|
30069 books about History and 2018
start with P
You are on page Previous 1 ... 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Next
|
READERS PUBLISHERS STUDENT SERVICES More to explore... |
30069 books about History and 2018
30069 books about History
2018 start with P start with P
2018 start with P start with P
The Practical Imagination
The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century
David F. Lindenfeld
University of Chicago Press, 1997
Drawing on the work of Foucault and Bourdieu, David Lindenfeld illuminates the practical imagination as it was exhibited in the transformation of the political and social sciences during the changing conditions of nineteenth-century Germany. Using a wealth of information from state and university archives, private correspondence, and a survey of lecture offerings in German universities, Lindenfeld examines the original group of learned disciplines which originated in eighteenth-century Germany as a curriculum to train state officials in the administration and reform of society and which included economics, statistics, politics, public administration, finance, and state law, as well as agriculture, forestry, and mining. He explores the ways in which some systems of knowledge became extinct, and how new ones came into existence, while other migrated to different subject areas.
Lindenfeld argues that these sciences of state developed a technique of deliberation on practical issues such as tax policy and welfare, that serves as a model for contemporary administrations.
Lindenfeld argues that these sciences of state developed a technique of deliberation on practical issues such as tax policy and welfare, that serves as a model for contemporary administrations.
[more]
Practical Matter
Newton’s Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687–1851
Margaret C. Jacob and Larry Stewart
Harvard University Press, 2006
Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart examine the profound transformation that began in 1687. From the year when Newton published his Principia to the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, science gradually became central to Western thought and economic development. The book aims at a general audience and examines how, despite powerful opposition on the Continent, a Newtonian understanding gained acceptance and practical application. By the mid-eighteenth century the new science had achieved ascendancy, and the race was on to apply Newtonian mechanics to industry and manufacturing. They end the story with the temple to scientific and technological progress that was the Crystal Palace exhibition. Choosing their examples carefully, Jacob and Stewart show that there was nothing preordained or inevitable about the centrality awarded to science. "It is easy to forget that science might have been stillborn, or remained the esoteric knowledge of court elites. Instead, for better and for worse, science became a centerpiece of Western culture."
[more]
Practical Mystic
Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington
Matthew Stanley
University of Chicago Press, 2007
Science and religion have long been thought incompatible. But nowhere has this apparent contradiction been more fully resolved than in the figure of A. S. Eddington (1882–1944), a pioneer in astrophysics, relativity, and the popularization of science, and a devout Quaker. Practical Mystic uses the figure of Eddington to shows how religious and scientific values can interact and overlap without compromising the integrity of either.
Eddington was a world-class scientist who not only maintained his religious belief throughout his scientific career but also defended the interrelation of science and religion while drawing inspiration from both for his practices. For instance, at a time when a strict adherence to deductive principles of physics had proved fruitless for understanding the nature of stars, insights from Quaker mysticism led Eddington to argue that an outlook less concerned with certainty and more concerned with further exploration was necessary to overcome the obstacles of incomplete and uncertain knowledge.
By examining this intersection between liberal religion and astrophysics, Practical Mystic questions many common assumptions about the relationship between science and spirituality. Matthew Stanley’s analysis of Eddington’s personal convictions also reveals much about the practice, production, and dissemination of scientific knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Eddington was a world-class scientist who not only maintained his religious belief throughout his scientific career but also defended the interrelation of science and religion while drawing inspiration from both for his practices. For instance, at a time when a strict adherence to deductive principles of physics had proved fruitless for understanding the nature of stars, insights from Quaker mysticism led Eddington to argue that an outlook less concerned with certainty and more concerned with further exploration was necessary to overcome the obstacles of incomplete and uncertain knowledge.
By examining this intersection between liberal religion and astrophysics, Practical Mystic questions many common assumptions about the relationship between science and spirituality. Matthew Stanley’s analysis of Eddington’s personal convictions also reveals much about the practice, production, and dissemination of scientific knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century.
[more]
Practical Pursuits
Takano Choei, Takahashi Keisaku, and Western Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Japan
Ellen Gardner Nakamura
Harvard University Press, 2005
The history of Western medicine in the late Tokugawa period is usually depicted as a prelude to modern medicine. By comparison to the Western medical science that was systematically introduced in the Meiji period, the Tokugawa study of Western learning is often seen as a hopelessly backward exercise in which inadequately equipped Japanese doctors valiantly struggled to make sense of outdated Dutch knowledge. In contrast, this book argues that the study of Western medicine was a dynamic activity that brought together doctors from all over the country in efforts to effect social change. Western knowledge was not simply the property of elite samurai doctors working for the Bakufu or domains but was shared even by commoner doctors working in local practices in rural backwaters. Through the examples of the doctors Takano Choei (1804-1850) and Takahashi Keisaku (1799-1875), this book explores the context into which local Japanese doctors incorporated Western ideas, the social networks through which they communicated them, and the geographical spaces that supported these activities. By examining the social impact of Western learning at the level of everyday life rather than simply its impact at the theoretical level, the book offers a broad picture of the way in which Western medicine, and Western knowledge, was absorbed and adapted in Japan.
[more]
Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will
Norman O. Dahl
University of Minnesota Press, 1984
Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
One of the central problems in recent moral philosophy is the apparent tension between the "practical" or "action-guiding" side of moral judgments and their objectivity. That tension would not exist if practical reason existed (if reason played a substantial role in producing motivation) and if recognition of obligation were one of the areas in which practical reason operated. In Practical Reason, Aristotle, and the Weakness of the Will,Norman Dahl argies that, despite widespread opinion to the contrary, Aristotle held a position on practical reason that both provides an objective basis for ethics and satisfies an important criterion of adequacy—that it acknowledges genuine cases of weakness of the will. In arguing for this, Dahl distinguishes Aristotle's position from that of David Hume, who denied the existence of practical reason. An important part of his argument is an account of the role that Aristotle allowed the faculty nous to play in the acquisition of general ends. Relying both on this argument and on an examination of passages from Aristotle's ethics and psychology, Dahl argues that Aristotle recognized that a genuine conflict of motives can occur in weakness of the will. This provides him with the basis for an interpretation that finds Aristotle acknowledging genuine cases of weakness of the will.
Dahl's arguments have both a philosophical and a historical point. He argues that Aristotle's position on practical reason deserves to be taken seriously, a conclusion he reinforces by comparing that position with more recent attempts, by Kant, Nagel, and Rawls, to base ethics on practical reason.
[more]
The Practice of Philology in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands
Edited by Ton van Kalmthout and Huib Zuidervaart
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
The Netherlands have a long and important tradition in scholarly philology. For instance in the early days of Leiden University 'philology', or the critical examination of classical texts, was regarded as a 'cutting-edge science'. This field of scholarship had far reaching implications on disciplines such as theology, chronology, astronomy, history, law and other demarcated bodies of knowledge identified as a separate science. Regardless of the exact field of inquiry, philologists as protectors and teachers of the written heritage always played a pivotal role in the formation of the cultural repertoire of the educated public. As men of learning and high esteem, philologists also exerted influence outside the cultural sphere, especially in politics and religion. The ever-changing composition of the philological frame of reference made no difference in this respect. But in the nineteenth century, the practice of philology was passing a crucial phase of change. In both its object of study and in its methods, several fundamental modifications occurred. Texts in the vernacular and national philologies attracted more and more attention of the public, and 'neo-philology' succeeded in taking over the central position traditionally occupied by classical philology. Subfields such as 'linguistics', 'edition technique' and 'history' grew into new, more-or-less independent (sub-)disciplines, whereas scientific methods such as stemmatology and comparative approaches were introduced in the humanities. This redesigned the landscape of philology radically. New boundaries became apparent and existing ones were questioned or drawn sharper. At the time, philology underwent an accelerated process of differentiation and professionalization. Philology demarcated its own more or less independent sphere, with a specific authority. The establishment of a branch of 'national philology' can be regarded as an example of discipline formation in the humanities. This fascinating process of change and the search for new boundaries in Dutch philology is highlighted in this book The Practice of Philology in the Netherlands in the Nineteenth Century, the first book on this topic in the English language.
[more]
The Practice of Politics in Postcolonial Brazil
Porto Alegre, 1845-1895
Roger A. Kittleson
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005
The Practice of Politics in Postcolonial Brazil traces the history of high and low politics in nineteenth-century Brazil from the vantage point of the provincial capital of Porto Alegre. In the immediate postcolonial period, new ideas about citizenship and freedom were developing, and elites struggled for control of the state as the lower classes sought inclusion in political life. In a shift from the Liberal Party to Positivist or Conservative rule during the bloody Federalist Revolt of 1893–1895, new leaders sought to bring about a more balanced structure of government where the capitalist was sympathetic to the worker, and the worker more passive toward the elite. This represented a complete change of opinions—a new regime of ideas. Termed a “scientific” approach by its proponents, the movement was based on historical process and would be brought about through civic education.
Against the backdrop of the abolition of slavery and subsequent assimilation, the rise of European immigration, and industrialization, Kittleson investigates how “the people” shaped changing political ideologies and practices, and how through local struggles and changes in elite ideology, the lower classes in Porto Alegre won limited political inclusion that was denied elsewhere.
[more]
The Practice of U.S. Women's History
Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues
Edited by S. Jay Kleinberg, Eileen Boris, and Vicki L. Ruiz
Rutgers University Press, 2008
In the last several decades, U.S. women’s history has come of age. Not only have historians challenged the national narrative on the basis of their rich explorations of the personal, the social, the economic, and the political, but they have also entered into dialogues with each other over the meaning of women’s history itself.
In this collection of seventeen original essays on women’s lives from the colonial period to the present, contributors take the competing forces of race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, and region into account. Among many other examples, they examine how conceptions of gender shaped government officials’ attitudes towards East Asian immigrants; how race and gender inequality pervaded the welfare state; and how color and class shaped Mexican American women’s mobilization for civil and labor rights.
[more]
Practicing Islam
Knowledge, Experience, and Social Navigation in Kyrgyzstan
David W. Montgomery
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016
David W. Montgomery presents a rich ethnographic study on the practice and meaning of Islamic life in Kyrgyzstan. As he shows, becoming and being a Muslim are based on knowledge acquired from the surrounding environment, enabled through the practice of doing. Through these acts, Islam is imbued in both the individual and the community. To Montgomery, religious practice and lived experience combine to create an ideological space that is shaped by events, opportunities, and potentialities that form the context from which knowing emerges. This acquired knowledge further frames social navigation and political negotiation.
Through his years of on-the-ground research, Montgomery assembles both an anthropology of knowledge and an anthropology of Islam, demonstrating how individuals make sense of and draw meanings from their environments. He reveals subtle individual interpretations of the religion and how people seek to define themselves and their lives as “good” within their communities and under Islam.
Based on numerous in-depth interviews, bolstered by extensive survey and data collection, Montgomery offers the most thorough English-language study to date of Islam in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. His work provides a broad view into the cognitive processes of Central Asian populations that will serve students, researchers, and policymakers alike.
Through his years of on-the-ground research, Montgomery assembles both an anthropology of knowledge and an anthropology of Islam, demonstrating how individuals make sense of and draw meanings from their environments. He reveals subtle individual interpretations of the religion and how people seek to define themselves and their lives as “good” within their communities and under Islam.
Based on numerous in-depth interviews, bolstered by extensive survey and data collection, Montgomery offers the most thorough English-language study to date of Islam in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. His work provides a broad view into the cognitive processes of Central Asian populations that will serve students, researchers, and policymakers alike.
[more]
Practicing Medicine in a Black Regiment
The Civil War Diary of Burt G. Wilder, 55th Massachusetts
Richard M. Reid
University of Massachusetts Press, 2010
In early 1863, in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Massachusetts began recruiting black soldiers to serve in the Civil War. Although the first regiment formed, the 54th Massachusetts, would become the best-known black regiment in the war, the second regiment raised, the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, performed equally valuable service in the Union Army.
Burt Green Wilder, a Boston-born, Harvard-educated doctor-in-training, was among the first white officers commissioned to staff the 55th Massachusetts. Like other officers serving in the state's African American units, Wilder was selected for his military experience, his "firm Anti-Slavery principles," and his faith in the value of black troops. From the time he joined the 55th in May 1863 until the regiment was discharged in September 1865, Wilder recorded his experiences and observations. He described the day-to-day activities of a Civil War surgeon, the indignities suffered by black enlisted men at the hands of a War Department that denied them the same treatment offered to white troops, and the role of the regiment in the campaign around Charleston and in Florida.
Service in the southern states also allowed Wilder to indulge a passion for natural science and comparative anatomy, including the collection of unusual species, one of which—the spider known as Nephila wilderi—still bears his name. After the war he completed his medical studies at Harvard and joined the faculty of Cornell University, where he became a distinguished professor of zoology as well as an outspoken advocate of racial equality.
In his introduction to the volume, Richard M. Reid analyzes Burt Wilder's diary and places it within the context of the war, the experience of African American troops, and Wilder's life and career.
Burt Green Wilder, a Boston-born, Harvard-educated doctor-in-training, was among the first white officers commissioned to staff the 55th Massachusetts. Like other officers serving in the state's African American units, Wilder was selected for his military experience, his "firm Anti-Slavery principles," and his faith in the value of black troops. From the time he joined the 55th in May 1863 until the regiment was discharged in September 1865, Wilder recorded his experiences and observations. He described the day-to-day activities of a Civil War surgeon, the indignities suffered by black enlisted men at the hands of a War Department that denied them the same treatment offered to white troops, and the role of the regiment in the campaign around Charleston and in Florida.
Service in the southern states also allowed Wilder to indulge a passion for natural science and comparative anatomy, including the collection of unusual species, one of which—the spider known as Nephila wilderi—still bears his name. After the war he completed his medical studies at Harvard and joined the faculty of Cornell University, where he became a distinguished professor of zoology as well as an outspoken advocate of racial equality.
In his introduction to the volume, Richard M. Reid analyzes Burt Wilder's diary and places it within the context of the war, the experience of African American troops, and Wilder's life and career.
[more]
Practicing New Historicism
Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt
University of Chicago Press, 2000
For almost twenty years, new historicism has been a highly controversial and influential force in literary and cultural studies. In Practicing the New Historicism, two of its most distinguished practitioners reflect on its surprisingly disparate sources and far-reaching effects.
