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Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven's Working Class, 1870-1940
by Stephen LassondeThis book offers an insightful view of the complex relations between home and school in the working-class immigrant Italian community of New Haven, Connecticut. Through the lenses of history, sociology, and education, Learning to Forget presents a highly readable account of cross-generational experiences during the period from 1870 to 1940, chronicling one generation's suspicions toward public education and another's need to assimilate. Through careful research Lassonde finds that not all working class parents were enthusiastic supporters of education. Not only did the time and energy spent in school restrict children's potential financial contributions to the family, but attitudes that children encountered in school often ran counter to the family's traditional values. Legally mandated education and child labor laws eventually resolved these conflicts, but not without considerable reluctance and resistance.
Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941
by Robert W. ThurstonTerror, in the sense of mass, unjust arrests, characterized the USSR during the late 1930s. But, argues Robert Thurston in this controversial book, Stalin did not intend to terrorize the country and did not need to rule by fear. Memoirs and interviews with Soviet people indicate that many more believed in Stalin's quest to eliminate internal enemies than were frightened by it.
Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500-c. 1800
by Anthony PagdenThis book compares the theories of empire as they emerged in, and helped to define, the great colonial powers of Spain, France and Britain. Pagden describes how the rulers of the three countries claimed to be 'Lord of all the world'.
Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America
by Colleen McDannellWhat can the religious objects used by nineteenth- and twentieth-century Americans tell us about American Christianity? What is the relationship between the beliefs of the faithful and the landscapes they build? This lavishly illustrated book investigates the history and meaning of Christian material culture in America over the last 150 years. <p><p> Drawing on a rich array of historical sources and on in-depth interviews with Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons, Colleen McDannell examines the relationship between religion and mass consumption. She describes examples of nineteenth-century religious practice: Victorians burying their dead in cultivated cemetery parks; Protestants producing and displaying elaborate family Bibles; Catholics writing for special water from Lourdes reputed to have miraculous powers. And she looks at today's Christians: Mormons wearing sacred underclothing as a reminder of their religious promises, Catholics debating the design of tasteful churches, and Protestants manufacturing, marketing, and using a vast array of prints, clothing, figurines, jewelry, and toys that some label "Jesus junk" but that others see as a witness to their faith. McDannell claims that previous studies of American Christianity have overemphasized the written, cognitive, and ethical dimensions of religion, presenting faith as a disembodied system of beliefs. She shifts attention from the church and the theological seminary to the workplace, home, cemetery, and Sunday school, highlighting a different Christianity—one in which average Christians experience the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the meaning of community through interacting with a created world of devotional images, environments, and objects.
Stravinsky Inside Out
by Charles M. JosephRevealing Igor Stravinsky's two sides--the public persona and the private composer--this complex portrait draws upon an array of unpublished materials and rereleased film clips from the composer's huge archive at the Paul Sacher Institute in Switzerland.
Ye Heart Of A Man: The Domestic Life Of Men In Colonial New England
by Lisa WilsonAn investigation of the everyday lives of men in pre-revolutionary America. It looks at men and women in colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut, comparing their experiences in order to understand the domestic environment in which they spent most of their time. The author uses letters, diaries and court records to describe how men thought of themselves, their wives, children and parents. This is a social history of New England during the sixteen and seventeen hundreds prior to the Revolution. Examines men's roles as husband, father, son and provider.
Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws
by Lynn A. StruveThis fascinating book presents eyewitness accounts of a turbulent period in Chinese history: the fall of the Ming dynasty and the conquest of China by the Manchus in the mid-seventeenth century. Lynn A. Struve has translated, introduced, and annotated absorbing testimonies from a wide range of individuals in different social stations--Chinese and Europeans, missionaries and viceroys, artists and merchants, Ming loyalists and Qing collaborators, maidservants and eunuchs--all telling stories of hardship and challenge in the midst of cataclysmic change.
