
Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers
by James Andrew MillerTinderbox tells the exclusive, explosive, uninhibited true story of HBO and how it burst onto the American scene and screen to detonate a revolution and transform our relationship with television forever. The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, The Wire, Succession…HBO has long been the home of epic shows, as well as the source for brilliant new movies, news-making documentaries, and controversial sports journalism. By thinking big, trashing tired formulas, and killing off cliches long past their primes, HBO shook off the shackles of convention and led the way to a bolder world of content, opening the door to all that was new, original, and worthy of our attention. In Tinderbox, award-winning journalist James Andrew Miller uncovers a bottomless trove of secrets and surprises, revealing new conflicts, insights, and analysis. As he did to great acclaim with SNL in Live from New York; with ESPN in Those Guys Have All the Fun; and with talent agency CAA in Powerhouse, Miller continues his record of extraordinary access to the most important voices, this time speaking with talents ranging from Abrams (J. J.) to Zendaya, as well as every single living president of HBO—and hundreds of other major players.Over the course of more than 750 interviews with key sources, Miller reveals how fraught HBO’s journey has been, capturing the drama and the comedy off-camera and inside boardrooms as HBO created and mobilized a daring new content universe, and, in doing so, reshaped storytelling and upended our entertainment lives forever.
Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out
by Sean P. GriffinThe first book to address the interaction between the Walt Disney Company and the gay communityFrom its Magic Kingdom theme parks to its udderless cows, the Walt Disney Company has successfully maintained itself as the brand name of conservative American family values. But the Walt Disney Company has also had a long and complex relationship to the gay and lesbian community that is only now becoming visible. In Tinker Belles and Evil Queens, Sean Griffin traces the evolution of this interaction between the company and gay communities, from the 1930s use of Mickey Mouse as a code phrase for gay to the 1990s "Gay Nights" at the Magic Kingdom. Armed with first-person accounts from Disney audiences, Griffin demonstrates how Disney animation, live-action films, television series, theme parks, and merchandise provide varied motifs and characteristics that readily lend themselves to use by gay culture. But Griffin delves further to explore the role of gays and lesbians within the company, through an examination of the background of early studio personnel, an account of sexual activism within the firm, and the story of the company's own concrete efforts to give recognition to gay voices and desires. The first book to address the history of the gay community and Disney, Tinker Belles and Evil Queens broadly examines the ambiguous legacy of how modern consumerism and advertising have affected the ways lesbians and gay men have expressed their sexuality. Disney itself is shown as sensitive to gay and lesbian audiences, while exploiting those same audiences as a niche market with strong buying power. Finally, Griffin demonstrates how queer audiences have co-opted Disney products for themselves-and in turn how Disney's corporate strategies have influenced our very definitions of sexuality.
Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present
by Hank StueverA heartfelt, hilarious look at the evolution of a half-trillion-dollar American holidayHank Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas, a suburb at once all-American and completely itself, to tell the story of the nation’s most over-the-top celebration: Christmas. Stuever starts the narrative as so many start the Christmas season: standing in line with the people waiting to purchase flat-screen TVs on Black Friday. From there he follows three of Frisco's true holiday believers as they navigate through the Nativity and all its attendant crises. Tammie Parnell, an eternally optimistic suburban mom, is the proprietor of "Two Elves with a Twist," a company that decorates other people's big houses for Christmas. Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski own that house every town has: the one with the visible-from-space, jaw-dropping Christmas lights. And single mother Carol Cavazos just hopes that the life-affirming moments of Christmas might overcome the struggles of the rest of the year. Stuever's portraits of the happy, mega-churchy, shop-until-you-drop community in Tinsel are revealing and riotously funny, showing how our ancient rituals of celebration have survived—and succumbed to—the test of time.
