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Writing the Story of Texas
by Patrick L. Cox Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr.The history of the Lone Star state is a narrative dominated by larger-than-life personalities and often-contentious legends, presenting interesting challenges for historians. Perhaps for this reason, Texas has produced a cadre of revered historians who have had a significant impact on the preservation (some would argue creation) of our state's past. An anthology of biographical essays, Writing the Story of Texas pays tribute to the scholars who shaped our understanding of Texas's past and, ultimately, the Texan identity. Edited by esteemed historians Patrick Cox and Kenneth Hendrickson, this collection includes insightful, cross-generational examinations of pivotal individuals who interpreted our history. On these pages, the contributors chart the progression from Eugene C. Barker's groundbreaking research to his public confrontations with Texas political leaders and his fellow historians. They look at Walter Prescott Webb's fundamental, innovative vision as a promoter of the past and Ruthe Winegarten's efforts to shine the spotlight on minorities and women who made history across the state. Other essayists explore Llerena Friend delving into an ambitious study of Sam Houston, Charles Ramsdell courageously addressing delicate issues such as racism and launching his controversial examination of Reconstruction in Texas, Robert Cotner-an Ohio-born product of the Ivy League-bringing a fresh perspective to the field, and Robert Maxwell engaged in early work in environmental history.
Writing the War
by Anne Kiley Thomas Pellechia David KileyAs expansive as it is personal, this chronicle of World War II is a firsthand account by a journalist and the woman he would marry of the dramatic events that engulfed the world in the middle of the twentieth century. The correspondence between Charles Kiley and Billee Gray also tells the poignant tale of two young people in love but forced apart by the circumstances of war. Edited by Charles and Billee's daughter, son, and son-in-law, this never-before-published compilation of letters is a striking example of the heroic, call-to-duty spirit that characterized "the greatest generation. " Charles was a soldier-journalist for the U. S. Army's Stars and Stripes newspaper and reported on the war from London, Normandy, Paris, Reims, Belgium, and Germany. As the sole reporter allowed direct access to Eisenhower's staff, he was the only reporter on the scene when the German high command was negotiating its unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945. Among his army newspaper friends and colleagues was Andy Rooney, later CBS correspondent and 60 Minutes commentator. Billee, like many young women of her time, witnessed the war years from the home front and filled vital civilian roles-defense-industry plant worker, Red Cross volunteer, war bonds salesgirl, and civil defense plane-spotter-and wrote about it all in her letters to Charles. Peppered with fascinating details about soldiers' and civilians' lives, and including Stars and Stripes articles and personal photographs of the era, Writing the War is both important history and a tribute to two remarkable people as well as their extraordinary generation.
Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File (Canons #84)
by John Edgar WidemanAn award-winning writer traces the life of the father of iconic Civil Rights martyr Emmett Till--a man who was executed by the Army ten years before Emmett's murder. An evocative and personal exploration of individual and collective memory in America by one of the most formidable Black intellectuals of our time.In 1955, Emmett Till, aged fourteen, traveled from his home in Chicago to visit family in Mississippi. Several weeks later he returned, dead; allegedly he whistled at a white woman. His mother, Mamie, wanted the world to see what had been done to her son. She chose to leave his casket open. Images of her brutalized boy were published widely. While Emmett's story is known, there's a dark side note that's rarely mentioned. Ten years earlier, Emmett's father was executed by the Army for rape and murder. In Writing to Save a Life, John Edgar Wideman searches for Louis Till, a silent victim of American injustice. Wideman's personal interaction with the story began when he learned of Emmett's murder in 1955; Wideman was also fourteen years old. After reading decades later about Louis's execution, he couldn't escape the twin tragedies of father and son, and tells their stories together for the first time. Author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, Wideman brings extraordinary insight and a haunting intimacy to this devastating story. An amalgam of research, memoir, and imagination, Writing to Save a Life is completely original in its delivery--an engaging and enlightening conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons. Wideman turns seventy-five this year, and he brings the force of his substantial intellect and experience to this beautiful, stirring book, his first nonfiction in fifteen years.