Perceval: The Story of the Grail
by Chrétien de Chrétien de TroyesOne of the most influential storytellers in Western literature, French poet Chrétien de Troyes helped to shape the ever-fascinating legend of King Arthur and the Round Table. Of Chrétien's five surviving romantic Arthurian poems, the last and longest is Perceval, an unfinished work that introduces the story of the Grail―a legend quickly adopted by other medieval writers and taken up by a continuing succession of authors. In Chrétien's romance, Perceval progresses from a naive boyhood in rural seclusion to a position of high respect as a knight at Arthur's court. With the help of two teachers―his mother and Gornemant of Goort―Perceval is ultimately able to reject the worldly adventures chosen by other knights and seek important moral and spiritual answers. <p><p> Acclaimed for his sensitive and faithful translations of the poems of Chrétien, Burton Raffel completes the Arthurian series with this rendition of Perceval. Raffel conveys to the modern English language reader all the delights of Chrétien’s inventive storytelling, perceptive characterizations and vividly evoked emotions.
On Toleration
by Michael WalzerWalzer examines five "regimes of toleration" -- from multinational empires to immigrant societies -- and describes the strengths and weaknesses of each regime, as well as the varying forms of toleration and exclusion each fosters. He shows how power, class, and gender interact with religion, race, and ethnicity in the different regimes and discusses how toleration works, and how it should work, in multicultural societies like the United States.
Wild Solutions: How Biodiversity Is Money in the Bank
by Andrew Beattie Paul R. EhrlichIn this fascinating and abundantly illustrated book, two eminent ecologists discuss the biological diversity of the Earth, showing how the natural systems that surround us play an essential role in protecting our basic life-support systems.
Sight Unseen
by Georgina Kleege<P>This elegantly written book offers an unexpected and unprecidented accout of blindness and sight. Legally blind since the age of eleven, Georgina Kleege draws on her experiences to offer a detailed testimony of visual impairment - both her own view of the world and the world's view of the blind. "I hope to turn the reader's gaze outward, to say not only 'Here's what I see' but also "here's what you see,' to show what's both unique and universal," Kleege writes. <P>Kleege describes the negative social status of the blind, analyzes stereotypes of the blind hat have been perpetuated by movies, and discusses how blindness has been portrayed in literature. She vividly conveys the visual experience of someone with severely impaired sight and explains what she cannot (and how her inability to achieve eye contact - in a society that prizes that form of connection - has affected her). <P>Finally she tells of the various ways she reads, and the freedom she felt when she stopped concealing her blindness and acquired skills, such as reading braille, as part of a new blind identity.
The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader
by Wilson H. Kimnach Kenneth P. Minkema Douglas A. SweeneyThe selection of Jonathan Edward's 15 sermons in this book reflect a life dedicated to experiencing and understanding spiritual truth, and address a wide range of occasions, situations and states.
Contemporary Cultures Of Display (Art and Its Histories Series)
by Emma BarkerFocusing on the place of art in contemporary culture, this work discusses museums, galleries and exhibitions in Western Europe and the USA. It encourages readers to reflect on their own experiences and to consider whether today's art could be considered to be dominated by 'spectacle'.
Blackhearts: Ecology in Outback Australia
by Richard SymanskiThis fascinating book is a firsthand account of the adventures of an ornithological field team studying long-tailed finches in outback Australia. In 1991, Nancy Burley, a noted behavioral ecologist, and her husband, Richard Symanski, went to Australia with their one-year-old son and four American students hired as field assistants and babysitter. The social relationships and problems that developed among these individuals in confined and exotic settings and the scientific discoveries that did -- and did not -- take place form the heart of the book. Symanski begins by telling how he and his wife set up this elaborate field expedition -- including the hiring of what seemed to be qualified, compatible, and knowledgeable field assistants. He then describes the harsh realities of their circumstances in Australia: primitive living conditions on an outback cattle station; field sites and subjects for study that were not as expected; and students who were not prepared for the rigors of field life and who became unenthusiastic about the work for which they had been hired. And he tells how he and his wife strove to overcome all the different challenges with which they were confronted. The book provides insight into the demands of professor-student-based fieldwork, particularly when generational conflicts, differing expectations, and culture shock complicate the "business" of doing science.
