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History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume II
Books 3–4
Thucydides
Harvard University Press, 1991

Classic political realism.

Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells us about this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of his history of the war—that it befell him to be an exile for twenty years. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He had been composing his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge, along with the accounts of others.

The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into one account when death came sometime before 396. His history of the first conflict, 431–421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415–413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record, though not fitted into the whole. His story of the final conflict of 413–404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing with the year 411. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight this history has no superior.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.

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History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume III
Books 5–6
Thucydides
Harvard University Press, 1991

Classic political realism.

Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells us about this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of his history of the war—that it befell him to be an exile for twenty years. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He had been composing his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge, along with the accounts of others.

The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into one account when death came sometime before 396. His history of the first conflict, 431–421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415–413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record, though not fitted into the whole. His story of the final conflict of 413–404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing with the year 411. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight this history has no superior.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.

[more]

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History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume IV
Books 7–8
Thucydides
Harvard University Press, 1991

Classic political realism.

Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells us about this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of his history of the war—that it befell him to be an exile for twenty years. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He had been composing his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge, along with the accounts of others.

The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into one account when death came sometime before 396. His history of the first conflict, 431–421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415–413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record, though not fitted into the whole. His story of the final conflict of 413–404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing with the year 411. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight this history has no superior.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.

[more]

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A History of the People’s Action Party, 1985-2021
Shashi Jayakumar
National University of Singapore Press, 2020
The People's Action Party (PAP) of Singapore is among the longest-ruling democratically-elected political parties in the world, in power continuously since Singapore gained self-rule in 1959. Such longevity is the product of an institution that is itself dynamic and responsive. But remarkably, the story of the party as institution has not received the sustained study it deserves from either historians or political scientists.
 
This narrative history of the PAP follows the story through decisions made by party leaders as they sought to respond to the changing demands and expectations of the Singapore electorate over a thirty-year period that saw Singapore enter the ranks of developed nations. The focus is on change in four dimensions: in the communications methods and styles the party adopted, the mechanisms it developed for managing institutional change, the sometimes vexed question of party renewal, and the evolution of economic and social policy. Drawing on internal party documents and multiple interviews with key leaders over the course of a decade, this book provides a detailed portrait of a robust political institution and establishes a distinctive new narrative of Singapore politics.
 
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History of the Persian Empire
A. T. Olmstead
University of Chicago Press, 1948
Out of a lifetime of study of the ancient Near East, Professor Olmstead has gathered previously unknown material into the story of the life, times, and thought of the Persians, told for the first time from the Persian rather than the traditional Greek point of view.

"The fullest and most reliable presentation of the history of the Persian Empire in existence."—M. Rostovtzeff
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The History of the Province of New-York
William Smith, Jr.
Harvard University Press, 1972

William Smith, Jr., (1728-1793), politician, jurist, historian, and Loyalist produced an admirable history of colonial New York that remains to this day one of the best records of early America written by a colonist. He published the first volume, covering the period 1610-1732, in 1757, and wrote the second (1732-1762) while a neutralist bystander during the Revolutionary War. Thus his History serves as an elegant testimony to the Americans' growing self-consciousness and search for identity on the eve of the Revolution.

As editor of the first accurate and complete version of this important work, Mr. Kammen has prepared a fresh first volume based upon the original edition, plus Smith's rich marginalia in his personal copy, and a second volume based upon the original manuscript. Included in this generously illustrated work is an extensive three-part introductory essay by the editor and four appendixes.

[more]

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The History of the Race Idea (CW3)
From Ray to Carus
Eric Voegelin, Edited & Intro by by Klaus Vondung, & Translated by Ruth Hein
University of Missouri Press

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A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps
Jeremy Black
University of Chicago Press, 2024

The first international history of railroads and railroad infrastructure told through stunningly reproduced maps.

Since their origins in eighteenth-century England, railroads have spread across the globe, changing everything in their path, from where and how people grew and made things to where and how they lived and moved. Railroads rewrote not only world geography but also the history of maps and mapping. Today, the needs of train companies and their users continue to shape the maps we consume and consult.

Featuring full-color maps primarily from the British Library's distinguished collection—many of them never before published—A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps is the first international history of railroads and railroad infrastructure told through maps. Jeremy Black includes examples from six continents, spanning a variety of uses from railroad planning and operations to guides for passengers, shippers, and tourists.

Arranged chronologically, the maps are accompanied by explanatory text that sheds light on the political, military, and urban development histories associated with the spread of railroads. A final chapter considers railroad maps from games, books, and other cultural artifacts. For anyone interested in the history of railroads or maps, A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps will offer new and unexpected insights into their intertwined global history.

[more]

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The History of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Ray Desmond
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2007
This is the definitive history of the world's greatest botanic garden. Comprehensively revised, this stunning, richly illustrated reference takes in every aspect of Kew's history over two centuries - from its origin, pivotal roles in collecting, classifying and identifying the world's plants, the commercial crops it gave to the British Empire, to being a world renowned institution at the cutting edge of plant science.
 
Kew's heritage - the herbarium, art and architecture, from Kew Palace and Burton's great Palm House to the Princess of Wales Conservatory, state of the art laboratories and new Davies Alpine House - is illustrated and described, together with the events leading to its UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2003. Lastly, it is a social history of the Gardens, and of the scientists, architects, designers and gardeners who have made Kew.
 
Detailed appendices and bibliography have been updated, and two new chapters added, bringing the book up to date as the authoritative reference work on Kew, its history and function.
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A History of the Rutgers University Glee Club
David F. Chapman
Rutgers University Press, 2022

Founded in 1872, the Glee Club is Rutgers University’s oldest continuously active student organization, as well as one of the first glee clubs in the United States. For the past 150 years, it has represented the university and presented an image of the Rutgers man on a national and international stage. 
 
This volume offers a comprehensive history of the Rutgers Glee Club, from its origins adopting traditions from the German Männerchor and British singing clubs to its current manifestation as a world-recognized ensemble. Along the way, we meet the colorful and charismatic men who have directed the group over the years, from the popular composer and minstrel performer Loren Bragdon to the classically-trained conductor Patrick Gardner. And of course, we learn what the club has meant to the generations of talented and dedicated young men who have sung in it. 
 
A History of the Rutgers University Glee Club recounts the origins of the group’s most beloved traditions, including the composition of the alma mater’s anthem “On the Banks of the Old Raritan” and the development of the annual Christmas in Carol and Song concerts. Meticulously researched, including a complete discography of the club’s recordings, this book is a must-have for all the Rutgers Glee Club’s many fans and alumni.

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A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps
Jeremy Black
University of Chicago Press, 2020
 
The First World War was marked by an exceptional expansion in the use and production of military cartography. But World War II took things even further, employing maps, charts, reconnaissance, and the systematic recording and processing of geographical and topographical information on an unprecedented scale. As Jeremy Black—one of the world’s leading military and cartographic historians—convincingly shows in this lavish full-color book, it is impossible to understand the events and outcomes of the Second World War without deep reference to mapping at all levels. In World War II, maps themselves became the weapons.