Writing to the World: Letters and the Origins of Modern Print Genres
by Rachael Scarborough KingLetters played a foundational role in facilitating the rise of print and popularizing new modes of writing in the long eighteenth century.In Writing to the World, Rachael Scarborough King examines the shift from manuscript to print media culture in the long eighteenth century. She introduces the concept of the "bridge genre," which enables such change by transferring existing textual conventions to emerging modes of composition and circulation. She draws on this concept to reveal how four crucial genres that emerged during this time—the newspaper, the periodical, the novel, and the biography—were united by their reliance on letters to accustom readers to these new forms of print media.King explains that as newspapers, scientific journals, book reviews, and other new genres began to circulate widely, much of their form and content was borrowed from letters, allowing for easier access to these unfamiliar modes of printing and reading texts. Arguing that bridge genres encouraged people to see themselves as connected by networks of communication—as members of what they called "the world" of writing—King combines techniques of genre theory with archival research and literary interpretation, analyzing canonical works such as Addison and Steele’s Spectator, Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey alongside anonymous periodicals and the letters of middle-class housewives. This original and groundbreaking work in media and literary history offers a model for the process of genre formation. Ultimately, Writing to the World is a sophisticated look at the intersection of print and the public sphere.
Writing to the World: Letters and the Origins of Modern Print Genres
by Rachael Scarborough King“King’s pitch for the indebtedness of the genres we know well—the novel, the biography, the magazine piece—to letter writing is stylish and convincing.” —Christina Lupton, author of Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth CenturyIn Writing to the World, Rachael Scarborough King examines the shift from manuscript to print media culture in the long eighteenth century. She introduces the concept of the “bridge genre,” which enables such change by transferring existing textual conventions to emerging modes of composition and circulation. She draws on this concept to reveal how four crucial genres that emerged during this time—the newspaper, the periodical, the novel, and the biography—were united by their reliance on letters to accustom readers to these new forms of print media.King explains that as newspapers, scientific journals, book reviews, and other new genres began to circulate widely, much of their form and content was borrowed from letters, allowing for easier access to these unfamiliar modes of printing and reading texts. Arguing that bridge genres encouraged people to see themselves as connected by networks of communication—as members of what they called “the world” of writing—King combines techniques of genre theory with archival research and literary interpretation, analyzing canonical works such as Addison and Steele’s Spectator, Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey alongside anonymous periodicals and the letters of middle-class housewives.This original and groundbreaking work in media and literary history offers a model for the process of genre formation. Ultimately, Writing to the World is a sophisticated look at the intersection of print and the public sphere.“This erudite, sophisticated, beautifully written book is a major achievement.” —Thomas Keymer, author of Poetics of the Pillory
Writing with Grace
by Judy McfarlaneWhen Judy McFarlane is asked if she will help Grace, a woman with Down syndrome who dreams of becoming a famous writer, she realizes she holds deep, unacknowledged fears - that Grace will be a dull-eyed young woman who can't read, let alone write, or that she might become agitated, even lash out. But the idea that Grace wants to be a writer, a dream McFarlane gave up when she was young, captures McFarlane. She helps Grace write her book and travels with Grace to give a copy of the book to her grandfather. Writing with Grace is the inspiring and informative story of the journey Grace and Judy have taken together. It relates the often-dark history of Down syndrome and tells a universal story of moving from a deep fear of the "other" to seeing the world through the eyes of another person. With honest introspection and keen insight, Writing with Grace delves into what it takes to face one's own prejudice and what it means to live a full life and believe you are worthy.
Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry (Russian Library)
by Konstantin BatyushkovKonstantin Batyushkov was one of the great poets of the Golden Age of Russian literature in the early nineteenth century. His verses, famous for their musicality, earned him the admiration of Alexander Pushkin and generations of Russian poets to come. In Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry, Peter France interweaves Batyushkov’s life and writings, presenting masterful new translations of his work with the compelling story of Batyushkov’s career as a soldier, diplomat, and poet and his tragic decline into mental illness at the age of thirty-four. Little known among non-Russian readers, Batyushkov left a varied body of writing, both in verse and in prose, as well as memorable letters to friends. France nests a substantial selection of his sprightly epistles on love, friendship, and social life, his often tragic elegies, and extracts from his essays and letters within episodes of his remarkable life—particularly appropriate for a poet whose motto was “write as you live, and live as you write.” Batyushkov’s writing reflects the transition from the urbane sociability of the Enlightenment to the rebellious sensibility of Pushkin and Lermontov; it spans the Napoleonic Wars and the rapid social and literary change from Catherine the Great to Nicholas I. Presenting Batyushkov’s poetry of feeling and wit alongside his troubled life, Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry makes his verse accessible to English-speaking readers in a necessary exploration of this transitional moment for Russian literature.