The Tiny Bee That Hovers at the Center of the World
by David SearcyAn ethereal meditation on longing, loss, and time, sweeping from the highways of Texas to the canals of Mars—by the acclaimed essayist and author of Shame and Wonder David Searcy&’s writing is enchanting and peculiar, obsessed with plumbing the mysteries and wonders of our everyday world, the beauty and cruelty of time, and nothing less than what he calls &“the whole idea of meaning.&” In The Tiny Bee That Hovers at the Center of the World, he leads the reader across the landscapes of his extraordinary mind, moving from the decaying architectural wonder that is the town of Arcosanti, Arizona, to driving the vast, open Texas highway in his much-abused college VW Beetle, to the mysterious, canal-riddled Martian landscape that famed astronomer Percival Lowell first set eyes on, via his telescope, in 1894. Searcy does not come at his ideas directly, but rather digresses and meditates and analyzes until some essential truth has been illuminated—and it is in that journey that the beauty is found.
Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Action and Culture
by Gary Alan FineIf all politics is local, then so is almost everything else, argues sociologist Gary Alan Fine. We organize our lives by relying on those closest to us—family members, friends, work colleagues, team mates, and other intimates—to create meaning and order. In this thoughtful and wide-ranging book, Fine argues that the basic building blocks of society itself are forged within the boundaries of such small groups, the "tiny publics" necessary for a robust, functioning social order at all levels. Action, meaning, authority, inequality, organization, and institutions all have their roots in small groups. Yet for the past twenty-five years social scientists have tended to ignore the power of groups in favor of an emphasis on organizations, societies, or individuals. Based on over thirty-five years of Fine's own ethnographic research across an array of small groups, Tiny Publics presents a compelling new theory of the pivotal role of small groups in organizing social life. No social system can thrive without flourishing small groups. They provide havens in an impersonal world, where faceless organizations become humanized. Taking examples from such diverse worlds as Little League baseball teams, restaurant workers, high school debate teams, weather forecasters, and political volunteers, Fine demonstrates how each group has its own unique culture, or idioculture—the system of knowledge, beliefs, behavior, and customs that define and hold a group together. With their dense network of relationships, groups serve as important sources of social and cultural capital for their members. The apparently innocuous jokes, rituals, and nicknames prevalent within Little League baseball teams help establish how teams function internally and how they compete with other teams. Small groups also provide a platform for their members to engage in broader social discourse and a supportive environment to begin effecting change in larger institutions. In his studies of mushroom collectors and high school debate teams, Fine demonstrates the importance of stories that group members tell each other about their successes and frustrations in fostering a strong sense of social cohesion. And Fine shows how the personal commitment political volunteers bring to their efforts is reinforced by the close-knit nature of their work, which in turn has the power to change larger groups and institutions. In this way, the actions and debates begun in small groups can eventually radiate outward to affect every level of society. Fine convincingly demonstrates how small groups provide fertile ground for the seeds of civic engagement. Outcomes often attributed to large-scale social forces originate within such small-scale domains. Employing rich insights from both sociology and social psychology, as well as vivid examples from a revealing array of real-work groups, Tiny Publics provides a compelling examination of the importance of small groups and of the rich vitality they bring to social life. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust
Tiny Revolutions in Russia: Twentieth Century Soviet and Russian History in Anecdotes and Jokes (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe #Vol. 3)
by Bruce AdamsThis book presents a large collection of anecdotes and jokes from different periods of the 20th century. Anecdotes and jokes were a hidden form of discursive communication in the Soviet era, lampooning official practices and acting as a confidential form of self-affirmation. They were not necessarily anti-Soviet, by their very nature both criticising existing reality and acting as a form of acquiescence. Above all they provide invaluable insights into everyday life, and the attitudes and concerns of ordinary people. The book also includes anecdotes and jokes from the post-Soviet period, when ordinary people in Russia continued to have to cope with rather grim reality, and the compiler provides extensive introductory and explanatory matter to set the material in context.
Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement
by Jennifer L. HollandTiny You tells the story of one of the most successful political movements of the twentieth century: the grassroots campaign against legalized abortion. While Americans have rapidly changed their minds about sex education, pornography, arts funding, gay teachers, and ultimately gay marriage, opposition to legalized abortion has only grown. As other socially conservative movements have lost young activists, the pro-life movement has successfully recruited more young people to its cause. Jennifer L. Holland explores why abortion dominates conservative politics like no other cultural issue. Looking at anti-abortion movements in four western states since the 1960s—turning to the fetal pins passed around church services, the graphic images exchanged between friends, and the fetus dolls given to children in school—she argues that activists made fetal life feel personal to many Americans. Pro-life activists persuaded people to see themselves in the pins, images, and dolls they held in their hands and made the fight against abortion the primary bread-and-butter issue for social conservatives. Holland ultimately demonstrates that the success of the pro-life movement lies in the borrowed logic and emotional power of leftist activism.
The Tio Kingdom of The Middle Congo: 1880-1892 (International African Institute Ser.)
by Jan VansinaOriginally published in 1973, this book reconstructs the political and economic organization and the social life of the Tio kingdom at the end of the 19th century by means of a critical synthesis of documentary and ethnographic data. Based on a detailed study of rich docuemntary sources and fieldwork, it analyses the persistent features of Tio social organization and political relations as well as the extensive economic changes associated with the development and later decline of caravan trading at Stanley Pool. It is fully illustrated with maps, tables and diagrams. This book shows the importance for both anthropoligical theory and historical interpreation of obtaining comprehensive data on the state of a particular society at a given time.
Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt
by Orisanmi BurtonA radical reinterpretation of "Attica," the revolutionary 1970s uprising that galvanized abolitionist movements and transformed prisons. Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. With this book, Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls. Burton goes beyond the state records that other histories have relied on for the story of Attica and expands that archive, drawing on oral history and applying Black radical theory in ways that center the intellectual and political goals of the incarcerated people who led the struggle. Packed with little-known insights from the prison movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army, Tip of the Spear promises to transform our understanding of prisons—not only as sites of race war and class war, of counterinsurgency and genocide, but also as sources of defiant Black life, revolutionary consciousness, and abolitionist possibility.
Tippecanoe and Tyler Too: Famous Slogans and Catchphrases in American History
by Jan R. Van MeterIn individual entries on slogans and catchphrases from the early seventeenth to the late twentieth century, Jan Van Meter reveals that each one is a living, malleable entity that has profoundly shaped and continues to influence our public culture. From John Winthrop's "We shall be as a city upon a hill" to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" and Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall", each of Van Meter's selections emerges as a memory device for a larger political or cultural story. Taken together in Van Meter's able hands, these famous slogans and catchphrases give voice to our common history even as we argue about where it should lead us.
Tippecanoe County and the 1913 Flood (Disaster)
by Pete Bill Arnold L. SweetHeralding the coming spring, the weather forecast promised a warm and sunny Easter in 1913. Little did the citizens of Tippecanoe County realize that a furious deluge would cause the Wabash River to swell to an ungovernable and lethal height. Bridges collapsed, whole buildings came unmoored from their foundations and washed away and heroic rescue attempts saved lives and cost others. Using previously untold stories and images never before seen in print, Pete Bill and Arnold Sweet unfold the human drama of communities suddenly cut off from the rest of the world and facing a natural disaster that gripped twenty states.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell'A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person thinks about the world around him' Michael LewisIn this brilliant and original book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analyses the 'tipping point', that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.'Hip and hopeful, THE TIPPING POINT is like the idea it describes: concise, elegant but packed with social power. A book for anyone who cares about how society works and how we can make it better' George Stephanopoulos
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell'A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person thinks about the world around him' Michael LewisIn this brilliant and original book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analyses the 'tipping point', that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.'Hip and hopeful, THE TIPPING POINT is like the idea it describes: concise, elegant but packed with social power. A book for anyone who cares about how society works and how we can make it better' George Stephanopoulos
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell'A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person thinks about the world around him' Michael LewisIn this brilliant and original book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analyses the 'tipping point', that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.'Hip and hopeful, THE TIPPING POINT is like the idea it describes: concise, elegant but packed with social power. A book for anyone who cares about how society works and how we can make it better' George Stephanopoulos
Tirana Modern: Biblio-Ethnography on the Margins of Europe
by Matthew RosenGuided by the thesis that literature can transform social reality, Tirana Modern draws on ethnographic and historical material to examine the public culture of reading in modern Albania. As its starting point, this book asks: How has Albanian literature and literary translation shaped social action during the longue durée of Albanian modernity?Drawing on material collected through fieldwork with a community of readers, writers, and translators attached to the independent Albanian publisher Pika pa sipërfaqe (Point without Surface), Tirana Modern provides a tightly focused ethnography of literary culture in Albania that brings into relief the more general dialectic between social imagination and social reality as mediated by reading and literature.