A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps traces how military cartography developed from simply recording and reflecting history to having a decisive impact on events of  a global scale. Drawing on one hundred key maps from the unparalleled collections of the British Library and other sources—many of which have never been published in book form before--Jeremy Black takes us from the prewar mapping programs undertaken by both Germany and the United Kingdom in the mid-1930s through the conflict’s end a decade later. Black shows how the development of maps led directly to the planning of the complex and fluid maneuvers that defined the European theater in World War II: for example, aerial reconnaissance photography allowed for the charting of beach gradients and ocean depths in the runup to the D-Day landings, and the subsequent troop movements at Normandy would have been impossible without the help of situation maps and photos. In the course of the conflict, both in Europe and the Pacific,  the realities of climate, terrain,  and logistics—recorded on maps—overcame the Axis powers. Maps also became propaganda tools as the pages of Time outlined the directions of the campaigns and the Allies dropped maps from their aircraft.

In this thrilling and unique book, Jeremy Black blends his singular cartographic and military expertise into a captivating overview of World War II from the air, sea, and sky, making clear how fundamental maps were to every aspect of this unforgettable global conflict.
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A History of the Silk Road
Jonathan Clements
Haus Publishing, 2017
The Silk Road is not a place, but a journey, a route from the edges of the Mediterranean to the central plains of China, through high mountains and inhospitable deserts. For thousands of years its history has been a traveller's history, of brief encounters in desert towns, snowbound passes and nameless forts. It was the conduit that first brought Buddhism, Christianity and Islam into China, and the site of much of the "Great Game" between 19th-century empires. Today, its central section encompasses several former Soviet republics, and the Chinese Autonomous Region of Xinjiang. The ancient trade route controversially crosses the sites of several forgotten kingdoms, buried in sand and only now revealing their secrets. An Armchair Traveller's History of the Silk Road not only offers the reader a chronological outline of the region's development, but also provides an invaluable introduction to its languages, literature and arts. It takes a comprehensive and illuminating look at the rich history of this dynamic and littleknown region, and provides an easy-to-use reference source. Clements pays particular attention to the fascinating historical sites which feature on any visitor's itinerary and special emphasis is also given to the writings and reactions of travellers through the centuries.
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A History of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Intersection of Art, Science, and Bureaucracy
Lois Marie Fink
University of Massachusetts Press, 2007
Dedicated to the art of the United States, the Smithsonian American Art Museum contains works by more than 7,000 artists and is widely regarded as an invaluable resource for the study and preservation of the nation's cultural heritage. But as Lois Marie Fink shows in this probing narrative, the history of the museum is hardly one of steady progress. Instead, it reads like a nineteenth-century melodrama, replete with villains and heroes, destruction by fire, dashed hopes, and periods of subsistence survival—all leading eventually to a happy ending. Originating as the art gallery stipulated in the 1846 founding legislation of the Smithsonian, the museum developed within an institution that was essentially controlled by scientists. In its early years, the museum's holdings included a diverse selection of art and artifacts, mostly donated from private collections. Government support varied in response to shifting attitudes of officials and the public toward American art, ranging from avid admiration at the turn of the twentieth century to a tepid response and an almost total withdrawal of funding a generation later in favor of European masterworks. For decades the museum followed scientific organizational principles in exhibitions and collection strategies. Far into the twentieth century, accessions remained tied to nineteenth-century figurative art, reflecting the strength and influence of anthropology and biological sciences at the Smithsonian. A key breakthrough for modern art came in 1964 with the appointment of Smithsonian secretary Dillon Ripley, a scientist who strongly promoted the art side of the institution. With renewed support for expanding the collection and programs, the museum moved in 1968 to its present location in the Patent Office Building. In recounting the history of the museum from 1846 to 1980, Fink unravels the various levels of institutional authority, power, governance, and bureaucracy and shows how people at each level influenced the fortunes of the collection. She also places changing concepts of art and museum practice in the context of national ideals and Washington realities.
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History of the Surrealist Movement
Gérard Durozoi
University of Chicago Press, 2002
"With its unprecedented depth and range, this massive new history of Surrealism from veteran French philosopher and art critic Durozoi will be the one-volume standard for years to come. . . . The book discusses expertly the main surrealist artists like Jean Arp, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, but also treats with considerable understanding the surrealist writing by Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Robert Desnos, Julien Graçq and, of course, the so-called 'Pope of Surrealism,' André Breton. . . . This book should turn up in all serious collections on 20th century art."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

From Dada to the Automatists, and from Max Ernst to André Breton, Gérard Durozoi here provides the most comprehensive history of the Surrealist movement. Tracing the movement from its origins in the 1920s to its decline in the 1950s and 1960s, Durozoi tells the history of Surrealism through its activities, publications, and reviews, demonstrating its close ties to some of the most explosive political, as well as creative, debates of the twentieth century.

Drawing on a staggering amount of documentary and visual evidence—including 1,000 photos—Durozoi illuminates all the intellectual and artistic facets of the movement, from literature and philosophy to painting, photography, and film, thus making History of the Surrealist Movement its definitive encyclopedia.
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A History of the Swedish People
Volume II: From Renaissance to Revolution
Vilhelm Moberg
University of Minnesota Press, 2005
In the second volume of his vivid history of the Swedes, Vilhelm Moberg brings his focus on the common people to bear on a period that included two dramatic revolts: the national insurrection under Engelbrekt and the last desperate attempt of the Smaland peasantry to retain their medieval liberties - a defiance bloodily crushed by King Gustav Vasa. Using a wide variety of local historical source materials, Moberg studies the ruthless monarch Vasa and his two tragic opponents: the psychopathic Christian II of Denmark and Nils Dracke, the leader of the Smalanders. Furthermore, he examines the enigmatic and wide appeal of the Swedish forest and investigates the origins of the Swedish hatred of Danes, which was implanted by propaganda through songs commissioned by Karl VIII's chancellery.Moberg's history has been widely hailed by the Swedish press as a masterpiece of popular history writing and has been an all-time best-seller in Swedish bookstores.
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front cover of History of the Triumphs of Our Holy Faith amongst the Most Barbarous and Fierce Peoples of the New World
History of the Triumphs of Our Holy Faith amongst the Most Barbarous and Fierce Peoples of the New World
Andrés Pérez de Ribas; Translated by Daniel T. Reff, Maureen Ahern, and Richard K. Danford; Annotated and with a Critical Introduction by Daniel T. Reff
University of Arizona Press, 1999
Considered by historian Herbert E. Bolton to be one of the greatest books ever written in the West, Andrés Pérez de Ribas's history of the Jesuit missions provides unusual insight into Spanish and Indian relations during the colonial period in Northern New Spain. First published in Madrid in 1645, it traces the history of the missions from 1591 to 1643 and includes letters from Jesuit annual reports and other correspondence, much of which has never been found or cataloged in historical archives. Daniel T. Reff, Maureen Ahern, and Richard K. Danford have now prepared the first complete, scholarly, and fully annotated edition of this important work in English.