In lucid and jargon-free prose, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt focus on five central aspects of new historicism: recurrent use of anecdotes, preoccupation with the nature of representations, fascination with the history of the body, sharp focus on neglected details, and skeptical analysis of ideology. Arguing that new historicism has always been more a passionately engaged practice of questioning and analysis than an abstract theory, Gallagher and Greenblatt demonstrate this practice in a series of characteristically dazzling readings of works ranging from paintings by Joos van Gent and Paolo Uccello to Hamlet and Great Expectations.
By juxtaposing analyses of Renaissance and nineteenth-century topics, the authors uncover a number of unexpected contrasts and connections between the two periods. Are aspects of the dispute over the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist detectable in British political economists' hostility to the potato? How does Pip's isolation in Great Expectations shed light on Hamlet's doubt?
Offering not only an insider's view of new historicism, but also a lively dialogue between a Renaissance scholar and a Victorianist, Practicing the New Historicism is an illuminating and unpredictable performance by two of America's most respected literary scholars.
"Gallagher and Greenblatt offer a brilliant introduction to new historicism. In their hands, difficult ideas become coherent and accessible."—Choice
"A tour de force of new literary criticism. . . . Gallagher and Greenblatt's virtuoso readings of paintings, potatoes (yes, spuds), religious ritual, and novels—all 'texts'—as well as essays on criticism and the significance of anecdotes, are likely to take their place as model examples of the qualities of the new critical school that they lead. . . . A zesty work for those already initiated into the incestuous world of contemporary literary criticism-and for those who might like to see what all the fuss is about."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
In lucid and jargon-free prose, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt focus on five central aspects of new historicism: recurrent use of anecdotes, preoccupation with the nature of representations, fascination with the history of the body, sharp focus on neglected details, and skeptical analysis of ideology. Arguing that new historicism has always been more a passionately engaged practice of questioning and analysis than an abstract theory, Gallagher and Greenblatt demonstrate this practice in a series of characteristically dazzling readings of works ranging from paintings by Joos van Gent and Paolo Uccello to Hamlet and Great Expectations.
By juxtaposing analyses of Renaissance and nineteenth-century topics, the authors uncover a number of unexpected contrasts and connections between the two periods. Are aspects of the dispute over the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist detectable in British political economists' hostility to the potato? How does Pip's isolation in Great Expectations shed light on Hamlet's doubt?
Offering not only an insider's view of new historicism, but also a lively dialogue between a Renaissance scholar and a Victorianist, Practicing the New Historicism is an illuminating and unpredictable performance by two of America's most respected literary scholars.
"Gallagher and Greenblatt offer a brilliant introduction to new historicism. In their hands, difficult ideas become coherent and accessible."—Choice
"A tour de force of new literary criticism. . . . Gallagher and Greenblatt's virtuoso readings of paintings, potatoes (yes, spuds), religious ritual, and novels—all 'texts'—as well as essays on criticism and the significance of anecdotes, are likely to take their place as model examples of the qualities of the new critical school that they lead. . . . A zesty work for those already initiated into the incestuous world of contemporary literary criticism-and for those who might like to see what all the fuss is about."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
[more]
Practicing Transnationalism
American Studies in the Middle East
Edited Eileen T. Lundy and Edward J. Lundy
University of Texas Press, 2016
Practicing Transnationalism explores the challenges of teaching American studies in the Middle East during a time of tension and conflict between the United States and the region.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, American studies programs began to spread in the Middle East. During a time of rising anti-American sentiment, ten major programs were established in the region. What impulses propelled universities in the Middle East to establish these centers and programs? What motivated students to take courses and pursue degrees in American studies? In part, American studies programs developed as a way to “know the enemy,” to better understand America’s ubiquitous influence in foreign relations, technology, and culture; however, some programs grew because residents admired the ideals set forth as American, including democracy and free speech.
Practicing Transnationalism investigates these issues and others, using the experiences and research of the editors and contributors, who worked either directly in these programs or as adjunct to them. These scholars seek to understand what American power means to people in the Middle East. They examine the challenge of developing American studies programs in a transnational paradigm, striving to build programs that are separate from and critical of American imperialism without simply becoming anti-American. In the essays, the contributors provide context for how the field of American studies has grown and developed, and they offer views of cultural interactions and classroom situations, demonstrating the problems instructors faced and how they worked to address them.
[more]
Practicing Utopia
An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement
Rosemary Wakeman
University of Chicago Press, 2016
The typical town springs up around a natural resource—a river, an ocean, an exceptionally deep harbor—or in proximity to a larger, already thriving town. Not so with “new towns,” which are created by decree rather than out of necessity and are often intended to break from the tendencies of past development. New towns aren’t a new thing—ancient Phoenicians named their colonies Qart Hadasht, or New City—but these utopian developments saw a resurgence in the twentieth century.
In Practicing Utopia, Rosemary Wakeman gives us a sweeping view of the new town movement as a global phenomenon. From Tapiola in Finland to Islamabad in Pakistan, Cergy-Pontoise in France to Irvine in California, Wakeman unspools a masterly account of the golden age of new towns, exploring their utopian qualities and investigating what these towns can tell us about contemporary modernization and urban planning. She presents the new town movement as something truly global, defying a Cold War East-West dichotomy or the north-south polarization of rich and poor countries. Wherever these new towns were located, whatever their size, whether famous or forgotten, they shared a utopian lineage and conception that, in each case, reveals how residents and planners imagined their ideal urban future.
In Practicing Utopia, Rosemary Wakeman gives us a sweeping view of the new town movement as a global phenomenon. From Tapiola in Finland to Islamabad in Pakistan, Cergy-Pontoise in France to Irvine in California, Wakeman unspools a masterly account of the golden age of new towns, exploring their utopian qualities and investigating what these towns can tell us about contemporary modernization and urban planning. She presents the new town movement as something truly global, defying a Cold War East-West dichotomy or the north-south polarization of rich and poor countries. Wherever these new towns were located, whatever their size, whether famous or forgotten, they shared a utopian lineage and conception that, in each case, reveals how residents and planners imagined their ideal urban future.
[more]
Practicing Writing
The Postwar Discourse of Freshman English
Thomas M. Masters
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004
Practicing Writing examines a pivotal era in the history of the most ubiquitous-and possibly most problematic-course in North American colleges and universities: the requireAd first-year writing course generally known as “freshman English.”
Thomas Masters's focus is the mid-twentieth century, beginning with the returning waves of World War II veterans attending college on the GI Bill. He then traces the education reforms that took place in the late 1950s after the launch of Sputnik and the establishment of composition as a separate discipline in 1963. This study draws upon archives at three midwestern schools that reflect a range of higher education options: Wheaton, a small, sectarian liberal arts college; Northwestern, a large private university; and Illinois, a large public university.
Practicing Writing gives voice to those whose work is often taken for granted or forgotten in other studies of the subject: freshman English students and their instructors. Masters examines students' papers, professors' letters, and course descriptions, and draws upon interviews conducted with teachers to present the practitioners' points of view.
Unlike other studies of the subject, which have tended to focus more on the philosophy, theory, and ideology of teaching composition and rhetoric, Masters reveals freshman English to be a practice-based phenomenon with a durable ideological apparatus. By reexamining texts that had previously been considered insignificant, he reveals the substance of first-year composition courses and the reasons for their durability.
[more]
Practitioners of the Divine
Greek Priests and Religious Officials from Homer to Heliodorus
Beate Dignas and Kai Trampedach
Harvard University Press, 2008
“What is a Greek priest?” The volume, which has its origins in a symposium held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., focuses on the question through a variety of lenses: the visual representation of cult personnel, priests as ritual experts, variations of priesthood, ideal concepts and their transformation, and the role of manteis. Each chapter looks at how priests and religious officials used a potential authority to promote themselves and their posts, how they played a role in conserving, shaping and reviving cult activity, how they acted behind the curtain of polis institutions, and how they performed as mediators between men and gods. It becomes clear that Greek priests had many faces, and that the factors that determined their roles and activities are political as well as historical, religious as well as economic, idealistic as well as pragmatic, personal as well as communal.
[more]
The Pragmatic Mind
Explorations in the Psychology of Belief
Mark Bauerlein
Duke University Press, 1997
The Pragmatic Mind is a study of the pragmatism of Emerson, James, and Peirce and its overlooked relevance for the neopragmatism of thinkers like Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Stanley Fish, and Cornel West. Arguing that the "original" pragmatists are too-often cited casually and imprecisely as mere precursors to this contemporary group of American intellectuals, Mark Bauerlein explores the explicit consequences of the earlier group’s work for current debates among and around the neopragmatists.
Bauerlein extracts from Emerson, James, and Peirce an intellectual focus that can be used to advance the broad social and academic reforms that the new pragmatists hail. He claims that, in an effort to repudiate the phony universalism of much contemporary theory, the new generation of theorists has ignored the fact that its visions of pragmatic action are grounded in this "old" school, not just in a way of doing things but also in a way of thinking about things. In other words, despite its inclination to regard psychological questions as irrelevant, Bauerlein shows that the pragmatic method demands a pragmatic mind—that is, a concept of cognition, judgment, habit, and belief. He shows that, in fact, such a concept of mind does exist, in the work of the "old" pragmatists.
Bauerlein extracts from Emerson, James, and Peirce an intellectual focus that can be used to advance the broad social and academic reforms that the new pragmatists hail. He claims that, in an effort to repudiate the phony universalism of much contemporary theory, the new generation of theorists has ignored the fact that its visions of pragmatic action are grounded in this "old" school, not just in a way of doing things but also in a way of thinking about things. In other words, despite its inclination to regard psychological questions as irrelevant, Bauerlein shows that the pragmatic method demands a pragmatic mind—that is, a concept of cognition, judgment, habit, and belief. He shows that, in fact, such a concept of mind does exist, in the work of the "old" pragmatists.
[more]
Prague
Belonging in the Modern City
Chad Bryant
Harvard University Press, 2021
A poignant reflection on alienation and belonging, told through the lives of five remarkable people who struggled against nationalism and intolerance in one of Europe’s most stunning cities.
What does it mean to belong somewhere? For many of Prague’s inhabitants, belonging has been linked to the nation, embodied in the capital city. Grandiose medieval buildings and monuments to national heroes boast of a glorious, shared history. Past governments, democratic and Communist, layered the city with architecture that melded politics and nationhood. Not all inhabitants, however, felt included in these efforts to nurture national belonging. Socialists, dissidents, Jews, Germans, and Vietnamese—all have been subject to hatred and political persecution in the city they called home.
Chad Bryant tells the stories of five marginalized individuals who, over the last two centuries, forged their own notions of belonging in one of Europe’s great cities. An aspiring guidebook writer, a German-speaking newspaperman, a Bolshevik carpenter, an actress of mixed heritage who came of age during the Communist terror, and a Czech-speaking Vietnamese blogger: none of them is famous, but their lives are revealing. They speak to tensions between exclusionary nationalism and on-the-ground diversity. In their struggles against alienation and dislocation, they forged alternative communities in cafes, workplaces, and online. While strolling park paths, joining political marches, or writing about their lives, these outsiders came to embody a city that, on its surface, was built for others.
A powerful and creative meditation on place and nation, the individual and community, Prague envisions how cohesion and difference might coexist as it acknowledges a need common to all.
[more]
Prague
Crossroads of Europe
Derek Sayer
Reaktion Books, 2018
Thirty years ago, Prague was a closed book to most travelers. Today, it is Europe’s fifth-most-visited city, surpassed only by London, Paris, Istanbul, and Rome. With a stunning natural setting on the Vltava river and featuring a spectacular architectural potpourri of everything from Romanesque rotundas to gothic towers, Renaissance palaces, Baroque churches, art nouveau cafés, and cubist apartment buildings, Prague may well be Europe’s most beautiful capital city.
But behind this beauty lies a turbulent and often violent history, and in this book, Derek Sayer explores both. Located at the uneasy center of the continent, Prague has been a crossroads of cultures for more than a millennium. From the religious wars of the middle ages and the nationalist struggles of the nineteenth century to the modern conflicts of fascism, communism, and democracy, Prague’s history is the history of the forces that have shaped Europe.
Sayer also goes beyond the complexities of Prague’s colorful past: his expert, very readable, and exquisitely illustrated guide helps us to see what Prague is today. He not only provides listings of what to see, hear, and do and where to eat, drink, and shop, but also offers deep personal reflection on the sides of Prague tourists seldom see, from a model interwar modernist villa colony to Europe’s biggest Vietnamese market.
But behind this beauty lies a turbulent and often violent history, and in this book, Derek Sayer explores both. Located at the uneasy center of the continent, Prague has been a crossroads of cultures for more than a millennium. From the religious wars of the middle ages and the nationalist struggles of the nineteenth century to the modern conflicts of fascism, communism, and democracy, Prague’s history is the history of the forces that have shaped Europe.
Sayer also goes beyond the complexities of Prague’s colorful past: his expert, very readable, and exquisitely illustrated guide helps us to see what Prague is today. He not only provides listings of what to see, hear, and do and where to eat, drink, and shop, but also offers deep personal reflection on the sides of Prague tourists seldom see, from a model interwar modernist villa colony to Europe’s biggest Vietnamese market.
[more]
Prague in Black
Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism
Chad Bryant
Harvard University Press, 2009
In September 1938, the Munich Agreement delivered the Sudetenland to Germany. Six months later, Hitler’s troops marched unopposed into Prague and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia—the first non-German territory to be occupied by Nazi Germany. Although Czechs outnumbered Germans thirty to one, Nazi leaders were determined to make the region entirely German.
Chad Bryant explores the origins and implementation of these plans as part of a wider history of Nazi rule and its consequences for the region. To make the Protectorate German, half the Czech population (and all Jews) would be expelled or killed, with the other half assimilated into a German national community with the correct racial and cultural composition. With the arrival of Reinhard Heydrich, Germanization measures accelerated. People faced mounting pressure from all sides. The Nazis required their subjects to act (and speak) German, while Czech patriots, and exiled leaders, pressed their countrymen to act as “good Czechs.”
By destroying democratic institutions, harnessing the economy, redefining citizenship, murdering the Jews, and creating a climate of terror, the Nazi occupation set the stage for the postwar expulsion of Czechoslovakia’s three million Germans and for the Communists’ rise to power in 1948. The region, Bryant shows, became entirely Czech, but not before Nazi rulers and their postwar successors had changed forever what it meant to be Czech, or German.
