14302 results for "History"

Cities made differently

Dubrovsky, Nika,Graeber, David
"This is a book about cities - how unexpectedly different they were in various countries and times, and cities that never existed, but someone dreamed of them or feared them. The project uses examples from a wide spectrum of different cultures, it researches the existential and universal question of what means to be human - as a child and as an adult - in order to explore the diversity of how people live globally and throughout history"--
The MIT Press 2025 119 pages

Bucky F*cking Dent

Duchovny, David
"Ted Fullilove, aka Mr. Peanut, is not like other Ivy League grads. He shares an apartment with Goldberg, his beloved battery-operated fish, sleeps on a bed littered with yellow legal pads penned with what he hopes will be the next great American novel, and spends the waning malaise-filled days of the Carter administration at Yankee Stadium, waxing poetic while slinging peanuts to pay the rent. When Ted hears the news that his estranged father, Marty, is dying of lung cancer, he immediately moves back into his childhood home, where a whirlwind of revelations ensues. The browbeating absentee father of his youth is living to make up for lost time, but his health dips drastically whenever his beloved Red Sox lose. And so, with help from a crew of neighborhood old-timers and the lovely Mariana--Marty's Nuyorican grief counselor--Ted orchestrates the illusion of a Sox winning streak, enabling Marty and the Red Sox to reverse the Curse of the Bambino and cruise their way to World Series victory. Well, sort of David Duchovny's richly drawn Bucky F&%@ing Dent is a story of the bond between fathers and sons, Yankee fans and the Fenway faithful, and grapples with the urgent need to find our story in an age of irony and artifice. Culminating in that fateful moment in October of '78 when the meek Bucky Dent hit his way into baseball history with the unlikeliest of home runs, this tragicomic novel demonstrates that life truly belongs to the losers--that the long shots are the ones worth betting on. Bucky F&%@ing is a singular tale that brims with the hilarity, poignance, and profound solitude of modern life"--
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2016-04-05 296 pages

In the image of God: religion, moral values, and our heritage of slavery

Davis, David Brion
In this broad-ranging book, the preeminent authority on the history of slavery meditates on the origins, experience, and legacy of this "peculiar institution." David Brion Davis begins with a substantial and highly personal introduction in which he discusses some of the major ideas and individuals that have shaped his approach to history. He then presents a series of interlocking essays that cover topics including slave resistance, the historical construction of race, and the connections.
Yale University Press 2002 392 pages

Science, order, and creativity

Bohm, David
In Science, Order and Creativity, David Bohm and F. David Peat argue that science has lost its way in recent years and needs to go beyond a narrow and fragmented view of nature and embrace a wider holistic view that restores the importance of creativity and communication for all humanity - not just scientists. The result of a close collaboration by one of the 20th century's greatest physicists and thinkers, David Bohm, with leading science writer F. David Peat, provides a rare combination of profound reflection and clear exposition that can be appreciated by anyone concerned with science and its importance in our lives. This new edition includes a new preface and an extended additional chapter by Peat which draws upon further discussions with David Bohm before the latter's death in 1992. A fascinating diagnosis and considered proposal for a cure for science's ills, it is also very accessible entry point to the work of David Bohm. Bohm and Peat contend that science has lost its bearings in the last century in favour of a narrow, abstracted, fragmented approach to nature and reality. Tracing the history of science, Bohm and Peat offer intriguing new insights into how scientific theories come into being, how to eliminate blocks of creativity and how science can lead to a deeper understanding of society, the human condition and the human mind itself.
Routledge 2000 316 pages

Pipeline to the Pros

Ben Kaplan,Danny Parkins
Jeff Van Gundy. Brad Stevens. Frank Vogel. Mike Budenholzer. Tom Thibodeau. Sam Presti. Leon Rose. Before you knew his name, before he drafted your favorite player, before he guided your team to a championship, he had a playing career of his own at an NCAA Division III college. He didn't play for fortune - the NBA was out of reach, and his school didn't even give athletic scholarships. He didn't play for fame - his games weren't televised, and the stands were rarely full. Whatever the motivation, he simply couldn't give up the game of basketball. And that didn't change after graduation, when it was time to pick a career path. For the first time in league history, NBA coaches and general managers are just as likely to have played Division III basketball as they are to have played in the NBA. While the number of former D3 players working in the NBA is higher than ever, small college alums have served in leadership positions since the league's founding. They shaped the NBA into what it is today, playing integral roles in the Lakers' initial success in Los Angeles, the inception of several expansion franchises, the creation of the popular All-Star Weekend dunk contest, the globalization of the league, and more. Their improbable and inspiring journeys tell a bigger story - the history of small college athletics, the evolution of coaching and management in the NBA, and the hiring practices in the most competitive fields. Their alma maters were small, but their impact on the game, and the implications of their success, loom large.
Triumph Books 2024-04-16 272 pages