Writings of Warner Mifflin: Forgotten Quaker Abolitionist of the Revolutionary Era
by Warner MifflinIn The Writings of Warner Mifflin: Forgotten Quaker Abolitionist of the Revolutionary Era Gary B. Nash and Michael R. McDowell present the correspondence, petitions and memorials to state and federal legislative bodies, semi-autobiographical essays, and other materials of the key figure in the U.S. abolitionist movement between the end of the American Revolution and the Jefferson presidency. Virtually unknown to Americans—schoolbooks ignore him, academic historians barely nod at him; the public knows him not at all--Mifflin has been brought to life in Gary B. Nash’s recent biography, Warner Mifflin: Unflinching Quaker Abolitionist (2017). This volume provides an array of insights into the mind of a conscience-bound pacifist Quaker who became instrumental in making Kent County, Delaware a bastion of free blacks liberated from slavery and a seedbed of a reparationist doctrine that insisted that enslavers owed “restitution” to manumitted Africans and their descendants. Mifflin's writings also show how he became the most skilled lobbyist of the antislavery campaigners who haunted the legislative chambers of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania as well as the halls of the Continental Congress and the First and Second Federal Congresses. An opening introduction and introductions to each of the five chronologically arranged parts of the book provide context for the documents and a narrative of the life of this remarkable American.
Written By Herself, Volume II: Women's Memoirs from Britain, Africa, Asia, and the United States
by Jill Ker ConwayThe bestselling author of The Road from Coorain presents an extraordinarily powerful anthology of the autobiographical writings of 25 women, literary predecessors and contemporaries that include Jane Addams, Zora Neale Hurst, Harriet Jacobs, Ellen Glasgow, Maya Angelou, Sara Josephine Baker, Margaret Mead, Gloria Steinem, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
Written Lives
by Javier Marías Margaret Jull CostaAn affectionate and very funny gallery of twenty great world authors from the pen of "the most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature" (The Boston Globe). In addition to his own busy career as "one of Europe's most intriguing contemporary writers" (TLS), Javier Marías is also the translator into Spanish of works by Hardy, Stevenson, Conrad, Faulkner, Nabokov, and Laurence Sterne. His love for these authors is the touchstone of Written Lives. Collected here are twenty pieces recounting great writers' lives, "or, more precisely, snippets of writers' lives." Thomas Mann, Rilke, Arthur Conan Doyle, Turgenev, Djuna Barnes, Emily Brontë, Malcolm Lowry, and Kipling appear ("all fairly disastrous individuals"), and "almost nothing" in his stories is invented. Like Isak Dinesen (who "claimed to have poor sight, yet could spot a four-leaf clover in a field from a remarkable distance away"), Marías has a sharp eye. Nabokov is here, making "the highly improbable assertion that he is 'as American as April in Arizona,'" as is Oscar Wilde, who, in debt on his deathbed, ordered up champagne, "remarking cheerfully, 'I am dying beyond my means.'" Faulkner, we find, when fired from his post office job, explained that he was not prepared "to be beholden to any son-of-a-bitch who had two cents to buy a stamp." Affection glows in the pages of Written Lives, evidence, as Marías remarks, that "although I have enjoyed writing all my books, this was the one with which I had the most fun."
Written by Herself: An Anthology
by Jill Ker ConwayAn extraordinarily powerful anthology of the autobiographical writings of 25 women, literary predecessors and contemporaries that include Jane Addams, Zora Neale Hurston, Harriet Jacobs, Ellen Glasgow, Maya Angelou, Sara Josephine Baker, Margaret Mead, Gloria Steinem, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
Written by Herself: Volume I
by Jill Ker ConwayThe bestselling author of The Road from Coorain presents an extraordinarily powerful anthology of the autobiographical writings of 25 women, literary predecessors and contemporaries that include Jane Addams, Zora Neale Hurst, Harriet Jacobs, Ellen Glasgow, Maya Angelou, Sara Josephine Baker, Margaret Mead, Gloria Steinem, and Maxine Hong Kingston.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind
by Sue BlackFrom the author of All That Remains, a tour through the human skeleton and the secrets our bones reveal. Longlisted for the Crime Writers&’ Association ALCS Gold Dagger for Nonfiction. In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence, all leavened with her wicked sense of humor. In her new book, Sue Black builds on the first, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones, which she calls "the last sentinels of our mortal life to bear witness to the way we lived it." Her narrative follows the skeleton from the top of the skull to the small bones in the foot. Each step of the journey includes an explanation of the biology—how the bone is formed in a person's development, how it changes as we age, the secrets it may hold—and is illustrated with anecdotes from the author's career helping solve crimes and identifying human remains, whether recent or historical. Written in Bone is full of entertaining stories that read like scenes from a true-life CSI drama, infused with humor and no-nonsense practicality about the realities of corpses and death.