[more]
Prague Palimpsest
Writing, Memory, and the City
Alfred Thomas
University of Chicago Press, 2010
A city of immense literary mystique, Prague has inspired writers across the centuries with its beauty, cosmopolitanism, and tragic history. Envisioning the ancient city in central Europe as a multilayered text, or palimpsest, that has been constantly revised and rewritten—from the medieval and Renaissance chroniclers who legitimized the city’s foundational origins to the modernists of the early twentieth century who established its reputation as the new capital of the avant-garde—Alfred Thomas argues that Prague has become a paradoxical site of inscription and effacement, of memory and forgetting, a utopian link to the prewar and pre-Holocaust European past and a dystopia of totalitarian amnesia.
Considering a wide range of writers, including the city’s most famous son, Franz Kafka, Prague Palimpsest reassesses the work of poets and novelists such as Bohumil Hrabal, Milan Kundera, Gustav Meyrink, Jan Neruda, Vítĕzslav Nezval, and Rainer Maria Rilke and engages with other famous authors who “wrote” Prague, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Ingeborg Bachmann, Albert Camus, Paul Celan, and W. G. Sebald. The result is a comparative, interdisciplinary study that helps to explain why Prague—more than any other major European city—has haunted the cultural and political imagination of the West.
[more]
Prague Panoramas
National Memory and Sacred Space in the Twentieth Century
Cynthia Paces
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009
Prague Panoramas examines the creation of Czech nationalism through monuments, buildings, festivals, and protests in the public spaces of the city during the twentieth century. These “sites of memory” were attempts by civic, religious, cultural, and political forces to create a cohesive sense of self for a country and a people torn by war, foreign occupation, and internal strife.
The Czechs struggled to define their national identity throughout the modern era. Prague, the capital of a diverse area comprising Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Poles, Ruthenians, and Romany as well as various religious groups including Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, became central to the Czech domination of the region and its identity. These struggles have often played out in violent acts, such as the destruction of religious monuments, or the forced segregation and near extermination of Jews.
During the twentieth century, Prague grew increasingly secular, yet leaders continued to look to religious figures such as Jan Hus and Saint Wenceslas as symbols of Czech heritage. Hus, in particular, became a paladin in the struggle for Czech independence from the Habsburg Empire and Austrian Catholicism.
Through her extensive archival research and personal fieldwork, Cynthia Paces offers a panoramic view of Prague as the cradle of Czech national identity, seen through a vast array of memory sites and objects. From the Gothic Saint Vitus Cathedral, to the Communist Party's reconstruction of Jan Hus's Bethlehem Chapel, to the 1969 self-immolation of student Jan Palach in protest of Soviet occupation, to the Hosková plaque commemorating the deportation of Jews from Josefov during the Holocaust, Paces reveals the iconography intrinsic to forming a collective memory and the meaning of being a Czech. As her study discerns, that meaning has yet to be clearly defined, and the search for identity continues today.
The Czechs struggled to define their national identity throughout the modern era. Prague, the capital of a diverse area comprising Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Poles, Ruthenians, and Romany as well as various religious groups including Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, became central to the Czech domination of the region and its identity. These struggles have often played out in violent acts, such as the destruction of religious monuments, or the forced segregation and near extermination of Jews.
During the twentieth century, Prague grew increasingly secular, yet leaders continued to look to religious figures such as Jan Hus and Saint Wenceslas as symbols of Czech heritage. Hus, in particular, became a paladin in the struggle for Czech independence from the Habsburg Empire and Austrian Catholicism.
Through her extensive archival research and personal fieldwork, Cynthia Paces offers a panoramic view of Prague as the cradle of Czech national identity, seen through a vast array of memory sites and objects. From the Gothic Saint Vitus Cathedral, to the Communist Party's reconstruction of Jan Hus's Bethlehem Chapel, to the 1969 self-immolation of student Jan Palach in protest of Soviet occupation, to the Hosková plaque commemorating the deportation of Jews from Josefov during the Holocaust, Paces reveals the iconography intrinsic to forming a collective memory and the meaning of being a Czech. As her study discerns, that meaning has yet to be clearly defined, and the search for identity continues today.
[more]
The Prairie
James Fenimore Cooper
Harvard University Press, 2014
In The Prairie (1827), Cooper's most celebrated literary work, Natty Bumppo, now aged, is reduced to making a living by trapping. As his journey from Atlantic to Pacific nears its end in a vast uninhabited grassland that Cooper consistently imagines as an ocean of the interior, nothing less than the future identity of America is at stake.
[more]
Prairie Albion
An English Settlement in Pioneer Illinois
Charles Boewe
Southern Illinois University Press, 1999
Originally published in 1962, this story of the English Settlement in pioneer Illinois is compiled from the eyewitness accounts of the participants. The founders, Morris Birkbeck and George Flower, as well as their associates and the many visitors to their prairie settlement, wrote mainly for immediate and sometimes controversial ends. Charles Boewe has selected excerpts from letters, descriptions, diaries, histories, and periodicals within a chronological framework to emphasize the implicit drama of the settlers' deeds as they searched for a suitable site, founded their colony, and augmented their forces with new arrivals from England. No less dramatic is the subsequent estrangement of the two founders, the disillusionment of many of the English settlers, the untimely death of Birkbeck, and the financial ruin of Flower.
[more]
The Prairie Boys Go to War
The Fifth Illinois Cavalry, 1861-1865
Rhonda M. Kohl
Southern Illinois University Press, 2013
Cavalry units from Midwestern states remain largely absent from Civil War literature, and what little has been written largely overlooks the individual men who served. The Fifth Illinois Cavalry has thus remained obscure despite participating in some of the most important campaigns in Arkansas and Mississippi. In this pioneering examination of that understudied regiment, Rhonda M. Kohl offers the only modern, comprehensive analysis of a southern Illinois regiment during the Civil War and combines well-documented military history with a cultural analysis of the men who served in the Fifth Illinois.
The regiment’s history unfolds around major events in the Western Theater from 1861 to September 1865, including campaigns at Helena, Vicksburg, Jackson, and Meridian, as well as numerous little-known skirmishes. Although they were led almost exclusively by Northern-born Republicans, the majority of the soldiers in the Fifth Illinois remained Democrats. As Kohl demonstrates, politics, economics, education, social values, and racism separated the line officers from the common soldiers, and the internal friction caused by these cultural disparities led to poor leadership, low morale, disciplinary problems, and rampant alcoholism.
The narrative pulls the Fifth Illinois out of historical oblivion, elucidating the highs and lows of the soldiers’ service as well as their changing attitudes toward war goals, religion, liberty, commanding generals, Copperheads, and alcoholism. By reconstructing the cultural context of Fifth Illinois soldiers, Prairie Boys Go to War reveals how social and economic traditions can shape the wartime experience.
[more]
Prairie City, Iowa
Three Seasons at Home
Douglas Bauer
University of Iowa Press, 1979
Weary from the journalistic treadmill of "going from one assignment to the next, like an itinerant fieldworker moving to his harvests" and healing from a divorce, Douglas Bauer decided it was time to return to his hometown. Back in Prairie City, he helped on his father's farm, scooped grains at the Co-op, and tended bar at the Cardinal. The resultant memoir is a classic picture of an adult experiencing one's childhood roots as a grown-up and testing whether one can ever truly go home again.
Bauer grew up "awkward with soil and with machines" in a small town east of Des Moines, As a teenager, he left the farm for college life twenty miles away and, after graduation, took a job with Better Homes and Gardens in Des Moines, writing in the junk-mail fictional persona of "Barbara Joyce,"asking millions of people to subscribe. After a few years he moved to Chicago to work as an editor and writer for Playboy and eventually as a freelance journalist. In the summer of 1975, he returned home to attend his grandmother's funeral and by autumn he moved back to Prairie City, where he stayed for the next three seasons.
Bauer's book is neither a wistful nostalgia about returning to a simpler time and place nor a patronizing look at those who never leave the town in which they were born. What emerges is an unsentimental yet loving account of life in the Midwest. Not just a portrait of Prairie City, Iowa, but of everyone's small town, everywhere.
Bauer grew up "awkward with soil and with machines" in a small town east of Des Moines, As a teenager, he left the farm for college life twenty miles away and, after graduation, took a job with Better Homes and Gardens in Des Moines, writing in the junk-mail fictional persona of "Barbara Joyce,"asking millions of people to subscribe. After a few years he moved to Chicago to work as an editor and writer for Playboy and eventually as a freelance journalist. In the summer of 1975, he returned home to attend his grandmother's funeral and by autumn he moved back to Prairie City, where he stayed for the next three seasons.
Bauer's book is neither a wistful nostalgia about returning to a simpler time and place nor a patronizing look at those who never leave the town in which they were born. What emerges is an unsentimental yet loving account of life in the Midwest. Not just a portrait of Prairie City, Iowa, but of everyone's small town, everywhere.
[more]
Prairie Defender
The Murder Trials of Abraham Lincoln
George R. Dekle, Sr.
Southern Illinois University Press, 2017
2018 FAPA President’s book award medalist in the non-fiction adult, biography, and political/current events categories
2018 ISHS Annual Award Winner for a Scholarly Publication
According to conventional wisdom, Abraham Lincoln spent most of his law career collecting debt and representing railroads, and this focus made him inept at defending clients in homicide cases. In this unprecedented study of Lincoln’s criminal cases, George Dekle disproves these popular notions, showing that Lincoln was first and foremost a trial lawyer. Through careful examination of Lincoln’s homicide cases and evaluation of his legal skills, Dekle demonstrates that criminal law was an important part of Lincoln's practice, and that he was quite capable of defending people accused of murder, trying approximately one such case per year.
Dekle begins by presenting the viewpoints of not only those who see Lincoln as a perfect lawyer whose only flaw was his inability to represent the wrong side of a case but also those who believe Lincoln was a less-than-honest legal hack. The author invites readers to compare these wildly different stereotypes with the flesh-and-blood Lincoln revealed in each case described in the book, including an axe murder suit in which Lincoln assisted the prosecution, a poisoning case he refused to prosecute for $200 but defended for $75, and a case he won by proving that a supposed murder victim was actually still alive.
For each case Dekle covers, he first tells the stories of the feuds, arguments, and insults that led to murder and other criminal activity, giving a gripping view of the seamy side of life in nineteenth-century Illinois. Then he traces the course of the pretrial litigation, describes the trials and the various tactics employed in the prosecution and defense, and critiques the performance of both Lincoln and his adversaries.
Dekle concludes that Lincoln was a competent, diligent criminal trial lawyer who knew the law, could argue it effectively to both judge and jury, and would use all lawful means to defend clients whether he believed them to be innocent or guilty. His trial record shows Lincoln to have been a formidable defense lawyer who won many seemingly hopeless cases through his skill as a courtroom tactician, cross-examiner, and orator. Criminal defendants who could retain Lincoln as a defense attorney were well represented, and criminal defense attorneys who sought him as co-counsel were well served. Providing insight into both Lincoln’s legal career and the culture in which he practiced law, Prairie Defender resolves a major misconception concerning one of our most important historical figures.
2018 ISHS Annual Award Winner for a Scholarly Publication
According to conventional wisdom, Abraham Lincoln spent most of his law career collecting debt and representing railroads, and this focus made him inept at defending clients in homicide cases. In this unprecedented study of Lincoln’s criminal cases, George Dekle disproves these popular notions, showing that Lincoln was first and foremost a trial lawyer. Through careful examination of Lincoln’s homicide cases and evaluation of his legal skills, Dekle demonstrates that criminal law was an important part of Lincoln's practice, and that he was quite capable of defending people accused of murder, trying approximately one such case per year.
Dekle begins by presenting the viewpoints of not only those who see Lincoln as a perfect lawyer whose only flaw was his inability to represent the wrong side of a case but also those who believe Lincoln was a less-than-honest legal hack. The author invites readers to compare these wildly different stereotypes with the flesh-and-blood Lincoln revealed in each case described in the book, including an axe murder suit in which Lincoln assisted the prosecution, a poisoning case he refused to prosecute for $200 but defended for $75, and a case he won by proving that a supposed murder victim was actually still alive.
For each case Dekle covers, he first tells the stories of the feuds, arguments, and insults that led to murder and other criminal activity, giving a gripping view of the seamy side of life in nineteenth-century Illinois. Then he traces the course of the pretrial litigation, describes the trials and the various tactics employed in the prosecution and defense, and critiques the performance of both Lincoln and his adversaries.
Dekle concludes that Lincoln was a competent, diligent criminal trial lawyer who knew the law, could argue it effectively to both judge and jury, and would use all lawful means to defend clients whether he believed them to be innocent or guilty. His trial record shows Lincoln to have been a formidable defense lawyer who won many seemingly hopeless cases through his skill as a courtroom tactician, cross-examiner, and orator. Criminal defendants who could retain Lincoln as a defense attorney were well represented, and criminal defense attorneys who sought him as co-counsel were well served. Providing insight into both Lincoln’s legal career and the culture in which he practiced law, Prairie Defender resolves a major misconception concerning one of our most important historical figures.
[more]
Prairie Ghost
Pronghorn and Human Interaction in Early America
Richard E. McCabe
University Press of Colorado, 2010
A Wildlife Management Institute Book
In this lavishly illustrated volume Richard E. McCabe, Bart W. O'Gara and Henry M. Reeves explore the fascinating relationship of pronghorn with people in early America, from prehistoric evidence through the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. The only one of fourteen pronghorn-like genera to survive the great extinction brought on by human migration into North America, the pronghorn has a long and unique history of interaction with humans on the continent, a history that until now has largely remained unwritten.With nearly 150 black-and-white photographs, 16 pages of color illustrations, plus original artwork by Daniel P. Metz, Prairie Ghost: Pronghorn and Human Interaction in Early America tells the intriguing story of humans and these elusive big game mammals in an informative and entertaining fashion that will appeal to historians, biologists, sportsmen and the general reader alike.
Winner of the Wildlife Society's Outstanding Book Award for 2005
[more]
Prairie Grass Roots
An Iowa Small Town in the Early Twentieth Century
Thomas J. Morain
University of Iowa Press, 1998
Prairie Grass Roots describes how broad social changes taking place in the early twentieth century influenced one particular town, Jefferson, Iowa. Examing the three turbulent decades between the turn of the century and the New Deal, Morain looks at the impact of social change on community social structure, gender roles, the influence of the automobile,electricty,World War I, and the farm depression. A final chapter analyzes the state of the small town at the beginning of the 1930's.
Combining archival research, oral histories and local newspaper accounts, Morain revisitis Jefferson's residents perceptions of their times.
