2501 results for "American History"

The artist's reality: philosophies of art

Rothko, Mark
One of the most important artists of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko (1903–1970) created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting over the course of his career. Rothko also wrote a number of essays and critical reviews during his lifetime, adding his thoughtful, intelligent, and opinionated voice to the debates of the contemporary art world. Although the artist never published a book of his varied and complex views, his heirs indicate that he occasionally spoke of the existence of such a manuscript to friends and colleagues. Stored in a New York City warehouse since the artist's death more than thirty years ago, this extraordinary manuscript, titled The Artist's Reality, is now being published for the first time. Probably written around 1940–41, this revelatory book discusses Rothko's ideas on the modern art world, art history, myth, beauty, the challenges of being an artist in society, the true nature of 'American art,” and much more. The Artist's Reality also includes an introduction by Christopher Rothko, the artist's son, who describes the discovery of the manuscript and the complicated and fascinating process of bringing the manuscript to publication. The introduction is illustrated with a small selection of relevant examples of the artist's own work as well as with reproductions of pages from the actual manuscript. The Artist's Reality will be a classic text for years to come, offering insight into both the work and the artistic philosophies of this great painter.
Yale University Press 2004-01-01 136 pages

The scared and the doomed: the Jewish establishment vs. the six million

Nurenberger, M. J.
During World War II, M.J.Nurenberger had a 'front row seat' to what he called the 'Jewish Civil War'. This 'war' was a fierce struggle between the 'pseudo-Zionist establishment' in North America and the 'Irgun' underground in what was then 'Eretz Israel' and their delegations in Washington and New York.This 'Jewish Civil War', according to M.J. Nurenberger, was the primary cause for the paralysis of organized and established American Jewry when Jews worldwide began to face the greatest challenge and ultimate tragedy of Jewish history - Hitler's war against the Six Million and their eventual extermination.Based upon exhaustive research in numerous archives, first-hand eye-witness accounts, and interviews with numerous participants, this book exposes the various events, the internal conflicts and bold initiatives which took place in the relations between the U.S. State Department, the Jewish Establishment and the Irgun. It also includes detailed and careful analyses of the Sternbuch Saga and the Musy Mission to Himmler, both of which were pivotal in sealing the fate of European Jewry.
Mosaic Press 1985 261 pages

The Mandela Plot

Kenneth Bonert
The second novel from GG finalist and international award winner Kenneth Bonert, who brought Jewish Johannesburg to explosive life in his 2013 debut, The Lion Seeker . As the 1980s draw to a close, apartheid is in its death throes and South Africa is a maelstrom of political violence. Young Martin Helger has problems of his own. Out of place at an elite private school, he is the son of a rough-handed scrap dealer and lives in the shadow of his enigmatic brother, a neighbourhood legend. When an irresistible young American boards at the Helger home, a transfixed Martin soon finds himself wrenched out of the isolated bubble of his white privilege and thrust into the raw heart of South Africa's racial struggle. At the same time, secrets from the past begin to emerge and old sins long-buried return in terrifying new ways, tearing at the Helgers, a second-generation Jewish family, even as the larger forces of history and politics tear apart the country. Migration, terrorism, revolution, identity and memory--these are just some of the bold themes brilliantly and honestly explored in this powerful novel. At once a riveting literary thriller, a moving coming-of-age tale, and an unforgettable journey through a fascinating world , The Mandela Plot entertains and terrifies in equal measure, and resonates profoundly in light of current affairs.
Knopf Canada 2018-05-29 480 pages

Joe Simon: my life in comics

Simon, Joe
In his own words, this is the life of Joe Simon, one of the most important figures in comics history, and half of the famous creative team Simon and Kirby. Joe Simon co-created Captain America , and was the first editor in chief of Marvel Comics (where he hired Stan Lee for his first job in comics). Simon began his prolific career in the Great Depression, and this book recounts his journey to New York City, his first comic book work, his meeting with Jack Kirby, and the role comics played in wartime America. He remembers the near-death of the comics industry, and the scramble to survive. And he reveals what it was like to bring comics out of their infancy, as they became an American art form.
Titan 2012 256 pages

