8468 results for "History"

A concise history of the Russian Revolution

Pipes, Richard
An authoritative history of the Russian Revolution and the "violent and disruptive acts" that created the first modern totalitarian regime, portraying the crisis at the heart of the tsarist empire "A deep and eloquent condemnation of the revolution and its aftermath." — The New York Times Drawing on archival materials released in Russia, Richard Pipes chronicles the upheaval that began as a conservative revolt but was soon captured by messianic intellectuals intent not merely on reforming Russia but on remaking the world. He provides fresh accounts of the revolution's personalities and policies, crises, and cruelties, from the murder of the royal family through civil war, famine, and state terror. Brilliantly and persuasively, Pipes shows us why the resulting system owes less to the theories of Marx than it did to the character of Lenin and Russia's long authoritarian tradition. What ensues is a path-clearing work that is indispensable to any understanding of the events of the century.
Vintage Books 1996-11-26 431 pages

Engines of Enterprise An Economic History of New England

Peter Temin
New England's economy has a history as dramatic as any in the world. From an inauspicious beginning--as immigration ground to a halt in the eighteenth century--New England went on to lead the United States in its transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy. And when the rest of the country caught up in the mid-twentieth century, New England reinvented itself as a leader in the complex economy of the information society. Engines of Enterprise tells this dramatic story in a sequence of narrative essays written by preeminent historians and economists. These essays chart the changing fortunes of entrepreneurs and venturers, businessmen and inventors, and common folk toiling in fields, in factories, and in air-conditioned offices. The authors describe how, short of staple crops, colonial New Englanders turned to the sea and built an empire; and how the region became the earliest home of the textile industry as commercial fortunes underwrote new industries in the nineteenth century. They show us the region as it grew ahead of the rest of the country and as the rest of the United States caught up. And they trace the transformation of New England's products and exports from cotton textiles and machine tools to such intangible goods as education and software. Concluding short essays also put forward surprising but persuasive arguments--for instance, that slavery, while not prominent in colonial New England, was a critical part of the economy; and that the federal government played a crucial role in the development of the region's industrial skills.
Harvard University Press 2000 328 pages

A history of modern Tibet. Volume 2. The calm before the storm, 1951-1955

Goldstein, Melvyn C.
This is an excellent, illuminating book, in line with Goldstein's preceding volume. It is both superbly researched and highly readable, thanks to the author's admirable capacity to weave significan not quotations and documents into his narrative. This said, a couple of issues may be raised. 1st and almost all important, in analyzing this chunk of Tibetan history Goldstein adopts a consistent approach, reflecting his views. This is fully acceptable, however sometimes1gets the impression that the author's perspective has become static and schematic, as if he had partially lost his previous sensitivity to the events on the ground. The previous volume's extraordinarily vivid image of Lhasa's life and society is no longer there and the author seems to have become somewhat estranged from Tibetan mentality. Second, while it is impossible for anyone to fully grasp the complexity of Tibetan life and culture, Goldstein's relative indifference to its essential religious dimension is quite apparent here
University of California Press 2007-08 639 pages

The Dialectical Imagination A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950

Martin Jay
Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Franz Neumann, Theodor Adorno, Leo Lowenthal--the impact of the Frankfurt School on the sociological, political, and cultural thought of the twentieth century has been profound. "The Dialectical Imagination" is a major history of this monumental cultural and intellectual enterprise during its early years in Germany and in the United States. Martin Jay has provided a substantial new preface for this edition, in which he reflects on the continuing relevance of the work of the Frankfurt School.
Little, Brown and Company 1973 382 pages

The dialectical imagination: a history of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950

Jay, Martin
Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Franz Neumann, Theodor Adorno, Leo Lowenthal--the impact of the Frankfurt School on the sociological, political, and cultural thought of the twentieth century has been profound. The Dialectical Imagination is a major history of this monumental cultural and intellectual enterprise during its early years in Germany and in the United States. Martin Jay has provided a substantial new preface for this edition, in which he reflects on the continuing relevance of the work of the Frankfurt School.
Heinemann 1973 382 pages