[more]
Prairie Justice
A History of Illinois Courts under French, English, and American Law
Roger L. Severns. Edited by John A. Lupton
Southern Illinois University Press, 2015
Winner, ISHS Superior Achievement Award for a Scholarly Publication, 2016
A concise legal history of Illinois through the end of the nineteenth century, Prairie Justice covers the region’s progression from French to British to early American legal systems, which culminated in a unique body of Illinois law that has influenced other jurisdictions. Written by Roger L. Severns in the 1950s and published in serial form in the 1960s, Prairie Justice is available now for the first time as a book, thanks to the work of editor John A. Lupton, an Illinois and legal historian who also contributed an introduction.
Illinois’ legal development demonstrates the tension between two completely different European legal systems, between river communities and prairie towns, and between agrarian and urban interests. Severns uses several rulings—including a reconstitution of the Supreme Court in 1824, slavery-related cases, and the impeachment of a Supreme Court justice—to examine political movements in Illinois and their impact on the local judiciary. Through legal decisions, the Illinois judiciary became an independent, co-equal branch of state government. By the mid-nineteenth century, Illinois had established itself as a leading judicial authority, influencing not only the growing western frontier but also the industrialized and farming regions of the country. With a close eye for detail, Severns reviews the status of the legal profession during the 1850s by looking new members of the Court, the nostalgia of circuit riding, and how a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln rose to prominence.
Illinois has a rich judicial history, but that history has not been adequately documented until now. With the publication of Prairie Justice, those interested in Illinois legal history finally have a book that covers the development of the state’s judiciary in its formative years.
[more]
Prairie Metropolis
New Essays on Winnipeg Social History
Esyllt W. Jones
University of Manitoba Press, 2009
At the turn of the twentieth century, Winnipeg was the fastest-growing city in North America. But its days as a diverse and culturally rich metropolis did not end when the boom collapsed. Prairie Metropolis brings together some of the best new graduate research on the history of Winnipeg and makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of the city between 1900 and the 1980s. The essays in this collection explore the development of social institutions such as the city’s police force, juvenile court, health care institutions, volunteer organizations, and cultural centres. They offer critical analyses on ethnic, gender, and class inequality and conflict, while placing Winnipeg’s experiences in national and international contexts.
[more]
The Prairie People
Continuity and Change in Potawatomi Indian Culture, 1665-1965
James A. Clifton
University of Iowa Press, 1998
A Prairie Populist
The Memoirs of Luna Kellie
Jane Taylor Nelsen
University of Iowa Press, 1992
Populist singer, Mid-Roader, editor, publisher, wife, mother of eleven, Luna Kellie was a well-informed, fervent member of the Farmers' Alliance movement in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Radicalized by railroad monopolies, corrupt government, recurring drought, heavy mortgages, and a desperate combination of rising costs and falling returns, prairie farmers were turning their energy toward raising "less corn and more hell."
Kellie actively sought to organize Nebraska into cooperatives and educate rural people about land, transportation, and money reform. Her compelling, often heartbreaking memoirs—written on the backs of ornate red-and-gold Farmers' Alliance certificates in 1925—give us her own description of how she became motivated to join the Alliance and participate in the Populist party. Kellie writes of her homesteading and political life from the age of eighteen to forty, of failed crops, mortgaged fields, intense hardships, and her devastation at the death of her children.
Kellie actively sought to organize Nebraska into cooperatives and educate rural people about land, transportation, and money reform. Her compelling, often heartbreaking memoirs—written on the backs of ornate red-and-gold Farmers' Alliance certificates in 1925—give us her own description of how she became motivated to join the Alliance and participate in the Populist party. Kellie writes of her homesteading and political life from the age of eighteen to forty, of failed crops, mortgaged fields, intense hardships, and her devastation at the death of her children.
One of the most complete accounts of the Mid-Road political faction available, relevant in many ways to the plight of today's farmers, A Prairie Populist should be read by anyone with an interest in national politics, the farm protest movement, women's studies, and American cultural history.
[more]
Prairie Power
Voices of 1960s Midwestern Student Protest
Robbie Lieberman
University of Missouri Press, 2004
Prairie Power, a superb collection of oral histories from the 1960s, focuses on former student radicals at the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, and Southern Illinois University. Robbie Lieberman presents a view of Midwestern New Left activists that has been neglected in previous studies.
Scholarship on the sixties has been shifting from a national focus to more local and regional studies, but few authors have studied the student movement in the Midwest. Moreover, the characterization of prairie power activists as “long-haired, dope-smoking anarchists” who were responsible for the downfall of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) has not been challenged directly. While still viewing these activists critically, Lieberman argues that Midwestern students made significant contributions to the New Left in the latter half of the decade, and that their efforts were not only important at the time but also had a lasting impact on the universities and towns in which they were active.
The author begins by explaining “prairie power” and establishing its significance in the history of 1960s protest. She then presents the oral histories in three parts. The first section reveals what “prairie power” meant to national leaders of SDS who were regional organizers in the Midwest. The second section of oral histories gives insight into the backgrounds, concerns, and activities of local leaders from the three universities who were homegrown Midwestern activists. Lieberman shows that while the national leaders take credit for organizing on several college campuses, the local activists often felt that they were on their own.
The third group of oral histories—from grassroots activists—is what most sets this book apart from previous works on the student New Left. These are students who joined demonstrations on their own campuses but did not necessarily identify with either local or national organizations. Their rarely heard voices help provide a better understanding of who participated in the student protest movement, why they were involved, and how their activities profoundly affected their lives for years to come.
Prairie Power makes a significant contribution toward a more comprehensive history of student activism in the turbulent 1960s.
[more]
Prairie Spirit
Perspectives on the Heritage of the United Church of Canada in the West
Dennis L. Butcher
University of Manitoba Press, 1985
The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own
The West River Country of South Dakota in the Years of Depression and Dust
Nelson, Paula M.
University of Iowa Press, 1996
Between 1900 and 1915, in the last great land rush, over one hundred thousand homesteaders flooded into the west river country of South Dakota, a land noted for its aridity and unpredictable weather, its treelessness, and its endless sky. The settlers of “the last, best west” weathered their first crisis in the severe drought of 1910-1911, which winnowed out many of the speculators and faint of heart; they abandoned their founding hopes of quick success and substituted a new ethos of “next year country”—while this year was hard, next year would be better, an ironic phrase at once optimistic and fatalistic.
“Next year,” however, was in many of those years not better. The collapse of the agricultural economy in the immediate aftermath of the boom years of World War I set in motion a pattern of regional decline amid national prosperity and cultural change: the rise of radio and mass culture increased rural folks' awareness of national trends and tastes, a development which paradoxically increased their own sense of remoteness and isolation. The failure of the farm economy to recover to any substantial degree in the twenties caused a less dramatic but cumulatively greater impact on the west river country's population and prospects—a second great crisis.
The Great Depression and the dustbowl years of the thirties were the greatest test of the west river people. The drought of 1910-1911, heretofore seen as the benchmark of bad times, faded even in the remembrances of the original pioneers in the face of the thirties' relentless drought, grasshoppers, blowing dust, and the accompanying starvation, struggle, and despair. The Depression in the west river country was a blast furnace from which a hardened yet still hopeful people emerged, scathed but undefeated. The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own is the voice of this experience.
[more]
The Praise of Folly
Desiderius Erasmus
University of Michigan Press, 1958
A satire on the pretensions of Erasmus's contemporaries in the Church and philosophy
[more]
Praising Girls
The Rhetoric of Young Women, 1895-1930
Henrietta Rix Wood
Southern Illinois University Press, 2016
In Praising Girls, Henrietta Rix Wood explores how ordinary schoolgirls engaged in extraordinary rhetorical activities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States. Focusing on high school girls’ public writing, Wood analyzes newspaper editorials and articles, creative writing projects, yearbook entries, and literary magazines, revealing how young women employed epideictic rhetoric—traditionally used to praise and blame in ceremonial situations—to define their individual and collective identities. Many girls, Wood argues, intervened rhetorically in national and international discourses on class, race, education, immigration, racism, and imperialism, confronting the gender politics that denigrated young women and often deprived them of positions of authority.
The site of the study—Kansas City, Missouri—reflects the diverse rhetorical experiences of girls in cities across the United States at the beginning of the last century. Four case studies examine the writing of privileged white girls at a college preparatory school, Native American girls at an off-reservation boarding school, African American girls at a segregated high school, and working- and middle-class girls at a large whites-only public high school. Wood’s analysis reveals a contemporary concept of epideictic rhetoric that accounts for issues of gender, race, class, and age.
The site of the study—Kansas City, Missouri—reflects the diverse rhetorical experiences of girls in cities across the United States at the beginning of the last century. Four case studies examine the writing of privileged white girls at a college preparatory school, Native American girls at an off-reservation boarding school, African American girls at a segregated high school, and working- and middle-class girls at a large whites-only public high school. Wood’s analysis reveals a contemporary concept of epideictic rhetoric that accounts for issues of gender, race, class, and age.
[more]
Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan
Asakusa Sensōji and Edo Society
Nam-lin Hur
Harvard University Press, 2000
The unique amalgam of prayer and play at the Sensōji temple in Edo is often cited as proof of the “degenerate Buddhism” of the Tokugawa period. This investigation of the economy and cultural politics of Sensōji, however, shows that its culture of prayer and play reflected changes taking place in Tokugawa Japan, particularly in the city of Edo. Play was an integral part of the business of religion at Sensōji, and the temple supplied both in equal measure to often rootless Edoites.
Nam-lin Hur’s reappraisal of prayer and play and their inherent connectedness provides a cultural critique of conventional scholarship on Tokugawa religion and shows how Edo commoners incorporated cultural politics into their daily lives through the pursuit of prayer and play.
[more]
Prayer and Power
George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship
Michael C. Schoenfeldt
University of Chicago Press, 1991
Michael C. Schoenfeldt here offers the first major exploration of the connections between George Herbert's devotional poetry and the social practices and political discourse of his day. Viewing The Temple and The Country Parson as part of the larger "civilizing process" of Western Europe, Schoenfeldt shows how Herbert discovers in the discourses of courtesy and theology a common vocabulary of authority, selfhood, petition, and discipline.
Before entering the priesthood, Herbert nourished contacts in court, was elected University Orator at Cambridge, and served in Parliament. In turning to God, Schoenfeldt argues, Herbert did not simply turn away from the secular world but also turned its language, particularly the language of courtesy, into the medium for his lyric worship of God. The confluence of courtesy and spirituality in Herbert's poetry provides a fascinating insight into a society searching for an appropriate discourse of reverence in a time of baffling change. The first five chapters investigate the manifold ways in which Herbert's life and works exemplify the interdependence of social and religious behavior in the English Renaissance. The sixth and final chapter extends this investigation into the nervous eroticism of Herbert's poems.
Considering The Temple as well as Herbert's letters, speeches, Latin poems, collections of foreign proverbs, translations, The Country Parson, and less familiar lyrics, Schoenfeldt offers a thorough and detailed reading of Herbert's rich and conflicted corpus. Prayer and Power is not only a bold redefinition of the accomplishment of one of the finest poets of the English Renaissance but also the first sustained study to advance a cultural poetics of the religious lyric.
Before entering the priesthood, Herbert nourished contacts in court, was elected University Orator at Cambridge, and served in Parliament. In turning to God, Schoenfeldt argues, Herbert did not simply turn away from the secular world but also turned its language, particularly the language of courtesy, into the medium for his lyric worship of God. The confluence of courtesy and spirituality in Herbert's poetry provides a fascinating insight into a society searching for an appropriate discourse of reverence in a time of baffling change. The first five chapters investigate the manifold ways in which Herbert's life and works exemplify the interdependence of social and religious behavior in the English Renaissance. The sixth and final chapter extends this investigation into the nervous eroticism of Herbert's poems.
Considering The Temple as well as Herbert's letters, speeches, Latin poems, collections of foreign proverbs, translations, The Country Parson, and less familiar lyrics, Schoenfeldt offers a thorough and detailed reading of Herbert's rich and conflicted corpus. Prayer and Power is not only a bold redefinition of the accomplishment of one of the finest poets of the English Renaissance but also the first sustained study to advance a cultural poetics of the religious lyric.
[more]
Prayers for Dark People
W.E.B. Du Bois
University of Massachusetts Press, 1980
A collection of prayers written by Du Bois for students at Atlanta University, thoughtfully compiled and introduced by Herbert Aptheker. These prayers are deeply commited to paying attention to and caring for the inner lives of black Americans. Biblical familiarity and agnosticity are both present in these autobiographical writings, uplifting the hopes and practices of W. E. B. Du Bois's life, while meditating on the still relevant question of how to make "a good life for all".
[more]
Prayers of the Faithful
The Shifting Spiritual Life of American Catholics
James P. McCartin
Harvard University Press, 2010
A hundred years ago Catholic believers young and old, rich and poor, would fill churches on holy days, drawn together in prayer and in the conviction that they, the laypeople, needed the clergy and patron saints to mediate between them and their God. Today a Catholic believer in America is as likely as not to find God for herself.
This book traces dramatic changes in the practice of faith among American Catholics through evolving ideas about prayer. Where so many have seen the movement of American Catholics away from traditional devotional practices as a symptom of encroaching secularism, author James P. McCartin shows how the changing practice of prayer itself was the primary catalyst behind Catholics' growing sense of spiritual independence.
Prayers of the Faithful reveals how, over the decades, Catholics' ways of praying underwent a significant shift alongside the larger transformations of American society and culture. The book documents the novel ways of praying that transcended the formal rites of earlier generations. Whether "praying in tongues" or working on behalf of social justice or participating in public protests as outpourings of prayer, lay Catholics consistently expanded their notions of praying. And in doing so, McCartin suggests, they reshaped and redefined American Catholicism. By examining the spiritual life of prayer over the twentieth century, this book thus opens up new ways of understanding Catholics, their church, and their place in American life.
[more]
Prayers that Cite Scripture
Biblical Quotation in Jewish Prayers from Antiquity through the Middle Ages
James L. Kugel
Harvard University Press, 2006
In the beginning, prayers were straightforward: people turned to God and asked for help. By the closing centuries of the biblical period, however, a change became observable. Prayers now began to include references to Scripture--allusions to biblical stories in which God had answered a prayer, or the evocation of specific biblical passages, or the recycling of biblical phrases in the creation of a new prayer. This process, the "Scripturalization of prayer," grew in intensity and refinement as Judaism moved from the biblical period to early post-biblical times. It is attested throughout the prayers found in the biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and early piyyut, and it continued apace in the liturgical compositions of the Geonic period and still later times. This collection of essays seeks to chart the main lines of the Scripturalization of prayer over this entire period.