Negotiations: interventions and interviews, 1971-2001

Derrida, Jacques
This collection of essays and interviews, some previously unpublished and almost all of which appear in English for the first time, encompasses the political and ethical thinking of Jacques Derrida over thirty years. Passionate, rigorous, beautifully argued, wide-ranging, the texts shed an entirely new light on his work and will be welcomed by scholars in many disciplines--politics, philosophy, history, cultural studies, literature, and a range of interdisciplinary programs. Derrida's arguments vary in their responsiveness to given political questions--sometimes they are vivid polemics on behalf of a position or figure, sometimes they are reflective analyses of a philosophical problem. They are united by the recurrent question of political decision or responsibility and the insistence that the apparent simplicity or programmatic character of political decision is in fact a profound avoidance of the political. This volume testifies to the possibility and the necessity of a philosophical politics. Negotiations assembles some of the most telling examples of the intrinsic relationship, so often affirmed by Derrida in more abstract philosophical terms, between deconstructive reading practices and what is called the "political"--more precisely, politics in an almost down-to-earth, pragmatic, and commonsense use of the word. Among the many subjects covered in the book are: the death penalty in the United States, the civil war in Algeria, globalization and cosmopolitanism, the American Declaration of Independence, Jean-Paul Sartre, the value of objectivity, politics and friendship, and the relationship between deconstruction and actuality.
Stanford University Press 2002 404 pages

Art,Truth and Politics

Pinter, Harold
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the [postwar] period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. ... Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. ... Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn t know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn t happening. It didn t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. Pinter s depictions of the ravages of the American Empire since 1945 [is unrivalled]. It.[comes as] one searing rhetorical lightening bolt. It will go into the history books, alongside such imperishable excoriations of empire as the speeches Thucidides put into the mouths of the Melians, and Tacitus into the mouth of Calgacus. Alexander Cockburn
Faber and Faber 2006-03-16 28 pages

The mismeasure of woman

Tavris, Carol
When "man is the measure of all things," woman is forever trying to measure up. In this enlightening book, Carol Tavris unmasks the widespread but invisible custom -- pervasive in the social sciences, medicine, law, and history -- of treating men as the normal standard, women as abnormal. Tavris expands our vision of normalcy by illuminating the similarities between women and men and showing that the real differences lie not in gender, but in power, resources, and life experiences. Winner of the American Association for Applied and Preventive Psychology's Distinguished Media Contribution Award
Simon & Schuster 1993-02-26 398 pages

Uncouth Nation Why Europe Dislikes America

Andrei S. Markovits
No survey can capture the breadth and depth of the anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years. From ultraconservative Bavarian grandmothers to thirty-year-old socialist activists in Greece, from globalization opponents to corporate executives--Europeans are joining in an ever louder chorus of disdain for America. For the first time, anti-Americanism has become a European lingua franca. In this sweeping and provocative look at the history of European aversion to America, Andrei Markovits argues that understanding the ubiquity of anti-Americanism since September 11, 2001, requires an appreciation of such sentiments among European elites going back at least to July 4, 1776. While George W. Bush's policies have catapulted anti-Americanism into overdrive, particularly in Western Europe, Markovits argues that this loathing has long been driven not by what America does, but by what it is. Focusing on seven Western European countries big and small, he shows how antipathies toward things American embrace aspects of everyday life--such as sports, language, work, education, media, health, and law--that remain far from the purview of the Bush administration's policies. Aggravating Europeans' antipathies toward America is their alleged helplessness in the face of an Americanization that they view as inexorably befalling them. More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism. Above all, he shows that while Europeans are far apart in terms of their everyday lives and shared experiences, their not being American provides them with a powerful common identity--one that elites have already begun to harness in their quest to construct a unified Europe to rival America.
Princeton University Press 2016-12-13 304 pages