The University of Toronto: a history

Friedland, Martin L.
The University of Toronto is Canada's leading university and one of Canada's most important cultural and scientific institutions. In this history of the University from its origin as King's College in 1827 to the present, Martin Friedland brings personalities, events, and changing visions and ideas into a remarkable synthesis. His scholarly yet highly readable account presents colourful presidents, professors, and students, notable intellectual figures from Daniel Wilson to Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan, and dramatic turning points such as the admission of women in the 1880s, the University College fire of 1890, the discovery of insulin, involvement in the two world wars, the student protests of the 1960s, and the successful renewal of the 1980s and 1990s. Friedland draws on archival records, private diaries, oral interviews, and a vast body of secondary literature. He draws also on his own experience of the University as a student in the 1950s and, later, as a faculty member and dean of law who played a part in some of the critical developments he unfolds. The history of the University of Toronto as recounted by Friedland is intimately connected with events outside the University. The transition in Canadian society, for example, from early dependence on Great Britain and fear of the United States to the present dominance of American culture and ideas is mirrored in the University. There too can be seen the effects of the two world wars, the cold war, and the Vietnam war. As Canadian society and culture have developed and changed, so too has the University. The history of the University in a sense is the history of Canada.
University of Toronto Press 2013-01-01 764 pages

Hidden from history: reclaiming the gay and lesbian past

Martin Bauml Duberman,Martha Vicinus,George Chauncey
Winner of two Lambda Rising Awards This richly revealing anthology brings together for the first time the vital new scholarly studies now lifting the veil from the gay and lesbian past. Such notable researchers as John Boswell, Shari Benstock, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Jeffrey Weeks and John D’Emilio illuminate gay and lesbian life as it evolved in places as diverse as the Athens of Plato, Renaissance Italy, Victorian London, jazz Age Harlem, Revolutionary Russia, Nazi Germany, Castro’s Cuba, post-World War II San Francisco—and peoples as varied as South African black miners, American Indians, Chinese courtiers, Japanese samurai, English schoolboys and girls, and urban working women. Gender and sexuality, repression and resistance, deviance and acceptance, identity and community—all are given a context in this fascinating work. "A landmark of a book and a landmark of ideas that will shatter ignorance and delusion."— Catharine Stimpson, University Professor and Dean Emerita of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University “Ground-breaking.”— Publishers Weekly “The juxtaposition of diverse perspectives and research crossing boundaries of race, gender, culture, and time encourages a lively dialogue. Highly recommended for history collections, and especially gay studies.”— Library Journal
New American Library 1989 579 pages

