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In the nineteenth-century mill towns of Preston, England; Lowell, Massachusetts; and Paisley, Scotland, there were specific demands for migrant and female labor, and potential employers provided the necessary respectable conditions in order to attract them. Using individual accounts, this innovative and comparative study examines the migrants' lives by addressing their reasons for migration, their relationship to their families, the roles they played in the cities to which they moved, and the dangers they met as a result of their youth, gender, and separation from family. Gordon details both the similarities and differences in the women's migration experiences, and somewhat surprisingly concludes that they became financially independent, rather than primarily contributors to a family economy.
Thousands flocked to see gladiators, charioteers, wild animals, women and children hacked, crucified, torn to pieces, ravished, burned, and drown. Biographies, paintings, historical evidence and an author's imagination merge to tell the story of one of history's most ruthless exhibitions—the Roman games.
Unhappy with city life and at odds with his step-father, fourteen year old Billy is sent to live in the country with his eccentric great-uncle — a powwow man and natural healer who teaches him the lore of a vanishing world.
Daniel P. Mannix's father and grandfather were distinguished navel officers who expected Daniel to keep up the family tradition. Daniel tried, he really did, but when all those attempting to mold him into a respectable cadet eventually gave up, well, what else can a navel academy flunkie do — TA DA! Join a carnival, of course. Inspired by the perseverance, bold imagination, and showmanship of the performers, Daniel was soon eating flaming torches, swallowing swords and neon lights, walking on knives, assisting as a mentalist, and writing stories about all he experienced. From the pen of a man who lived the life and loved and respected carnival folk, Step Right Up! will take the reader on a comprehensive and highly entertaining excursion into the vanishing world of sideshow performers. Fire-eating and sword swallowing are not tricks, ladies and gentlemen. Allow the talented Daniel P Mannix to explain!
Torture has been an intrinsic part of the legal process in most cultures for centuries. Indeed, the violence we witness daily in our own society and recent revelations about the continued use of torture, seems proof that inflicting extreme mental or physical pain on an individual to achieve one's own ends is not a taboo practice buried in the past. This incomparable, extremely thorough book — told with a frightening and factual honesty — examines every aspect of torture: professional torturers, theories and techniques, the role of torture in history, moral implications, and the refinements brought to the practice of torture by individual fanatics, religious groups, the military, and, ind...
A noir classic about the era of the sideshow when freaks were the star attraction — respected and revered by other carnival members. Their stories are frankly and tenderly told by an author who lived and worked as a carny.
A terrifying, suspenseful, and grim exploration of the circumstances under which animals become man-killers as told from the perspective of a huge and formidable wolf-dog. Based on true events in 18th century France.
Peter Ryhiner — hero, adventurer, and romantic — was one of the world's most active wild animal collectors. Born in Basel, Switzerland, on January 1, 1920, Peter knew by the time he was eight years old that he wanted to be a naturalist and explorer — and thought about nothing else. His parents listened to him with good natured amusement, but were not so amused when his interests caused him to flunk out of two schools and precipitated his expulsion from a third for truancy. Eventually, throwing up their hands in frustration, his family cut off his funds, and Peter had to use all his ingenuity to figure out how to continue collecting and studying animals — including breeding and develo...
A major study of Catholic and Protestant Irish in an important but neglected center of historic Irish settlement where communal violence and Irish-related antipathy bore the hallmarks of the Liverpool and Glasgow experiences. "Culture, Conflict and Migration... deserves to be read as an important contribution to the growing literature on the Irish in Britain."—Irish Studies Review
A baby bald eagle is raised by attentive parents in a tall tree overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. A story overflowing with eagle facts and information, feathered with humor, and nested in a commentary on the fate of the bald eagle in North America.