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1895: Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain

Nicholas Freeman

Oscar Wilde's disastrous libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry dominated British newspapers during the spring of 1895. This book shows that the Wilde scandal was just one of many events to ... More

Oscar Wilde's disastrous libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry dominated British newspapers during the spring of 1895. This book shows that the Wilde scandal was just one of many events to capture the public's imagination that year. Had Jack the Ripper returned? Did the Prime Minister have a dreadful secret? Were Aubrey Beardsley's drawings corrupting the nation? Were overpaid foreign players ruining English football? Could cricket save a nation from moral ruin? Freak weather, flu, a General Election, industrial unrest, New Women, fraud, accidents, anarchists, balloons and bicycles all stirred up interest and alarm. The book shows how this turbulent year is at the same time far removed from our own day and strangely familiar. It interweaves literature, politics and historical biography with topics such as crime, the weather, sport, visual art and journalism to give an overarching view of everyday life in 1895. The book draws on diverse primary sources, from the Aberdeen Weekly Journal to the Women's Signal Budget, and from the Illustrated Police News to The Yellow Book; and is illustrated with stills from plays and reproductions of newspaper front pages, to bring Victorian culture to life.Less

1929: Mapping the Jewish World

Hasia Diner and Gennady Estraikh (eds)

The year 1929 represents a major turning point for interwar Jewish society, proving to be a year when Jews, regardless of where they lived, saw themselves affected by developments that took place ... More

The year 1929 represents a major turning point for interwar Jewish society, proving to be a year when Jews, regardless of where they lived, saw themselves affected by developments that took place around the world, as the crises endured by other Jews became part of the transnational Jewish consciousness. In the United States, the stock market crash brought lasting economic, social, and ideological changes to the Jewish community and limited its ability to support humanitarian and nationalist projects in other countries. In Palestine, the anti-Jewish riots in Hebron and other towns underscored the vulnerability of the Zionist enterprise and ignited heated discussions among various Jewish political groups about the wisdom of establishing a Jewish state on its historical site. At the same time, in the Soviet Union, the consolidation of power in the hands of Joseph Stalin created a much more dogmatic climate in the international Communist movement, including its Jewish branches. This book surveys the Jewish world in one year offering clear examples of the transnational connections which linked Jews to each other—from politics, diplomacy, and philanthropy to literature, culture, and the fate of Yiddish—regardless of where they lived. The book argues that, whether American, Soviet, German, Polish, or Palestinian, Jews throughout the world lived in a global context.Less

1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe

Mary Elise Sarotte

This book explores the momentous events following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the effects they have had on the world ever since. Based on documents, interviews, and television broadcasts from ... More

This book explores the momentous events following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the effects they have had on the world ever since. Based on documents, interviews, and television broadcasts from Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, and a dozen other locations, the book describes how Germany unified, NATO expansion began, and Russia got left on the periphery of the new Europe. Chapters cover changes in the Summer and Autumn of 1989, including the stepping back of Americans and rise in East German's confidence; the restoration of the rights of the Four Powers, including the night of November 9 and the Portugalov Push; heroic aspirations in 1990, including the emerging controversy over reparations and NATO; security, political and economic solutions; the securing of building permits, including money and NATO reform; and the legacy of 1989 and 1990. This updated edition contains a new afterword with the most recent evidence on the 1990 origins of NATO's post-Cold War expansion.Less

“A Gentleman and an Officer”: A Military and Social History of James B. Griffin's Civil War

James B. Griffin

Judith N. McArthur and Orville Vernon Burton (eds)

In 1861, James B. Griffin left Edgefield, South Carolina, and rode off to Virginia to take up duty with the Confederate Army. He was thirty-five years old, a wealthy planter, and the owner of ... More