Slave law in the American South: State v. Mann in history and literature

Tushnet, Mark V.
Product Description Slavery in the American South could not have existed without the authority of law defining slaves as the property of their masters. But the fact that slaves were also human beings placed limits on this harsh reality. When the rigor of the law and the complex bonds of sentiment linking master and slave came into conflict, masters looked to the courts. In one such case, State v. Mann, North Carolina Supreme Court justice Thomas Ruffin ruled that masters could not be prosecuted for assaulting their slaves. In articulating the legal basis for his decision, Justice Ruffin also revealed his own view of the "logic of slavery," in which he sanctioned the owner's rights even as he expressed his own horror at the mistreatment of the slave. Mark Tushnet, one of the foremost living authorities on antebellum slave law, now shows how studying such a simple case can illuminate an entire society. For those who detested slavery, the case represented all that was intolerable about that institution; for those who defended it, it raised vexing and persistent issues that could not be wished away. As further testament to the importance of State v. Mann, Harriet Beecher Stowe even made it central to her second antislavery novel, Dred. Tushnet discusses the opinion's place in the novel-in which she quoted liberally from Ruffin's decision-and evaluates other historians' interpretations of both the opinion and Stowe's provocative novel. Tushnet provides a finely detailed analysis of Ruffin's opinion, portraying the judge as a man compelled by law to uphold the slaveowner's right while moved as a Christian by the slave's maltreatment and ever hopeful that communal morality and a deep-seated sense of honor would moderate the excesses of slave owners. As Tushnet shows, however, slave law was a means for maintaining the ideological hegemony of the Southern master class. Slave Law in the American South paints a broad picture of a landmark case, tying together legal, historical, social, political, and even literary strands to show how the law itself was implicated in the persistence of slavery. It sheds new light on slavery and Southern history, as it probes the conscience of a troubled jurist incapable of fully transcending his times. This book is part of the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series. From the Back Cover "While losing neither objectivity nor moral compass, Mark Tushnet skillfully navigates the murky waters of Southern judicial and legal logic. His inspired study highly deserves close and serious attention."--Bertram Wyatt-Brown, author of The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War, 1760-1880s"More than two decades ago, Tushnet ignited the field of slave law studies with his provocative and thoughtful overview of the subject, The American Law of Slavery, 1810-1860. Now he has given us the first book-length study of a classic American slave case. Comprehensive and insightful, it merits the attention of legal scholars, historians, and non-specialists alike."--Timothy S. Huebner, author of The Southern Judicial Tradition: State Judges and Section Distinctness, 1790-1890 About the Author Mark V. Tushnet is Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. A former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, he is the author of numerous books including Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts and Red, White, and Blue: A Critical Analysis of Constitutional Law.
University Press of Kansas 2003 150 pages

Why history matters: life and thought

Lerner, Gerda
All human beings are practicing historians," writes Gerda Lerner. "We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing." It is as important as breathing, too. History shapes our self-definition and our relationship to community; it locates us in time and place and helps to give meaning to our lives. History can be the vital thread that holds a nation together, as demonstrated most strikingly in the case of Jewish history. Conversely, for women, who have lived in a world in which they apparently had no history, its absence can be devastating. In Why History Matters, Lerner brings together her thinking and research of the last sixteen years, combining personal reminiscences with innovative theory that illuminate the importance of history and the vital role women have played in it.Why History Matters contains some of the most significant thinking and writing on history that Lerner has done in her entire career--a summation of her life and work. The chapters are divided into three sections, each widely different from the others, each revelatory of Lerner as a woman and a feminist. We read first of Lerner's coming to consciousness as a Jewish woman. There are moving accounts of her early life as a refugee in America, her return to Austria fifty years after fleeing the Nazis (to discover a nation remarkable both for the absence of Jews and for the anti-Semitism just below the surface), her slow assimilation into American life, and her decision to be a historian. If the first section is personal, the second focuses on more professional concerns. Included here is a fascinating essay on nonviolent resistance, tracing the idea from the Quakers (such as Mary Dyer), to abolitionists such as Theodore Dwight Weld (the "most mobbed man" in America), to Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience, then across the sea to Tolstoy and Gandhi, before finally returning to America during the civil rights movement of the 1950s. There are insightful essays on "American Values" and on the tremendous advances women have made in the twentieth century, as well as Lerner's presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, which outlines the contributions of women to the field of history and the growing importance of women as a subject of history. The highlight of the final section of the book is Lerner's bold and innovative look at the issues of class and race as they relate to women, an essay that distills her thinking on these difficult subjects and offers a coherent conceptual framework that will prove of lasting interest to historians and intellectuals.A major figure in women's studies and long-term activist for women's issues, a founding member of NOW and a past president of the Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is a pioneer in the field of Women's History and one of its leading practitioners. Why History Matters is the summation of the work and thinking of this distinguished historian.
Oxford University Press 1997 249 pages