Written in History: Letters That Changed the World
by Simon Sebag MontefioreOutstanding selection of great letters from ancient times to the 21st century, touching on power, love, art, sex, faith, and war.Written in History: Letters that Changed the World celebrates the great letters of world history, and cultural and personal life. Bestselling, prizewinning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects letters that have changed the course of global events or touched a timeless emotion—whether passion, rage, humor—from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Some are noble and inspiring, some despicable and unsettling, some are exquisite works of literature, others brutal, coarse, and frankly outrageous, many are erotic, others heartbreaking. It is a surprising and eclectic selection, from the four corners of the world, filled with extraordinary women and men, from ancient times to now. Truly a choice of letters for our own times encompassing love letters to calls for liberation to declarations of war to reflections on life and death. The writers vary from Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great to Mandela, Stalin and Picasso, Fanny Burney and Emily Pankhurst to Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks, Oscar Wilde, Chekhov and Pushkin to Balzac, Mozart and Michelangelo, Hitler, Rameses the Great and Alexander Hamilton to Augustus and Churchill, Lincoln, Donald Trump and Suleiman the Magnificent. In a book that is a perfect gift, here is a window on astonishing characters, seminal events, and unforgettable words. In the colorful, accessible style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these letters are essential reading and how they can unveil and enlighten the past—and enrich the way we live now.
Written in History: Letters that Changed the World
by Simon Sebag MontefioreINCLUDES NEW MATERIALWRITTEN IN HISTORY celebrates the great letters of world history, creative culture and personal life. Acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects over one hundred letters from ancient times to the twenty-first century: some are noble and inspiring, some despicable and unsettling; some are exquisite works of literature, others brutal, coarse and frankly outrageous; many are erotic, others heartbreaking. The writers vary from Elizabeth I, Rameses the Great and Leonard Cohen to Emmeline Pankhurst, Mandela, Stalin, Michelangelo, Suleiman the Magnificent and unknown people in extraordinary circumstances - from love letters to calls for liberation, declarations of war to reflections on death. In the colourful, accessible style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these letters are essential reading: how they enlighten our past, enrich the way we live now - and illuminate tomorrow.
Written in History: Letters that Changed the World
by Simon Sebag MontefioreHistory cannot be relived, but thanks to a tradition that spans millennia, we can revisit it in the letters of the people who influenced or witnessed the moments it changed for ever. In WRITTEN IN HISTORY, acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects some of the greatest letters ever written from ancient times to the twentieth century: declarations of war, petitions for peace, diplomatic entanglements, steamy love letters and beyond. In each case, he explores the significance of each piece of correspondence and shows how letters can open a unique window to the past and the personalities of some of the greatest - and most notorious - figures in history.(p) Orion Publishing Group 2018
Written in My Soul
by Bill FlanaganWritten in My Soul, first published in 1986, is a snapshot of some of rock & roll's most iconic artists at the same moment. Bill Flanagan, who would go on to create VH1 Storytellers and CMT Crossroads, spoke about songwriting and creativity with Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Joni Mitchell, Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Bono and nineteen more music legends. Long a collector's item, second hand copies of Written in My Soul have sold for over a hundred dollars. It is a look at rock & roll history from inside the heads of the people who made it. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bill Flanagan is executive vice president and editorial director of MTV Networks. He is also the author of A&R, New Bedlam, U2 at the End of the World, Last of the Moe Haircuts, and the novel Evening's Empire. Flanagan has written for several magazines, including Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone, Spy, and Vanity Fair.
Written on Water
by Eileen Chang Andrew Jones Ailing Zhang Nicole HuangKnown as "the Garbo of Chinese letters" for her elegance and the aura of mystery that surrounded her, Eileen Chang is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential modern Chinese novelists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. In Written on Water, first published in 1945 and now available for the first time in English, Chang offers essays on art, literature, war, and urban life, as well as autobiographical reflections. Chang takes in the sights and sounds of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong, with the tremors of national upheaval and the drone of warplanes in the background, and inventively fuses explorations of urban life, literary trends, domestic habits, and historic events. These evocative and moving firsthand accounts examine the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of the Japanese bombing and occupation of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Eileen Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. Her nuanced depictions range from observations of how a woman's elegant dress affects morale to descriptions of hospital life. With a distinctive style that is at once meditative, vibrant, and humorous, Chang engages the reader through sly, ironic humor; an occasionally chatty tone; and an intense fascination with the subtleties of modern urban life. The collection vividly captures the sights and sounds of Shanghai, a city defined by its mix of tradition and modernity. Chang explores the city's food, fashions, shops, cultural life, and social mores; she reveals and upends prevalent attitudes toward women and in the process presents a portrait of a liberated, cosmopolitan woman, enjoying the opportunities, freedoms, and pleasures offered by urban life. In addition to her descriptions of daily life, Chang also reflects on a variety of artistic and literary issues, including contemporary films, the aims of the writer, the popularity of the Peking Opera, dance, and painting.
