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"The United States, Jeremy Black suggests, is a continent pretending to be a country. Its government presides over 3.7 million square miles of earth and nearly 300 million people. Its sheer scale poses a monumental challenge to all who try to grapple with its rich and immensely complex physical and social geography. Drawing on his own travels, Black responds to this challenge by offering a succinct and authoritative analysis of the ways in which events in history and culture since 1960 have remade the USA's geography and demographics."--BOOK JACKET.
“You offer yourself to be slain,” General Sir John Hackett once observed, remarking on the military profession. “This is the essence of being a soldier.” For this reason as much as any other, the British army has invariably been seen as standing apart from other professions—and sometimes from society as a whole. A British Profession of Arms effectively counters this view. In this definitive study of the late Victorian army, distinguished scholar Ian F. W. Beckett finds that the British soldier, like any other professional, was motivated by considerations of material reward and career advancement. Within the context of debates about both the evolution of Victorian professions and th...
The discourse of Buddhist studies has traditionally been structured around texts and nations (the transmission of Buddhism from India to China to Japan). And yet, it is doubtful that these categories reflect in any significant way the organizing themes familiar to most Buddhists. It could be argued that cultic practices associated with particular buddhas and bodhisattvas are more representative of the way Buddhists conceive of their relation to tradition. This volume aims to explore this aspect of Buddhism by focusing on one of its most important cults, that of the Buddha Amitabha. Approaching the Land of Bliss is a rich collection of studies of texts and ritual practices devoted to Amitabha, ranging from Tibet to Japan and from early medieval times to the present.
The War at Home brings together some of the state’s leading historians to examine the connections between Arkansas and World War I. These essays explore how historical entities and important events such as Camp Pike, the Little Rock Picric Acid Plant, and the Elaine Race Massacre were related to the conflict as they investigate the issues of gender, race, and public health. This collection sheds new light on the ways that Arkansas participated in the war as well as the ways the war affected Arkansas then and still does today.
Two hundred years ago, a 30-man U.S. Army party ascended the Missouri River and conducted the most extensive exploration yet attempted of the North American continent¿s interior. The preparations for the Lewis and Clark expedition were exhaustive. Pres. Jefferson ensured Lewis was well prepared for his task by coaching, mentoring, and teaching the young officer for two years. Lewis and Clark then spent the better part of a third year planning and organizing for the journey. This study examines the key logistics components and considerations in the planning and execution of the mission. Modern logisticians will find themes in transportation, civilian contracting, indigenous (host nation) support, and others that still resonate today. Maps and illus.
This book revisits some of the most significant guerrilla struggles of the late 19th century, all set in Africa, and remind readers, in light of current events, the difficulties involved in engaging in this type of conflict.
This is a new edition of Volume Three of the four volume collection of documents on Nazism 1919-1945, with substantial revisions to three chapters and the inclusion of many new documents, an index and a revised bibliography. The volume contains the most systematic documentation available in English of the Nazi programmes of racial and eugenic extermination, including a case study of the occupation of Poland.
Myth, art, literature, film, and other discourses are replete with depictions of evil plants, salvific plants, and human-plant hybrids. In various ways, these representations intersect with “deep-rooted” insecurities about the place of human beings in the natural world, the relative viability of animalian motility and heterotrophy as evolutionary strategies, as well as the identity of organic life as such. Plants surprise us by combining the appearance of harmlessness and familiarity with an underlying strangeness. The otherness of vegetal life poses a challenge to our ethical, philosophical, and existential categories and tests the limits of human empathy and imagination. At the same ti...
As governor of Rhode Island, J. Howard McGrath oversaw the passage of social legislation aimed at improving the lives of his constituents during the dark days of World War II. As a Rhode Island senator he served as the Democratic National Committee Chairman during the contentious 1948 presidential election, when few believed Harry Truman could defeat New York governor Thomas R. Dewey. Following Truman's victory, McGrath could easily have written his own ticket to further political success--but his career was cut short in 1952 when he was forced to resign as Attorney General amid a cloud of scandal. This biography traces the rise and fall of a politician who achieved notable success yet ultimately fell victim to his appetite for power, fame and fortune.
Since ancient times, explorers and adventurers have captured popular imagination with their frightening narratives of travels gone wrong. Usually, these stories heavily feature the exotic or unknown, and can transform any journey into a nightmare. Stories of such horrific happenings have a long and rich history that stretches from folktales to contemporary media narratives. This work presents eighteen essays that explore the ways in which these texts reflect and shape our fear and fascination surrounding travel, posing new questions about the "geographies of evil" and how our notions of "terrible places" and their inhabitants change over time. The volume's five thematic sections offer new insights into how power, privilege, uncanny landscapes, misbegotten quests, hellish commutes and deadly vacations can turn our travels into terror.