[more]
Praying for Power
Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China
Timothy Brook
Harvard University Press, 1993
In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China, Buddhists and Confucians alike flooded local Buddhist monasteries with donations. As gentry numbers grew faster than the imperial bureaucracy, traditional Confucian careers were closed to many; but visible philanthropy could publicize elite status outside the state realm. Actively sought by fundraising abbots, such patronage affected institutional Buddhism.
After exploring the relation of Buddhism to Ming Neo-Confucianism, the growth of tourism to Buddhist sites, and the mechanisms and motives for charitable donations, Timothy Brook studies three widely separated and economically dissimilar counties. He draws on rich data in monastic gazetteers to examine the patterns and social consequences of patronage.
[more]
The Preacher's Demons
Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy
Franco Mormando
University of Chicago Press, 1999
"When the city was filled with these bonfires, he then combed the city, and whenever he received notice of some public sodomite, he had him immediately seized and thrown into the nearest bonfire at hand and had him burned immediately." This story, of an anonymous individual who sought to cleanse medieval Paris, was part of a sermon delivered in Siena, Italy, in 1427. The speaker, the friar Bernardino (1380-1444), was one of the most important public figures of the time, and he spent forty years combing the towns of Italy, instructing, admonishing, and entertaining the crowds that gathered in prodigious numbers to hear his sermons.
His story of the Parisian vigilante was a recommendation. Sexual deviants were the objects of relentless, unconditional persecution in Bernardino's sermons. Other targets of the preacher's venom were witches, Jews, and heretics. Mormando takes us into the social underworld of early Renaissance Italy to discover how one enormously influential figure helped to dramatically increase fear, hatred, and intolerance for those on society's margins.
This book is the first on Bernardino to appear in thirty-five years, and the first ever to consider the preacher's inflammatory role in Renaissance social issues.
His story of the Parisian vigilante was a recommendation. Sexual deviants were the objects of relentless, unconditional persecution in Bernardino's sermons. Other targets of the preacher's venom were witches, Jews, and heretics. Mormando takes us into the social underworld of early Renaissance Italy to discover how one enormously influential figure helped to dramatically increase fear, hatred, and intolerance for those on society's margins.
This book is the first on Bernardino to appear in thirty-five years, and the first ever to consider the preacher's inflammatory role in Renaissance social issues.
[more]
The Preacher's Tale
The Civil War Journal of Rev. Francis Springer, Chaplain, U.S. Army of the Frontier
William Furry
University of Arkansas Press, 2001
In the fall of 1861, fifty-one-year-old Rev. Francis Springer enlisted in the Union army. The following spring, Springer, a friend and one-time neighbor to Abraham Lincoln, rode away with the 10th Illinois Cavalry. A witness to the Battle of Prairie Grove (December 1862), Springer was later named post chaplain at Fort Smith, where, in additon to preaching and ministering to the troops, he was placed in charge of refugees—widows, orphans, and contrabands—the displaced victims of virulent guerrilla warfare in Northwest Arkansas. Springer also wrote articles and columns in the Fort Smith New Era under the pseudonym, “Thrifton.” Springer’s honest appraisals of life in the Army of the Frontier make for fascinating reading, and his unique perspective as moralist, educator, and journalist provide new insight into the Civil War and how it was fought in the West. The book includes several never-before published photographs and appendixes which feature accounts of six military executions that Springer participated in as a Union Army chaplain, the hitherto unpublished last letters home of two rebel soldiers condemned and executed at Fort Smith, as well as a eulogy for Abraham Lincoln.
The Preacher’s Tale includes several never before published photographs, and appendixes that contain accounts of six military executions that Springer participated in as a Union Army chaplain, the last letters home of two rebel soldiers condemned and executed at Fort Smith, as well as a eulogy written for Abraham Lincoln.
[more]
Precarious Democracy
Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil
Benjamin Junge
Rutgers University Press, 2021
Brazil changed drastically in the 21st century’s second decade. In 2010, the country’s outgoing president Lula left office with almost 90% approval. As the presidency passed to his Workers' Party successor, Dilma Rousseff, many across the world hailed Brazil as a model of progressive governance in the Global South. Yet, by 2019, those progressive gains were being dismantled as the far right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of a bitterly divided country. Digging beneath this pendulum swing of policy and politics, and drawing on rich ethnographic portraits, Precarious Democracy shows how these transformations were made and experienced by Brazilians far from the halls of power. Bringing together powerful and intimate stories and portraits from Brazil's megacities to rural Amazonia, this volume demonstrates the necessity of ethnography for understanding social and political change, and provides crucial insights on one of the most epochal periods of change in Brazilian history.
[more]
Precarious Intimacies
The Politics of Touch in Contemporary Western European Cinema
Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber
Northwestern University Press, 2020
Drawing on and responding to the writings of theorists such as Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, and Lisa Lowe, this book proposes the notion of “precarious intimacies” to navigate a dilemma: how to recognize, affirm, and value love, touch, and care while challenging the racialized and gendered politics in which they are embedded.
Twenty-first-century Europe is undergoing dramatic political and economic transformations that produce new forms of transnational contact as well as new regimes of exclusion and economic precarity. These political and economic shifts both circumscribe and enable new possibilities for intimacy. Many European films of the last two decades depict experiences of political and economic vulnerability in narratives of precarious intimacies. In these films, stories of intimacy, sex, love, and friendship are embedded in violence and exclusion, but, as Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber show, the politics of touch and connection also offers avenues to theorize forms of attention and affection that challenge exclusive notions of race, citizenship, and belonging.
Precarious Intimacies examines the aesthetic strategies that respond to this tension and proposes a politics of interpretation that identifies the potential and possibility of intimacy.
Twenty-first-century Europe is undergoing dramatic political and economic transformations that produce new forms of transnational contact as well as new regimes of exclusion and economic precarity. These political and economic shifts both circumscribe and enable new possibilities for intimacy. Many European films of the last two decades depict experiences of political and economic vulnerability in narratives of precarious intimacies. In these films, stories of intimacy, sex, love, and friendship are embedded in violence and exclusion, but, as Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber show, the politics of touch and connection also offers avenues to theorize forms of attention and affection that challenge exclusive notions of race, citizenship, and belonging.
Precarious Intimacies examines the aesthetic strategies that respond to this tension and proposes a politics of interpretation that identifies the potential and possibility of intimacy.
[more]
Precarious Japan
Anne Allison
Duke University Press, 2013
In an era of irregular labor, nagging recession, nuclear contamination, and a shrinking population, Japan is facing precarious times. How the Japanese experience insecurity in their daily and social lives is the subject of Precarious Japan. Tacking between the structural conditions of socioeconomic life and the ways people are making do, or not, Anne Allison chronicles the loss of home affecting many Japanese, not only in the literal sense but also in the figurative sense of not belonging. Until the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in 1991, lifelong employment and a secure income were within reach of most Japanese men, enabling them to maintain their families in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Now, as fewer and fewer people are able to find full-time work, hope turns to hopelessness and security gives way to a pervasive unease. Yet some Japanese are getting by, partly by reconceiving notions of home, family, and togetherness.
[more]
Precarious Partners
Horses and Their Humans in Nineteenth-Century France
Kari Weil
University of Chicago Press, 2020
From the recent spate of equine deaths on racetracks to protests demanding the removal of mounted Confederate soldier statues to the success and appeal of War Horse, there is no question that horses still play a role in our lives—though fewer and fewer of us actually interact with them. In Precarious Partners, Kari Weil takes readers back to a time in France when horses were an inescapable part of daily life. This was a time when horse ownership became an attainable dream not just for soldiers but also for middle-class children; when natural historians argued about animal intelligence; when the prevalence of horse beatings led to the first animal protection laws; and when the combined magnificence and abuse of these animals inspired artists, writers, and riders alike.
Weil traces the evolving partnerships established between French citizens and their horses through this era. She considers the newly designed “races” of workhorses who carried men from the battlefield to the hippodrome, lugged heavy loads through the boulevards, or paraded women riders, amazones, in the parks or circus halls—as well as those unfortunate horses who found their fate on a dinner plate. Moving between literature, painting, natural philosophy, popular cartoons, sports manuals, and tracts of public hygiene, Precarious Partners traces the changing social, political, and emotional relations with these charismatic creatures who straddled conceptions of pet and livestock in nineteenth-century France.
Weil traces the evolving partnerships established between French citizens and their horses through this era. She considers the newly designed “races” of workhorses who carried men from the battlefield to the hippodrome, lugged heavy loads through the boulevards, or paraded women riders, amazones, in the parks or circus halls—as well as those unfortunate horses who found their fate on a dinner plate. Moving between literature, painting, natural philosophy, popular cartoons, sports manuals, and tracts of public hygiene, Precarious Partners traces the changing social, political, and emotional relations with these charismatic creatures who straddled conceptions of pet and livestock in nineteenth-century France.
[more]
Precarious Professionals
Gender, Identities and Social Change in Modern Britain
Edited by Heidi Egginton and Zoë Thomas
University of London Press, 2021
Precarious Professionals details the fight for equality in the workplace, particularly among women and queer people in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain.
Precarious Professionals uncovers the inequalities and insecurities which lay at the heart of professional life in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. This book challenges conventional categories in the history of work, exploring instead the everyday labor of maintaining a professional identity on the margins of the traditional professions. Situating new historical perspectives on gender at the forefront of their research, the contributors explore how professional cultures could not only define themselves against but often flourished outside of, the confines of patriarchal codes and structures.
Precarious Professionals offers twelve fascinating case studies, ranging between the 1840s and the 1960s. From pioneering female lawyers and scientists to ballet dancers, secretaries, historians, humanitarian relief workers, social researchers, and Cold War diplomats, this book reveals that precarity was a thread woven throughout the very fabric of modern professional life. Together, these essays enrich our understanding of the histories and mysteries of professional identity and help us to reimagine the future of work in precarious times.
Precarious Professionals uncovers the inequalities and insecurities which lay at the heart of professional life in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. This book challenges conventional categories in the history of work, exploring instead the everyday labor of maintaining a professional identity on the margins of the traditional professions. Situating new historical perspectives on gender at the forefront of their research, the contributors explore how professional cultures could not only define themselves against but often flourished outside of, the confines of patriarchal codes and structures.
Precarious Professionals offers twelve fascinating case studies, ranging between the 1840s and the 1960s. From pioneering female lawyers and scientists to ballet dancers, secretaries, historians, humanitarian relief workers, social researchers, and Cold War diplomats, this book reveals that precarity was a thread woven throughout the very fabric of modern professional life. Together, these essays enrich our understanding of the histories and mysteries of professional identity and help us to reimagine the future of work in precarious times.
[more]
The Preceramic Horizons of Northeastern Oklahoma
David Albert Baerreis
University of Michigan Press, 1951
David Albert Baerreis reports on the excavation of three sites in Delaware County in northeastern Oklahoma, and the artifacts found there. The author focuses on lithics (projectile points and other chipped stone tools as well as ground stone tools) and provides a comparative analysis of the material.
[more]
Precious Commodity
Providing Water for America’s Cities
Martin V. Melosi
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011
As an essential resource, water has been the object of warfare, political wrangling, and individual and corporate abuse. It has also become an object of commodification, with multinational corporations vying for water supply contracts in many countries. In Precious Commodity, Martin V. Melosi examines water resources in the United States and addresses whether access to water is an inalienable right of citizens, and if government is responsible for its distribution as a public good.
Melosi provides historical background on the construction, administration, and adaptability of water supply and wastewater systems in urban America. He cites budgetary constraints and the deterioration of existing water infrastructures as factors leading many municipalities to seriously consider the privatization of their water supply. Melosi also views the role of government in the management of, development of, and legal jurisdiction over America’s rivers and waterways for hydroelectric power, flood control, irrigation, and transportation access. Looking to the future, he compares the costs and benefits of public versus private water supply, examining the global movement toward privatization.
[more]
Precious Fire
Maud Russell and the Chinese Revolution
Karen Garner
University of Massachusetts Press
When Maud Russell (1893–1989) first sailed for China in 1917, she traveled as one of a number of "foreign secretaries" dispatched by the YWCA to do "Woman's Work for Woman." A product of the Progressive Era, she sought to bring the benefits of Christianity and Western civilization to a new generation of Chinese women struggling to find their own path to modernity in the wake of the 1911 Republican Revolution. Instead, over the next twenty-six years, Russell was herself transformed—from Christian liberal reformer to committed Marxist revolutionary. According to Karen Garner, Russell's personal political trajectory paralleled that of the YWCA in China, which evolved during the 1920s and 1930s from a Western-led, middle-class-oriented institution into a Chinese-led organization that addressed the needs of revolutionary working women. Crossing class, race, and cultural boundaries to learn from their Chinese associates, Russell and a few other western YWCA secretaries developed a shared vision of feminist social change that included support for the Chinese Communist Party and its leadership. Returning to the United States during World War II, Russell joined American liberals and leftists in promoting government cooperation with the Soviet Union and other Communist Party-led states and movements. After the war her views, including her advocacy of a "one world" Progressive Party, collided with the anticommunist imperatives of the emerging Cold War. In response, Russell adopted a defensive and dogmatic pro-communist stance from which she would never retreat. During a long and at times lonely career as a radical activist and publisher of the Far East Reporter (1952–1989), Russell was defamed and investigated by the anticommunist right and embraced by the antiwar New Left. Her notoriety as a proponent of friendship with the People's Republic of China soared during the restoration of U.S–China diplomatic relations in the 1970s, only to dissolve in the 1980s as she denounced the revival of capitalist economics in China on ideological grounds. Although Russell's own political vision may have narrowed over the years, Garner's reconstruction of her life broadens our understanding of U.S.–China relations during the twentieth century. Not only did Russell come to see her own country through the eyes of an ideological antagonist, she also brought to that vantage point the experiences of a modern American woman. As Garner shows, even if one did not agree with Russell's views, one could not deny the fervor of her commitment to gender equality, social justice, and internationalism.
