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Modern Art & the Remaking of Human Disposition
by Emmelyn Butterfield-RosenHow artists at the turn of the twentieth century broke with traditional ways of posing the bodies of human figures to reflect modern understandings of human consciousness. With this book, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen brings a new formal and conceptual rubric to the study of turn-of-the-century modernism, transforming our understanding of the era’s canonical works. Butterfield-Rosen analyzes a hitherto unexamined formal phenomenon in European art: how artists departed from conventions for posing the human figure that had long been standard. In the decades around 1900, artists working in different countries and across different media began to present human figures in strictly frontal, lateral, and dorsal postures. The effect, both archaic and modern, broke with the centuries-old tradition of rendering bodies in torsion, with poses designed to simulate the human being’s physical volume and capacity for autonomous thought and movement. This formal departure destabilized prevailing visual codes for signifying the existence of the inner life of the human subject. Exploring major works by Georges Seurat, Gustav Klimt, and the dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky— replete with new archival discoveries—Modern Art and the Remaking of Human Disposition combines intensive formal analysis with inquiries into the history of psychology and evolutionary biology. In doing so, it shows how modern understandings of human consciousness and the relation of mind to body were materialized in art through a new vocabulary of postures and poses.
$9 Therapy: Semi-Capitalist Solutions to Your Emotional Problems
by Megan Reid Nick GreeneA tongue-in-cheek collection of the tips, tricks, and recipes that will fix your life without busting your budget.$9 Therapy proves that it’s possible to take self-care seriously without taking yourself too seriously. Self-professed lifestyle gurus Nick Greene and Megan Reid know that sometimes it takes as little as spending nine dollars on an act of self-care to turn your day around. While working their first, low-paying jobs out of school, Nick and Meg learned to spend wisely—and fabulously—and firmly came to believe in the radical potential of simple pleasures. In $9 Therapy, they use their hard-won wisdom to show how small, inexpensive treats can elevate your adulting game: whether it’s mindfully repotting a plant to finally drinking from a decent wine glass (even if you can afford only one), to recipes you’ll actually want to cook, to design tips to make even the tiniest spaces look like Instagram-bait.With enthusiasm and sass, (and featuring 30 colorful illustrations), $9 Therapy brings together the lifehacks and mini-upgrades that encourage you to make your life a little bit easier, a little bit less stressful, a little bit better, a little more loving toward yourself and the humans around you.
The Boeing B-17 (FlightCraft #27)
by Ben SkipperThe B-17 Flying Fortress, a term coined by a Seattle Daily Times report in 1935, was a quantum leap in offensive air power. Designed for a nation whose foreign policy was still deeply isolationist, and an Air Corps whose in-service bomber fleet was dominated by bi-planes, the B-17, with its four engines, huge wingspan, enviable payload – almost double that of contemporary bombers – and all metal construction, ushered in a new age. For an aircraft of its size and relative complexity the B-17’s design and development was heralded by a host of key innovations with the unveiling of the XB-15 (Boeing 294), including engine access crawl ways, enhanced endurance and massive load capacity. Within a year the Y1B-17 or Model 299 had refined ideas from the XB-15 and produced a sleek, attractive-looking aircraft. By 1937 all testing had been completed and the first 12 aircraft were delivered to 2nd Bombardment Group for assessment. At the start of the Second World War the still-new B-17 was just beginning to fill the ranks of US bomber squadron’s and by early 1941 the B-17C, arguably the fastest B-17 built, was flying in RAF Service. The B-17 was soon flying over Europe with the newly-created United States Army Air Forces, as well as taking the fight to the Japanese in the Pacific and to the Axis in the Mediterranean. When production of the B-17 was halted in April 1945, at which point the B-17 had been supplanted by the B-24 in the Pacific, over 12,700 B-17s had been built. The type would bow out as a bomber not long after the war’s end, though a few would soldier on as SB-17 air-sea rescue aircraft. Ultimately the B-17 would fly with 26 countries. This Flight Craft title offers the modeler an exciting selection of photographs, illustrations and showcase examples to help build their own version of this icon of the skies.