Tirano Ou Cidadão
by Guido Galeano Vega Jéssica DondoniEscrevo este livro com muita humildade em meu coração, sou uma pessoa adulta, com todas experiências do meu meio século de vida, tenho passado tantas coisas, desde minha infância, em um país arrasado por guerras, uma nação que desde sua origem tem experimentado o abuso de exploradores, de agressores, de oportunistas e violadores, que tem suportado a tirania de um dos piores ditadores da América Latina, tem sofrido discriminação e humilhação por parte dos países vizinhos, que o mutilaram. Nações cujos cidadãos, silenciosamente, tem sofrido a tortura de serem governados por mentirosos, oportunistas, ladrões, cínicos, gente sem escrúpulo, sem sensibilidade e essencialmente sem respeito aos direitos de seus semelhantes. Como uma pessoa que tem se adaptado às mudanças globais da tecnologia promissora de comunicação e a usou para adquirir conhecimentos gerais sobre as sociedades modernas e suas histórias. Este livro é a contribuição de um cidadão comum, sem influências políticas ou sociais, em um país onde, em tais círculos, o dinheiro está em primeiro e depois os valores e direitos humanos. Sem pretender, de maneira alguma, que este livro seja considerado de caráter político ou ideológico, apenas com a intenção de compartilhar um profundo sentimento de preocupação com o destino final da humanidade.
Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism
by Catherine Waldby Robert MitchellAs new medical technologies are developed, more and more human tissues--such as skin, bones, heart valves, embryos, and stem cell lines--are stored and distributed for therapeutic and research purposes. The accelerating circulation of human tissue fragments raises profound social and ethical concerns related to who donates or sells bodily tissue, who receives it, and who profits--or does not--from the transaction. Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell survey the rapidly expanding economies of exchange in human tissue, explaining the complex questions raised and suggesting likely developments. Comparing contemporary tissue economies in the United Kingdom and United States, they explore and complicate the distinction that has dominated practice and policy for several decades: the distinction between tissue as a gift to be exchanged in a transaction separate from the commercial market and tissue as a commodity to be traded for profit. Waldby and Mitchell pull together a prodigious amount of research--involving policy reports and scientific papers, operating manuals, legal decisions, interviews, journalism, and Congressional testimony--to offer a series of case studies based on particular forms of tissue exchange. They examine the effect of threats of contamination--from HIV and other pathogens--on blood banks' understandings of the gift/commodity relationship; the growth of autologous economies, in which individuals bank their tissues for their own use; the creation of the United Kingdom's Stem Cell bank, which facilitates the donation of embryos for stem cell development; and the legal and financial repercussions of designating some tissues "hospital waste. " They also consider the impact of different models of biotechnology patents on tissue economies and the relationship between experimental therapies to regenerate damaged or degenerated tissues and calls for a legal, for-profit market in organs. Ultimately, Waldby and Mitchell conclude that scientific technologies, the globalization of tissue exchange, and recent anthropological, sociological, and legal thinking have blurred any strict line separating donations from the incursion of market values into tissue economies.