In 1861, James B. Griffin left Edgefield, South Carolina, and rode off to Virginia to take up duty with the Confederate Army. He was thirty-five years old, a wealthy planter, and the owner of sixty-one slaves when he joined Wade Hampton's elite Legion as a major of cavalry. This book features eighty of Griffin's letters written at the Virginia front, and during later postings on the South Carolina coast, to his wife Leila Burt Griffin. The letters encompass Griffin's entire Civil War service, detailing living conditions and military maneuvers, the jockeying for position among officers, and the different ways in which officers and enlisted men interacted. The letters shed light on the life of a middle officer—a life of extreme military hardship, complicated further by the need for reassurance about personal valor and status common to men of the southern gentry. Griffin describes secret troop movements, such as the Hampton Legion's role in the Peninsula Campaign. Here he relates the march from Manassas to Fredricksburg, the siege of Yorktown and the retreat to Richmond, and the fighting at Eltham's landing and Seven Pines, where Griffin commanded the Legion after Hampton was wounded. Griffin recounts day-to-day issues, from the weather to gossip. Monumental historical events sent Griffin off to war but his heartfelt considerations were about his family, his community, and his own personal pride. Griffin's letters present the Civil War as the ordeal by fire that tested and verified—or modified—Southern upperclass values.Less

‘A Nation of Beggars’?: Priests, People, and Politics in Famine Ireland, 1846–1852

Donal A. Kerr

This is the first full account of the role of the Irish Catholic Church in the Great Famine of 1846 and its aftermath. The author shows how the Famine and the subsequent evictions led to rural ... More

This is the first full account of the role of the Irish Catholic Church in the Great Famine of 1846 and its aftermath. The author shows how the Famine and the subsequent evictions led to rural violence and a spate of assassinations culminating in the murder of Major Mahon, which the local parish priest was accused of inciting. Savage denunciations followed in press and parliament. In conjunction with the belief that Pope Pius IX had blessed the struggle of oppressed nationalities, many priests became involved in the run-up to the Young Ireland Rebellion. These years also saw a sharpening of religious tension as Protestant Evangelicals made an all-out effort to Protestantine Ireland. The author has charted how the Famine and the violence soured relations between the Church and State and ultimately destroyed Lord John Russell’s dream of bringing a golden age to Ireland.Less

The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

In this age of globalization, the eighteenth-century priest and abolitionist Henri Grégoire has often been called a man ahead of his time. An icon of anti-racism, a hero to people from Ho Chi Minh to ... More

In this age of globalization, the eighteenth-century priest and abolitionist Henri Grégoire has often been called a man ahead of his time. An icon of anti-racism, a hero to people from Ho Chi Minh to French Jews, Grégoire has been particularly celebrated since 1989, when the French government placed him in the Pantheon as a model of ideals of universalism and human rights. In this biography, based on newly discovered and previously overlooked material, we gain access to the full complexity of Grégoire's intellectual and political universe as well as the compelling nature of his persona. His life offers an extraordinary vantage from which to view large issues in European and world history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and provides provocative insights into many of the prevailing tensions, ideals, and paradoxes of the twenty-first century. Focusing on Grégoire's idea of “regeneration,” that people could literally be made anew, the book argues that revolutionary universalism was more complicated than it appeared. Tracing the French Revolution's long-term legacy, it suggests that while it spread concepts of equality and liberation throughout the world, its ideals also helped to justify colonialism and conquest.Less

The Abbots and Priors of Late Medieval and Reformation England

Martin Heale

The importance of the medieval abbot needs no particular emphasis. The monastic superiors of late medieval England ruled over thousands of monks and canons, who swore to them vows of obedience; they ... More

The importance of the medieval abbot needs no particular emphasis. The monastic superiors of late medieval England ruled over thousands of monks and canons, who swore to them vows of obedience; they were prominent figures in royal and church government; and collectively they controlled properties worth around double the Crown’s annual ordinary income. As guardians of regular observance and the primary interface between their monastery and the wider world, abbots and priors were pivotal to the effective functioning and well-being of the monastic order. This book provides the first detailed study of English monastic superiors, exploring their evolving role and reputation between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Individual chapters examine the election of late medieval monastic heads; the internal functions of the superior as the father of the community; the head of house as administrator; abbatial living standards and modes of display; monastic superiors’ public role in service of the Church and Crown; their external relations and reputation; the interaction between monastic heads and the government in Henry VIII’s England; the Dissolution of the monasteries; and the afterlives of abbots and priors following the suppression of their houses. This study of monastic leadership sheds much valuable light on the religious houses of late medieval England, including their spiritual life, administration, spending priorities, and their multi-faceted relations with the outside world. It also elucidates the crucial part played by monastic superiors in the dramatic events of the 1530s, when many heads surrendered their monasteries into the hands of Henry VIII.Less

Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War-Era South

Diane Miller Sommerville

Aberration of Mind is a social history of suicide in the American South during the Civil War era. The book casts a wide net, focusing on Confederate soldiers and veterans and their families, and the ... More

Aberration of Mind is a social history of suicide in the American South during the Civil War era. The book casts a wide net, focusing on Confederate soldiers and veterans and their families, and the enslaved and newly freed. The central question is, how did the Civil War and the suffering it generated shape suicidal thoughts and behavior? The author seeks to understand how the suffering experienced by southerners living in a war zone contributed to psychological distress that, in extreme cases, led southerners to contemplate or act on suicidal thoughts. The unprecedented human toll the war took on southerners created a psychological crisis that has not been fully explored. Drawing on sources like letters, diaries, military service records, coroners’ reports, and asylum patient case histories, the work recovers myriad stories, previously hidden, of individuals exhibiting suicidal activity or aberrant psychological behavior linked to the war and its aftermath. In addition to expanding our understanding of the full human costs of the Civil War, the book concludes that southerners transformed the meaning of suicide from an act of cowardice to a heroic symbol of white southern identity. The book fills a neglected niche in an otherwise crowded field of Civil War scholarship – the psychological impact of war and defeat on southerners.Less

Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility

G. J. Barker-Benfield

During the many years that they were separated by the perils of the American Revolution, John and Abigail Adams exchanged hundreds of letters. Writing to each other of public events and private ... More

During the many years that they were separated by the perils of the American Revolution, John and Abigail Adams exchanged hundreds of letters. Writing to each other of public events and private feelings, loyalty and love, revolution and parenting, they wove a tapestry of correspondence that has become a cherished part of American history and literature. With Abigail and John Adams, this book mines those familiar letters to a new purpose: teasing out the ways in which they reflected—and helped transform—a language of sensibility, inherited from Britain but, amid the revolutionary fervor, becoming Americanized. Sensibility—a heightened moral consciousness of feeling, rooted in the theories of such thinkers as Descartes, Locke, and Adam Smith, and including a “moral sense” akin to the physical senses—threads throughout these letters. As the book makes clear, sensibility was the fertile, humanizing ground on which the Adamses not only founded their marriage, but also the “abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity” they and their contemporaries hoped to plant at the heart of the new nation. Bringing together their correspondence with a wealth of fascinating detail about life and thought, courtship and sex, gender and parenting, and class and politics in the revolutionary generation and beyond, the book draws a portrait of a marriage endangered by separation, yet surviving by the same ideas and idealism that drove the revolution itself.Less

Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids

Donald Prothero and Daniel Loxton

Throughout our history, humans have been captivated by mythic beasts and legendary creatures. Tales of Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness monster are part of our collective experience. This book ... More

Throughout our history, humans have been captivated by mythic beasts and legendary creatures. Tales of Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness monster are part of our collective experience. This book explores and elucidates the fascinating world of cryptozoology. This is an entertaining, educational, and definitive text on cryptids, presenting the arguments both for and against their existence and systematically challenging the pseudoscience that perpetuates their myths. After examining the nature of science and pseudoscience and their relation to cryptozoology, the book takes on Bigfoot; the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, and its cross-cultural incarnations; the Loch Ness monster and its highly publicized sightings; the evolution of the Great Sea Serpent; and Mokele Mbembe, or the Congo dinosaur. It concludes with an analysis of the psychology behind the persistent belief in paranormal phenomena, identifying the major players in cryptozoology, discussing the character of its subculture, and considering the challenge it poses to clear and critical thinking in our increasingly complex world.Less