1963: How Youth Changed the World with Music, Fashion, and Art
by Robin Morgan Ariel LeveBeginning in London and ricocheting across the Atlantic, 1963: The Year of the Revolution is an oral history of twelve months that changed our world—the Youth Quake movement—and laid the foundations for the generation of today.Ariel Leve and Robin Morgan's oral history is the first book to recount the kinetic story of the twelve months that witnessed a demographic power shift—the rise of the Youth Quake movement, a cultural transformation through music, fashion, politics, theater, and film. Leve and Morgan detail how, for the first time in history, youth became a commercial and cultural force with the power to command the attention of government and religion and shape society.While the Cold War began to thaw, the race into space heated up, feminism and civil rights percolated in politics, and JFK’s assassination shocked the world, the Beatles and Bob Dylan would emerge as poster boys and the prophet of a revolution that changed the world.1963: The Year of the Revolution records, documentary-style, the incredible roller-coaster ride of those twelve months, told through the recollections of some of the period’s most influential figures—from Keith Richards to Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon to Graham Nash, Alan Parker to Peter Frampton, Eric Clapton to Gay Talese, Stevie Nicks to Norma Kamali, and many more.
Cobblestones, Conversations, and Corks: A Son's Discovery of His Italian Heritage
by Giovanni Ruscitti“Giovanni Ruscitti has written a wonderful book of special relevance for all North and South Americans whose ancestors have migrated from Asia, Europe, and Africa. His journey to the land of his forefathers is so meaningful not only because of the discovery of what connects us ‘Americanos’ to the rest of the world but also the journey within. A trip in which we all feel recognized. Bravo maestro!” —Hernando de Soto, finalist for Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and author of Mystery of Capital Amazon #1 Bestseller Cobblestones, Conversations, and Corks is a passionate and deeply moving story about a father-son relationship; a culture rooted in family, food and wine; and an ancestral small town in Central Italy that was left behind after World War II. On November 11, 1943, the Nazis invaded Cansano, forcing its two thousand inhabitants to make a tough decision—fight and be killed or sent to a POW camp, stay behind as servants to the Nazis, or move into the unforgiving mountains of Abruzzo while the Nazis used their village as a home base. Giovanni Ruscitti’s family chose the latter and spent the next few months living in horrendous winter conditions in the rugged mountains. When the war ended, they returned to a village so ravaged by the Nazis that, today, the town has less than two hundred citizens and remains in a dilapidated state. In this memoir, Ruscitti visits Cansano for the first time with his family, including parents Emiliano and Maria. As he walks Cansano’s cobblestones, his father’s stories and life are illuminated by the town piazza, the steep valley, and the surrounding mountains. He relives the tales of his parents’ struggles during World War II, their extreme post-war misery and poverty, their budding romance after, and their decision to immigrate to the US in search of the American Dream. Ruscitti’s adventure is not just an exploration of his homeland but reveals what family, culture, wisdom, and love really means. And what our heritage really tells us about who we are.
Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx: Beuys, Warhol, Klein, Duchamp
by Thierry de DuveJoseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Yves Klein, and Marcel Duchamp form an unlikely quartet, but they each played a singular role in shaping a new avant-garde for the 1960s and beyond. Each of them staged brash, even shocking, events and produced works that challenged the way the mainstream art world operated and thought about itself. Distinguished philosopher Thierry de Duve binds these artists through another connection: the mapping of the aesthetic field onto political economy. Karl Marx provides the red thread tying together these four beautifully written essays in which de Duve treats each artist as a distinct, characteristic figure in that mapping. He sees in Beuys, who imagined a new economic system where creativity, not money, was the true capital, the incarnation of the last of the proletarians; he carries forward Warhol’s desire to be a machine of mass production and draws the consequences for aesthetic theory; he calls Klein, who staked a claim on pictorial space as if it were a commodity, “The dead dealer”; and he reads Duchamp as the witty financier who holds the secret of artistic exchange value. Throughout, de Duve expresses his view that the mapping of the aesthetic field onto political economy is a phenomenon that should be seen as central to modernity in art. Even more, de Duve shows that Marx—though perhaps no longer the “Marxist” Marx of yore—can still help us resist the current disenchantment with modernity’s many unmet promises. An intriguing look at these four influential artists, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx is an absorbing investigation into the many intertwined relationships between the economic and artistic realms.