Tit-For-Tat Media: The Contentious Bodies and Sex Imagery of Political Activism
by Katrien JacobsThis book examines the visual-sexual turn in social media discourses in the field of online activism with a particular focus on the extraordinary protest years of 2018–2020. Presenting a socially engaged theory of "tit-for-tat media" and including case-studies on activist movements such as the Euro-American alt-right, the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and revolutionary artists in China, this study reveals how visual cultures, including gendered or sexualized imagery, are utilized to influence public perception. By presenting in-depth explorations of online ethnography, interviews with activists and studies of the political histories and urban protests-environments, the volume uncovers how local artists, netizens and citizens are using media and digital imagery in contemporary activism. Covering a broad spectrum of social media content, from hyper-cute manga and cartoons to satirical pornography and sexualized hate-speech, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, political communication, sexuality and gender studies.
Titanic: 'Iceberg Ahead'
by James W. BancroftUsing a unique approach, the author explores the disaster through the lives of fifty people linked to the sinking, from all walks of life and geographical regions.To have sailed on ‘the voyage of the century’ aboard White Star Line’s RMS Titanic – described at the time as ‘a floating palace’ – was like being one of the first passengers to fly on Concorde. On 10 April 1912, people from all walks of life began embarking on Titanic, then the largest ship afloat, for what was to be the trip of a lifetime on the ship’s maiden voyage across the north Atlantic. Many were looking forward to starting new lives in the United States. However, just before midnight on Sunday, 14 April 1912, Titanic’s crew began to send out distress signals stating, ‘We have struck an iceberg.' The liner had been steaming at speed when it collided with an enormous iceberg which stripped off her bilge under the waterline for more than 100 yards, opened up five of the front compartments and flooded the coal bunker servicing one of the boilers. The damage was fatal, and some three hours after the disaster began to unfold the last visible part of Titanic slipped beneath the waves. There were only sixteen lifeboats and four collapsible dinghies – which was completely insufficient for the number of passengers making the crossing. As a consequence, more than 1,500 passengers and crew died: two out of every three people onboard perished. Much has been written about the Titanic disaster, and it has been the subject matter for several films. The author is well-known for his depth of research and his attention to detail, and in a new style of format, he has selected fifty people involved in the disaster, and by using their specific eyewitness accounts he has managed to make the confusing situation much clearer, making it possible for the reader to experience the dreadful events as they unfolded. The book also includes biographical tributes to the fifty people, who came from all walks of life and geographical regions, telling who they were, their experiences during the disaster, and what happened to those who were fortunate enough to survive.
The Titanic and the City of Widows It Left Behind: The Forgotten Victims of the Fatal Voyage
by Julie Cook“Harrowing and emotional . . . A tribute to the enduring power of family. The story of the disaster’s widows uplifts and devastates in equal measure.” —Gareth Russell, author of The Ship of DreamsWhen the Titanic foundered in April 1912, the world’s focus was on the tragedy of the passengers who lost their lives. Ever since, in films, dramatizations, adaptations and books, the focus has mostly continued to be on the ones who died.The Titanic and the City of Widows It Left Behind focuses on another group of people—the widows and children of the crew who perished on board.Author Julie Cook’s great-grandfather was a stoker who died on the Titanic. Her great-grandmother had to raise five children with no breadwinner.This book focuses on Emily and the widows like her who had to fight for survival through great hardship, while still grieving for the men they loved who’d died on the ship. Using original archive sources and with accounts from descendants of crew who also lost their lives, the book asks how these women survived through abject poverty and grief—and why their voices have been silent for so long.“The sinking of the Titanic has produced a wealth of books, articles, films and TV documentaries, all of which have given very little thought to the dependents and friends of those who lost their lives in this ocean tragedy. A moving and involving story that corrects this neglect, told by a descendant of a Titanic widow . . . How most of them survived the grief and grinding hardship is a story worth the telling, as are the stories of those who did not survive the crushing pressures.” —Firetrench
The Titanic Disaster: Omens, Mysteries & Misfortunes of the Doomed Liner