Pérez de Ribas was the first permanent missionary to the Ahome, Zuaque, and Yaqui Indians. After fifteen years on the mission frontier he was recalled to Mexico City, where he held various posts, including Jesuit Provincial. Addressed to novitiates ignorant of the challenges they would face in the field, his Historia was a virtual textbook on missionary work in the New World. Also written to encourage ongoing support of the Jesuit missions, it reflected the author's deep grasp of what rhetorically soothed and moved Church and Crown officials.

Perhaps of greatest interest to the modern reader are Pérez de Ribas's often detailed comments on indigenous beliefs and practices. These firsthand observations provide a rich resource of ethnographic and historical data concerning everything from native subsistence, settlement patterns, and myths to the dynamics of Jesuit-Indian relations. The many cases of conversion that Pérez de Ribas describes are especially rich in ethnographic data, clarifying the values and beliefs from which the Indians were "rescued."

History of the Triumphs is a primary document of great importance, made more valuable here by an exceptionally fluid translation and painstaking annotations. It will be a standard reference for all engaged in research on New Spain and a captivating read for anyone interested in this chapter of American history.
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A History of the Twentieth Century in 100 Maps
Tim Bryars and Tom Harper
University of Chicago Press, 2014
The twentieth century was a golden age of mapmaking, an era of cartographic boom. Maps proliferated and permeated almost every aspect of daily life, not only chronicling geography and history but also charting and conveying myriad political and social agendas. Here Tim Bryars and Tom Harper select one hundred maps from the millions printed, drawn, or otherwise constructed during the twentieth century and recount through them a narrative of the century’s key events and developments.
           
As Bryars and Harper reveal, maps make ideal narrators, and the maps in this book tell the story of the 1900s—which saw two world wars, the Great Depression, the Swinging Sixties, the Cold War, feminism, leisure, and the Internet. Several of the maps have already gained recognition for their historical significance—for example, Harry Beck’s iconic London Underground map—but the majority of maps on these pages have rarely, if ever, been seen in print since they first appeared. There are maps that were printed on handkerchiefs and on the endpapers of books; maps that were used in advertising or propaganda; maps that were strictly official and those that were entirely commercial; maps that were printed by the thousand, and highly specialist maps issued in editions of just a few dozen; maps that were envisaged as permanent keepsakes of major events, and maps that were relevant for a matter of hours or days.
           
As much a pleasure to view as it is to read, A History of the Twentieth Century in 100 Maps celebrates the visual variety of twentieth century maps and the hilarious, shocking, or poignant narratives of the individuals and institutions caught up in their production and use.
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History of the University of Alabama
Volume One, 1818-1902
James Benson Sellers
University of Alabama Press, 1953
The University of Alabama, established in 1831, has survived poverty, riots, political interference, wartime destruction, attacks by clergy and laymen, and internal feuds to develop from a boarding school for planters’ sons to a modern and thriving state university. Using official records and state newspapers as well as letters and diaries of presidents, students, teachers, and alumni, this comprehensive volume that covers 1818 to 1902 reveals the hardships and achievements of the men and women who made the university during its early years.
 
The History of the University of Alabama, first published in 1953, details the educational progress in spite of meager funds, primitive buildings and equipment, unruly students, and interruption by the Civil War. Interwoven with the accounts of campus life, extracurricular activities, early intercollegiate athletics, and building programs is the history of a long-sustained effort by many devoted presidents, faculty, and citizens to raise educational standards and to improve the instruction provided for the youth of the state.
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A History of the University of Chicago, Founded by John D. Rockefeller
The First Quarter-Century
Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed
University of Chicago Press, 1973
The initial steps which led to the founding of the great educational institutions of the world are known in very few instances. Seldom was any record even made of them, their significance not being recognized when the events occurred. The author of this work, Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed, was intimately connected with the persons and events involved in the founding of the University of Chicago in 1891. His detailed account of that institution's first twenty-five years, originally published in 1916, reveals that the chief participants were aware from the beginning of the magnitude and importance of their enterprise.

As Goodspeed shows, once the main roles were cast—in the persons of John D. Rockefeller and William Rainey Harper—the University of Chicago was irrevocably headed for greatness. Without the support of both of these men it would never have become one of the nation's major universities in a mere quarter century. Although Harper died in 1906, his innovative mind and unflagging energy left an indelible mark on the university during the fifteen years of his presidency. The study provides detailed information on the founding of the university, the procurement of funds, the recruitment of faculty, the construction of buildings, student life, and the problems of continuing growth.
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A History of the University of Wisconsin System
Patricia A. Brady
University of Wisconsin Press, 2020
A tumultuous 1971 merger that combined all of the state’s public colleges and universities into a single entity led to the creation of the University of Wisconsin System. Drawing on decades of previously unpublished sources, Patricia A. Brady details the System’s full history from its origin to the present, illuminating complex networks among and within the campuses and an evolving relationship with the state.

The UW System serves as a powerful case study for how broad, national trends in higher education take shape on the ground. Brady illustrates the ways culture wars have played out on campuses and the pressures that have mounted as universities have shifted to a student-as-consumer approach. This is the essential, unvarnished story of the unique collection of institutions that serve Wisconsin and the world—and a convincing argument for why recognizing and reinvesting in the System is critically important for the economic and civic future of the state and its citizens.
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A History of the Vandals
Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen
Westholme Publishing, 2012

The First General History in English of the Germanic People Who Sacked Rome in the Fifth Century AD and Established a Kingdom in North Africa

The fifth century AD was a time of great changes in the Mediterranean world. In the early 400s, the Roman Empire ranged from the lowlands of Scotland to the Upper Nile and from Portugal to the Caucasus. It was almost at its widest extent, and although ruled by two emperors—one in the West and one in the East—it was still a single empire. One hundred years later, Roman control of Western Europe and Western North Africa had been lost. In its place, a number of Germanic kingdoms had been established in these regions, with hundreds of thousands of Germanic and other peoples settling permanently inside the former borders of the Western Roman Empire.

            One of the most fascinating of these tribes of late antiquity were the Vandals, who over a period of six hundred years had migrated from the woodland regions of Scandinavia across Europe and ended in the deserts of North Africa. In A History of the Vandals, the first general account in English covering the entire story of the Vandals from their emergence to the end of their kingdom, historian Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen pieces together what we know about the Vandals, sifting fact from fiction. In the middle of the fifth century the Vandals, who professed Arianism, a form of Christianity considered heretical by the Roman emperor, created the first permanent Germanic successor state in the West and were one of the deciding factors in the downfall of the Western Roman Empire. Later Christian historians described their sack of Rome in 455 and their vehement persecution of Catholics in their kingdom, accounts that were sensationalized and gave birth to the term “vandalism.”