Written on the Knee
by Helen Electrie Lindsay Theodore ElectrisDuring the Greek-Italian conflict of World War II, Dr. Theodore Electris, newly married and idealistic, was called up to the Greek-Italian front in the remote mountains of Albania. Homesick, hungry and desperately missing his young wife, Chrysoula, he kept an intimate journal to preserve his experiences for her. Translated by his daughter, Helen Electrie Lindsay, Electris’s entries and letters come together in Written on the Knee. Fully illustrated and accompanied by supporting reference material, the collection serves as both an authentic historical document of Greek involvement in WWII and a story of love, separation and family ties threatened and strengthened by war. Often overlooked in the scope of WWII, Greece’s six-month conflict with Mussolini’s forces played a pivotal role in the war’s outcome. The small country’s fierce resistance against the Italians delayed Hitler’s move into the Soviet Union, which many historians believe turned the war in favor of the Allies. From Dr. Electris’s first entry to his last, Written on the Knee captures the true story of love and war during a crucial time in modern history.
Written on the Knee: A Diary from the Greek-Italian Front of WWII
by Helen Electrie LindsayDuring the Greek-Italian conflict of World War II, Dr. Theodore Electris, newly married and idealistic, was called up to the Greek-Italian front in the remote mountains of Albania. <P><P>Homesick, hungry and desperately missing his young wife, Chrysoula, he kept an intimate journal to preserve his experiences for her.Translated by his daughter, Helen Electrie Lindsay, Electris's entries and letters come together in Written on the Knee. Fully illustrated and accompanied by supporting reference material, the collection serves as both an authentic historical document of Greek involvement in WWII and a story of love, separation and family ties threatened and strengthened by war.Often overlooked in the scope of WWII, Greece's six-month conflict with Mussolini's forces played a pivotal role in the war's outcome. The small country's fierce resistance against the Italians delayed Hitler's move into the Soviet Union, which many historians believe turned the war in favor of the Allies.From Dr. Electris's first entry to his last, Written on the Knee captures the true story of love and war during a crucial time in modern history.
Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with His Son
by Peter CareyPrevious winner of two Booker Prizes, Peter Carey expands his extraordinary achievement with each new novel -- but now gives us something entirely different. When famously shy Charley Carey becomes obsessed with Japanese manga and anime, Peter is not only delighted for his son, but entranced himself. Thus, with a father sharing his twelve-year-old's exotic comic books, begins a journey that will lead them both to Tokyo, where a strange Japanese boy will become both their guide and judge. The visitors quickly plunge deep into the lanes of Shitimachi -- into the "weird stuff" of modern Japan -- meeting manga artists and anime directors, "visualists" who painstakingly impersonate cartoons, and solitary "otakus" who lead a computerized existence. What emerges from these encounters is a pithy, far-ranging study of history and culture both high and low -- from samurai to salaryman, from kabuki theatre to the post-war robot craze. Peter Carey's observations are provocative, even though his hosts often point out, politely, that he is wrong about Japan. In adventures that are comic, surprising, and ultimately moving, father and son cope with and learn from each other in a place far from home. "No Real Japan," said Charley. "You've got to promise. No temples. No museums." "What could we do?" "We could buy cool manga." "There'll be no English translations." "I don't care. I'd eat raw fish." --excerpt from Wrong About Japan.