A history of public health

Rosen, George
Since its publication in 1958, George Rosen's classic treatise has remained the only comprehensive international account of the history of public health. Long available only through antiquarian bookstores, A History of Public Health now returns to print in a paperback edition that supplements the original text with Elizabeth Fee's new introduction and Edward T. Morman's biographical essay and bibliography. George Rosen discusses the evolution of public health in classical Greece, imperial Rome, England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the United States, and other countries. He also presents the lives and history-making contributions of the great figures in public health. Approaching the subject from a broad point of view, Rosen considers community health problems of different periods in terms of their political, social, and economic patterns. Among the topics discussed are the prevalence of disease, the water supply and sewage disposal, epidemiological theory, maternal and child health, nutrition, occupational health, health education, public health administration, communicable disease control, medical care, statistics, public policy, and medical geography. A new introduction by Elizabeth Fee places the work in the context of both the earlier and later historiography of public health. Fee identifies Rosen's agenda in relation to trends in medical history and the politics of public health in the 1950s. She also assesses the impact of Rosen's book and identifies new problems in public health that have arisen since its first publication.
Johns Hopkins University Press 1993-07 535 pages

The Jews of France: a history from antiquity to the present

Benbassa, Esther
In the first English-language edition of a general, synthetic history of French Jewry from antiquity to the present, Esther Benbassa tells the intriguing tale of the social, economic, and cultural vicissitudes of a people in diaspora. With verve and insight, she reveals the diversity of Jewish life throughout France's regions, while showing how Jewish identity has constantly redefined itself in a country known for both the Rights of Man and the Dreyfus affair. Beginning with late antiquity, she charts the migrations of Jews into France and traces their fortunes through the making of the French kingdom, the Revolution, the rise of modern anti-Semitism, and the current renewal of interest in Judaism.
Princeton University Press 1999 281 pages

Life History and the Historical Moment: Diverse Presentations

Erik H. Erikson,H. Erik Erikson
One of the most powerful (though deceptively simple) of current ideas is Erik H. Erikson's insight into the nature of the interrelationships of the psychogenic development of an individual and the historical development of the times. This insight, present in all his work beginning with Childhood and Society, and particularly examined in Young Man Luther and Gandhi's Truth, finds full and mature expression in the present book. Just as Erikson's notion of the identity crisis has been obscured and confused as it has passed into everyday speech, so too have glib popularizers misused his notions of psychobiography and psychohistory. Thus, this book is of supreme importance, not merely to set the record straight, but more especially to make these vital ideas, central to our time, fully available. "To deal with life history and history psychoanalytically," Erikson points out, "means to engage in a kind of circular chronology: our inquiry always points to selected periods in the past which, in throwing new light on the present, suggest new forays into the more distant past." Consequently, this book opens with autobiography; ranges through discussions of Freud and Gandhi and of the meaning of ideas on womanhood; and concludes with an examination of the role of psychoanalysis in the evolution of ethics.
W. W. Norton & Company 1977-11-17 284 pages

A people's history of the Second World War: resistance versus empire

Gluckstein, Donny
"A People's History of the Second World War unearths the fascinating history of the war as fought "from below." Until now, the vast majority of historical accounts have focused on the regular armies of the allied powers. Donny Gluckstein shows that an important part of the fighting involved people's militias struggling against not just fascism, but also colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism itself. Gluckstein argues that despite this radical element, which was fighting on the ground, the allied governments were more interested in creating a new order to suit their interests. He shows how various anti-fascist resistance movements in Poland, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere were betrayed by the Allies despite playing a decisive part in defeating the Nazis. This book will fundamentally challenge our understanding of the Second World War - both about the people who fought it and the reasons for which it was fought."--Publisher's website
Pluto Press 2012 269 pages

Re-inventing the Jewish past: European Jewish intellectuals and the Zionist return to history

Myers, David N.
David Myers' book explores a fascinating and untold chapter in modern Jewish intellectual history: the role of the first generation of Jewish scholars at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in establishing Jewish studies within framework of a jewish national university. committed to rewriting jewsh history according to zionst standarts, these "jerusalem scholars" richly reflect the tensions that attended their dual allegiances, to both zionism and the discipline of history
Oxford University Press 1995-11-30 278 pages