[more]
Precision and Purpose
Airpower in the Libyan Civil War
Karl P. Mueller
RAND Corporation, 2015
A team of U.S. and international experts assesses the impact of various nations’ airpower efforts during the 2011 conflict in Libya, including NATO allies and non-NATO partners, and how their experiences offer guidance for future conflicts. In addition to the roles played by the United States, Britain and France, it examines the efforts of Italy, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Qatar, the UAE, and the Libyan rebels.
[more]
Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador
Toward an Integrated Approach
Colin McEwan
Harvard University Press
Archaeologists, art historians, ethnohistorians, and ethnographers have long been captivated by the expressive material culture of the prehispanic indigenous peoples in the lands between Mesoamerica and the Andes. Interconnected communities of practice that were active from central Honduras in the north to coastal Ecuador in the south, with networks of interaction that included the Antilles and Amazonia, made this area essential for understanding long-term culture change.
Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach presents twenty chapters on current research in this central area of Latin America. Over two dozen specialists have contributed to this lavishly illustrated book, on topics ranging from historical and theoretical perspectives to analytical studies, reports on recent excavations, and evaluations of material such as ceramics, stone sculpture, gold artifacts, and ceremonial seats from various contexts in Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador. Edited by Colin McEwan and John W. Hoopes, this book is an essential addition to the library of any scholar fascinated by the diverse indigenous peoples of the Americas.
[more]
Pre-Columbian Jamaica
Phillip Allsworth-Jones
University of Alabama Press, 2008
Much of Jamaican prehistoric research—like that in the rest of the Caribbean basin—has been guided by at least a subconscious attempt to allow prehistoric native peoples to find their places within the charts established by Irving Rouse, who guided Caribbean research for much of the last half-century. The pre-Columbian peoples of Jamaica, and not merely their material culture, are beginning to take form, revealing their lifestyles and rituals, and taking their rightful place among the cultures of the New World.
Pre-Columbian Jamaica represents the first substantial attempt to summarize the prehistoric evidence from the island in a single published account since J. E. Duerden’s invaluable 1897 article on the subject, which is also reprinted within this volume. The book is designed to provide general commentary that can stand alone and be read as a continuous narrative; and as an additional and valuable resource is the accompanying CD-ROM that furnishes a great range of further illustrations, data, calculations, measurements, and comparisons. This data is curated at the Archaeology Laboratory at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, in Kingston, and was presented to the university by Dr. James Lee in 2000. His gift, and the comprehensive study that followed, provide the impetus for both the book and the CD-ROM.
[more]
Precolumbian Water Management
Ideology, Ritual, and Power
Edited by Lisa J. Lucero and Barbara W. Fash
University of Arizona Press, 2006
Among ancient Mesoamerican and Southwestern peoples, water was as essential as maize for sustenance and was a driving force in the development of complex society. Control of water shaped the political, economic, and religious landscape of the ancient Americas, yet it is often overlooked in Precolumbian studies. Now one volume offers the latest thinking on water systems and their place within the ancient physical and mental language of the region.
Precolumbian Water Management examines water management from both economic and symbolic perspectives. Water management facilities, settlement patterns, shrines, and water-related imagery associated with civic-ceremonial and residential architecture provide evidence that water systems pervade all aspects of ancient society. Through analysis of such data, the contributors seek to combine an understanding of imagery and the religious aspects of water with its functional components, thereby presenting a unified perspective of how water was conceived, used, and represented in ancient greater Mesoamerica. The collection boasts broad chronological and geographical coverage—from the irrigation networks of Teotihuacan to the use of ritual water technology at Casas Grandes—that shows how procurement and storage systems were adapted to local conditions.
The articles consider the mechanisms that were used to build upon the sacredness of water to enhance political authority through time and space and show that water was not merely an essential natural resource but an important spiritual one as well, and that its manipulation was socially far more complex than might appear at first glance. As these papers reveal, an understanding of materials associated with water can contribute much to the ways that archaeologists study ancient cultural systems. Precolumbian Water Management underscores the importance of water management research and the need to include it in archaeological projects of all types.
Precolumbian Water Management examines water management from both economic and symbolic perspectives. Water management facilities, settlement patterns, shrines, and water-related imagery associated with civic-ceremonial and residential architecture provide evidence that water systems pervade all aspects of ancient society. Through analysis of such data, the contributors seek to combine an understanding of imagery and the religious aspects of water with its functional components, thereby presenting a unified perspective of how water was conceived, used, and represented in ancient greater Mesoamerica. The collection boasts broad chronological and geographical coverage—from the irrigation networks of Teotihuacan to the use of ritual water technology at Casas Grandes—that shows how procurement and storage systems were adapted to local conditions.
The articles consider the mechanisms that were used to build upon the sacredness of water to enhance political authority through time and space and show that water was not merely an essential natural resource but an important spiritual one as well, and that its manipulation was socially far more complex than might appear at first glance. As these papers reveal, an understanding of materials associated with water can contribute much to the ways that archaeologists study ancient cultural systems. Precolumbian Water Management underscores the importance of water management research and the need to include it in archaeological projects of all types.
[more]
Predatory Bureaucracy
The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West
Michael Robinson
University Press of Colorado, 2005
Predatory Bureaucracy is the definitive history of America's wolves and our policies toward predators. Tracking wolves from the days of the conquistadors to the present, author Michael Robinson shows that their story merges with that of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey. This federal agency was chartered to research insects and birds but - because of various pressures - morphed into a political powerhouse dedicated to killing wolves and other wildlife.
Robinson follows wolves' successful adaptation to the arrival of explorers, mountain men, and bounty hunters, through their disastrous century-long entanglement with the federal government. He shares the parallel story of the Biological Survey's rise, detailing the personal, social, geographic, and political forces that allowed it to thrive despite opposition from hunters, animal lovers, scientists, environmentalists, and presidents.
Federal predator control nearly eliminated wolves throughout the United States and Mexico and radically changed American lands and wildlife populations. It undercut the livelihoods of countless homestead families in order to benefit an emerging western elite of livestock owners. The extermination of predators led to problems associated with prey overpopulation, but, as Robinson reveals, extermination and control programs still continue. Predatory Bureaucracy will fascinate readers interested in wildlife, ecosystems, agriculture, and environmental politics.
[more]
The Predestination of Humans
Augustinus, Tome III, Book IX
Cornelius Jansen
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
No other theological text polarized the early modern Catholic world as much as Cornelius Jansen's Augustinus. In it the erudite bishop not only reconstructed St. Augustine's teaching on grace and free will, but also boldly claimed that his views were in line with the Council of Trent and the Society of Jesus. For Jansen the latter had marginalized the Church Father's doctrine on divine predestination by overemphasizing human free will. Published after his death in 1640, Jansen's work drew a large crowd of followers and inspired an Augustinian reform movement. Its papal condemnation unintentionally spread this theology, but stifled an impassionate, academic engagement with the Augustinus. This first-ever translation of some of its central chapters enables historians, philosophers and theologians to finally engage with the founding text of Jansenism.
[more]
The Predicament of Blackness
Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race
Jemima Pierre
University of Chicago Press, 2012
What is the meaning of blackness in Africa? While much has been written on Africa’s complex ethnic and tribal relationships, Jemima Pierre’s groundbreaking The Predicament of Blackness is the first book to tackle the question of race in West Africa through its postcolonial manifestations. Challenging the view of the African continent as a nonracialized space—as a fixed historic source for the African diaspora—she envisions Africa, and in particular the nation of Ghana, as a place whose local relationships are deeply informed by global structures of race, economics, and politics.
Against the backdrop of Ghana’s history as a major port in the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent and disruptive forces of colonialism and postcolonialism, Pierre examines key facets of contemporary Ghanaian society, from the pervasive significance of “whiteness” to the practice of chemical skin-bleaching to the government’s active promotion of Pan-African “heritage tourism.” Drawing these and other examples together, she shows that race and racism have not only persisted in Ghana after colonialism, but also that the beliefs and practices of this modern society all occur within a global racial hierarchy. In doing so, she provides a powerful articulation of race on the continent and a new way of understanding contemporary Africa—and the modern African diaspora.
[more]
The Predicament of Culture
Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art
James Clifford
Harvard University Press, 1988
The Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, James Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in post-colonial contexts. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group’s identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and “the other” clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations?
In chapters devoted to the history of anthropology, Clifford discusses the work of Malinowski, Mead, Griaule, Lévi-Strauss, Turner, Geertz, and other influential scholars. He also explores the affinity of ethnography with avant-garde art and writing, recovering a subversive, self-reflexive cultural criticism. The surrealists’ encounters with Paris or New York, the work of Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris in the Collège de Sociologie, and the hybrid constructions of recent tribal artists offer provocative ethnographic examples that challenge familiar notions of difference and identity. In an emerging global modernity, the exotic is unexpectedly nearby, the familiar strangely distanced.
[more]
Predicting the Past
The Utah War's Twenty-First Century Future
William Mackinnon
Utah State University Press, 2009
The first ten lectures in Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Series are here collected in one volume. The series, established by one of the twentieth-century West's most distinguished historians, Leonard Arrington, has become a leading forum for prominent historians to address topics related to Mormon history. The first lecturer was Arrington himself. He was followed by Richard Lyman Bushman, Richard E. Bennett, Howard R. Lamar, Claudia L. Bushman, Kenneth W. Godfrey, Jan Shipps, Donald Worster, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and F. Ross Peterson. Utah State University hosts the Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Series. The University Libraries' Special Collections and Archives houses the Arrington collection. The state's land grant university began collecting records very early, and in the 1960s became a major depository for Utah and Mormon records. Leonard and his wife Grace joined the USU faculty and family in 1946, and the Arringtons and their colleagues worked to collect original diaries, journals, letters, and photographs.
Although trained as an economist at the University of North Carolina, Arrington became a Mormon historian of international repute. Working with numerous colleagues, the Twin Falls, Idaho, native produced the classic Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints in 1958. Utilizing available collections at USU, Arrington embarked on a prolific publishing and editing career. He and his close ally, Dr. S. George Ellsworth helped organize the Western History Association, and they created the Western Historical Quarterly as the scholarly voice of the WHA. While serving with Ellsworth as editor of the new journal, Arr ington also helped both the Mormon History Association and the independent journal Dialogue get established.
One of Arrington's great talents was to encourage and inspire other scholars or writers. While he worked on biographies or institutional histories, he employed many young scholars as researchers. He fostered many careers as well as arranged for the publication of numerous books and articles.
In 1973, Arrington accepted the appointment as the official historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as the Lemuel Redd Chair of Western History at Brigham Young University. More and more Arrington focused on Mormon, rather than economic, historical topics. His own career flourished by the publication of The Mormon Experience, co-authored with Davis Bitton, and American Moses: A Biography of Brigham Young. He and his staff produced many research papers and position papers for the LDS Church as well. Nevertheless, tension developed over the historical process, and Arrington chose to move full time to BYU with his entire staff. The Joseph Fielding Smith Institute of History was established, and Leonard continued to mentor new scholars as well as publish biographies. He also produced a very significant two-volume study, The History of Idaho.
After Grace Arrington passed away, Leonard married Harriet Horne of Salt Lake City. They made the decision to deposit the vast Arrington collection of research documents, letters, files, books, and journals at Utah State University. The Leonard J. Arrington Historical Archives is part of the university's Special Collections. The Arrington Lecture Committee works with Special Collections to sponsor the annual lecture.
[more]
Predicting the Weather
Victorians and the Science of Meteorology
Katharine Anderson
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Victorian Britain, with its maritime economy and strong links between government and scientific enterprises, founded an office to collect meteorological statistics in 1854 in an effort to foster a modern science of the weather. But as the office turned to prediction rather than data collection, the fragile science became a public spectacle, with its forecasts open to daily scrutiny in the newspapers. And meteorology came to assume a pivotal role in debates about the responsibility of scientists and the authority of science.
Studying meteorology as a means to examine the historical identity of prediction, Katharine Anderson offers here an engrossing account of forecasting that analyzes scientific practice and ideas about evidence, the organization of science in public life, and the articulation of scientific values in Victorian culture. In Predicting the Weather, Anderson grapples with fundamental questions about the function, intelligibility, and boundaries of scientific work while exposing the public expectations that shaped the practice of science during this period.
A cogent analysis of the remarkable history of weather forecasting in Victorian Britain, Predicting the Weather will be essential reading for scholars interested in the public dimensions of science.
Studying meteorology as a means to examine the historical identity of prediction, Katharine Anderson offers here an engrossing account of forecasting that analyzes scientific practice and ideas about evidence, the organization of science in public life, and the articulation of scientific values in Victorian culture. In Predicting the Weather, Anderson grapples with fundamental questions about the function, intelligibility, and boundaries of scientific work while exposing the public expectations that shaped the practice of science during this period.
A cogent analysis of the remarkable history of weather forecasting in Victorian Britain, Predicting the Weather will be essential reading for scholars interested in the public dimensions of science.
[more]
The Prefabricated Home
Colin Davies
Reaktion Books, 2005
From sash windows and ceramic tiles to barracks and warehouses, industrialized building has thrived since the nineteenth century in Europe and America. Yet architects have neglected this area of practical construction in favor of historical, theoretical, and artistic analyses, resulting in the emergence of an influential building industry with architects on the far margins. Colin Davies explores in The Prefabricated Home how the relationship between architecture and industrialized building has now become an urgent issue for architects.
The Prefabricated Home outlines the methods and motives of prefabricated buildings and assesses their architectural implications. Davies traces the origins of the branded building phenomenon with examples ranging from the Dymaxion bathroom to IKEA's "Bo Klok" house. He also analyzes the use of industrialized buildings worldwide—including McDonald's drive-through restaurants and contrasts the aesthetic concerns of architects against the economic ones of industrialized building manufacturers. Ultimately, The Prefabricated Home proposes a partnership of architects and industrialized building that could potentially produce an exciting new type of humane and eco-conscious architecture.
The Prefabricated Home outlines the methods and motives of prefabricated buildings and assesses their architectural implications. Davies traces the origins of the branded building phenomenon with examples ranging from the Dymaxion bathroom to IKEA's "Bo Klok" house. He also analyzes the use of industrialized buildings worldwide—including McDonald's drive-through restaurants and contrasts the aesthetic concerns of architects against the economic ones of industrialized building manufacturers. Ultimately, The Prefabricated Home proposes a partnership of architects and industrialized building that could potentially produce an exciting new type of humane and eco-conscious architecture.
