14302 results for "History"

Fear in Chile: lives under Pinochet

Politzer Kerekes, Patricia
"Like a García Márquez novel that has suddenly, horrifyingly, come to real life" ( New York Newsday ), Fear in Chile is an extraordinary collection of firstperson accounts of life under dictatorship. In the 1980s, shortly after Chile emerged from one of the century's most notorious reigns of terror, Chilean journalist Patricia Politzer interviewed figures including a revolutionary activist, a military leader loyal to General Augusto Pinochet, a bank clerk concerned with the status quo, the mother of one of the "disappeared," as well as a dozen other men and women from every political position and social stratum of Chilean life. The result is a broad, vivid, yet nonideological view of modern life under military rule, about which Ariel Dorfman writes, "I can think of no better introduction to my country." With the October 1998 arrest of General Pinochet in Great Britain and renewed world awareness of the horrendous crimes committed during his regime, Fear in Chile , updated with a new afterword by the author that considers the recent attempts to prosecute Pinochet for human-rights violations, offers a vivid portrait of Chile's Pinochet era.
New Press 2001 254 pages

Objectivity and liberal scholarship

Chomsky, Noam
Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship is Chomsky's powerful indictment of a liberal intelligentsia that provided self-serving arguments for war in Vietnam, legitimizing U.S. commitment to autocratic rule, to intervention in Asia and, ultimately, the "pacification" of millions. Over thirty years after their first printing, these are prophetic words, as today America effects "regime change" in Iraq and an increasingly boisterous militarism around the globe. Included here is Chomsky's classic counter-analysis of the Spanish Civil War as a revolutionary war from below, as he lays bare the hostility of even liberal scholarly elites to engage in mass movements and social change, revealing not objectivity, but its opposite--the use of ideology to mask self-interest and obeisance to power. Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship is a crucial signpost of Chomsky's searing contribution to our age, and an indispensable lens through which to consider mainstream punditry today. This is the fourth in a series of Chomsky's classic political books reissued by The New Press. The others are American Power and the New Mandarins , For Reasons of State , and Problems of Knowledge and Freedom.
New Press 2003 131 pages

A new generation draws the line: "humanitarian" intervention and the standards of the west

Chomsky, Noam linguiste
How do we understand the ethics of humanitarian intervention in today's world? After Western intervention in Libya's civil war this new edition of A New Generation Draws the Line provides timely answers. In a new chapter on recent interventions Chomsky dissects the meaning of the 'right to protect' principle. Other chapters examine the West's uses and abuses of 'humanitarian intervention' including detailed studies of East Timor and Kosovo. The actions of Muammar Gaddafi and the trial of Serbian military commander Ratko Mladic have energised narratives about the role of the 'civilised' West. In this book, Chomsky deploys his forensic method - asking the difficult questions the West would prefer to avoid.
Pluto 2012 176 pages

A journey through philosophy in 101 anecdotes

Rescher, Nicholas
"The first comprehensive chronology of philosophical anecdotes, from antiquity to the current era. Rescher introduces the major thinkers, texts, and historical periods of Western philosophy, recounting many of the stories philosophers have used over time to engage with issues of philosophical concern: questions of meaning, truth, knowledge, value, action, and ethics. Rescher's anecdotes touch on a wide range of themes--from logic to epistemology, ethics to metaphysics"--
University of Pittsburgh Press 2015-06-04 289 pages

King Zeno

Rich, Nathaniel
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Paris Review Staff Pick A January Pick by Salon , Town and Country, Southern Living, and LA Magazine New Orleans, 1918. The birth of jazz, the Spanish flu, an ax murderer on the loose. The lives of a traumatized cop, a conflicted Mafia matriarch, and a brilliant trumpeter converge—and the Crescent City gets the rich, dark, sweeping novel it so deserves. From one of the most inventive writers of his generation, King Zeno is a historical crime novel and a searching inquiry into man’s dreams of immortality. New Orleans, a century ago: a city determined to reshape its destiny and, with it, the nation’s. Downtown, a new American music is born. In Storyville, prostitution is outlawed and the police retake the streets with maximum violence. In the Ninth Ward, laborers break ground on a gigantic canal that will split the city, a work of staggering human ingenuity intended to restore New Orleans’s faded mercantile glory. The war is ending and a prosperous new age dawns. But everything is thrown into chaos by a series of murders committed by an ax-wielding maniac with a peculiar taste in music. The ax murders scramble the fates of three people from different corners of town. Detective William Bastrop is an army veteran haunted by an act of wartime cowardice, recklessly bent on redemption. Isadore Zeno is a jazz cornetist with a dangerous side hustle. Beatrice Vizzini is the widow of a crime boss who yearns to take the family business straight. Each nurtures private dreams of worldly glory and eternal life, their ambitions carrying them into dark territories of obsession, paranoia, and madness. In New Orleans, a city built on swamp, nothing stays buried long.
MCD 2018-01-09 386 pages