            In the mid-sixth century, the Vandals and their North African kingdom were the first target of Byzantine Emperor Justinian’s ambitious plan to reconquer the lost territories of the fallen Western Empire. In less than four months, what had been considered one of the strongest Germanic kingdoms had been defeated by a small Roman army led by the general Belisarius. Despite later rebellions, this was the end of the Germanic presence in North Africa, and in many ways the end of the Arian heresy of Christianity. For the Romans it was the incredibly successful start of the reconquest of the lost lands of the Western Empire.
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History of the Wars, Volume I
Books 1–2
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

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History of the Wars, Volume II
Books 3–4
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

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History of the Wars, Volume III
Books 5–6.15
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

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History of the Wars, Volume IV
Books 6.16–7.35
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

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History of the Wars, Volume V
Books 7.36–8
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

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A History of the Weimar Republic
Erich Eyck
Harvard University Press

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A History of the Weimar Republic
Erich Eyck
Harvard University Press

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A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks
Stewart Gordon
University Press of New England, 2017
Stories of disasters at sea, whether about Roman triremes, the treasure fleet of the Spanish Main, or great transatlantic ocean liners, fire the imagination as little else can. From the historical sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania to the recent capsizing of a Mediterranean cruise ship, the study of shipwrecks also makes for a new and very different understanding of world history. A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks explores the age-old, immensely hazardous, persistently romantic, and ongoing process of moving people and goods across the seven seas. In recounting the stories of ships and the people who made and sailed them, from the earliest craft plying the ancient Nile to the Exxon Valdez, Stewart Gordon argues that the gradual integration of mainly local and separate maritime domains into fewer, larger, and more interdependent regions offers a unique perspective on world history. Gordon draws a number of provocative conclusions from his study, among them that the European “Age of Exploration” as a singular event is simply a myth: over the millennia, many cultures, east and west, have explored far-flung maritime worlds, and technologies of shipbuilding and navigation have been among the main drivers of science and exploration throughout history. In a series of compelling narratives, A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks shows that the development of institutions and technologies that made the terrifying oceans familiar and turned unknown seas into well-traveled sea-lanes matters profoundly in our modern world.
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A History of the World in the Twentieth Century
J. A. S. Grenville
Harvard University Press
THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER TWO-VOLUME PAPERBACK EDITION.
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A History of the World in the Twentieth Century
J. A. S. Grenville
Harvard University Press

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER TWO-VOLUME PAPERBACK EDITION.

This now classic history of the world in our century has been updated and expanded to take the history almost to the end of our century. It is being published in paperback in two compact volumes, divided at the time of the Cold War. Volume I covers the years 1900 to 1947 while volume II extends from 1945 to 1996. Grenville has also updated the references and index, and has provided new prefatory material. All illustrations and maps have been retained.

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A History of the World in the Twentieth Century
Enlarged Edition
J. A. S. Grenville
Harvard University Press, 2000

In this enlargement of his outstanding history of the world, Grenville stresses the history of nation-states within a world of interdependence and regional groupings. The twentieth century remains an epoch of revolutionary change. Clashes of culture, the impact of technology, the consequences of industrialization all play out within national borders that are also porous.

In this latest enlarged edition, Grenville has updated the history through 1999 and added new material on the demise of Yugoslavia, with its wars and ethnic cleansing; Clinton's policies in Haiti, Somalia, and Asia; his economic policy; Eastern Europe's new democracies; and the progress of Third World countries. Democracy and the market economy are portrayed as the linchpins of a new century.

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A History of the World Semiconductor Industry
P.R. Morris
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 1990
The book describes the development of semiconductor manufacture on a worldwide basis, from its early beginnings to date. Its approach is wide-ranging, encompassing early experimental work rooted in nineteenth century science, and it includes a brief historical review of the thermionic valve, which played an important part in the genesis of the semiconductor industry. The contents include a description of the establishment and subsequent development of semiconductor manufacture within the various nation states. Although not a technical treatise, major device types and manufacturing processes used in semiconductor fabrication are outlined. Factors affecting the performance of the industry within the major national participants are discussed, and the relationship of the industry to science and technology is also considered.
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The History of the World-Conqueror
Translated from the text of Mirza Muhammad Qazvini
’Ala ad-Din ’Ata Malik Juvaini
Harvard University Press

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A History of Tourism in Africa
Exoticization, Exploitation, and Enrichment
Todd Cleveland
Ohio University Press, 2021
An engaging social history of foreign tourists’ dreams, the African tourism industry’s efforts to fulfill them, and how both sides affect each other. Since the nineteenth century, foreign tourists and resident tourism workers in Africa have mutually relied upon notions of exoticism, but from vastly different perspectives. Many of the countless tourists who have traveled to the African continent fail to acknowledge or even realize that skilled African artists in the tourist industry repeatedly manufacture “authentic” experiences in order to fulfill foreigners’ often delusional, or at least uninformed, expectations. These carefully nurtured and controlled performances typically reinforce tourists’ reductive impressions—formed over centuries—of the continent, its peoples, and even its wildlife. In turn, once back in their respective homelands, tourists’ accounts of their travels often substantiate, and thereby reinforce, prevailing stereotypes of “exotic” Africa. Meanwhile, Africans’ staged performances not only impact their own lives, primarily by generating remunerative opportunities, but also subject the continent’s residents to objectification, exoticization, and myriad forms of exploitation.
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A History of Trust in Ancient Greece
Steven Johnstone
University of Chicago Press, 2011
An enormous amount of literature exists on Greek law, economics, and political philosophy. Yet no one has written a history of trust, one of the most fundamental aspects of social and economic interaction in the ancient world. In this fresh look at antiquity, Steven Johnstone explores the way democracy and markets flourished in ancient Greece not so much through personal relationships as through trust in abstract systems—including money, standardized measurement, rhetoric, and haggling.
Focusing on markets and democratic politics, Johnstone draws on speeches given in Athenian courts, histories of Athenian democracy, comic writings, and laws inscribed on stone to examine how these systems worked. He analyzes their potentials and limitations and how the Greeks understood and critiqued them. In providing the first comprehensive account of these pervasive and crucial systems, A History of Trust in Ancient Greece links Greek political, economic, social, and intellectual history in new ways and challenges contemporary analyses of trust and civil society.
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A History of Twentieth-Century Russia
Robert Service
Harvard University Press, 1998

Russia has had an extraordinary history in the twentieth century. As the first Communist society, the USSR was both an admired model and an object of fear and hatred to the rest of the world.

How are we to make sense of this history? A History of Twentieth-Century Russia treats the years from 1917 to 1991 as a single period and analyzes the peculiar mixture of political, economic, and social ingredients that made up the Soviet formula. Under a succession of leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev, various methods were used to conserve and strengthen this compound. At times the emphasis was upon shaking up the ingredients, at others upon stabilization. All this occurred against a background of dictatorship, civil war, forcible industrialization, terror, world war, and the postwar arms race. Communist ideas and practices never fully pervaded the society of the USSR. Yet an impact was made and, as this book expertly documents, Russia since 1991 has encountered difficulties in completely eradicating the legacy of Communism.

A History of Twentieth-Century Russia is the first work to use the mass of material that has become available in the documentary collections, memoirs, and archives over the past decade. It is an extraordinarily lucid, masterful account of the most complex and turbulent period in Russia's long history.

