14302 results for "History"

Mr. and Mrs. President: from the Trumans to the Clintons

Troy, Gil
It began with Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. It accelerated with Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson became partners in office and Nancy and Ronnie seemed joined at the hip. Without question, the presidential couple has arrived as a force in politics. Yet surprisingly, the electorate is not happy about it. The emergence of the presidential couple is one of the most important and contentious developments in America’s postwar political history. Its citizens’ reaction to the First Couple reflects the country’s changing morality, its uncertain attitude toward feminism, and the increasing power of the media. Gil Troy traces these shifts through ten presidential marriages, from the homesick tensions between Harry and Bess Truman to the very public scandals endured by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Along the way, readers learn of Mamie Eisenhower's perseverance on her husband’s campaign trail, Gerald Ford’s embarrassment over Betty’s outspoken honesty, and the amazing political success of Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s partnership in office. With a new chapter devoted to Hillary and Bill Clinton’s tainted partnership in office and to our present First Lady’s senatorial ambitions, this edition of Gil Troy’s Mr. and Mrs. President offers fresh insights into America’s paradoxical expectations for its presidential wives and husbands. “Troy argues that the rise of the First Couple is not simply a function of the women’s movement, but reflects a mixture of factors, including the weakening of parties, the rise of personality politics, the increasing power of the Presidency and the Federal Government and perhaps, most important of all, the ‘rise of the mass media and the new political culture it spawned.’”—New York Times Book Review.
University Press of Kansas 2000-05-02 440 pages

The crisis of German ideology: intellectual origins of the Third Reich

Mosse, George L.
In his classic study of the idealogical sources of National Socialism, George L. Mosse explores a unique complex of anti-democratic ideas deeply embedded in German history. He traces these currents of thought though the 19th and 20th centuries to show how a peculiarly Germanic ideology became institutionalized in the schools, youth movements, veterans' groups and political parties, and how the "German revolution" called for by the ideology's exponents was transformed by Hitler into an "anti-Jewish revolution," and an effective political program as the Nazis rose to power.
H. Fertig 1998 373 pages

The fateful question of culture

Hartman, Geoffrey H.
Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of California, Irvine, 1992. The essays discuss culture and the growth of cultural studies over the past 50 years. Ch. 4 (pp. 99-140), "Language and Culture after the Holocaust, " suggests that the Holocaust is a reference point in cultural history - there is a before and an after. Though some have said that after Auschwitz no narrative is possible, without narrative it is much harder to keep the event in mind. Discusses philosophers' problems with the Holocaust - especially the "nonresponse" of Heidegger and the responses of Adorno, Celan, and Derrida. After the Nazi experience, culture can no longer claim to represent a definitive triumph of the spirit; Auschwitz cannot be integrated into culture. The war against the Jews left a grim intellectual legacy.
Columbia University Press 1997 249 pages

The royalist revolution: monarchy and the American founding

Nelson, Eric
Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize, Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey Finalist, George Washington Prize A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2015 Generations of students have been taught that the American Revolution was a revolt against royal tyranny. In this revisionist account, Eric Nelson argues that a great many of our “founding fathers” saw themselves as rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. The Royalist Revolution interprets the patriot campaign of the 1770s as an insurrection in favor of royal power—driven by the conviction that the Lords and Commons had usurped the just prerogatives of the monarch. “ The Royalist Revolution is a thought-provoking book, and Nelson is to be commended for reviving discussion of the complex ideology of the American Revolution. He reminds us that there was a spectrum of opinion even among the most ardent patriots and a deep British influence on the political institutions of the new country.” —Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Wall Street Journal “A scrupulous archaeology of American revolutionary thought.” —Thomas Meaney, The Nation “A powerful double-barrelled challenge to historiographical orthodoxy.” —Colin Kidd, London Review of Books “[A] brilliant and provocative analysis of the American Revolution.” —John Brewer, New York Review of Books
Harvard University Press 2014-10-06 390 pages

The origin of capitalism

Wood, Ellen Meiksins
Few questions of history have as many contemporary political implications as this deceptively simple one: how did capitalism come to be? In this clarifying work, Ellen Meiksins Wood refutes most existing accounts of the origin of capitalism, which, she argues, fail to recognize capitalism's distinctive attributes as a social system, making it seem a culmination of a natural human inclination to sell and buy. Wood begins with searching assessments of classical thinkers ranging from Adam Smith to Max Weber. She then explores the great Marxist debates among writers such as Paul Sweezy, Maurice Dobb, Robert Brenner, Perry Anderson, and E. P. Thompson. She concludes with her own account of capitalism's agrarian origin, challenging the association of capitalism with cities, the identification of "capitalist" with "bourgeois," and conceptions of modernity and postmodernity derived from those assumptions. Only with a proper understanding of capitalism's beginning, Wood concludes, can we imagine the possibility of it ending.
Monthly Review Press 1999 138 pages