Rocket and lightship: essays on literature and ideas

Kirsch, Adam
"A collection of essays from a "great poet-critic-intellectual" (Daily Beast). In these brilliant, wide-ranging essays, published over the last seven years in the New Republic, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, renowned American critic Adam Kirsch explores the intersection of literature with larger questions about ideas, history, and society. Kirsch has been described as "elegant and astute . . . [a] critic of the very first order" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). In Rocket and Lightship he examines the work and lives of writers past and present, from intellectuals Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, and Walter Benjamin to novelists including E. M. Forster, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith. Kirsch quotes G. M. Hopkins: "Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone." So, according to Kirsch, shines literature: as an unattainable speed, as a moving beacon. Taken together, the provocative and bold essays in Rocket and Lightship show how literature can illuminate questions of meaning, ethics, and politics, and how those questions shape the way we take pleasure in art" --
W. W. Norton & Company 2015 305 pages

Modern higher algebra

Albert, A. Adrian
Abraham Adrian Albert (1905-72) was an American mathematician primarily known for his groundbreaking work on algebra. In this book, which was originally published in 1938, Albert provides a detailed exposition of 'modern abstract algebra', taking into account numerous discoveries in the field during the preceding ten years. A glossary is included. This is a highly informative book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the development of algebra and the history of mathematics.
Cambridge University Press 2015-10-01 332 pages

The times of my life: and my life with The Times

Frankel, Max
Since 1949, when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Max Frankel began to write for The New York Times, readers have looked to his work as a lens through which they could witness America's role in a rapidly changing world. In this vivid and unforgettable memoir, Frankel chronicles the times of his extraordinary life as he experienced them...within the context of the news stories that defined an era. A quintessentially American story, The Times of My Life traces Frankel's riveting personal relationship with history...his harrowing escape from Nazi Germany...his life as an immigrant on the streets of New York...and his extraordinary half-century-long career at The Times. In a rich first-person account that moves from Hitler's Berlin to Cold War Moscow, from Castro's Havana to the newsroom of America's most influential newspaper, this powerful, compelling work interweaves Frankel's personal and professional lives with the era's greatest stories, from Sputnik to the Pentagon Papers to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. And it reveals Frankel's fascinating off-the-record encounters with Nikita Khrushchev, Henry Kissinger, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and a host of other history-makers who shaped their times--and ours. Guiding readers through Hitler's Berlin, Khrushchev's Moscow, Castro's Havana, and the Washington of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, THE TIMES OF MY LIFE reevaluates the Cold War, and interweaves Frankel's personal and professional life with the greatest stories of the era. -->
Delta Trade Paperbacks 2000 546 pages

Pop culture and the dark side of the American dream: con men, gangsters, drug lords, and zombies

Cantor, Paul A.
The many con men, gangsters, and drug lords portrayed in popular culture are examples of the dark side of the American dream. Viewers are fascinated by these twisted versions of heroic American archetypes, like the self-made man and the entrepreneur. Applying the critical skills he developed as a Shakespeare scholar, Paul A. Cantor finds new depth in familiar landmarks of popular culture. He invokes Shakespearean models to show that the concept of the tragic hero can help us understand why we are both repelled by and drawn to figures such as Vito and Michael Corleone or Walter White. Beginning with Huckleberry Finn and ending with The Walking Dead , Cantor also uncovers the link between the American dream and frontier life. In imaginative variants of a Wild West setting, popular culture has served up disturbing--and yet strangely compelling--images of what happens when people move beyond the borders of law and order. Cantor demonstrates that, at its best, popular culture raises thoughtful questions about the validity and viability of the American dream, thus deepening our understanding of America itself.
University Press of Kentucky 2019 207 pages