Three rings: a tale of exile, narrative, and fate

Mendelsohn, Daniel Adam
Winner of the 2020 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, France's best foreign book of the year. 'Astounding' Sebastian Barry 'A masterpiece' Ayad Akhtar 'This little book is ruminative, humane, and gorgeously precise' Jonathan Lethem In this genre-defying book, best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own-works that pondered the nature of narrative itself. Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler's Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul. Francois Fenelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey,The Adventures of Telemachus - a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Europe for one hundred years - resulted in his banishment. And the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home. Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn's struggles to write two of his own books-a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father-that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life.
William Collins 2022-03-17 116 pages

Debating Palestine and Israel

Cohn-Sherbok, Dan,Grey, Mary C.
While the Jews strove for statehood and national identity as a result of their claim to their ancient homeland, the Palestinians were denied both, leading to their marginalisation and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. This book seeks to uncover and explore the central issues of this crisis through the dialogue and debate of a pro-Palestinian Christian and a pro-Zionist Jew. Clashing viewpoints are expressed as the authors trace the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the end of the nineteenth century until the present.
Impress Books 2014 308 pages

The Nation. a Biography

D. D. Guttenplan
The Nation: A Biography tells the surprising story behind America’s oldest weekly magazine, instigator of progress since 1865—the bickering abolitionists who founded it; the campaigns, causes and controversies that shaped it; the rebels, mavericks and visionaries who have written, edited and fought in its pages for 150 years and counting. The story of The Nation is also the story of our country—and our movement. Entertaining as well as inspiring, Guttenplan’s history of The Nation is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where we came from—and how to continue the march toward a radical future. “Here’s to The Nation on its 150th birthday,” historian Eric Foner writes in the introduction. “This book makes clear why we should hope that the country’s oldest weekly magazine survives for at least another century and a half.”
Nation Company, L.P. 2015-04-20 271 pages

Infotopia: how many minds produce knowledge

Sunstein, Cass R.
As the dire history of planned economies highlights, small well-informed groups of people will often make far worse decisions than large numbers of people, acting independently, would make. In Infotopia, Cass Sunstein looks at the "wisdom of the many"--particularly as seen on today's Internet--illuminating many new ways of collecting and evaluating information and making effective decisions. Sunstein shows how the on-line efforts of many people coming together help companies, schools, governments, and individuals to amass ever-growing bodies of accurate knowledge. He describes for instance how Wikipedia, through an endless flurry of self-correcting exchanges, collects information on everything from politics and business to science fiction. Open-source software--which licenses programmers to use, change, and improve the software--taps the power of large numbers of people to spur technological development. And prediction markets--such as the famous Iowa Electronic Market, where people bet real money on the outcome of local and national elections--collect information in a way that allows companies, ranging from computer makers to Hollywood studios, to make better decisions about the future. Sunstein reveals why these revolutionary new methods are so astoundingly accurate and he also shows how people can take advantage of "the wisdom of the many" without succumbing to the dangers of herd mentality. "Sunstein, one of the biggest of America's internet big thinkers, has written an intriguing new book in which he argues that Hayek's insights about the genius of markets are equally true of the internet." --Patti Waldmeir, Financial Times "This extraordinary work synthesizes the latest in how we know, with the latest in what the web has become, to map more compellingly than any other book the promise and risk of the information society." --Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture and The Future of Ideas "Vivid, readable, and informativea show-me-the-money guide to what soars and what stumbles from the stable of Internet dreams." --Jedediah Purdy, American Prospect "Sunstein, one of the biggest of America's internet big thinkers, has written an intriguing new book in which he argues that Hayek's insights about the genius of markets are equally true of the internet. Sunstein argues, for example, that sharing scientific information online would cure some of the worst problems of the US patent system and foster innovation much more efficiently than costly patent litigation. Sunstein recognizes all the potential flaws of such collaborative projects. Groupthink can be dangerous. But, says Sunstein, the wisdom of the many is a great thing, and sharing knowledge online can lead to remarkable advances for companies, for governments and for the rest of us."--Patti Waldmeir, Financial Times "A survey of the evidence on how information technology affects political debate and institutional decision making. The result is a vivid, readable, and informative work of empiricist skepticism--a show-me-the-money guide to what soars and what stumbles from the stable of Internet dreams."--Jedediah Purdy, merican Prospect, Duke University "This extraordinary work synthesizes the latest in how we know, with the latest in what the web has become, to map more compellingly than any other book the promise and risk of the information society. As with everything Sunstein writes, this beautiful and clear book has something to teach the experts, and lots to teach the rest of us."-Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture and The Future of Ideas "Infotopia is a persuasive and sophisticated meditation on the ways in which the Web is not just living up to its early hype, but transcending it. Cass Sunstein has given us a brilliant integrative view of how the distributed users of the Internet can band together to produce extraordinary work--along with the circumstances that best give rise to deliberation r
Oxford University Press 2008 273 pages