The Far Shore

Edward Ellsberg
Edward Ellsberg's The Far Shore is the riveting first-hand account of the Allied D-Day landings in France in June 1944. A key actor in the invasion, Ellsberg describes in detail the massive preparations for the launch of the greatest armada in history, focusing on Hitler's Atlantic Wall defenses along the Normandy beaches and the ingenious creation of the Mulberry artificial floating harbor which would prove vital in securing an Allied beach-head in France. Ellsberg devotes the second half of his book to an unforgettable real-time account of the bloody D-Day landings.
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2018-07-19 256 pages

Mosaic

Diane Armstrong
international praise for Diane Armstrong: 'Mosaic flows like a novel which, once started, is hard to put down. It is a compelling family history of extraordinary people played out against some of the most frightening events of our century. The depth of emotions evoked is stunning. I was thrilled and deeply moved.' Joseph Heller author of Catch-22 'Diane Armstrong's book is a source of delight to the reader. Written with fervor and talent, it will capture your attention and retain it to the last page.' Elie Wiesel Nobel Prize winner a family story you'll never forget ... This extraordinary true story begins in the Polish city of Krakow in 1890 and spans one hundred years and four continents. It is the story of a Jewish family whose patriarch, Daniel Baldinger, divorces the wife he loves because she is barren. He believes 'a man must have sons to say Kaddish for him when he dies.' To ensure having children, he marries a girl of eighteen. By 1913, Daniel has eleven children - including six sons to say Kaddish for him. Impatient for his God-given son to begin learning the sacred language of the Torah, Daniel sent Avner to cheder at Chevre Tilem when he was three years old. Most boys were enrolled at four or five, but Daniel couldn't wait for Avner's rabbinical training to begin. Cheder was the place where childhood ended. At this religious day school, Jewish boys learned Hebrew and studied the Torah. No coloured pictures, childish stories or lively games relieved the tedium of this dour classroom where Avner had to memorise words he didn't understand, learn hundreds of rules and write strange squiggles. But although God has answered Daniel's prayers, it is with a bitter twist: each of his six sons rebels against his religion, and not one of them says Kaddish for him when he dies. This richly textured portrait follows these eleven children from the 1890s, through the terrifying years of the Holocaust (when Diane and her parents assumed non-Jewish names and passed themselves off as Catholics in the little village of Piszczac), to the present. A long shadow fell across the little girl tracing patterns in the dirt with a stick. After watching her for a few minutes, the stranger asked, 'What's your name, little girl?' Without looking up, she replied, 'Danusia Boguslawska.' 'But what was your name before that?' he insisted. My father, Henek, who was standing by the open window, froze when he heard the last question. Instead of rushing outside and grabbing the child to prevent her from answering that insidious question, he was struck dumb and stood there helplessly awaiting her reply, on which all their lives depended. Mosaic is compelling storytelling at its best: from the fascinating detail of Polish Jewish culture at the turn of the century and the rivalries and dramas of family life, to its moving account of lives torn apart by war and prejudice, this is a remarkable story of a family, and of one woman's journey to reclaim her heritage. For centuries Poland has been a battleground whose fields, watered by more blood than rain, have nurtured ancient hatreds. Jews have not had a monopoly on suffering, grief and loss. Before we drive away from Szczakowa, I look back at the leafy street where the synagogue and mikveh stood, just a short stroll from the house on Parkowa Street. If I close my eyes, I can see a dapper white-haired gentleman in top hat and patent leather shoes like mirrors striding ahead of his wife in a flowered hat with feathers, her long full skirt rustling as she tries to keep up with him as they walk to the synagogue on Kilinskiego Street for the marriage of their daughter Lieba to Daniel Baldinger. In this forgotten country town, I've found important pieces of the mosaic.
Random House Australia 1999-09-24 592 pages

Zionism: an emotional state

Penslar, Derek Jonathan
"Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as a Zionist, the word connotates liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived for so many years after the establishment of the Israeli State. Zionism: An Emotional State expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feelings whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement's history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish Identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world"--
Rutgers University Press 2023 321 pages

The complete book of the Summer Olympics

Wallechinsky, David
Contains records, statistics, medal standings, and anecdotes from throughout the history of summer Olympics, listing the top eight finishers in every event from 1896 to 2000, describing the rules and scoring of every event included in the 2004 Athens games, and including more than two hundred photographs, as well as essays on issues such as Olympic corruption, terrorism, and doping.
Sport Classic Books 2004 1171 pages