The New Cambridge medieval history

Rosamond McKitterick,Paul Fouracre,Timothy Reuter,David Edward Luscombe,David Abulafia,Jonathan Riley-Smith,Christopher Allmand,Michael Jones
The fourth volume of The New Cambridge Medieval History covers the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which comprised the most dynamic period in the European Middle Ages. The first of two parts, this volume deals with ecclesiastical and secular themes, in addition to major developments such as the expansion of population, agriculture, trade, and towns; the radical reform of the Western Church; the appearance of new kingdoms and states, the Crusades, knighthood and law; and the development of literature, art and architecture, heresies and the scholastic movement.
Cambridge University Press 1995 959 pages

Illuminating history: a retrospective of seven decades

Bailyn, Bernard
The brilliance of a master historian shines through this “elegant and engaging memoir” of a lifetime’s work (Richard Aldous, Wall Street Journal ). Over a remarkable career Bernard Bailyn has reshaped our understanding of the early American past. Inscribing his superb scholarship with passion and imagination honed by a commitment to rigor, Bailyn captures the particularity of the past and its broad significance in precise, elegant prose. His transformative work has ranged from a new reckoning with the ideology that powered the opposition to British authority in the American Revolution, to a sweeping account of the peopling of America, and the critical nurturing of a new field, the history of the Atlantic world. Illuminating History is the most personal of Bailyn’s works. It is in part an intellectual memoir of the significant turns in an immensely productive and influential scholarly career. It is also alive with people whose actions touched the long arc of history. Among the dramatic human stories that command our attention: a struggling Boston merchant tormented by the tensions between capitalist avarice and a constrictive Puritan piety; an ordinary shopkeeper who in a unique way feverishly condemned British authority as corrupt and unworthy of public confidence; a charismatic German Pietist who founded a cloister in the Pennsylvania wilderness famous for its strange theosophy, its spartan lifestyle, and its rich musical and artistic achievement. And the good townspeople of Petersham, whose response in 1780 to a draft Massachusetts constitution speaks directly to us through a moving insistence on individual freedoms in the face of an imposing central authority. Here is vivid history and an illuminating self-portrait from one of the most eminent historians of our time.
W.W. Norton and Company 2021-06-08 288 pages

A history of the Federal Reserve. Volume 2. Book 1, 1951-1969

Meltzer, Allan H.
Allan H. Meltzer’s critically acclaimed history of the Federal Reserve is the most ambitious, most intensive, and most revealing investigation of the subject ever conducted. Its first volume, published to widespread critical acclaim in 2003, spanned the period from the institution’s founding in 1913 to the restoration of its independence in 1951. This two-part second volume of the history chronicles the evolution and development of this institution from the Treasury–Federal Reserve accord in 1951 to the mid-1980s, when the great inflation ended. It reveals the inner workings of the Fed during a period of rapid and extensive change. An epilogue discusses the role of the Fed in resolving our current economic crisis and the needed reforms of the financial system. In rich detail, drawing on the Federal Reserve’s own documents, Meltzer traces the relation between its decisions and economic and monetary theory, its experience as an institution independent of politics, and its role in tempering inflation. He explains, for example, how the Federal Reserve’s independence was often compromised by the active policy-making roles of Congress, the Treasury Department, different presidents, and even White House staff, who often pressured the bank to take a short-term view of its responsibilities. With an eye on the present, Meltzer also offers solutions for improving the Federal Reserve, arguing that as a regulator of financial firms and lender of last resort, it should focus more attention on incentives for reform, medium-term consequences, and rule-like behavior for mitigating financial crises. Less attention should be paid, he contends, to command and control of the markets and the noise of quarterly data. At a time when the United States finds itself in an unprecedented financial crisis, Meltzer’s fascinating history will be the source of record for scholars and policy makers navigating an uncertain economic future.
The University of Chicago Press 2014-08-20 682 pages