The Elements of Learning
by Harold C. Cannon James M. Banner Jr.Both a thoughtful celebration of the learning process and a practical guide to becoming a better student, this engaging and helpful book is designed to help students of all ages attain their full potential for success in any area of study.
The Elements of Teaching
by Harold C. Cannon James M. Banner Jr.This book focuses on the qualities, both natural and cultivated, of those who teach rather than on the techniques they use because far too much attention has been given to explaining the process of teaching and not nearly enough to describing the people responsible for that process.
Henry VII
by Stanley B. ChrimesFounder of the Tudor dynasty, Henry VII was a crucial figure in English history. In this acclaimed study of the king's life & reign, the distinguished historian S. B. Chrimes explores the circumstances surrounding Henry's acquisition of the throne, examines the personnel & machinery of government, & surveys the king's social, political, & economic policies, law enforcement, & foreign strategy. This edition of the book includes a new critical introduction & bibliographical updating by George Bernard.
The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt
by Teresa A. Sullivan Elizabeth Warren Jay Lawrence WestbrookThis book is about the middle class as viewed through the lens of bankruptcy. Since 1997, the number of American families filing for federal bankruptcy annually has exceeded one million. By most measures, those who file are members of the middle class -- a group that has long provided stability and vitality for the American economic system. This raises the troubling question: why, during the most remarkable period of prosperity in our history, are unprecedented numbers of Americans encountering such serious financial trouble?The authors of this important book analyze court records and demographic data on thousands of bankruptcy cases, as well as debtors' own poignant accounts of the reasons for their bankruptcies. For many middle-class Americans, the findings show, financial stability is fragile -- almost any setback can be disastrous. The erosion of job stability, divorce and family instability, the visible and invisible costs of medical care, the burden of home ownership, and the staggering weight of consumer debt financed with plastic combine to threaten the financial security of growing numbers of middle-class families. The authors view the bankruptcy process in the light of changing cultural and economic factors and consider what this may signify for the future of a large, secure, and dynamic middle class.
Philosophy of Economy: The World as Household
by Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov Catherine EvtuhovThe writings of Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944), like those of other major social thinkers of Russia's Silver Age, were obliterated from public consciousness under Soviet rule. Discovered again after eighty years of silence, Bulgakov's work speaks with remarkable directness to the postmodern listener. This outstanding translation of Philosophy of Economy brings to English-language speakers for the first time a major work of social theory written by a critical figure in the Russian tradition of liberal thought. What is unique about Bulgakov, Catherine Evtuhov explains in her introduction to this book, is that he bridges two worlds. His social thought is firmly based in the Western tradition, yet some of his ideas reflect a specifically Russian way of thinking about society. Though arguing strenuously in favor of political and social liberty, Bulgakov repudiates the individualistic basis of Western liberalism in favor of a conception of human dignity that is compatible with collectivity. His economic theory stresses the spiritual content of life in the world and imagines national life as a kind of giant household. Bulgakov's work, with its singularly postmodern balance between Western and non-Western, offers fascinating implications for those in the process of reevaluating ideologies in post-Soviet Russia and in America as well.
Politics, Law and Morality: Essays By V. S. Soloviev
by Vladimir Soloviev Vladimir WozniukConsidered one of Russia's greatest philosophers, Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) was also a theologian, historian, poet, and social and political critic. His works have emerged to enjoy renewed attention in post-Soviet Russia, and his concerns echo in contemporary discussions of politics, law, and morality. In this collection of Soloviev's essays -- many translated into English for the first time -- the philosopher explores an array of social issues, from the death penalty to nationalism to women's rights. Soloviev reacts against the tradition of European rationalist thought and seeks to synthesize religious philosophy, science, and ethics in the context of a universal Christianity. In these writings he reveals the centrality of human rights in his Christian world-view, not only as an abstract theory but also as an inspiration in everyday life. In a substantive introduction and copious annotations to the essays, Vladimir Wozniuk points out distinctive and often overlooked features of Soloviev's works while,illuminating his place within both the Russian and Western intellectual traditions.
Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property
by Joseph William SingerIn this important work of legal, political, and moral theory, Joseph William Singer offers a controversial new view of property and the entitlements and obligations of its owners. Singer argues against the conventional understanding that owners have the right to control their property as they see fit, with few limitations by government. Instead, property should be understood as a mode of organizing social relations, he says, and he explains the potent consequences of this idea. Singer focuses on the ways in which property law reflects and shapes social relationships. He contends that property is a matter not of right but of entitlement -- and entitlement, in Singer's work, is a complex accommodation of mutual claims. Property requires regulation -- property is a system and not just an individual entitlement, and the system must support a form of social life that spreads wealth, promotes liberty, , avoids undue concentration of power, and furthers justice. The author argues that owners have not only rights,but obligations as well -- to other owners, to nonowners, and to the community as a whole. Those obligations ensure that property rights function to shape social relationships in ways that are both just and defensible.
George Santayana: Literary Philosopher
by Irving SingerGeorge Santayana was unique in his contribution to American culture. For almost sixty years before his death in 1952, he combined literary and philosophical talents, writing not only important works of philosophy but also a best-selling novel, volumes of poetry, and much literary criticism. In this fascinating portrait of Santayana's thought and complex personality, Irving Singer explores the full range of his harmonization of the literary and the philosophical. Singer shows how Santayana's genius consisted in his imaginative ability to turn various types of personal alienation into creative elements that recur throughout his books. Singer points out that Santayana was a professional philosopher who addressed immediate problems of existence, a materialist in philosophy who believed in both a life of spirit and a life of reason, a product of American pragmatism who nevertheless rebelled against it, a Spaniard who wrote only in English, an American author who spent the last forty years of his lift in different European countries. Against the grain of most twentieth-century philosophy, Santayana kept in view questions that matter to us all in our search for meaningful and satisfying lives.
Heidegger's Polemos: From Being to Politics
by Gregory FriedGregory Fried offers in this book a careful investigation of Martin Heidegger's understanding of politics. Disturbing issues surround Heidegger's commitment to National Socialism, his disdain for liberal democracy, and his rejection of the Enlightenment. Fried confronts these issues, focusing not on the historical debate over Heidegger's personal involvement with Nazism, but on whether and how the formulation of Heidegger's ontology relates to his political thinking as expressed in his philosophical works. The inquiry begins with Heidegger's interpretation of Heraclitus, particularly the term polemos ("war", or, in Heidegger's usage, "confrontation"). Fried contends that Heidegger invests polemos with broad ontological significance and that his appropriation of the word provides important insights into major strands of his thinking -- his conception of the human being, understanding of truth, and interpretation of history -- as well as the meaning of the so-called turn in his thought. Although Fried finds,that Heidegger's politics are continuous with his thought, he also argues that Heidegger's work raises important questions about contemporary identity politics. Fried also shows that many postmodernists, despite attempts to distance themselves from Heidegger, fail to avoid some of the same political pitfalls his thinking entailed.
Freedom and Time: A Theory of Constitutional Self-Government
by Jed RubenfeldJed Rubenfeld addresses the issue of wanting to live in the present.
America's Congress: James Madison Through Newt Gingrich
by David R. MayhewTo understand American politics and government, we need to recognize that members of Congress are more than agents of societal interests and preferences -- they also act with some autonomy and consequence in the public sphere. In this illuminating book, a distinguished political scientist examines the actions of members of Congress throughout American history, assessing their patterns and importance and their role in the U. S. system of separation of powers.