B. Krigstein comics

Krigstein, B.
Famed as one of the great innovators in comics history, Krigstein was one of the first cartoonists to consciously experiment with pacing and layout for psychological effect. This impressive coffee-table book follows his development from his heavy-handed crime and romance comics of the late 1940s to his expressionist masterpieces for EC Comics a few years later. Employing a variety of artistic styles and inking techniques, Krigstein emerges as a restless trendsetter, moving from a loose, sketchy style to a dense horror technique, depending on the story. Unfortunately, the reprinted comics stories also show how Krigstein was handcuffed by the period's trite themes and "shock" endings. Many of the stories are so hackneyed they're barely readable today, and when editor Sadowski mentions that a story about a pirate with an ape for a sidekick was a Krigstein favorite, one can only wonder why. However, at EC, Krigstein found writers similarly dedicated to pushing artistic boundaries, and these collaborations are the book's finest: "Key Chain," in which a crime in a key-making shop leads to madness, or "In the Bag," a gruesome story of a cop following a suspicious character whom Krigstein elevates to art with his moody storytelling and withering ability to capture human weakness with a few lines. The quality is heightened by Marie Severin's masterful recolorings throughout.
Fantagraphics Books 2004 230 pages

Barnett Newman

Newman, Barnett
Barnett Newman (1905-1970) was one of the most profound and influential artists of the twentieth century. A master of expansive spatial effects and evocative color, he pioneered painting that was both abstract and emotive, suffused with powerful philosophical and spiritual meaning. This landmark book surveys the breadth of Newman's career from his founding role in the New York School in the 1940s to his key influence on both minimalism and conceptual art in the 1960s. Featuring more than 100 of his paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, the book also offers significant new scholarly findings based on the archives of the Barnett Newman Foundation. Despite the apparent simplicity of his signature, the "zip, " Newman's art is richly complicated and unexpectedly diverse. His works include such masterpieces as Onement 1 (1948), the series Stations of the Cross (1958-66), and the monumental sculpture Broken Obelisk (1967). Each work of art in this book is reproduced in full color and accompanied by its own entry. A comprehensive chronology of the artist's life based on new documentation, a selected bibliography, and a selected exhibition history complete the volume.
Philadelphia Museum of Art 2002-01-01 351 pages

Dictionary of untranslatables: a philosophical lexicon

Barbara Cassin,Emily Apter
"This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy--or any--translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages--English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J.C. Young, and many more. The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas."--Book jacket
Princeton University Press 2014-02-09 1297 pages

Moses: a human life

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb
An unprecedented portrait of Moses's inner world and perplexing character, by a distinguished biblical scholar No figure looms larger in Jewish culture than Moses, and few have stories more enigmatic. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, acclaimed for her many books on Jewish thought, turns her attention to Moses in this remarkably rich, evocative book. Drawing on a broad range of sources--literary as well as psychoanalytic, a wealth of classical Jewish texts alongside George Eliot, W. G. Sebald, and Werner Herzog--Zornberg offers a vivid and original portrait of the biblical Moses. Moses's vexing personality, his uncertain origins, and his turbulent relations with his own people are acutely explored by Zornberg, who sees this story, told and retold, as crucial not only to the biblical past but also to the future of Jewish history.
Yale University Press 2020-03-17 225 pages