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A History of Utah International
From Construction to Mining
Sterling D Sessions
University of Utah Press, 2005

The story of how the Utah Construction Company, founded in Ogden, Utah in 1900, became Utah International, a multinational corporation, is known to historians of the American West but perhaps not by the general public. The publication of this book remedies that omission.

During its first decades, the company built railroads and dams and was one of the Six Companies Consortium that built Hoover Dam. Utah Construction was also engaged in numerous war-contract activities during World War II. In the postwar period, the company expanded its activities into mining and land development and moved its headquarters to San Francisco. Changing its name to Utah Construction and Mining, and eventually to Utah International, the corporation became one of the most successful multinational mining companies in the world. In 1976, Utah International and General Electric negotiated the largest yet corporate merger in the United States.

Based on the Utah International archives housed in the Stewart Library at Weber State University, the story of Utah International describes more than projects: it is also the story of how two remarkable entrepreneurs, Marriner Stoddard Eccles and Edmund Wattis Littlefield, transformed the company incorporated in 1900 by the Wattis brothers into the largest and most profitable mining company in the United States.

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A History of Utah Radicalism
Startling, Socialistic, and Decidedly Revolutionary
John S. McCormick
Utah State University Press, 2023

Utah, now one of the most conservative states, has a long tradition of left-wing radicalism. Early Mormon settlers set a precedent with the United Order and other experiments with a socialistic economy. The tradition continued into the more recent past with New Left, anti-apartheid, and other radicals. Throughout, Utah radicalism usually reflected national and international developments. Recounting its long history, McCormick and Sillito focus especially on the Socialist Party of America, which reached a peak of political influence in the first two decades of the twentieth century—in Utah and across the nation.

At least 115 Socialists in over two dozen Utah towns and cities were elected to office in that period, and on seven occasions they controlled governments of five different municipalities. This is a little-known story worth a closer look. Histories of Socialism in the United States have tended to forsake attention to specific, local cases and situations in favor of broader overviews of the movement. By looking closely at Utah's experience, this book helps unravel how American Socialism briefly flowered before rapidly withering in the early twentieth century. It also broadens the conventional understanding of Utah history.

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History Of Utah's American Indians
Forrest S. Cuch
Utah State University Press, 2003

This book is a joint project of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs and the Utah State Historical Society. It is distributed to the book trade by Utah State University Press.

The valleys, mountains, and deserts of Utah have been home to native peoples for thousands of years. Like peoples around the word, Utah's native inhabitants organized themselves in family units, groups, bands, clans, and tribes. Today, six Indian tribes in Utah are recognized as official entities. They include the Northwestern Shoshone, the Goshutes, the Paiutes, the Utes, the White Mesa or Southern Utes, and the Navajos (Dineh). Each tribe has its own government. Tribe members are citizens of Utah and the United States; however, lines of distinction both within the tribes and with the greater society at large have not always been clear. Migration, interaction, war, trade, intermarriage, common threats, and challenges have made relationships and affiliations more fluid than might be expected. In this volume, the editor and authors endeavor to write the history of Utah's first residents from an Indian perspective. An introductory chapter provides an overview of Utah's American Indians and a concluding chapter summarizes the issues and concerns of contemporary Indians and their leaders. Chapters on each of the six tribes look at origin stories, religion, politics, education, folkways, family life, social activities, economic issues, and important events. They provide an introduction to the rich heritage of Utah's native peoples. This book includes chapters by David Begay, Dennis Defa, Clifford Duncan, Ronald Holt, Nancy Maryboy, Robert McPherson, Mae Parry, Gary Tom, and Mary Jane Yazzie.

Forrest Cuch was born and raised on the Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah. He graduated from Westminster College in 1973 with a bachelor of arts degree in behavioral sciences. He served as education director for the Ute Indian Tribe from 1973 to 1988. From 1988 to 1994 he was employed by the Wampanoag Tribe in Gay Head, Massachusetts, first as a planner and then as tribal administrator. Since October 1997 he has been director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.

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History of Vardan and the Armenian War
Eļishē
Harvard University Press, 1982

Here is a fully annotated translation of an Armenian literary classic, the first made from the critical Armenian text.

The sixth-century History of Vardan and the Armenian War describes a revolt of Armenians against the shah of Sasanian Iran in 450-451 in protest against the persecution of Christianity. Elishē uses this occasion to express in more general terms his attitude as a Christian Armenian to the problems of cultural survival and patriotism in a hostile environment. His history profoundly influenced Armenian writers from classical times to the present; its hero, Vardan, remains the ideal figure of a patriot even in Soviet Armenia. Mr. Thomson's introduction places the work in its historical context, while extensive notes identify people and places, explain allusions, and clarify details of the account.

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History of Venice
Pietro BemboEdited and translated by Robert W. Ulery, Jr.
Harvard University Press, 2007
Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), a Venetian nobleman, later a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, was the most celebrated Latin stylist of his day and was widely admired for his writings in Italian as well. His early dialogue on the subject of love greatly influenced the development of the literary vernacular, as did his Prose della volgar lingua (1525). From 1513 to 1521, he served Pope Leo X as Latin secretary and became known as the leading advocate of Ciceronian Latin in Europe and of the Tuscan dialect within Italy. He was named official historian of Venice in 1529 and began to compose in Latin his continuation of the city’s history in twelve books, covering the years from 1487 to 1513. Although the work chronicles internal politics and events, much of it is devoted to the external affairs of Venice, principally conflicts with other European states (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Milan, and the papacy) and with the Turks in the East. The History of Venice was published after Bembo’s death, in Latin and in his own Italian version. This edition, completed by this third volume, makes it available for the first time in English translation.
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History of Venice
Pietro BemboEdited and translated by Robert W. Ulery, Jr.
Harvard University Press, 2007
Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), a Venetian nobleman, later a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, was the most celebrated Latin stylist of his day and was widely admired for his writings in Italian as well. His early dialogue on the subject of love greatly influenced the development of the literary vernacular, as did his Prose della volgar lingua (1525). From 1513 to 1521 he served Pope Leo X as Latin secretary and became known as the leading advocate of Ciceronian Latin in Europe and of the Tuscan dialect within Italy. He was named official historian of Venice in 1529 and began to compose in Latin his continuation of the city’s history in twelve books, covering the years from 1487 to 1513. Although the work chronicles internal politics and events, much of it is devoted to the external affairs of Venice, principally conflicts with other European states (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Milan, and the papacy) and with the Turks in the East. The History of Venice was published after Bembo’s death, in Latin and in his own Italian version. This edition, in a projected three volumes, makes it available for the first time in English translation.
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History of Venice
Pietro BemboEdited and translated by Robert W. Ulery, Jr.
Harvard University Press, 2007
Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), a Venetian nobleman, later a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, was the most celebrated Latin stylist of his day and was widely admired for his writings in Italian as well. His early dialogue on the subject of love greatly influenced the development of the literary vernacular, as did his Prose della volgar lingua (1525). From 1513 to 1521 he served Pope Leo X as Latin secretary and became known as the leading advocate of Ciceronian Latin in Europe and of the Tuscan dialect within Italy. He was named official historian of Venice in 1529 and began to compose in Latin his continuation of the city's history in twelve books, covering the years from 1487 to 1513. Although the work chronicles internal politics and events, much of it is devoted to the external affairs of Venice, principally conflicts with other European states (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Milan, and the papacy) and with the Turks in the East. The History of Venice was published after Bembo's death, in Latin and in his own Italian version. This edition, in a projected three volumes, makes it available for the first time in English translation.
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History of Western Civilization
A Handbook
William H. McNeill
University of Chicago Press, 1986
Renowned historian William H. McNeil provides a brilliant narrative chronology of the development of Western civilization, representing its socio-political as well as cultural aspects. This sixth edition includes new material for the twentieth-century period and completely revised bibliographies. An invaluable tool for the study of Western civilization, the Handbook is an essential complement to readings in primary and secondary sources such as those in the nine-volume University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization.
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The History of Wisconsin, Volume I
From Exploration to Statehood
Alice E. Smith
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1973
Published in 1973, this first volume in the History of Wisconsin series remains the definitive work on Wisconsin's beginnings, from the arrival of the French explorer Jean Nicolet in 1634, to the attainment of statehood in 1848. This volume explores how Wisconsin's Native American inhabitants, early trappers, traders, explorers, and many immigrant groups paved the way for the territory to become a more permanent society. Including nearly two dozen maps as well as illustrations of territorial Wisconsin and portraits of early residents, this volume provides an in-depth history of the beginnings of the state.
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The History of Wisconsin, Volume II
Civil War Era, 1848-1873
Richard N. Current
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1976