[more]
A Preface to Theology
W. Clark Gilpin
University of Chicago Press, 1996
At a time of widespread perplexity about the social role of humanistic scholarship, few disciplines are as anxious about their nature and purposes as academic theology. In this important work, W. Clark Gilpin, dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School, proposes that American theological scholarship become responsible to a threefold public: the churches, the academic community, and civil society.
Gilpin approaches this goal indirectly, by investigating the historic social roles of Protestant theologians and the educational institutions in which they have pursued their scholarship and teaching. Ranging from analyses of the New England Puritan Cotton Mather to contemporary theologians as "public intellectuals," Gilpin proposes that we find out what theology is by asking what theologians do.
By showing how particular cultural problems have always shaped the work of theologians, Gilpin's work profoundly illuminates the foundations of American academic theology, providing insights that will help guide its future.
Gilpin approaches this goal indirectly, by investigating the historic social roles of Protestant theologians and the educational institutions in which they have pursued their scholarship and teaching. Ranging from analyses of the New England Puritan Cotton Mather to contemporary theologians as "public intellectuals," Gilpin proposes that we find out what theology is by asking what theologians do.
By showing how particular cultural problems have always shaped the work of theologians, Gilpin's work profoundly illuminates the foundations of American academic theology, providing insights that will help guide its future.
[more]
Prefaces to Canon Law Books in Latin Christianity
Selected Translations, 500-1317, second edition
Robert Somerville
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
An updated and expanded version of the original edition, published in 1998. That original edition went up through 1245. This new version extends to 1317 and adds two important prefaces.
Praise for the First Edition
“Both students and specialists can be grateful to the authors for this major contribution in English to the study of medieval canon law. It is a clear statement--one emphasized by the late John Gilchrist-that because of its critical importance in medieval life and culture canon law should not remain the obscure domain of specialists, but should be shared with students and non-specialists alike.” – The American Journal of Legal History
“[A] learned and useful book, which for the first time assembles a body of canonistic prefaces, presents them in an accessible form, and provides students of medieval canonical thought with a valuable new resource for study and teaching.” – The Catholic Historical Review
“This volume is an important and welcome addition to a field of studies where translations into English are few and far between. The breadth of the works selected, the quality of the translations, and the attention to detail that has long characterized the work of both editors make this a valuable resource for specialist and student alike.” – Church History
“A welcome combination: a text that is informative for students and professionals alike. The translations succeed in rendering accessible to a general audience some otherwise highly inaccessible material. Somerville and Brasington are to be greatly commended for undertaking this very original enterprise and bringing it to successful parturition.” – Journal of Law and Religion
“Somerville and Brasington have chosen to let their compilers and commentators speak for themselves. In doing so, they have had to wrestle with often obscure Latin and frequently less than satisfactory editions. That they succeed in making these texts intelligible through translation and annotation is no small feat.” – Sixteenth Century Journal
“This is a significant, elegantly presented contribution to the field of theology, cultural history, and canon law.” – Theological Studies
[more]
Pre-Gay L.A.
A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights
C. Todd White
University of Illinois Press, 2008
This book explores the origins and history of the modern American movement for homosexual rights, which originated in Los Angeles in the late 1940s and continues today. Part ethnography and part social history, it is a detailed account of the history of the movement as manifested through the emergence of four related organizations: Mattachine, ONE Incorporated, the Homosexual Information Center (HIC), and the Institute for the Study of Human Resources (ISHR), which began doing business as ONE Incorporated when the two organizations merged in 1995. Pre-Gay L.A. is a chronicle of how one clandestine special interest association emerged as a powerful political force that spawned several other organizations over a period of more than sixty years.
Relying on extended interviews with participants as well as a full review of the archives of the Homosexual Information Center, C. Todd White unearths the institutional histories of the gay and lesbian rights movement and the myriad personalities involved, including Mattachine founder Harry Hay; ONE Magazine editors Dale Jennings, Donald Slater, and Irma Wolf; ONE Incorporated founder Dorr Legg; and many others. Fighting to decriminalize homosexuality and to obtain equal rights, the viable organizations that these individuals helped to establish significantly impacted legal policies not only in Los Angeles but across the United States, affecting the lives of most of us living in America today.
[more]
Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Choice in Twentieth-Century Arizona
Mary S. Melcher
University of Arizona Press, 2012
Early twentieth-century Arizona was a life-threatening place for new and expectant mothers. Towns were small and very far apart, and the weather and harsh landscape often delayed midwives. It was not uncommon for a woman to give birth without medical care and with the aid of only family members. By the 1920s, Arizona was at the top of the list for the highest number of infant deaths.
Mary Melcher’s Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Choice in Twentieth-Century Arizona provides a deep and diverse history of the dramatic changes in childbirth, birth control, infant mortality, and abortion over the course of the last century. Using oral histories, memoirs, newspaper accounts, government documents, letters, photos, and biographical collections, this fine-grained study of women’s reproductive health places the voices of real women at the forefront of the narrative, providing a personal view into some of the most intense experiences of their lives.
Tackling difficult issues such as disparities in reproductive health care based on race and class, abortion, and birth control, this book seeks to change the way the world looks at women’s health. An essential read for both historians and public health officials, this book reveals that many of the choices and challenges that women once faced remain even today.
[more]
Pre-Hispanic Occupance in the Valley of Sonora, Mexico
Archaeological Confirmations of Early Spanish Reports
William E. Doolittle
University of Arizona Press, 1988
“[This book] presents a great amount of new information for a poorly known or understood area of northern Mexico, and provides a pleasant integration of the methods and theories of anthropology, geography, and ecology in a well-organized manner. . . . This report represents an important contribution to our understanding of cultural evolution and environmental adaptation in the Valley of Sonora and lays a strong framework for future studies and discussions.”—Journal of Arizona History
[more]
Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Northwestern Valley of Mexico
The Zumpango Region
Jeffrey R. Parsons with contributions by Larry J. Gorenflo, Mary H. Parsons, and David J. Wilson
University of Michigan Press, 2008
This monograph presents data from a systematic regional archaeological survey carried out over an area of ca. 600 square kilometers during May through December 1973 by the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology.
[more]
Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Southern Valley of Mexico
The Chalco-Xochimilco Region
Jeffrey R. Parsons, Elizabeth Brumfiel, Mary H. Parsons, and David J. Wilson
University of Michigan Press, 1982
Extensive description and analysis of the archaeological settlement data collected in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the Chalco-Xochimilco Region in the Valley of Mexico.
[more]
Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Upper Mantaro and Tarma Drainages, Junín, Peru
The Tarama-Chinchaycocha Region, Vol. 1, Parts 1 and 2
Jeffrey R. Parsons, Charles M. Hastings, Ramiro Matos M.
University of Michigan Press, 2000
An archaeological study of ancient settlement patterns in Peru’s rugged and diverse central highlands.
[more]
Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Upper Mantaro and Tarma Drainages, Junín, Peru
Volume 2, The Wanka Region
Edited by Jeffrey R. Parsons, Charles M. Hastings and Ramiro Matos M.
University of Michigan Press, 2000
This monograph is based on six months of systematic regional survey in the Wanka Region of Peru’s sierra central, carried out in two field seasons in 1975–1976 by the Junin Archaeological Research Project (JASP) under the co-direction of Jeffrey R. Parsons (University of Michigan) and Ramiro Matos Mendieta (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos).
[more]
The Prehistoric Animal Ecology and Ethnozoology of the Upper Great Lakes Region
Charles Edward Cleland
University of Michigan Press, 1966
Charles Edward Cleland presents an analysis of the paleoecology and ethnozoology of the Upper Great Lakes from about 12,000 BC to AD 1700, with particular attention to faunal remains found at sites in Michigan and Wisconsin. The nine appendices were originally compiled as faunal reports for archaeological sites in the region.
[more]
Prehistoric Architecture in Micronesia
William N. Morgan
University of Texas Press, 1988
In the many centuries preceding Western contact, a richly diverse and innovative architectural tradition reached maturity in the western Pacific. Prehistoric Architecture in Micronesia, the first modern study of this remarkable work, reveals that there is no such thing as primitive architecture but only primitive means.
This study presents five distinctly different examples of Micronesia's ancient architecture. The sites include the extraordinary stone cities of Leluh and Nan Madol on the islands of Kosrae and Pohnpei, respectively. Other structures include the meeting houses and residences built on hexagonal stone platforms in the Yap Islands, the earth terraces and ornately decorated meeting houses of Palau, and the megalithic columns and capstones of prehistoric houses in the Mariana Islands.
These structures are illustrated by photographs, maps, plans, and other drawings. Many of the basic data come from archaeological investigations of the specific sites. Summaries at the ends of chapters and in the concluding section compare the architectural characteristics of the island groups with each other and with monuments outside Micronesia. One of the most remarkable achievements of any ancient people, the prehistoric architecture of Micronesia is a source of continuing inspiration for persons who search for meaning in the built form of our present-day environment.
[more]
Prehistoric Biological Relationships in the Great Lakes Region
Richard Guy Wilkinson
University of Michigan Press, 1971
In this work, author Richard Guy Wilkinson presents an examination of the biological relationships among certain Middle and Late Woodland populations from the Great Lakes area. He studied the skeletal material from many Midwest archaeological sites, including Juntunen, Younge, Bussinger, Steuben, and Norton Mounds (the largest Hopewellian complex in Michigan). His research attempts to answer questions related to Illinois Hopewellian migration into Michigan; the relationship of Middle and Late Woodland populations in Illinois and the Great Lakes area; and the apparent causes of these relationships.
[more]
Prehistoric Copper Mining in Michigan
The Nineteenth-Century Discovery of “Ancient Diggings” in the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale
John R Halsey
University of Michigan Press, 2018
Isle Royale and the counties that line the northwest coast of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are called Copper Country because of the rich deposits of native copper there. In the nineteenth century, explorers and miners discovered evidence of prehistoric copper mining in this region. They used those “ancient diggings” as a guide to establishing their own, much larger mines, and in the process, destroyed the archaeological record left by the prehistoric miners. Using mining reports, newspaper accounts, personal letters, and other sources, this book reconstructs what these nineteenth-century discoverers found, how they interpreted the material remains of prehistoric activity, and what they did with the stone, wood, and copper tools they found at the prehistoric sites.
“This volume represents an exhaustive compilation of the early written and published accounts of mines and mining in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It will prove a valuable resource to current and future scholars. Through these early historic accounts of prospectors and miners, Halsey provides a vivid picture of what once could be seen.”
—John M. O’Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology
“This volume represents an exhaustive compilation of the early written and published accounts of mines and mining in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It will prove a valuable resource to current and future scholars. Through these early historic accounts of prospectors and miners, Halsey provides a vivid picture of what once could be seen.”
—John M. O’Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology
[more]
Prehistoric Food Production in North America
Edited by Richard I. Ford
University of Michigan Press, 1985
As Richard I. Ford explains in his preface to this volume, the 1980s saw an “explosive expansion of our knowledge about the variety of cultivated and domesticated plants and their history in aboriginal America.” This collection presents research on prehistoric food production from Ford, Patty Jo Watson, Frances B. King, C. Wesley Cowan, Paul E. Minnis, and others.
[more]
Prehistoric Future
Max Ernst and the Return of Painting between the Wars
Ralph Ubl
University of Chicago Press, 2013
One of the most admired artists of the twentieth century, Max Ernst was a proponent of Dada and founder of surrealism, known for his strange, evocative paintings and drawings. In Prehistoric Future, Ralph Ubl approaches Ernst like no one else has, using theories of the unconscious—surrealist automatism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the concept of history as trauma—to examine how Ernst’s construction of collage departs from other modern artists.
Ubl shows that while Picasso, Braque, and Man Ray used scissors and glue to create collages, Ernst employed techniques he himself had forged—rubbing and scraping to bring images forth onto a sheet of paper or canvas to simulate how a screen image or memory comes into the mind’s view. In addition, Ernst scoured the past for obsolete scientific illustrations and odd advertisements to illustrate the rapidity with which time passes and to simulate the apprehension generated when rapid flows of knowledge turn living culture into artifact. Ultimately, Ubl reveals, Ernst was interested in the construction and phenomenology of both collective and individual modern history and memory. Shedding new light on Ernst’s working methods and the reasons that his pieces continue to imprint themselves in viewers’ memories, Prehistoric Future is an innovative work of critical writing on a key figure of surrealism.
[more]
Prehistoric Households at Turkey Creek Pueblo, Arizona
Julie C. Lowell
University of Arizona Press, 1991
Excavations at Turkey Creek Pueblo, a large thirteenth-century ruin in the Point of Pines region boasting approximately 335 rooms.
[more]
The Prehistoric Native American Art of Mud Glyph Cave
Charles H. Faulkner
University of Tennessee Press, 1986
This is the only book on the historic art to be found in Mud Glyph Cave.
[more]
The Prehistoric People of the Fort Ancient Culture of the Central Ohio Valley
Louise M. Robbins and Georg K. Neumann
University of Michigan Press, 1972
Louise M. Robbins analyzes prehistoric human remains from sites in the central Ohio Valley. She organizes them into five groups and describes the varieties. She also sorts the remains by culture (Baum, Feurt, Anderson, Madisonville). Extensive appendices on metrical and morphological terminology, data, descriptions, drawings, and more.
[more]
Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida
William E. McGoun
University of Alabama Press, 1993
To many people in South Florida, and "oldtimer" is someone who has lived there for more than five years. Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida considers the culture history of the real South Florida "oldtimers" dating from 10,000 B.C. through the invasion by Europeans and analyzes the ways in which they adapted to their environment through time—or caused their environment to adapt to them.
South Florida is a biological island, its plant communities circumscribed by the southern limits of frost. Its peoples were distinct from those to the north and were less studied by scholars. In recent years the pace of research has increased, but there has been no attempt at synthesis since John M. Goggin wrote his still-unpublished manuscript on the Glades nearly half a century ago. Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida assembles the available knowledge and discusses competing theories, and does so in terms that are understandable to the general reader. McGoun outlines a cultural system that maintained an impressive continuity for 10,000 years—before being destroyed by two centuries of European contact.
[more]
A Prehistoric Sequence in the Middle Pecos Valley, New Mexico
Arthur J. Jelinek
University of Michigan Press, 1967
Arthur J. Jelinek describes the results of his archaeological surveys and excavations in east central New Mexico and provides a prehistoric cultural sequence of the Middle Pecos Valley, from the Paleoindian period to the Late McKenzie Phase. With a contribution on pollen analysis by Paul S. Martin.