by James W. BancroftIt was on Wednesday, 10 April 1912, that the imposing bulk of the RMS Titanic slipped her berth, and, to great fanfare, headed out into the Solent at the start of her maiden voyage. By all accounts, the liner was at the time the largest man-made object ever to move on water. The space her decks created allowed her designers to introduce previously unseen levels of luxury. In first class, for example, there were many new features such as squash courts, a Turkish bath, a gymnasium, a barber shop and even the first swimming pool built on board a ship. There was also the bold claim by its builders that Titanic was ‘practically unsinkable’. Sadly, just four days later, this assertion was found wanting. At 23.40 hours on the evening of 14 April, Titanic struck an iceberg. In less than three hours she had slipped beneath the waves. While the liner’s loss has been the subject of numerous films, documentaries and publications in the years that followed, in this book the author James W. Bancroft asks if the RMS Titanic had been doomed to a watery grave even before it sailed? Certainly, many people experienced feelings of foreboding about the ship, and there were many strange omens and unexplained events surrounding its construction and maiden voyage. A novel written many years before Titanic was built mirrored almost exactly the details of the disaster, and the well-known spiritualist, W.T. Stead, wrote a story of a similar nature. As a passenger on the ship, he seemed to have accepted his fate and did not try to save himself. Even animals seem to have sensed danger, such as the dog which tried to stop its owner from traveling to board the vessel, and Titanic’s cat had kittens and was seen taking them all off the liner before it sailed. The voyage was fatefully delayed for three weeks, and at least fifty travelers had forebodings about the ‘Ghost Ship’, some of whom missed the sailing or refused to board. Following years of research, James has uncovered some 100 fascinating stories concerning omens and premonitions of people who sailed – or in fact decided not to – on the ill-fated liner. This is the first time that all of these incidents have been brought together. Together they provide an unusual insight into the Titanic disaster.
Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education (Critical Moments in American History)
by Elizabeth Kaufer Busch William E. ThroThis book examines the history and evolution of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funding. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and William Thro illuminate the ways in which the interpretation and implementation of Title IX have been transformed over time to extend far beyond the law's relatively narrow statutory text. The analysis considers the impact of Title IX on athletics, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and, for a time, transgender discrimination. Combining legal and cultural perspectives and supported by primary documents, Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education offers a balanced and insightful narrative of interest to anyone studying the history of sex discrimination, educational policy, and the law in the contemporary United States.
The Title of Totonicapán
by Stephen HoustonThis work is the first English translation of the complete text of the Title of Totonicapán, one of the most important documents composed by the K’iche’ Maya in the highlands of Guatemala, second only to the Popol Vuh. The original document was completed in 1554, only a few decades after the Spanish Conquest of the K’iche’ people in 1524. This volume contains a wholly new translation from the original K’iche’ Maya text, based on the oldest known manuscript copy, rediscovered by Robert Carmack in 1973. The Title of Totonicapán is a land title written by surviving members of the K’iche’ Maya nobility, a branch of the Maya that dominated the highlands of western Guatemala prior to the Spanish invasion in 1524, and it was duly signed by the ruling lords of all three major K’iche’ lineages—the Kaweqib’, the Nijayib’, and the Ajaw K’iche’s. Titles of this kind were relatively common for Maya communities in the Guatemalan highlands in the first century after the Spanish Conquest as a means of asserting land rights and privileges for its leaders. Like the Popol Vuh, the Title of Totonicapán is written in the elevated court language of the early Colonial period and eloquently describes the mythic origins and history of the K’iche’ people. For the most part, the Title of Totonicapán agrees with the Popol Vuh’s version of K’iche’ history and cosmology, providing a complementary account that attests traditions that must have been widely known and understood. But in many instances the Totonicapán document is richer in detail and departs from the Popol Vuh’s more cursory description of history, genealogy, and political organization. In other instances, it contradicts assertions made by the authors of the Popol Vuh, perhaps a reflection of internal dissent and jealousy between rival lineages within the K’iche’ hierarchy. It also contains significant passages of cosmology and history that do not appear in any other highland Maya text. This volume makes a comprehensive and updated edition of the Title of Totonicapán accessible to scholars and students in history, anthropology, archaeology, and religious studies in Latin America, as well as those interested in Indigenous literature and Native American/Indigenous studies more broadly. It is also a stand-alone work of Indigenous literature that provides additional K’iche’ perspectives, enhancing the reading of other colonial Maya sources.