Material Ecocriticism
by Serenella Iovino Serpil OppermannMaterial Ecocriticism offers new ways to analyze language and reality, human and nonhuman life, mind and matter, without falling into well-worn paths of thinking. Bringing ecocriticism closer to the material turn, the contributions to this landmark volume focus on material forces and substances, the agency of things, processes, narratives and stories, and making meaning out of the world. This broad-ranging reflection on contemporary human experience and expression provokes new understandings of the planet to which we are intimately connected.
The Undefeated: The Oklahoma Sooners and the Greatest Winning Streak in College Football
by Jim DentJim Dent's The Undefeated details the winning and powerful history of the Oklahoma Sooners' run of glory.For three perfect seasons (1954-1956), the Oklahoma Sooners won every football game they played--home or away--and over the course of five years they won 47 straight games. This awesome record was the product of a genius and masterful coach named Bud Wilkinson and the spirited young men he led. The Undefeated will detail all the thrilling action on the field during this record winning streak, but it will also reveal all the behind-the-scenes tumult and pressure swirling around it. Dent presents an absorbing character study of the brilliant, complex coach who engineered it all - Bud Wilkinson, the on-field genius whose starched-shirt public persona hid a man of many secrets and an in-depth look at a state and its people still suffering from a Depression hangover and an identity crisis, who took up the Sooners football banner almost as a religious cause. Through it all, the young men who accomplished this amazing feat shine in vivid life.
Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917–1953
by James von Geldern and Richard StitesThis anthology offers a rich array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, comic routines, and folklore to offer a close look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. Both state-sponsored cultural forms and the unofficial culture that flourished beneath the surface are represented. The focus is on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses. The period covered encompasses the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the mixed economy and culture of the 1920s, the tightly controlled Stalinist 1930s, the looser atmosphere of the Great Patriotic War, and the postwar era ending with the death of Stalin. Much of the material appears here in English for the first time.A companion 45-minute audio tape (ISBN 0-253-32911-6) features contemporaneous performances of fifteen popular songs of the time, with such favorites as "Bublichki," "The Blue Kerchief," and "Katyusha." Russian texts of the songs are included in the book.
The Accompaniment in "Unaccompanied" Bach: Interpreting the Sonatas and Partitas for Violin (Publications of the Early Music Institute)
by Stanley RitchieKnown around the world for his advocacy of early historical performance and as a skilled violin performer and pedagogue, Stanley Ritchie has developed a technical guide to the interpretation and performance of J. S. Bach's enigmatic sonatas and partitas for solo violin. Unlike typical Baroque compositions, Bach's six solos are uniquely free of accompaniment. To add depth and texture to the pieces, Bach incorporated various techniques to bring out a multitude of voices from four strings and one bow, including arpeggios across strings, multiple stopping, opposing tonal ranges, and deft bowing. Published in 1802, over 80 years after its completion in 1720, Bach's manuscript is without expression marks, leaving the performer to freely interpret the dynamics, fingering, bowings, and articulations. Marshaling a lifetime of experience, Stanley Ritchie provides violinists with deep insights into the interpretation and technicalities at the heart of these challenging pieces.