Abortion After Roe

Johanna Schoen

Abortion is—and always has been—an arena for contesting power relations between women and men. When in 1973 the Supreme Court made the procedure legal throughout the United States, it seemed that ... More

Abortion is—and always has been—an arena for contesting power relations between women and men. When in 1973 the Supreme Court made the procedure legal throughout the United States, it seemed that women were at last able to make decisions about their own bodies. In the four decades that followed, however, abortion became ever more politicized and stigmatized. Abortion after Roe chronicles and analyzes what the new legal status and changing political environment have meant for abortion providers and their patients. This book sheds light on the little-studied experience of performing and receiving abortion care from the 1970s—a period of optimism—to the rise of the antiabortion movement and the escalation of antiabortion tactics in the 1980s to the 1990s and beyond, when violent attacks on clinics and abortion providers led to a new articulation of abortion care as moral work. More than four decades after the legalization of abortion, the abortion provider community has powerfully asserted that abortion care is a moral good.Less

Abortion Under Apartheid: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women's Reproductive Rights in South Africa

Susanne M. Klausen

This is the first book to focus on the history of abortion in an African context. It traces the criminalization of abortion in South Africa during the apartheid era (1948–1990), the emergence of a ... More

This is the first book to focus on the history of abortion in an African context. It traces the criminalization of abortion in South Africa during the apartheid era (1948–1990), the emergence of a flourishing clandestine abortion industry, and the controversial passage in 1975 of the country’s first statutory law on abortion. The study examines the politics of gender, sexuality, racism, and nationalism in the making and maintenance of apartheid culture, in particular regarding the authoritarian National Party government’s attempt to regulate white women’s reproductive sexuality in the interests of maintaining white supremacy. A major focus of the book is the battle about abortion that erupted in the late 1960s when doctors and feminists called for liberalization of colonial-era abortion laws. A central argument is that all women, regardless of race, were oppressed under apartheid. Although the National Party was preoccupied with denying young white women their reproductive rights, black women bore the brunt of the lack of access to safe abortion, suffering the effects of clandestine abortion on a shocking scale in urban centers around the country. At the heart of the story are the black and white girls and women who, regardless of hostility from a range of official and traditional authorities, persisted in determining their own destinies. Although a great many were harmed and even died as a result of being denied safe abortion, many more succeeded in thwarting opponents of women’s right to control their capacity to bear children. This book hopes to convey both the tragic and triumphant sides of their story.Less

About Method: Experimenters, Snake Venom, and the History of Writing Scientifically

Jutta Schickore

About Method: Experimenters, Snake Venom, and the History of Writing Scientifically is a long-term history of scientists’ methodological discussions about experimentation in the life sciences. It ... More

About Method: Experimenters, Snake Venom, and the History of Writing Scientifically is a long-term history of scientists’ methodological discussions about experimentation in the life sciences. It directs attention to working scientists’ methods discourse, its history and meanings, and its functions in scientific publications. The term “methods discourse” comprises all kinds of methods-related statements in scientific writing, including explicit commitments to experimentalism, descriptions of protocols, and justifications of methodological concepts and strategies. The book examines the complex trajectory of methods discourse from the mid-17th to the early 20th century through the history of snake venom research. Because experiments with poisonous snakes were both challenging and controversial, experimenters produced very detailed descriptions and discussions of their approaches, making venom research uniquely suitable for a long-term history of methodological thought and the various factors impinging on its development. The book offers an analytic framework for the study of methods discourse, its history, and the history of how experimenters organized and presented their thoughts about methods in writings about their experiments.Less

Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth-Century America

Barry Schwartz

By the 1920s, Abraham Lincoln had transcended the lingering controversies of the Civil War to become a secular saint, honored in North and South alike for his steadfast leadership in crisis. ... More