Wrong Lanes Have Right Turns: A Pardoned Man's Escape from the School-to-Prison Pipeline and What We Can Do to Dismantle It
by Michael PhillipsThe unforgettable true story of one man&’s escape from the school-to-prison pipeline, how he reinvented himself as a pastor and education reform advocate, and what his journey can teach us about turning the collateral damage in the lives of our youth into hope.&“A heart-wrenching and triumphant story that will change lives.&”—Bishop T. D. JakesMichael Phillips would never become anything. At least, that&’s what he was told. It seemed like everyone was waiting for him to just fall through the cracks. After losing his father, suffering a life-altering car accident, and losing his college scholarship, Michael turned to selling drugs to make ends meet. But when his house was raided, he was arrested and thrown into a living nightmare.When it looked like he would be sentenced to spend years behind bars, the judge gave him a choice—go to a special college program for adjudicated youth or face the possibility of a thirty-year prison sentence. It wasn&’t hard to pick. From that choice, a mission was born—to help change the system that shuffles so many young Black men like Michael straight from school to prison. Today, Michael is the pastor of a thriving church, a local leader in Baltimore, and a member of the Maryland State Board of Education. He discovered that education was the path to becoming who he was created to be. Armed with research, statistics, and his powerful story, Michael tackles the embedded privilege of the education system and introduces ideas for change that could level the playing field and reduce negative impacts on vulnerable youth. He explores ways in which the readers can help advocate and provide resources for students, and points us to the one thing anyone can start doing, no matter who we are or what our role is: speak into young kids&’ lives. Tell them of their inherent worth and purpose. In this inspiring, thought-provoking, and energizing call to action, Michael&’s practical steps provide a way forward to anyone wanting to help create space for collateral hope in the lives of for young people around them.
Wu Zhao: China's Only Female Emperor
by N. RothschildThis new entry in the Longman Library of World Biography series offers the compelling story of Wu Zhao - one woman’s unlikely and remarkable ascent to the apex of political power in the patriarchal society of traditional China. Wu Zhao, Woman Emperor of China is the account of the first and only female emperor in China’s history. Set in vibrant, multi-ethnic Tang China, this biography chronicles Wu Zhao’s humble beginnings as the daughter of a provincial official, following her path to the inner palace, where she improbably rose from a fifth-ranked concubine to becoming Empress. Using clever Buddhist rhetoric, grandiose architecture, elegant court rituals, and an insidious network of “cruel officials” to cow her many opponents in court, Wu Zhao inaugurated a new dynasty in 690, the Zhou. She ruled as Emperor for fifteen years, proving eminently competent in the arts of governance, deftly balancing factions in court, staving off the encroachment of Turks and Tibetans, and fostering the state’s economic growth.
Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City
by Fang FangFrom one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak.On January 25, 2020, after the central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang began publishing an online diary. In the days and weeks that followed, Fang Fang’s nightly postings gave voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of her fellow citizens, reflecting on the psychological impact of forced isolation, the role of the internet as both community lifeline and source of misinformation, and most tragically, the lives of neighbors and friends taken by the deadly virus. A fascinating eyewitness account of events as they unfold, Wuhan Diary captures the challenges of daily life and the changing moods and emotions of being quarantined without reliable information. Fang Fang finds solace in small domestic comforts and is inspired by the courage of friends, health professionals and volunteers, as well as the resilience and perseverance of Wuhan’s nine million residents. But, by claiming the writer´s duty to record she also speaks out against social injustice, abuse of power, and other problems which impeded the response to the epidemic and gets herself embroiled in online controversies because of it.As Fang Fang documents the beginning of the global health crisis in real time, we are able to identify patterns and mistakes that many of the countries dealing with the novel coronavirus have later repeated. She reminds us that, in the face of the new virus, the plight of the citizens of Wuhan is also that of citizens everywhere. As Fang Fang writes: “The virus is the common enemy of humankind; that is a lesson for all humanity. The only way we can conquer this virus and free ourselves from its grip is for all members of humankind to work together.” Blending the intimate and the epic, the profound and the quotidian, Wuhan Diary is a remarkable record of an extraordinary time. Translated from the Chinese by Michael Berry
Wuhu Diary
by Emily PragerIn 1994 an American writer named Emily Prager met her new daughter LuLu. All she knew about her was that the baby had been born in Wuhu, a city in southern China, and left near a police station in her first three days of life. Her birth mother had left a note with Lulu's western and lunar birth dates. In 1999 Emily and her daughter-now a happy, fearless four-year-old--returned to China to find out more. That journey and its discoveries unfold in this lovely, touching and sensitively observed book.In Wuhu Diary, we follow Emily and LuLu through a country where children are doted on yet often summarily abandoned and where immense human friendliness can coexist with outbursts of state-orchestrated hostility-particularly after the U. S. accidentally bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. We see Emily unearthing precious details of her child's past and LuLu coming to terms with who she is. The result is a book that will delight anyone interested in China, and that will move and instruct anyone who has ever adopted--or considered adopting--a child.From the Trade Paperback edition.