Evolution of Vertebrate Design
by Leonard B. RadinskyThe Evolution of Vertebrate Design is a solid introduction to vertebrate evolution, paleontology, vertebrate biology, and functional, comparative anatomy. Its lucid style also makes it ideal for general readers intrigued by fossil history. Clearly drawn diagrams illustrate biomechanical explanations of the evolution of fins, jaws, joints, and body shapes among vertebrates. A glossary of terms is included. "A luminous text is matched by lucid drawings rationally placed. . . . A great teaching monograph, the book will charm lay readers of fossil history. For virtually every college & public collection."—Scitech Book News
Aldous Huxley: A Biography
by Nicholas MurrayWhen Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963, on the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he was widely considered to be one of the most intelligent and wide-ranging English writers of the twentieth century. Associated in the public mind with his dystopian satire, Brave New World, and experimentation with drugs that preceded the psychedelic, a term he invented, era of the 1960s, Huxley seemed to embody the condition of twentieth-century man in his restless curiosity, his search for meaning in a post-religious age, and his concern about the misuses of science and the future of the planet.But Huxley was born when Queen Victoria was on the British throne. He was the grandson of the great Victorian scientist Thomas Henry Huxley "Darwin's bulldog," and the great-nephew of the great poet and critic Matthew Arnold. Exiled in the Californian sun, he never ceased to think of himself as part of a tradition that could be traced back to the Victorian public intellectuals. This biography of Huxley---the first in thirty years---draws on a substantial amount of unpublished material, as well as numerous interviews with his family and friends. It is a portrait of a daring and iconoclastic novelist; a man hampered by semi-blindness, who spent a restless life in search of personal enlightenment. Nicholas Murray charts Huxley's Bloomsbury years, his surprising and complex relationship with D. H. Lawrence, and his emigration to America in the late 1930s, where he pursued a career as a screenwriter while continuing his fascination with mysticism and religion. Huxley's private life was also unconventional, and this book reveals for the first time the extraordinary story of the ménage à trois including Huxley, his remarkable wife, Maria, and the Bloomsbury socialite and mistress of Clive Bell, Mary Hutchinson.Huxley emerges from this new biography as one of the most intriguing and complex figures of twentieth-century English writing---novelist, poet, biographer, philosopher, social and political thinker. In an era of intense specialization he remained a free-ranging thinker, unconfined by conventional categories, concerned to communicate his insights in ordinary language---a very English intellectual.
The New York Times Living History: The Allied Counteroffensive, 1942–1945 (The New York Times Living History)
by Douglas BrinkleyWorld War II comes alive through the public records and private accounts of the day...We have long relied on historians to sift through the debris of the past and piece together narratives to shape our understanding of events. But it is in the letters, diaries, speeches, song lyrics, newspaper articles, and government papers that history truly comes alive. In The New York Times Living History: World War II: The Allied Counteroffensive, 1942-1945 eminent historian Douglas Brinkley has carefully chosen the critical documents that bring to life the days of the war from the first Allied counteroffensive to the US military formation of the European Theater of Operations (ETO) to V-J Day. His selections span the momentous, such as Eisenhower's address to the troops in preparation for D-Day and Hirohito's surrender on Japanese radio, to the intimate and the obscure. Readers will find one of Tokyo Rose's broadcasts, letters from soldiers on the eve of battle, Ernie Pyle's dispatches from Sicily, and Truman's diary entries in which he wrestles with the decision to drop the A-bomb. Each primary document is accompanied by a relevant piece of New York Times reporting from the period and original text explaining the historical significance of the event in the war's progress. News photos and other images add a strong visual component to this vivid re-creation of history.
The Book on the Book: A Landmark Inquiry into Which Strategies in the Modern Game Actually Work
by Bill FelberDie-hard fanatics will enjoy this comprehensive collection of groundbreaking baseball strategies, analyses, statistics, and studies"Picking up where Michael Lewis left off in Moneyball, he addresses the central questions of risk, reward, and value--on the field and off--and reveals what it takes to win." -John Thorn, editor of Total BaseballThis unique approach to understanding the "tried and true" methodologies of the game of baseball examines conventional elements like the steal, hit and run, and line-up construction. The Book on The Book offers an exciting critique of baseball by placing an actual dollar value on player performance and rating managers based on their on-field moves to determine who are the smartest tacticians.No corner of the ballpark is left unturned as author Bill Felber explores the various methods of team-building, on-field values of players, the role and influence of the general manager in team success, and the importance of park effects. In the vein of the late Leonard Koppett and Bill James, Felber uses mathematical and statistical principles to evaluate the wisdom of standard baseball strategies. Illustrations and a refreshingly engaging style make The Book on The Book the new textbook of baseball analysis.
Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America
by Helen AnnePlant breeders have long sought technologies to extend human control over nature. Early in the twentieth century, this led some to experiment with startlingly strange tools like x-ray machines, chromosome-altering chemicals, and radioactive elements. Contemporary reports celebrated these mutation-inducing methods as ways of generating variation in plants on demand. Speeding up evolution, they imagined, would allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Creating a new food crop or garden flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product. In Evolution Made to Order, Helen Anne Curry traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could intervene in evolution. An immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation, Evolution Made to Order provides vital historical context for current worldwide ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering.
Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me
by Sopan DebA bittersweet and humorous memoir of family—of the silence and ignorance that separate us, and the blood and stories that connect us—from an award-winning New York Times writer and comedian.Approaching his 30th birthday, Sopan Deb had found comfort in his day job as a writer for the New York Times and a practicing comedian. But his stage material highlighting his South Asian culture only served to mask the insecurities borne from his family history. Sure, Deb knew the facts: his parents, both Indian, separately immigrated to North America in the 1960s and 1970s. They were brought together in a volatile and ultimately doomed arranged marriage and raised a family in suburban New Jersey before his father returned to India alone.But Deb had never learned who his parents were as individuals—their ages, how many siblings they had, what they were like as children, what their favorite movies were. Theirs was an ostensibly nuclear family without any of the familial bonds. Coming of age in a mostly white suburban town, Deb’s alienation led him to seek separation from his family and his culture, longing for the tight-knit home environment of his white friends. His desire wasn’t rooted in racism or oppression; it was born of envy and desire—for white moms who made after-school snacks and asked his friends about the girls they liked and the teachers they didn’t. Deb yearned for the same.Deb’s experiences as one of the few minorities covering the Trump campaign, and subsequently as a stand up comedian, propelled him on a dramatic journey to India to see his father—the first step in a life altering journey to bridge the emotional distance separating him from those whose DNA he shared. Deb had to learn to connect with this man he recognized yet did not know—and eventually breach the silence separating him from his mother. As it beautifully and poignantly chronicles Deb’s odyssey, Missed Translations raises questions essential to us all: Is it ever too late to pick up the pieces and offer forgiveness? How do we build bridges where there was nothing before—and what happens to us, to our past and our future, if we don’t?
Fat Boy and the Champagne Salesman: Göring, Ribbentrop, and the Nazi Invasion of Poland
by Rush Loving Jr.Fat Boy and the Champagne Salesman offers a compelling behind-the-scenes exploration of the road to World War II and the invasion of Poland by the Hitler's Third Reich. Focusing on the personal power plays within Hitler's inner circle, author Rush Loving details the struggle for Hitler's approval, long before the battle for Poland had begun. The rivalry was between "Fat Boy," the moniker given to Hermann Göring by his fellow Nazi generals, and "the Champagne Salesman," Joachim von Ribbentrop, nicknamed for his previous career, and it was at the heart of Germany's plans for the expansion of the Reich into Poland. Göring, founder of the Lüftwaffe and the man who oversaw the armaments industry, was convinced that any invasion of Poland would lead to war with England and France, who were committed to its defense. Von Ribbentrop, Hitler's foreign minister, argued that the Allies would stand down and continue their policy of appeasement. Only one would be proved correct. An engrossing and dramatic tale, Fat Boy and the Champagne Salesman shows Göring and Ribbentrop playing a tug-of-war with Hitler's will. Loving's vivid narrative of the struggle between the two advisers lends a new understanding of the events leading to the opening days of World War II.
