You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Columbus called them "Indians" because his geography was faulty. But that name and, more importantly, the images it has come to suggest have endured for five centuries, not only obscuring the true identity of the original Americans but serving as an idealogical weapon in their subjugation. Now, in this brilliant and deeply disturbing reinterpretation of the American past, Robert Berkhofer has written an impressively documented account of the self-serving stereotypes Europeans and white Americans have concocted about the "Indian": Noble Savage or bloodthirsty redskin, he was deemed inferior in the light of western, Christian civilization and manipulated to its benefit. A thought-provoking and...
What legitimate form can history take when faced by the severe challenges issued in recent years by literary, rhetorical, multiculturalist, and feminist theories? That is the question considered in this pathbreaking book. Robert Berkhofer addresses the essential practical concern of contemporary historians.
This book offers historians and aspiring historians a learned, absorbing, and comprehensive overview of current fashions of method, interpretation, and meaning in the context of postmodernism that has washed over the historical profession in the last two decades.
The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History presents the story of the indigenous peoples who lived-and live-in the territory that became the United States. It describes the major aspects of the historical change that occurred over the past 500 years with essays by leading experts, both Native and non-Native, that focus on significant moments of upheaval and change, place-based histories of major centers of indigenous occupation, and overviews of major aspects of Indian community and national life.
Some central questions in the natural and social sciences can't be answered by controlled laboratory experiments, often considered to be the hallmark of the scientific method. This impossibility holds for any science concerned with the past. In addition, many manipulative experiments, while possible, would be considered immoral or illegal. One has to devise other methods of observing, describing, and explaining the world. In the historical disciplines, a fruitful approach has been to use natural experiments or the comparative method. This book consists of eight comparative studies drawn from history, archeology, economics, economic history, geography, and political science. The studies cover...
The role of large-scale business enterprise—big business and its managers—during the formative years of modern capitalism (from the 1850s until the 1920s) is delineated in this pathmarking book. Alfred Chandler, Jr., the distinguished business historian, sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and the central sectors of production and distribution.
Confidence in American government has been declining for three decades. Leading Harvard scholars here explore the roots of this mistrust by examining the government's current scope, its actual performance, citizens' perceptions of its performance, and explanations that have been offered for the decline of trust.
In the West, media coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan is framed by military and political concerns, resulting in a simplistic picture of ageless barbarity, terrorist safe havens, and peoples in need of either punishment or salvation. Under the Drones looks beyond this limiting view to investigate real people on the ground, and to analyze the political, social, and economic forces that shape their lives. Understanding the complexity of life along the 1,600-mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan can help America and its European allies realign their priorities in the region to address genuine problems, rather than fabricated ones. This volume explodes Western misunderstandings by revea...
Presents the story of Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation. This title contains a philosophical and ethical inquiry into a people faced with the end of their way of life.