By the 1920s, Abraham Lincoln had transcended the lingering controversies of the Civil War to become a secular saint, honored in North and South alike for his steadfast leadership in crisis. Throughout the Great Depression and World War II, he was invoked countless times as a reminder of America's strength and wisdom, a commanding ideal against which weary citizens could see their own hardships in perspective. But as revealed in this book, those years represent the apogee of Lincoln's prestige. The decades following World War II brought radical changes to American culture, changes that led to the diminishing of all heroes. As the author explains, growing sympathy for the plight of racial minorities, disenchantment with the American state, the lessening of patriotism in the wake of the Vietnam War, and an intensifying celebration of diversity all contributed to a culture in which neither Lincoln nor any single person could be a heroic symbol for all Americans. Paradoxically, however, the very culture that made Lincoln an object of indifference, questioning, criticism, and even ridicule was a culture of unprecedented beneficence and inclusion, where racial, ethnic, and religious groups treated one another more fairly and justly than ever before. Thus, as the prestige of the Great Emancipator shrank, his legacy of equality continued to flourish. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the book documents the decline of Lincoln's public standing, asking throughout whether there is any path back from this post-heroic era. Can a new generation of Americans embrace again their epic past, including great leaders whom they know to be flawed?Less

The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain

Bernard Porter

The British empire was a huge enterprise. To foreigners, it more or less defined Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its repercussions in the wider world are still with us today. It also ... More

The British empire was a huge enterprise. To foreigners, it more or less defined Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its repercussions in the wider world are still with us today. It also had a great impact on Britain herself: for example, on her economy, security, population, and eating habits. One might expect this to have been reflected in her society and culture. Indeed, this has now become the conventional wisdom: that Britain was steeped in imperialism domestically, which affected (or infected) almost everything Britons thought, felt, and did. This book examines this assumption critically against the broader background of contemporary British society. It argues that the empire had a far lower profile in Britain than it did abroad. Although Britain was an imperial nation in this period, she was never a genuine imperial society. As well as showing how this was possible, the book also discusses the implications of this attitude for Britain and her empire, and for the relationship between culture and imperialism more generally, bringing his study up to date by including the case of the present-day United States.Less

Absolute War: Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792-1820

Mark Hewitson

Wars have played a fundamental part in modern German history. Although infrequent, conflicts involving German states have usually been extensive and often catastrophic, constituting turning points ... More

Wars have played a fundamental part in modern German history. Although infrequent, conflicts involving German states have usually been extensive and often catastrophic, constituting turning points for Europe as a whole. This volume is the first in a series of studies that explore how such conflicts were experienced by soldiers and civilians during wartime, and how they were subsequently imagined and understood during peacetime. Without such an understanding, it is difficult to make sense of the dramatic shifts characterizing the politics of Germany and Europe over the past two centuries. The studies argue that the ease—or reluctance—with which Germans went to war, and the far-reaching consequences of such wars on domestic politics, were related to soldiers’ and civilians’ attitudes to violence and death, as well as to long-term transformations in contemporaries’ conceptualization of conflict. Absolute War reassesses the meaning of military conflict for the millions of German subjects who were directly implicated in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Based on a re-reading of contemporary diaries, letters, memoirs, official correspondence, press reports, pamphlets, treatises, poems, and plays, it refocuses attention on combat and conscription as the central components of new forms of mass warfare. It concentrates, in particular, on the impact of violence, killing, and death on soldiers’ and civilians’ experiences and subsequent memories of conflict. War has often been conceived of as ‘an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds’, as Clausewitz put it, but the relationship between military conflicts and violent acts remains a problematic one.Less

Absolutism in Renaissance Milan: Plenitude of Power under the Visconti and the Sforza 1329-1535

Jane Black

This volume charts the rise and decline of absolutism in Milan from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The study shows how authority above the law, once the preserve of pope and ... More