UFOs Over Nevada: A True History of Extraterrestrial Encounters in the Silver State
by Preston DennettUFO sightings and information from the late 1800s to present day in NevadaComplete history, eyewitness testimony, new cases, startling photographs includedIncludes the inside information and newest developments about Area 51
In Praise of Idleness: A Timeless Essay
by Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell is considered “the Voltaire of his time,” and Bradley Trevor Greive is considered one of the funniest people of his. Russell was a Nobel Laureate, and Greive is a New York Times bestselling author. Together, with Russell bringing the philosophy and Greive bringing the hilarious commentary, this book is a classic. In his celebrated essay, In Praise of Idleness, Russell champions the seemingly incongruous notion that realizing our full potential—and thus enjoying the greatest possible success and happiness—is not accomplished by working harder or smarter, but through harnessing the extraordinary power of idleness. Russell’s penetrating insights and exquisite turns of phrase feel as fresh and relevant today as when they were first written. Arguing that we can achieve far more by doing far less and that traditional wealth accumulation is a form of cultural and moral poverty, Russell demands greater depth from our age of abundant creativity and heralds the next wave of enlightened entrepreneurs.
Kung Fu High School: A Novel
by Ryan Gattis“[An] ultraviolent, dystopian debut novel from Ryan Gattis, the spawn of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Cormier.” —Publishers WeeklyHigh school is brutal, but Jen B. has learned to pick her battles. Except the first one—that one is mandatory. At the Good Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King High School, aka “Kung Fu,” everyone gets beaten to a pulp in their first week. Getting “kicked in” helps Ridley, the drug kingpin who runs the school and everyone in it, maintain order. He's the reason that 99.5 percent of the students know some form of martial art, and why they suit up in body armor and blades before class.Jen’s life is savage but simple until the day her cousin Jimmy, a world-famous kung fu champion, shows up. Everyone at Kung Fu wants a piece of him, especially Ridley, but Jimmy’s made a promise never to fight again—a promise that sends the whole school hurtling toward a colossal clash, ending in an epic bloody showdown.Ryan Gattis’s dystopian satire, Kung Fu High School, is a cult classic in the making—a darkly comic, gleefully graphic, barbaric opera about loyalty, survival, and the horrors of high school, which earned comparison with the works of such icons as Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Price, and Anthony Burgess.
Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation of Power (Women In Culture And Society Ser.)
by Suzanne G. CusickA &“priceless&” study of the life and career of the Renaissance-era Italian who was the first woman to have composed an opera (Gender & History).&“Extraordinary in its breadth, its detail, its insight, and its worth to all participants in early music…. Its contribution is not limited to the musical world, however, as Cusick&’s remarkable command and analysis of her material…has immense value for scholars engaged in cultural studies, performance studies, history, politics, or the study of difference.&”—Renaissance Quarterly A contemporary of Shakespeare and Monteverdi, and a colleague of Galileo and Artemisia Gentileschi at the Medici court, Francesca Caccini was a dominant musical figure there for thirty years. Dazzling listeners with the transformative power of her performances and the sparkling wit of the music she composed for more than a dozen court theatricals, Caccini is best remembered today as the first woman to have composed opera. Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court reveals for the first time how this multitalented composer established a fully professional musical career at a time when virtually no other women were able to achieve comparable success. Suzanne G. Cusick argues that Caccini&’s career depended on the usefulness of her talents to the political agenda of Grand Duchess Christine de Lorraine, Tuscany&’s de facto regent from 1606 to 1636. Drawing on Classical and feminist theory, Cusick shows how the music Caccini made for the Medici court sustained the culture that enabled Christine&’s power, thereby also supporting the sexual and political aims of its women. In bringing Caccini&’s surprising story so vividly to life, Cusick ultimately illuminates how music making functioned in early modern Italy as a significant medium for the circulation of power.
Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century
by Karen A. Rader Victoria E.M. CainRich with archival detail and compelling characters, Life on Display uses the history of biological exhibitions to analyze museums’ shifting roles in twentieth-century American science and society. Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain chronicle profound changes in these exhibitions—and the institutions that housed them—between 1910 and 1990, ultimately offering new perspectives on the history of museums, science, and science education. Rader and Cain explain why science and natural history museums began to welcome new audiences between the 1900s and the 1920s and chronicle the turmoil that resulted from the introduction of new kinds of biological displays. They describe how these displays of life changed dramatically once again in the 1930s and 1940s, as museums negotiated changing, often conflicting interests of scientists, educators, and visitors. The authors then reveal how museum staffs, facing intense public and scientific scrutiny, experimented with wildly different definitions of life science and life science education from the 1950s through the 1980s. The book concludes with a discussion of the influence that corporate sponsorship and blockbuster economics wielded over science and natural history museums in the century’s last decades. A vivid, entertaining study of the ways science and natural history museums shaped and were shaped by understandings of science and public education in the twentieth-century United States, Life on Display will appeal to historians, sociologists, and ethnographers of American science and culture, as well as museum practitioners and general readers.
A History of Modern Britain
by Andrew MarrA History of Modern Britain confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification. In each decade, political leaders think they know what they are doing, but find themselves confounded. Every time, the British people turn out to be stroppier and harder to herd than predicted. Throughout, Britain is a country on the edge – first of invasion, then of bankruptcy, then on the vulnerable front line of the Cold War and later in the forefront of the great opening up of capital and migration now reshaping the world. This history follows all the political and economic stories, but deals too with comedy, cars, the war against homosexuals, Sixties anarchists, oil-men and punks, Margaret Thatcher's wonderful good luck, political lies and the true heroes of British theatre.
Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam
by Asra NomaniAs President Bush is preparing to invade Iraq, Wall Street Journal correspondent Asra Nomani embarks on a dangerous journey from Middle America to the Middle East to join more than two million fellow Muslims on the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required of all Muslims once in their lifetime. Mecca is Islam's most sacred city and strictly off limits to non-Muslims. On a journey perilous enough for any American reporter, Nomani is determined to take along her infant son, Shibli -- living proof that she, an unmarried Muslim woman, is guilty of zina, or "illegal sex." If she is found out, the puritanical Islamic law of the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia may mete out terrifying punishment. But Nomani discovers she is not alone. She is following in the four-thousand-year-old footsteps of another single mother, Hajar (known in the West as Hagar), the original pilgrim to Mecca and mother of the Islamic nation.Each day of her hajj evokes for Nomani the history of a different Muslim matriarch: Eve, from whom she learns about sin and redemption; Hajar, the single mother abandoned in the desert who teaches her about courage; Khadijah, the first benefactor of Islam and trailblazer for a Muslim woman's right to self-determination; and Aisha, the favorite wife of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam's first female theologian. Inspired by these heroic Muslim women, Nomani returns to America to confront the sexism and intolerance in her local mosque and to fight for the rights of modern Muslim women who are tired of standing alone against the repressive rules and regulations imposed by reactionary fundamentalists.Nomani shows how many of the freedoms enjoyed centuries ago have been erased by the conservative brand of Islam practiced today, giving the West a false image of Muslim women as veiled and isolated from the world. Standing Alone in Mecca is a personal narrative, relating the modern-day lives of the author and other Muslim women to the lives of those who came before, bringing the changing face of women in Islam into focus through the unique lens of the hajj. Interweaving reportage, political analysis, cultural history, and spiritual travelogue, this is a modern woman's jihad, offering for Westerners a never-before-seen look inside the heart of Islam and the emerging role of Muslim women.
The RBG Workout: How She Stays Strong . . . and You Can Too!
by Bryant JohnsonA fun, fully illustrated exercise book that details Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s workout, written by her trainer.A Supremely Good Exercise Program!How does Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the Supreme Court’s favorite octogenarians, stay so active and energetic? She owes it in part to the twice-weekly workouts she does with her personal trainer, Bryant Johnson, a man she’s called “the most important person” in her life (after her family, of course). Now, with The RBG Workout, you can exercise alongside Justice Ginsburg and Bryant. Whether you want to keep up with one of America’s most admired women or just reach your own fitness goals, this book is for you. Case closed.