Going out: the rise and fall of public amusements

Nasaw, David
There was a time not very long ago when "going out" was only for the rich and the reckless. At the turn of the century, "going out" became part of everyday life as vaudeville halls, photograph parlors, penny arcades, nickelodeons, nightclubs, dance halls, world's fair midways, amusement parks, ballparks, and movie palaces opened their doors to the people of the city. The new amusement centers welcomed women, men, and children, native-born and immigrant, rich, poor, and middling. Only African Americans were excluded or segregated in the audience, though they were overrepresented on stage. Going Out chronicles the twentieth-century entertainment revolution that changed forever the ways we live, work, and play. In a matter of decades, a new public world of amusements was created where ethnic, class, and neighborhood differences were subordinated to the common pursuit of a good time. Clerks and bankers, sales girls and society ladies "turkey trotted" to ragtime in nightclubs and dance halls; "shot the chute" and clutched one another in "barrels of love"; visited "Darkest Africa" on the world's fair midways; and sat together in the dark watching pictures move on a screen. In Going Out, we meet the colorful characters who invented show business: Thomas Alva Edison, who was astonished when his phonograph made money playing music (he had designed it to take business dictation); Benjamin Franklin Keith, the circus grifter who opened a dime museum in Boston in the 1880s and within a decade owned the world's largest vaudeville theater circuit; Adolph Zukor and Marcus Loew, the New York furriers who made millions in the early picture-show business; and the dozens of small-time show businessmen who rode the rails with their "shows" in their trunks. And we hear the stories of the early black performers and their struggles to maintain their dignity and livelihood while audiences demanded their public humiliation. Going Out is a history of twentieth-century show business and of the new American public that assembled in the city's wondrous pleasure palaces, parks, and theaters. The book concludes with an account of the fall or relocation of this entertainment world, as central city amusement parks, movie palaces, and ballparks were uprooted and transported to the suburbs in the decades following World War II.
Harvard University Press 1999-04-15 312 pages

The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail

David Kahn
One of the most colorful and controversial figures in American intelligence, Herbert O. Yardley (1889-1958) gave America its best form of information, but his fame rests more on his indiscretions than on his achievements. In this highly readable biography, a premier historian of military intelligence tells Yardley's story and evaluates his impact on the American intelligence community. Yardley established the nation's first codebreaking agency in 1917, and his solutions helped the United States win a major diplomatic victory at the 1921 disarmament conference. But when his unit was closed in 1929 because "gentlemen do not read each other's mail," Yardley wrote a best-selling memoir that introduced-and disclosed-codemaking and codebreaking to the public. David Kahn de-scribes the vicissitudes of Yardley's career, including his work in China and Canada, offers a capsule history of American intelligence up to World War I, and gives a short course in classical codes and ciphers. He debunks the accusations that the publication of Yardley's book caused Japan to change its codes and ciphers and that Yardley traitorously sold his solutions to Japan. And he asserts that Yardley's disclosures not only did not hurt but actually helped American codebreaking during World War II.
Yale University Press 2011-03-08 368 pages

Not in the heavens: the tradition of Jewish secular thought

Biale, David
Not in the Heavens traces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries created is a uniquely Jewish one, and how the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself. Biale explores how ancient Hebrew books like Job, Song of Songs, and Esther downplay or even exclude God altogether, and how Spinoza, inspired by medieval Jewish philosophy, recast the biblical God in the role of nature and stripped the Torah of its revelatory status to instead read scripture as a historical and cultural text. Biale examines the influential Jewish thinkers who followed in Spinoza's secularizing footsteps, such as Salomon Maimon, Heinrich Heine, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. He tells the stories of those who also took their cues from medieval Jewish mysticism in their revolts against tradition, including Hayim Nahman Bialik, Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. And he looks at Zionists like David Ben-Gurion and other secular political thinkers who recast Israel and the Bible in modern terms of race, nationalism, and the state. Not in the Heavens demonstrates how these many Jewish paths to secularism were dependent, in complex and paradoxical ways, on the very religious traditions they were rejecting, and examines the legacy and meaning of Jewish secularism today.
Princeton University Press 2011 229 pages