This volume charts the rise and decline of absolutism in Milan from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The study shows how authority above the law, once the preserve of pope and emperor, was claimed by the ruling Milanese dynasties, the Visconti and the Sforza, and why this privilege was finally abandoned by Francesco II Sforza (d. 1535), the last duke. As new rulers, the Visconti and the Sforza had had to impose their regime by rewarding supporters at the expense of opponents. That process required absolute power (also known as plenitude of power), meaning the capacity to laws and the rights of subjects, including titles to property. The basis for such power reflected the changing status of Milanese rulers, first as signori and then as dukes. Contemporary lawyers were at first prepared to overturn established doctrines in support of the free use of absolute power: even Baldo degli Ubaldi accepted the latest teaching. But eventually lawyers regretted the new approach, reasserting the traditional principle that laws could not be set aside without compelling justification. The Visconti and the Sforza also saw the dangers of absolute power: as legitimate princes they were meant to champion law and justice, not condone arbitrary acts that disregarded basic rights. Black traces the application of plenitude of power in day‐to‐day government, and demonstrates how the rulers of Milan kept pace with the initial acceptance and subsequent rejection by lawyers of the concept of absolute power.Less

Abusir: The Necropolis of the Sons of the Sun

Miroslav Verner

At the center of the world-famous pyramid field of the Memphite necropolis lies a group of pyramids, temples, and tombs named after the nearby village of Abusir. Long overshadowed by the more ... More

At the center of the world-famous pyramid field of the Memphite necropolis lies a group of pyramids, temples, and tombs named after the nearby village of Abusir. Long overshadowed by the more familiar pyramids at Giza and Saqqara, this area has nonetheless been the site, for the last fifty years, of an extensive operation to discover its past. This thoroughly updated in-depth book documents the uncovering by a dedicated team of Czech archaeologists of a hitherto neglected wealth of ancient remains dating from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period. This is Abusir, realm of Osiris, God of the dead, and its story is one of both modern archaeology and the long-buried mysteries that it seeks to uncover.Less

Academic ambassadors, Pacific allies: Australia, America and the Fulbright Program

Alice Garner and Diane Kirkby

This book recounts the history of the Fulbright Program in Australia, locating academic exchange in the context of US cultural diplomacy and revealing a complex relationship between governments, ... More

This book recounts the history of the Fulbright Program in Australia, locating academic exchange in the context of US cultural diplomacy and revealing a complex relationship between governments, publicly funded research and the integrity of academic independence. The study is the first in-depth analysis of the Fulbright exchange program in a single country. Drawing on previously unexplored archives and a new oral history, the authors investigate the educational, political and diplomatic challenges experienced by Australian and American scholars who won awards and those who managed the complex bi-national program. The book begins with the scheme’s origins, moves through its Australian establishment during the early Cold War, Vietnam War dilemmas, civil rights and gender parity struggles and the impacts of mid-to-late 20th century belt-tightening. How the program’s goal of ‘mutual understanding’ was understood and enacted across six decades lies at the heart of the book, which weaves institutional and individual experiences together with broader geopolitical issues. Bringing a complex and nuanced analysis to the Australia-US relationship, the authors offer fresh insights into the global influence of the Fulbright Program. It is a compelling account of academic exchange as cultural diplomacy. It offers a critical appraisal of Fulbright achievements and limitations in avoiding political influence, integrating gender and racial diversity, absorbing conflict and dissent, and responding to economic fluctuations and social changeLess

Academic General Practice in the UK Medical Schools, 1948-2000: A Short History

John Howie and Michael Whitfield (eds)

Although General Practice is the commonest career choice for medical graduates, and the majority of encounters between doctors and patients take place in general practice, there was no formal ... More

Although General Practice is the commonest career choice for medical graduates, and the majority of encounters between doctors and patients take place in general practice, there was no formal teaching in or about the subject before the start of the NHS in 1948. Nor were there any staff trained in the discipline in a paid university position. This Book traces the revolution in medical education that took place between 1948 and 2000 resulting in every one of the then 31 established medical schools having a professorial appointment in the discipline, and some 15% of the medical curriculum nationally being taught in the general practice setting by general practitioners. Each of the 21 chapters describes how this change came about (the London chapter describes the process across 11 different schools), and captures the struggles of visionary doctors (most but not all of whom were general practitioners) to establish a new discipline against a mix of protectionism, apathy and sometimes hostility from the existing medical establishment. The Book includes a more general analysis of the recurrent themes which were common across the university system, and of the long process of trying to establish the financial parity with existing clinical disciplines which was critical to allowing the new discipline first to survive and more recently to thrive.Less