The transfiguration of the commonplace: a philosophy of art

Danto, Arthur Coleman
Mr. Danto argues that recent developments in the artworld, in particular the production of works of art that cannot be told from ordinary things, make urgent the need for a new theory of art and make plain the factors such a theory can and cannot involve. In the course of constructing such a theory, he seeks to demonstrate the relationship between philosophy and art, as well as the connections that hold between art and social institutions and art history. The book distinguishes what belongs to artistic theory from what has traditionally been confused with it, namely aesthetic theory and offers as well a systematic account of metaphor, expression, and style, together with an original account of artistic representation. A wealth of examples, drawn especially from recent and contemporary art, illuminate the argument.
Harvard University Press 1981 212 pages

Johnson at 10: the inside story

Seldon, Anthony,Newell, Raymond (Writer on British Politics)
"After his sudden rise to power in the summer of 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock, Boris Johnson presided over the most dramatic period of British history in almost a century. From the controversial prorogation of Parliament in August 2019 to the historic landslide victory later that year, the agonising upheaval of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic - and the scandals unleashed by both - the Afghanistan crisis, and the conflict in Ukraine, Johnson's premiership was more turbulent than any other in living memory. This gripping work of contemporary history maps Johnson's time in power across ten decisive moments and sheds light on the most divisive and inscrutable prime minister since Margaret Thatcher. Based on major interviews with key aides and allies, Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell give the first full account of Boris Johnson's explosive time in office"--Publisher's description.
Atlantic Books 2023 336 pages

The den of shadows quartet

Atwater-Rhodes, Amelia
FOUR COMPLETE NOVELS—ONE CAPTIVATING WORLD In the Forests of the Night Three hundred years ago Risika had a family—a brother and a father who loved her. Three hundred years ago she was human. Now she is a vampire, a powerful one. And her past has come back to torment her. Demon in My View Jessica isn’t your average high school student—she’s an acclaimed published author of vampire fiction. Now two new students at her high school strongly remind her of her favorite characters. But those characters only live in her imagination—right? Shattered Mirror Christopher Raneva and Sarah Vida may look like a normal high school couple, but he’s actually a vampire who’s sworn off human blood and she’s an incredibly powerful, vampire-hunting witch. As if that weren’t enough to prevent their love, his past and her future collide when they get tangled up with Nikolas, one of the most reviled vampires ever. Midnight Predator Once a happy teenager, Turquoise Draka is now a vampire hunter. Her current assigment is to assassinate Jeshikah, one of the cruelest vampires in history. But to do that, she’ll have to enter Midnight, a fabled vampire realm, as a human slave. . . .
Delacorte 2009-08-11 595 pages

The Red Garden A Novel

Alice Hoffman
From the author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick The Rules of Magic comes a transfixing glimpse into a small American town where a mysterious, magical garden holds the truth behind three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption. “[A] dreamy, fabulist series of connected stories . . . [These] tales, with their tight, soft focus on America, cast their own spell.”— The Washington Post The Red Garden introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts, capturing the unexpected turns in its history and in our own lives. From the town's founder, a brave young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or bears, to the young man who runs away to New York City with only his dog for company, the characters in The Red Garden are extraordinary and vivid: a young wounded Civil War soldier who is saved by a passionate neighbor, a woman who meets a fiercely human historical character, a poet who falls in love with a blind man, a mysterious traveler who comes to town in the year when summer never arrives. At the center of everyone’s life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look. Beautifully crafted and shimmering with magic, The Red Garden is as unforgettable as it is moving.
Crown 2011-08-02 304 pages

On settler colonialism: ideology, violence, and justice

Kirsch, Adam
"A prominent public intellectual tackles one of the most crucial political ideas of our moment. Since Hamas's attack on Israel last October 7, the term "settler colonialism" has become central to public debate in the United States. A concept new to most Americans, but already established and influential in academic circles, settler colonialism is shaping the way many people think about the history of the United States, Israel and Palestine, and a host of political issues. This short book is the first to examine settler colonialism critically for a general readership. By critiquing the most important writers, texts, and ideas in the field, Adam Kirsch shows how the concept emerged in the context of North American and Australian history and how it is being applied to Israel. He examines the sources of its appeal, which, he argues, are spiritual as much as political; how it works to delegitimize nations; and why it has the potential to turn indignation at past injustices into a source of new injustices today. A compact and accessible introduction, rich with historical detail, the book will speak to readers interested in the Middle East, American history, and today's most urgent cultural-political debates."-- Dust jacket.
W. W. Norton & Company 2024 142 pages