This second volume in the History of Wisconsin series introduces us to the first generation of statehood, from the conversion of prairie and forests into farmland to the development of cities and industry. In addition, this volume presents a synthesis of the Civil War and Reconstruction era in Wisconsin. Scarcely a decade after entering the Union, the state was plunged into the nationwide debate over slavery, the secession crisis, and a war in which 11,000 "Badger Boys in Blue" gave their lives. Wisconsin's role in the Civil War is chronicled, along with the post-war years. Complete with photographs from the Historical Society's collections, as well as many pertinent maps, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in this era of Wisconsin's history.

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front cover of The History of Wisconsin, Volume III
The History of Wisconsin, Volume III
Urbanization & Industrialization 1873-1893
Robert C. Nesbit
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1985

Although the years from 1873-1893 lacked the well known, dramatic events of the periods before and after, this period presented a major transformation in Wisconsin's economy. The third volume in the History of Wisconsin series presents a balanced, comprehensive, and witty account of these two decades of dynamic growth and change in Wisconsin society, business, and industry. Concentrating on three major areas: the economy, communities, and politics and government, this volume in the History of Wisconsin series adds substantially to our knowledge and understanding of this crucial, but generally little-understood, period.

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The History of Wisconsin, Volume IV
The Progressive Era, 1893-1914
John D. Buenker
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1998

Published in Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial year, this fourth volume in The History of Wisconsin series covers the twenty tumultuous years between the World's Columbian Exposition and the First World War when Wisconsin essentially reinvented itself, becoming the nation's "laboratory of democracy."

The period known as the Progressive Era began to emerge in the mid-1890s. A sense of crisis and a widespread clamor for reform arose in reaction to rapid changes in population, technology, work, and society. Wisconsinites responded with action: their advocacy of women's suffrage, labor rights and protections, educational reform, increased social services, and more responsive government led to a veritable flood of reform legislation that established Wisconsin as the most progressive state in the union.

As governor and U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., was the most celebrated of the Progressives, but he was surrounded by a host of pragmatic idealists from politics, government, and the state university. Although the Progressives frequently disagreed over priorities and tactics, their values and core beliefs coalesced around broad-based participatory democracy, the application of scientific expertise to governance, and an active concern for the welfare of all members of society-what came to be known as "the Wisconsin Idea."

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front cover of The History of Wisconsin, Volume V
The History of Wisconsin, Volume V
War, a New Era, and Depression, 1914-1940
Paul W. Glad
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1990

The fifth volume in The History of Wisconsin series covers the years from the outbreak of World War I to the eve of American entry into World War II. In between, the rise of the woman's movement, the advent of universal suffrage, and the "great experiment" of Prohibition are explored, along with the contest between newly emergent labor unions and powerful business and industrial corporations. Author Paul W. Glad also investigates the Great Depression in Wisconsin and its impact on rural and urban families in the state. Photographs and maps further illustrate this volume which tells the story of one of the most exciting and stressful eras in the history of the state.

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The History of Wisconsin, Volume VI
Continuity and Change, 1940-1965
William F. Thompson
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1988

The sixth and final volume in the History of Wisconsin series examines the period from 1940-1965, in which state and nation struggled to maintain balance and traditions. Some of the major developments analyzed in this volume include: coping with three wars, racial and societal conflict, technological innovation, population shifts to and from cities and suburbs, and accompanying stress in politics, government, and society as a whole. Using dozens of photographs to visually illustrate this period in the state's history, this volume upholds the high standards set forth in the previous volumes.

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History of Women in the Sciences
Readings from Isis
Edited by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Why is it that some women have created successful careers in science, when historically there have been so many barriers that exclude women from engaging in scientific work? At last, here is a comparative history that illuminates some of the patterns that have emerged in the history of women in science.

This book features some of the most influential and pioneering studies of women in the sciences, with a special focus on patterns of education, access, barriers, and opportunities for women's work in science. Spanning the 17th through the 20th centuries, the book demonstrates the meaning and power of gender experienced by women in the sciences.

Individual chapters focus on exceptional women whose unusual initiativee and particular circumstance led them to engage in science: Laura Bassi, Nettie Stevens, Maria Winkelmann, and others. Chapters on women's access to science discuss collaboration with family members in the domestic sphere, the impact of primers and popular science writing, and formal education in public schools and advanced research institutions. There are examinations of the reasons for clusters of women working in "female friendly" sciences such as botany and physiology in the 19th century and astronomy in the U.S. during the early 20th century.

This important and useful book provides a thoughtful and detailed overview for scholars and students in the history of science, as well as for feminist historians, scientists, and others who who want a comparative and historical analysis of women in the sciences.

Contributors include Janet Browne, Paula Findlen, Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Ann Hibner Koblitz, M. Susan Lindee, Carolyn Merchant, Margaret W. Rossiter, Londa Schiebinger, Nancy Leys Stepan, and Deborah Jean Warner.
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History of Women in the West
Georges Duby
Harvard University Press, 1992

The French Revolution opened a whole new stage in the history of women, despite their conspicuous absence from the playbill. The coming century would see women’s subordination to men codified in all manner of new laws and rules; and yet the period would also witness the birth of feminism, the unprecedented emergence of women as a collective force in the political arena.

