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An expanded edition of Kinoglasnost that examines the fascinating world of Soviet cinema during the yeas of glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s. In Before the Fall, Anna Lawton shows how the reforms that shook the foundations of the Bolshevik state and affected economic and social structures have been reflected in the film industry. A new added chapter provides a commentary on the dramatic changes that marked the beginning of democracy in Russia. Soviet cinema has always been closely connected with national political reality, challenging the conventions of bourgeois society and educating the people. In this pioneering study, Lawton discusses the restructuring of the main institutions gover...
An overview of generations of Italians in the Big Apple, weaving together numerous stories from different epochs and different backgrounds. “If you want to learn something about Italian creativity, come to New York. Here, you will find the pride of flying the Italian colors at the Fifth Avenue Columbus Day Parade, the American patriotism of those who perished at Ground Zero, the courage of firefighters and marines on the frontline of the war against terrorism, the babel of dialects at the Arthur Avenue market, portrayals of social change in the writings of Gay Talese, stories of successful business ventures on the TV shows of Maria Bartiromo and Charles Gasparino, political passion in the battles of Mario Cuomo and Rudy Giuliani, creative imagination in the works of Gaetano Pesce, Renzo Piano and Matteo Pericoli, and provocation in the attire of Lady Gaga . . . The Midtown top managers, who arrived in the past twenty years, operate in the XXI century, while on Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood the panelle are still prepared according to the Sicilian recipes transmitted from one generation to the next.” —From the Introduction
The first biography of this nineteenth-century sea captain, adventurer, and State Department official: “A vivid picture of [a] unique career.” —The Day (New London, CT) This is the first biography of Capt. Peter Strickland, a little-known Connecticut Yankee who crossed the Atlantic one hundred times in command of a sailing vessel, traded with French and Portuguese colonies during the period 1864-1905, and served as the first American consul to French West Africa for over twenty years. We know about Peter Strickland’s long life because he wrote a daily journal from the age of nineteen until the year he died. He broke away from a long line of farmers to adopt a seafaring life at age fi...
The Strega Prize–winning author of The Girl with a Leica delivers a novel that hinges on one of the bloodiest World War II battles and those who fought it. In this highly original novel, Janeczek retells the four-month-long Battle of Monte Cassino from the point of view of the Maori, Gurkha, Polish, North African, small-town American and other Allied foot soldiers who fought and died under German fire near that 6th century Benedictine abbey. Twined through the battle is another story, a memory of the drowned and the saved in Janeczek’s own family in wartime Eastern Europe, where Jews who did not go to Nazi death camps went to Soviet gulag camps, and sometimes survived, and even went on t...
This collection of "Stitesiana" includes 29 essays on Russian culture, representing the bulk of 20 years of scholarship, in addition to well-known monographs and diverse pieces in popular magazines.
“Rodrigues uses subtle metaphors of haunting memory to dramatize the Portuguese penetrationof the Arab trading world of the sixteenth century.” —Jaysinh Birjepatil, author of The Good Muslim of Jackson Heights Love and Samsara is an epic diorama of the world in the early 16th century, stretching from Europe to Asia, taking in Brazil, Africa, the Middle East, India, and then the lands below the wind, the monsoon countries of South East Asia. The hero, a renowned Arab ship pilot, hunted down for eloping with a Jain girl, escapes from their assassins by guiding Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese ships to Calicut, the major emporium of the spice trade. Only later does he realize the tremendo...
How the repeated social tropes and paradigms of the City comedies give us an in-depth look into everyday London society in the early 17th-century. Although literature is often assumed to belong to the sphere of representation rather than constituting an accurate reflection of social reality, early-modern English drama can tell us much about social attitudes in the early seventeenth century. The City comedies were, in particular, composed by authors who were embedded in the mundane social existence of London, in its quotidian transactions and exchanges, in its less salubrious contexts of debt, drinking, death and incarceration. To elucidate the complex social attitudes of the City urban elite...
“This fascinating collection of interviews is ‘must reading’ for anyone interested in the cultural politics of race in America. A unique historical resource.” —Denise Youngblood, author of Cinematic Cold War This book pays tribute to the sacrifices and achievements of seven individuals who made difficult and controversial choices to ensure that black Americans shared in the evolution of the nation’s cultural heritage. Transcriptions and analyses of never-before-published uncensored conversations with Lorenzo Tucker, Lillian Gish, King Vidor, Clarence Muse, Woody Strode, Charles Gordone, and Frederick Douglass O’Neal reveal many of the reasons and rationalizations behind a racis...
“A worthy successor to Every Step a Struggle . . . the contributions to American cinema of these determined and courageous rebels will never be forgotten.” —Denise Youngblood, author ofCinematic Cold War While Every Step a Struggle recalled the performers who fought to give black artists a voice and a presence in film and on stage, this new ground-breaking book focuses on the personalities who replaced the pioneers and refused to abide by Jim Crow traditions. Presented against a detailed background of the revolutionary post-World War II era up to the mid-1970s, the individual views of Mae Mercer, Brock Peters, Jim Brown, Ivan Dixon, James Whitmore, William Marshall and Ruby Dee in here...
Eclectic criticism and insightful observations from “one of the most respected cultural historians working today” (Ronald A. Wells, Professor of History Emeritus, Calvin College). “From cowboy philosopher Will Rogers to popular perceptions of two world wars and Vietnam, from the history of language to the language of film and television, Peter Rollins has devoted his career to exploring the intriguing ways in which the creative impulse both shapes and reflects American culture. His observations are fresh, illuminating and of enduring value.” —John E. O’Connor, co-founder/editor of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies “Examines the roles of...