[more]
Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Texcoco Region, Mexico
Jeffrey R. Parsons
University of Michigan Press, 1971
In this volume, archaeologist Jeffrey R. Parsons presents research based on an extensive 1967 survey of the Texcoco Region in the Valley of Mexico. The sites are organized by time period, from Middle Formative to Aztec. Parsons describes the sites in detail and compares them to those of the same time periods in the Teotihuacan Valley and the Valley of Mexico in general.
[more]
Prehistoric Social, Political, and Economic Development in the Area of the Tehuacan Valley
Some Results of the Palo Blanco Project
Edited by Robert D. Drennan
University of Michigan Press, 1979
In this volume, editor Robert D. Drennan presents a series of reports on archaeological research in the Tehuacán Valley of Mexico. Charles S. Spencer writes about irrigation in the Formative period; Elsa M. Redmond reports on a Terminal Formative ceramic workshop; John R. Alden writes about a survey at Quachilco; Drennan provides a preliminary report on excavations at Cuayucatepec; Spencer and Redmond report on Formative and Classic developments in the Cuicatlan Cañada; and Judith E. Smith provides an analysis of carbonized botanical remains from Quachilco, Cuayucatepec, and La Coyotera.
[more]
A Prehistory of South America
Ancient Cultural Diversity on the Least Known Continent
Jerry D. Moore
University Press of Colorado, 2014
A Prehistory of South America is an overview of the ancient and historic native cultures of the entire continent of South America based on the most recent archaeological investigations. This accessible, clearly written text is designed to engage undergraduate and beginning graduate students in anthropology.
For more than 12,000 years, South American cultures ranged from mobile hunters and gatherers to rulers and residents of colossal cities. In the process, native South American societies made advancements in agriculture and economic systems and created great works of art—in pottery, textiles, precious metals, and stone—that still awe the modern eye. Organized in broad chronological periods, A Prehistory of South America explores these diverse human achievements, emphasizing the many adaptations of peoples from a continent-wide perspective. Moore examines the archaeologies of societies across South America, from the arid deserts of the Pacific coast and the frigid Andean highlands to the humid lowlands of the Amazon Basin and the fjords of Patagonia and beyond.
Illustrated in full color and suitable for an educated general reader interested in the Precolumbian peoples of South America, A Prehistory of South America is a long overdue addition to the literature on South American archaeology.
For more than 12,000 years, South American cultures ranged from mobile hunters and gatherers to rulers and residents of colossal cities. In the process, native South American societies made advancements in agriculture and economic systems and created great works of art—in pottery, textiles, precious metals, and stone—that still awe the modern eye. Organized in broad chronological periods, A Prehistory of South America explores these diverse human achievements, emphasizing the many adaptations of peoples from a continent-wide perspective. Moore examines the archaeologies of societies across South America, from the arid deserts of the Pacific coast and the frigid Andean highlands to the humid lowlands of the Amazon Basin and the fjords of Patagonia and beyond.
Illustrated in full color and suitable for an educated general reader interested in the Precolumbian peoples of South America, A Prehistory of South America is a long overdue addition to the literature on South American archaeology.
[more]
Prehistory of the Ayacucho Basin, Peru
Volume II: Excavations and Chronology
Richard S. MacNeish, Angel Garcia Cook, Luis G. Lumbreras, Robert K. Vierra, and Antoinette Nelken-Terner
University of Michigan Press, 1982
Excavations and Chronology is the second of a series of major publications devoted to the archaeology of South America. Richard S. MacNeish has assembled an excellent staff of cooperating scientists for the excavation and interdisciplinary analysis of the Ayacucho Basin, a pristine nuclear site and a region containing the major archaeological, geographical, and ecological units of highland Peru. Supported by the National Science Foundation, MacNeish and his colleagues, in addition to their excavation, collected historical and prehistoric specimens and records documenting the geological, botanical, zoological, and other aspects of the Basin from the past 25,000 years. Future volumes will provide discussions on changes in the prehistorical environment, changes in ceramics and architecture, statistical-computer techniques used in determining ancient human behavior and reconstructing ancient cultural systems and subsystems, and changes in population and settlement patterns and energy flow.
[more]
Prehistory of the Ayacucho Basin, Peru
Volume III: Nonceramic Artifacts
Richard S. MacNeish, Angel Garcia Cook, Luis G. Lumbreras, Robert K. Vierra, and Antoinette Nelken-Terner
University of Michigan Press, 1980
Nonceramic Artifacts is the first of a series of major publications devoted to the archaeology of South America. Richard S. MacNeish has assembled an excellent staff of cooperating scientists for the excavation and interdisciplinary analysis of the Ayacucho Basin, a pristine nuclear site and a region containing the major archaeological, geographical, and ecological units of highland Peru. Supported by the National Science Foundation, MacNeish and his colleagues, in addition to their excavation, collected historical and prehistoric specimens and records documenting the geological, botanical, zoological, and other aspects of the Basin from the past 25,000 years. Future volumes will provide discussions on changes in the prehistorical environment, excavation techniques and methodology for establishing chronology, changes in ceramics and architecture, statistical-computer techniques used in determining ancient human behavior and reconstructing ancient cultural systems and subsystems, and changes in population and settlement patterns and energy flow.
[more]
Prehistory of the Ayacucho Basin, Peru
Volume IV: The Preceramic Way of Life
Richard S. MacNeish, Angel Garcia Cook, Luis G. Lumbreras, Robert K. Vierra, and Antoinette Nelken-Terner
University of Michigan Press, 1983
The Preceramic Way of Life is the third of a series of major publications devoted to the archaeology of South America. Richard S. MacNeish has assembled an excellent staff of cooperating scientists for the excavation and interdisciplinary analysis of the Ayacucho Basin, a pristine nuclear site and a region containing the major archaeological, geographical, and ecological units of highland Peru. Supported by the National Science Foundation, MacNeish and his colleagues, in addition to their excavation, collected historical and prehistoric specimens and records documenting the geological, botanical, zoological, and other aspects of the Basin from the past 25,000 years. A future volume will provide discussion on changes in the prehistorical environment, statistical-computer techniques used in determining ancient human behavior and reconstructing ancient cultural systems and subsystems, and changes in population and settlement patterns.
[more]
The Prehistory of the Burnt Bluff Area
Edited by James E. Fitting
University of Michigan Press, 1968
The Burnt Bluff area is an archaeological site in Delta County in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There are hundreds of caves and rock paintings along the cliffs on the southern end of the Garden Peninsula, which reaches southwest into Lake Michigan from the mainland. This report describes the results of archaeological research there in 1963 and 1965. Contributions by James E. Fitting, Charles E. Cleland, G. Richard Peske, Donald E. Janzen, Earl J. Prahl, W. R. Farrand, Douglas W. Lugthart, and Volney H. Jones.
[more]
Prehistory of the Central Mississippi Valley
Edited by Charles H. McNutt
University of Alabama Press, 1996
The Central Mississippi Valley, defined as the region along the Mississippi River from where the Ohio River joins in the north to its confluence with the Arkansas River in the south, lies between the two most important archaeological areas of the Southeast: American Bottom/Cahokia and the Lower Yazoo Basin. The valley has been influenced by these major centers and has a complex history of its own. Contributions from experts throughout the region present current, if sometimes conflicting, views of the regional cultural sequences supported by data from recent surveys and excavations, as well as radiocarbon and chronometric determinations. By examining this new information and reevaluating earlier interpretations of local archaeological sequences, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the valley and defines future research goals.
[more]
Prehistory, Personality, and Place
Emil W. Haury and the Mogollon Controversy
Jefferson Reid and Stephanie Whittlesey
University of Arizona Press, 2010
When Emil Haury defined the ancient Mogollon in the 1930s as a culture distinct from their Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam neighbors, he triggered a major intellectual controversy in the history of southwestern archaeology, centering on whether the Mogollon were truly a different culture or merely a “backwoods variant” of a better-known people. In this book, archaeologists Jefferson Reid and Stephanie Whittlesey tell the story of the remarkable individuals who discovered the Mogollon culture, fought to validate it, and eventually resolved the controversy.
Reid and Whittlesey present the arguments and actions surrounding the Mogollon discovery, definition, and debate. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted with Haury before his death in 1992, they explore facets of the debate that scholars pursued at various times and places and how ultimately the New Archaeology shifted attention from the research questions of cultural affiliation and antiquity that had been at the heart of the controversy. In gathering the facts and anecdotes surrounding the debate, Reid and Whittlesey offer a compelling picture of an academician who was committed to understanding the unwritten past, who believed wholeheartedly in the techniques of scientific archaeology, and who used his influence to assist scholarship rather than to advance his own career.
Prehistory, Personality, and Place depicts a real archaeologist practicing real archaeology, one that fashioned from potsherds and pit houses a true understanding of prehistoric peoples. But more than the chronicle of a controversy, it is a book about places and personalities: the role of place in shaping archaeologists’ intellect and personalities, as well as the unusual intersections of people and places that produced resolutions of some intractable problems in Southwest history.
Reid and Whittlesey present the arguments and actions surrounding the Mogollon discovery, definition, and debate. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted with Haury before his death in 1992, they explore facets of the debate that scholars pursued at various times and places and how ultimately the New Archaeology shifted attention from the research questions of cultural affiliation and antiquity that had been at the heart of the controversy. In gathering the facts and anecdotes surrounding the debate, Reid and Whittlesey offer a compelling picture of an academician who was committed to understanding the unwritten past, who believed wholeheartedly in the techniques of scientific archaeology, and who used his influence to assist scholarship rather than to advance his own career.
Prehistory, Personality, and Place depicts a real archaeologist practicing real archaeology, one that fashioned from potsherds and pit houses a true understanding of prehistoric peoples. But more than the chronicle of a controversy, it is a book about places and personalities: the role of place in shaping archaeologists’ intellect and personalities, as well as the unusual intersections of people and places that produced resolutions of some intractable problems in Southwest history.
[more]
Prejudice and Pride
LGBT Activist Stories from Manchester and Beyond
LGBT North West
Intellect Books, 2015
A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy
John F. W. Herschel
University of Chicago Press, 1987
Originally published in 1830, this book can be called the first modern work in the philosophy of science, covering an extraordinary range of philosophical, methodological, and scientific subjects.
"Herschel's book . . . brilliantly analyzes both the history and nature of science."—Keith Stewart Thomson, American Scientist
"Herschel's book . . . brilliantly analyzes both the history and nature of science."—Keith Stewart Thomson, American Scientist
[more]
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
University of Chicago Press, 1995
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot expresses the hopes, dogmas, assumptions, and prejudices that have come to characterize the French Enlightenment. In this preface to the Encyclopedia, d'Alembert traces the history of intellectual progress from the Renaissance to 1751. Including a revision of Diderot's Prospectus and a list of contributors to the Encyclopedia, this edition, elegantly translated and introduced by Professor Richard Schwab, is one of the great works of the Enlightenment and an outstanding introduction to the philosophes.
[more]
Prelude to Genocide
Arusha, Rwanda, and the Failure of Diplomacy
David Rawson
Ohio University Press, 2018
As the initial US observer, David Rawson participated in the 1993 Rwandan peace talks at Arusha, Tanzania. Later, he served as US ambassador to Rwanda during the last months of the doomed effort to make them hold. Despite the intervention of concerned states in establishing a peace process and the presence of an international mission, UNAMIR, the promise of the Arusha Peace Accords could not be realized. Instead, the downing of Rwandan president Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994 rekindled the civil war and opened the door to genocide.
In Prelude to Genocide, Rawson draws on declassified documents and his own experiences to seek out what went wrong. How did the course of political negotiations in Arusha and party wrangling in Kigali, Rwanda, bring to naught a concentrated international effort to establish peace? And what lessons are there for other international humanitarian interventions? The result is a commanding blend of diplomatic history and analysis that is a milestone read on the Rwandan crisis and on what happens when conflict resolution and diplomacy fall short.
Published in partnership with the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series.
[more]
Prelude to Hospice
Florence Wald, Dying People, and their Families
Abel, Emily K.
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Hospices have played a critical role in transforming ideas about death and dying. Viewing death as a natural event, hospices seek to enable people approaching mortality to live as fully and painlessly as possible. Award-winning medical historian Emily K. Abel provides insight into several important issues surrounding the growth of hospice care. Using a unique set of records, Prelude to Hospice expands our understanding of the history of U.S. hospices. Compiled largely by Florence Wald, the founder of the first U.S. hospice, the records provide a detailed account of her experiences studying and caring for dying people and their families in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although Wald never published a report of her findings, she often presented her material informally. Like many others seeking to found new institutions, she believed she could garner support only by demonstrating that her facility would be superior in every respect to what currently existed. As a result, she generated inflated expectations about what a hospice could accomplish. Wald’s records enable us to glimpse the complexities of the work of tending to dying people.
[more]
Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco
Pre-Colonial Protest and Resistance, 1860-1912
Edmund Burke, III
University of Chicago Press, 1977
At last we are beginning to learn as much about the French empire as the British, so that generalizations about imperialism need not continue to be skewed, as they hav,e been in the past, by drawing too many of our data from the British experience. The present study makes a major contribution in this direction, providing as it does the first nearly definitive account of a central series of episodes in the French, African, and Islamic experiences with imperialism.
[more]
A Prelude to the Welfare State
The Origins of Workers' Compensation
Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Workers' compensation was arguably the first widespread social insurance program in the United States and the most successful form of labor legislation to emerge from the early Progressive Movement. Adopted in most states between 1910 and 1920, workers' compensation laws have been paving seen as the way for social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and eventually the broad network of social welfare programs we have today.
In this highly original and persuasive work, Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor challenge widespread historical perceptions, arguing that, rather than being an early progressive victory, workers' compensation succeeded because all relevant parties—labor and management, insurance companies, lawyers, and legislators—benefited from the legislation. Thorough, rigorous, and convincing, A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation is a major reappraisal of the causes and consequences of a movement that ultimately transformed the nature of social insurance and the American workplace.
In this highly original and persuasive work, Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor challenge widespread historical perceptions, arguing that, rather than being an early progressive victory, workers' compensation succeeded because all relevant parties—labor and management, insurance companies, lawyers, and legislators—benefited from the legislation. Thorough, rigorous, and convincing, A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation is a major reappraisal of the causes and consequences of a movement that ultimately transformed the nature of social insurance and the American workplace.
[more]
home | accessibility | search | about | contact us
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2023
The University of Chicago Press