The fourth volume in this world-acclaimed series covers the distance between these two poles, between the French Revolution and World War I. It gives us a vibrant picture of a bourgeois century, dynamic and expansive, in which the role of woman in the home was stressed more and more, even as the economic pressures and opportunities of the industrial revolution drew her out of the house; in which woman’s growing role in the family as the center of all morals and virtues pressed her into public service to fight social ills.

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History of Women in the West
Georges Duby
Harvard University Press, 1992

Drawing on myriad sources—from the faint traces left by the rocking of a cradle at the site of an early medieval home to an antique illustration of Eve’s fall from grace—this second volume in the celebrated series offers new perspectives on women of the past. Twelve distinguished historians from many countries examine the image of women in the masculine mind, their social condition, and their daily experience from the demise of the Roman Empire to the genesis of the Italian Renaissance.

More than in any other era, a medieval woman’s place in society was determined by men; her sexuality was perceived as disruptive and dangerous, her proper realm that of the home and cloister. The authors draw upon the writings of bishops and abbots, moralists and merchants, philosophers and legislators, to illuminate how men controlled women’s lives. Sumptuary laws regulating feminine dress and ornament, pastoral letters admonishing women to keep silent and remain chaste, and learned treatises with their fantastic theories about women’s physiology are fully explored in these pages. As adoration of the Virgin Mary reached full flower by the year 1200, ecclesiastics began to envision motherhood as a holy role; misogyny, however, flourished unrestrained in local proverbs, secular verses, and clerical thought throughout the period.

Were women’s fates sealed by the dictates of church and society? The authors investigate legal, economic, and demographic aspects of family and communal life between the sixth and the fifteenth centuries and bring to light the fleeting moments in which women managed to seize some small measure of autonomy over their lives. The notion that courtly love empowered feudal women is discredited in this volume. The pattern of wear on a hearthstone, fingerprints on a terracotta pot, and artifacts from everyday life such as scissors, thimbles, spindles, and combs are used to reconstruct in superb detail the commonplace tasks that shaped women’s existence inside and outside the home. As in antiquity, male fantasies and fears are evident in art. Yet a growing number of women rendered visions of their own gender in sumptuous tapestries and illuminations. The authors look at the surviving texts of female poets and mystics and document the stirrings of a quiet revolution throughout the West, as a few daring women began to preserve their thoughts in writing.

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History of Women in the West
Georges Duby
Harvard University Press, 1992
Has the worst of times for humanity—this century bloodied by wars and revolutions without precedent in history—been the best of times for women? How have the promises of freedom, parity with men, full participation in society, actually been met amid all the transformations and upheavals the twentieth century has witnessed? This fifth volume in the world-acclaimed series brings the history of women up to the present, placing it in the context of momentous events and profound social changes that have marked our time.
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History of Women in the West
Georges Duby
Harvard University Press, 1992
Volume III of A History of Women draws a richly detailed picture of women in early modern Europe, considering them in a context of work, marriage, and family. At the heart of this volume is “woman” as she appears in a wealth of representations, from simple woodcuts and popular literature to master paintings; and as the focal point of a debate—sometimes humorous, sometimes acrimonious—conducted in every field: letters, arts, philosophy, the sciences, and medicine. Against oppressive experience, confining laws, and repetitious claims about female “nature,” women took initiative by quiet maneuvers and outright dissidence. In conformity and resistance, in image and reality, women from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries emerge from these pages in remarkable diversity.
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History of Women in the West
Georges Duby
Harvard University Press, 1992

Informed by the work of seventy-five distinguished historians, this five-volume series sets before us an engaging, panoramic chronicle that extends from antiquity to the present day.

The inaugural volume brings women from the margins of ancient history into the fore. It offers fresh insight into more than twenty centuries of Greek and Roman history and encompasses a landscape that stretches from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and from the Pillars of Hercules to the banks of the Indus. The authors draw upon a wide range of sources including gravestones, floor plans, papyrus rolls, vase paintings, and literary works to illustrate how representations of women evolved during this age. They journey into the minds of men and bring to light an imaginative history of women and of the relations between the sexes.

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A History of Writing
Steven Roger Fischer
Reaktion Books, 2020
From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers an investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world. Illustrated with numerous examples, this book offers a global overview in a format that everyone can follow. Steven Roger Fischer also reveals his own discoveries made since the early 1980s, making it a useful reference for students and specialists as well as a delightful read for lovers of the written word everywhere.
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History of Writing
Steven Roger Fischer
Reaktion Books, 2004
From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers a fascinating investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world.

Commencing with the first stages of information storage, Fischer focuses on the emergence of complete writing systems in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC. He documents the rise of Phoenician and its effect on the Greek alphabet, generating the many alphabetic scripts of the West. Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese writing systems are dealt with in depth, as is writing in pre-Columbian America. Also explored are Western Europe's medieval manuscripts and the history of printing, leading to the innovations in technology and spelling rules of the 19th and 20th centuries.
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A History of Young People in the West
Giovanni Levi
Harvard University Press, 1997

However swiftly it passes, youth is always with us, a perpetual passing phase, an apprenticeship to the myriad ways of the world, subject of panegyrics and diatribes, romances and cautionary tales from antiquity to our day. This two-volume history is the first to present a comprehensive account of what youth has been in the West and what it has meant through the ages. Brought together by Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt, a company of gifted historians and social scientists traces the changing character and status of young people from the gymnasia of ancient Greece to the lycées of modern France, from the sweatshops of the industrial revolution to the crucibles of Nazi youth.

Monumental in its scope, minute in its attention to detail, A History of Young People takes us into the sensational rituals surrounding youth in Roman antiquity (such as the Lupercalia, with its nudity and whipping) and into the chivalric trials awaiting the privileged young of the Middle Ages. Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Michel Pastoureau explore the elusive question of what defines youth, a concept that over time has reached from infancy to the age of forty. Elliott Horowitz and Renata Ago consider the young in the context of the family--within the different worlds of European Judaism and Catholicism through the Renaissance. Sabina Loriga takes us through three centuries of military experience to temper and complicate our assumptions about the youthful face of war. Michelle Perrot focuses on working-class youth, and Jean-Claude Caron on the young at school. The obedient and the rebellious are here, the cherished and the sacrificed, the children catapulted into adult responsibility, the adults who have yet to forsake the protections of childhood. What emerges in this history as never before is a vast, richly textured picture of youth as a changing constant of culture, society, economics, politics, and art, and as a uniquely complex experience of acculturation in every life.

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A History of Young People in the West
Giovanni Levi
Harvard University Press, 1997

However swiftly it passes, youth is always with us, a perpetual passing phase, an apprenticeship to the myriad ways of the world, subject of panegyrics and diatribes, romances and cautionary tales from antiquity to our day. This two-volume history is the first to present a comprehensive account of what youth has been in the West and what it has meant through the ages. Brought together by Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt, a company of gifted historians and social scientists traces the changing character and status of young people from the gymnasia of ancient Greece to the lycées of modern France, from the sweatshops of the industrial revolution to the crucibles of Nazi youth.