A Shattered Peace Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today

David A. Andelman
Advance Praise for A Shattered Peace "The peace settlements that followed World War I have recently come back into focus as one of the dominant factors shaping the modern world. The Balkans, the Middle East, Iraq, Turkey, and parts of Africa all owe their present-day problems, in part, to these negotiations. David Andelman brings it all back to life--the lofty ideals, the ugly compromises, the larger-than-life personalities who came to Paris in 1919. And he links that far-away diplomatic dance to present-day problems to illuminate our troubled times. A tremendous addition to this vitally important subject." --Ambassador Richard Holbrooke "The peace conference in Paris at the end of World War I was the first and last moment of pure hope for peace in the history of world affairs. Our president Woodrow Wilson was the sorcerer for this hope, and he kindled great expectations in people everywhere. David Andelman, a classic reporter and storyteller, tells this fascinating tale of hope falling finally and forever on the shoals of naivete and hard-headed cynicism." --Leslie H. Gelb, former columnist for the New York Times and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations "The failed peace settlement following the Great War of 1914-1918 has been the subject of many fine books. In many respects, David Andelman's A Shattered Peace is the best of these. It is compact and compellingly written. Moreover, it explains more clearly than any other work how the failure of peacemaking in 1919 shaped later history and, indeed, shapes our own era." --Ernest R. May, Charles Warren Professor of American History, Harvard University "It is the power and fascination of David Andelman's new book, A Shattered Peace, that he shows us--with the clarity of a first-rate reporter and the drama and detail at the command of a first-rate novelist--that we are all still enmeshed in the loose ends of the Treaty of Versailles. Andelman brings us to Korea, to Vietnam, to the Persian Gulf, and to Iraq in our own vexed era. His story is alive with color, conflict, and interesting people. We could not find a better guide to this time." --Richard Snow, Editor in Chief, American Heritage
Wiley 2007-10-19 336 pages

The Italian city republics

Waley, Daniel Philip,Dean, Trevor
"Now in its fifth edition, The Italian City Republics illustrates how, from the eleventh century onwards, many Italian towns achieved independence as political entities, unhindered by any centralising power. Until the fourteenth century, when the regimes of individual 'tyrants' took over in most towns, these communes were the scene of a precocious, and very well-documented, experiment in republican self-government. In this new edition, Trevor Dean has expanded the book's treatment of women and gender, the early history of the communes and the lives of non-élites. Focusing on the typical medium-sized towns rather than the better-known cities, the authors draw on a rich variety of contemporary material, both documentary and literary, to portray the world of the communes, illustrating the patriotism and public spirit as well as the equally characteristic factional strife which was to tear them apart. Discussion of the artistic and social lives of the inhabitants shows how these towns were the seedbed of the cultural achievements of the early Renaissance. The bibliography has been updated with the latest scholarship for students to continue their studies. Both students and the general reader interested in Italian history, literature and art will find this accessible book a rewarding and fascinating read"--
Routledge 2023 213 pages

Rogues, writers & whores: dining with the rich & infamous

Rogov, Daniel
Throughout history, numerous famous and infamous men and women have contributed in their sometimes perverted but always intriguing ways to the world of gastronomy. The stories of those people--their culinary habits and the dishes created by them, named after them or cherished by them--are the subject of this book. Kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, chefs and restaurateurs, novelists and composers, generals and courtesans--all have had dishes named after them. Follow the fortunes and discover the recipes of almost seventy rogues, writers, and whores, from Apicius to Zola, or if you prefer chronologically, Lucullus through Hemingway.
Toby Press 2007 335 pages

We stand divided: the rift between American Jews and Israel

Gordis, Daniel
"From National Jewish Book Award Winner and author of Israel, a bold reevaluation of the tensions between American and Israeli Jews that reinterprets the past and reimagines the future of Jewish life. Relations between the American Jewish community and Israel are at an all-time nadir. Since Israel's founding seventy years ago, particularly as memory of the Holocaust and of Israel's early vulnerability has receded, the divide has grown only wider. Most explanations pin the blame on Israel's handling of the conflict with the Palestinians, its attitude toward non-Orthodox Judaism, and the Jewish state's dismissive view of American Jews in general. In short, the cause for the rupture is not what Israel is; it's what Israel does. These explanations tell only half the story. We Stand Divided examines the history of the troubled relationship, showing that from the outset, the founders of what are now the world's two largest Jewish communities were responding to different threats and opportunities, and had very different ideas of how to guarantee a Jewish future. With an even hand, Daniel Gordis takes us beyond the headlines and explains how Israel and America have fundamentally different ideas about issues ranging from democracy and history to religion and identity. He argues that as a first step to healing the breach, the two communities must acknowledge and discuss their profoundly different purposes and moral commitments. Only then can they forge a path forward, together." --
ECCO, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2019-09-24 293 pages