Homicide in American Fiction, 1798-1860 A Study in Social Values

David Brion Davis
Homicide has many social and psychological implications that vary from culture to culture and which change as people accept new ideas concerning guilt, responsibility, and the causes of crime . A study of attitudes toward homicide is therefore a method of examining social values in a specific setting. Homicide in American Fiction, 1798-1860 is the first book to contrast psychological assumptions of imaginative writers with certain social and intellectual currents in an attempt to integrate social attitudes toward such diverse subjects as human evil, moral responsibility, criminal insanity, social causes of crime, dueling, lynching, the "unwritten law" of a husband's revenge, and capital punishment. In addition to works of literary distinction by Cooper, Hawthorne, Irving, and Poe, among others, Davis considers a large body of cheap popular fiction generally ignored in previous studies of the literature of this period. This is an engrossing study of fiction as a reflection of and a commentary on social problems and as an influence shaping general beliefs and opinions.
Cornell University Press 2018-08-15 364 pages

Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy On Being an American Citizen

Susan Griffin
What does is it mean to be a citizen of the United States? Susan Griffin’s provocative investigation of that question takes us from the Declaration of Independence to the Iraq War, with many stops in between. Her conclusion: democracy is nothing less than a revolution of consciousness, and the revolution has just begun.
Shambhala Publications, Incorporated 2009-11-10 291 pages

The Ojibwa Woman

Ruth Landes
The Ojibwa Woman is a book written by Ruth Landes that explores the life and culture of the Ojibwa people, specifically focusing on the experiences of Ojibwa women. The book is based on Landes' fieldwork among the Ojibwa people in the early 1930s, during which she lived among the tribe and conducted extensive interviews with women to gain a better understanding of their lives, beliefs, and customs.The book covers a wide range of topics related to Ojibwa women, including their roles in the community, their relationships with men and other women, their experiences of motherhood and childbirth, and their spiritual beliefs and practices. Landes also explores the impact of colonialism and Christianity on the Ojibwa people, and the ways in which these forces have affected the lives of Ojibwa women.Throughout the book, Landes presents a nuanced and empathetic portrait of the Ojibwa people and their culture, drawing on her own observations and the insights of the women she interviewed. The book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history and culture of indigenous peoples, as well as for those interested in the experiences of women in different cultures and societies.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
Literary Licensing, LLC 2011-08 256 pages

Looking for Los Angeles : architecture, film, photography, and the urban landscape

Charles G. Salas,Michael S. Roth
Often referred to as the city of the future, Los Angeles is known for its sprawl, its constant change, and its special relationship to the film industry. The twelve contributors to Looking for Los Angeles focus on dramatic shifts in the urban landscape, important moments in the city's architectural history, and the role of the image in this mecca of image makers. Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom searches for Los Angeles's center and finds a city that "breaks itself down, builds itself up again, displaces and regroups itself" and where "freedom of movement" is a basic premise of life. Historian Philip Ethington documents the city's changing character in both text and images, urban studies professor Dana Cuff exposes the demise of once-thriving urban neighborhoods to make way for Modernist housing projects, and anthropologist Susan A. Phillips invites us on a personal journey into "the projects" to meet gang members and their families today. Artist Robbert Flick offers a sixteen-page, full-color photo-essay that takes us on a "drive-by" along Alameda Avenue, architectural historian Thomas S. Hines traces Frank Lloyd Wright's influence on the life and career of photographer Edmund Teske, and film historian Robert L. Carringer examines Los Angeles as a setting for Hollywood feature films.
Getty Research Institute 2001 329 pages

Writing like a woman

Ostriker, Alicia
"'If we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly as we think, ' as Woolf puts it in A Room of One's Own , writing like a woman simply means writing like what one actually is, in sickness and health, richer and poorer, belly and bowels, the consonants and the vowels too. We may have a general sense that women poets are more likely than men, at the present time, to write in detail about their bodies; to take power relationships as a theme; to want to speak with a strong rather than a subdued voice; are less likely to seek distance, more likely to seek intimacy, in poetic tone. But generalization would be foolish here. 'Woman poet, ' like 'American poet' or 'French poet' or 'Russian poet, ' allows--even insists on--diversity, while implying something valuable in common, some shared language and life, of tremendous importance to the poet and the poet's readers." --Alicia Ostriker
Michigan U.P. 1983 147 pages