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A gripping tale of one of history's most bizarre events, and what it reveals about the strange possibilities of human nature In the searing July heat of 1518, Frau Troffea stepped into the streets of Strasbourg and began to dance. Bathed in sweat, she continued to dance. Overcome with exhaustion, she stopped, and then resumed her solitary jig a few hours later. Over the next two months, roughly four hundred people succumbed to the same agonizing compulsion. At its peak, the epidemic claimed the lives of fifteen men, women, and children a day. Possibly 100 people danced to their deaths in one of the most bizarre and terrifying plagues in history. John Waller compellingly evokes the sights, sounds, and aromas; the diseases and hardships; the fervent supernaturalism and the desperate hedonism of the late medieval world. Based on new evidence, he explains why the plague occurred and how it came to an end. In doing so, he sheds light on the strangest capabilities of the human mind and on our own susceptibility to mass hysteria.
Tales of fishing on Britian's most famous trout river.
In 2016, award-winning Minnesota-based photographer R. J. Kern made portraits of youth contestants at Minnesota county fairs. Each participant—some as young as four years old—had spent a year raising an animal, which they had then entered into a 4-H livestock competition. None of the youths who sat for him had succeeded in winning an award, despite the obvious care they had given to their animals. The Unchosen Ones depicts the bloom of youth and the mettle of the kids who grow up on farms, reminding us how resilient children can be when confronted with life's inevitable disappointments. The formal qualities of the lighting and setting endow these young people with a gravitas beyond their...
It contains over 200 sketches and shows a magical Corfu, its town and villages, as seen through the eyes of an artist who has lived on the island since 1961.
From a parish workhouse to the heart of the industrial revolution, from debtors' jail to Cambridge University and a prestigious London church, Robert Blincoe's political, personal and turbulent story illuminates the Dickensian age like never before. In 1792 as revolution, riot and sedition spread across Europe, Robert Blincoe was born in the calm of rural St Pancras parish. At four he was abandoned to a workhouse, never to see his family again. At seven, he was sent 200 miles north to work in one of the cotton mills of the dawning industrial age. He suffered years of unrelenting abuse, a life dictated by the inhuman rhythm of machines. Like Dickens' most famous character, Blincoe rebelled af...
"This book focuses on the career of a single individual--an ambitious, resourceful Black American--and his efforts to realize personal fulfillment in a racist world. No Black American was more determined to realize the promise of American life following the Civil War, nor more frustrated by his inability to do so than John Lewis Waller. Waller, whose first twelve years were spent in slavery, overcame his humble beginnings to become a politician, lawyer, journalist, and diplomat. Nevertheless, his life provides a case study of a middle class black caught between a desire to work within the existing political and economic framework and a need to reject a milieu that was becoming increasingly racist"--From University of Kansas Press website.
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