Lifetimes Under Apartheid

Nadine Gordimer,David Goldblatt
"Superb...a series of masterly drawn glimpses into the storymaking art of one of Africa's great modern literary geniuses." -Alan Cheuse, NPR A selection of short stories written to date by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, Life Times reveals her acute understanding of human nature and paints a fascinatingly original portrait of South Africa. Whether focusing on politics, sexuality, race, love, or loss, Gordimer maps out the terrain of human relationships with razor-sharp psychological insight and a stunning lack of sentimentality. Complex and multifaceted, her stories challenge us, time and again, to examine the conflict between our actions and our unspoken desires. This powerful collection, which includes two new stories, is a testament to Gordimer's literary genius and the ongoing power and relevance of her vision.
Viking 1986 115 pages

Corpus Christi: the Eucharist in late medieval culture

Rubin, Miri
This book studies later medieval culture (c. 1150-1500) through its central symbol: the eucharist. From the twelfth century onward the eucharist was designed by the Church as the foremost sacrament. The claim that this ritual brought into presence Christ's own body, and offered it to believers, underpinned the sacramental system and the clerical meditation upon which it depended. The book explores the context in which the sacramental world was created and the cultural processes through which it was disseminated, interpreted and used. With attention to the variety of eucharistic meanings and practices, the book moves from the "design" of the eucharist in the twelfth century to its redesign in the sixteenth--a story of the emergence of a symbol, its use and interpretation and final transformation.
Cambridge University Press 1991 432 pages

After the World Trade Center: rethinking New York City

Michael Sorkin,Sharon Zukin
The terrorist attacks of September 11 have created an unprecedented public discussion about the uses and meanings of the central area of lower Manhattan that was once the World Trade Center. While the city sifts through the debris, contrary forces shaping its future are at work. Developers jockey to control the right to rebuild "ground zero." Financial firms line up for sweetheart deals while proposals for memorials are gaining in appeal. In After the World Trade Center, eminent social critics Sharon Zukin and Michael Sorkin call on New York's most acclaimed urbanists to consider the impact of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and what it bodes for the future of New York. Contributors take a close look at the reaction to the attack from a variety of New York communities and discuss possible effects on public life in the city.
Routledge 2002-01 236 pages

The trial of Donald Rumsfeld: a prosecution by book

Ratner, Michael
The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld lays out the evidence that high–level officials of the Bush administration ordered, authorized, implemented, and permitted war crimes, in particular the crimes of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Using primary source documents ranging from Rumsfeld's "techniques chart" and Iraqi plaintiffs' statements to the testimony of whistleblowers and key pieces of reportage, the book sets forth evidence of a torture program that took place throughout the world: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, secret CIA prisons, and other places unknown. The accused are accorded a defense drawn from their memos and public statements. Readers are allowed to judge whether the Bush administration has engaged in torture and whom among the administration to hold responsible. Reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens's bestselling The Trial of Henry Kissinger, The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld constitutes one of the only attempts to hold high–ranking Bush administration officials criminally responsible for their actions.
New Press 2008 242 pages

Dead Heat The Race Against The Greenhouse Effect

Michael Oppenheimer
Shows society at a crossroads--in one direction pollution, drought, and destruction, in the other solar cells, clean energy, and safe technology. Skeptical? You should be. This volume is fine as an abstract policy study, but it fails to confront those who are happy with the way things are: mining fossil fuel, clearing old-growth forests, legislating for special interests, and generally sticking it to the public. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Basic Books 1991-08-05 268 pages

Charmed Lives A Family Romance

Michael Korda
A Rolls Royce Silver Cloud drove him to airports; the British film industry kowtowed to his power; the great Hollywood studios fawned at his feet.Sir Alexander Korda, one of the world's most flamboyant movie tycoons, rose from obscurity in rural Hungary to become a legendary filmmaker. With him were his brothers, Zoltan and Vincent, all living charmed lives in circles that included H. G. Wells, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Marlena Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, and Merle Oberon, who was soon to be Alex's wife. But along with Alex's flair for success was an equally powerful impulse for destruction. Now, Vincent's son, Michael Korda, in the first book of his memoirs, recalls the enchanted figures of his childhood...the glory days of the Korda brothers' great films...and then their heartbreaking, tragic end.
HarperCollins 2002-05-14 512 pages