Monumental in its scope, minute in its attention to detail, A History of Young People takes us into the sensational rituals surrounding youth in Roman antiquity (such as the Lupercalia, with its nudity and whipping) and into the chivalric trials awaiting the privileged young of the Middle Ages. Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Michel Pastoureau explore the elusive question of what defines youth, a concept that over time has reached from infancy to the age of forty. Elliott Horowitz and Renata Ago consider the young in the context of the family--within the different worlds of European Judaism and Catholicism through the Renaissance. Sabina Loriga takes us through three centuries of military experience to temper and complicate our assumptions about the youthful face of war. Michelle Perrot focuses on working-class youth, and Jean-Claude Caron on the young at school. The obedient and the rebellious are here, the cherished and the sacrificed, the children catapulted into adult responsibility, the adults who have yet to forsake the protections of childhood. What emerges in this history as never before is a vast, richly textured picture of youth as a changing constant of culture, society, economics, politics, and art, and as a uniquely complex experience of acculturation in every life.

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History on the Run
Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies
Ma Vang
Duke University Press, 2021
During its secret war in Laos (1961–1975), the United States recruited proxy soldiers among the Hmong people. Following the war, many of these Hmong soldiers migrated to the United States with refugee status. In History on the Run Ma Vang examines the experiences of Hmong refugees in the United States to theorize refugee histories and secrecy, in particular those of the Hmong. Vang conceptualizes these histories as fugitive histories, as they move and are carried by people who move. Charting the incomplete archives of the war made secret through redacted US state documents, ethnography, film, and literature, Vang shows how Hmong refugees tell their stories in ways that exist separately from narratives of U.S. empire and that cannot be traditionally archived. In so doing, Vang outlines a methodology for writing histories that foreground refugee epistemologies despite systematic attempts to silence those histories.
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History, Power, and Identity
Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492-1992
Jonathan D. Hill
University of Iowa Press, 1996

For the past five centuries, indigenous and African American communities throughout the Americas have sought to maintain and recreate enduring identities under conditions of radical change and discontinuity. The essays in this groundbreaking volume document this cultural activity—this ethnogenesis—within and against the broader contexts of domination; the authors simultaneously encompass the entanglements of local communities in the webs of national and global power relations as well as people's unique abilities to gain control over their history and identity.

By defining ethnogenesis as the synthesis of people's cultural and political struggles, History, Power, and Identity breaks out of the implicit contrast between isolated local cultures and dynamic global history. From the northeastern plains of North America to Amazonia, colonial and independent states in the Americas interacted with vast multilingual and multicultural networks, resulting in the historical emergence of new ethnic identities and the disappearance of many earlier ones. The importance of African, indigenous American, and European religions, myths, and symbols, as historical cornerstones in the building of new ethnic identities, emerges as one of the central themes of this convincing collection.

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History Repeating Itself
The Republication of Children's Historical Literature and the Christian Right
Gregory M. Pfitzer
University of Massachusetts Press, 2014
Recently publishers on the Christian Right have been reprinting nineteenth-century children's history books and marketing them to parents as "anchor texts" for homeschool instruction. Why, Gregory M. Pfitzer asks, would books written more than 150 years ago be presumed suitable for educating twenty-first-century children? The answer, he proposes, is that promoters of these recycled works believe that history as a discipline took a wrong turn in the early twentieth century, when progressive educators introduced social studies methodologies into public school history classrooms, foisting upon unsuspecting and vulnerable children ideologically distorted history books.

In History Repeating Itself, Pfitzer tests these assertions by scrutinizing and contextualizing the original nineteenth-century texts on which these republications are based. He focuses on how the writers borrowed from one another to produce works that were similar in many ways yet differed markedly in terms of pedagogical strategy and philosophy of history. Pfitzer demonstrates that far from being non-ideological, these works were rooted in intense contemporary debates over changing conceptions of childhood.

Pfitzer argues that the repurposing of antiquated texts reveals a misplaced resistance to the idea of a contested past. He also raises essential philosophical questions about how and why curricular decisions are shaped by the "past we choose to remember" on behalf of our children.
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History, Rhetoric, and Proof
Carlo Ginzburg
Brandeis University Press, 1999
Historian Carlo Ginzburg uses the occasion of his Menachem Stern Lectureship to present a provocative and characteristically brilliant examination of the relation between rhetoric and historiography. In four lectures, based on a wide range of texts -- Aristotle's Poetics; humanist Lorenzo Valla's tract exposing the Donation of Constantine as a forgery; an early 18th-century Jesuit historical account purporting to record the diatribe of a Mariana Island native against Spanish rule; and Proust's commentary on Flaubert's style -- he demonstrates that rhetoric, if properly understood, is related not only to ornament but to historical understanding and truth. Ginzburg discovers a middle ground between the empiricist or positivist view of history, and the current postmodern tendency to regard any historical account as just one among an infinity of possible narratives, distinguished or measured not by the standard of truth, but by rhetorical skill. As a whole, these lectures stake out a position that both mediates and transcends warring factions in the current historiographical debate.
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History, the Human, and the World Between
R. Radhakrishnan
Duke University Press, 2008
History, the Human, and the World Between is a philosophical investigation of the human subject and its simultaneous implication in multiple and often contradictory ways of knowing. The eminent postcolonial theorist R. Radhakrishnan argues that human subjectivity is always constituted “between”: between subjective and objective, temporality and historicity, being and knowing, the ethical and the political, nature and culture, the one and the many, identity and difference, experience and system. In this major study, he suggests that a reconstituted phenomenology has a crucial role to play in mediating between generic modes of knowledge production and an experiential return to life. Keenly appreciative of poststructuralist critiques of phenomenology, Radhakrishnan argues that there is still something profoundly vulnerable at stake in the practice of phenomenology.

Radhakrishnan develops his rationale of the “between” through three linked essays where he locates the terms “world,” “history,” “human,” and “subject” between phenomenology and poststructuralism, and in the process sets forth a nuanced reading of the politics of a gendered postcolonial humanism. Critically juxtaposing the works of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrienne Rich, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, David Harvey, and Ranajit Guha, Radhakrishnan examines the relationship between systems of thought and their worldly situations. History, the Human, and the World Between is a powerful argument for a theoretical perspective that combines the existential urgency of phenomenology with the discursive rigor of poststructuralist practices.

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History, Theory, Text
Historians and the Linguistic Turn
Elizabeth A. Clark
Harvard University Press, 2004

In this work of sweeping erudition, one of our foremost historians of early Christianity considers a variety of theoretical critiques to examine the problems and opportunities posed by the ways in which history is written. Elizabeth Clark argues forcefully for a renewal of the study of premodern Western history through engagement with the kinds of critical methods that have transformed other humanities disciplines in recent decades.

History, Theory, Text provides a user-friendly survey of crucial developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century debates surrounding history, philosophy, and critical theory. Beginning with the "noble dream" of "history as it really was" in the works of Leopold von Ranke, Clark goes on to review Anglo-American philosophies of history, schools of twentieth-century historiography, structuralism, the debate over narrative history, the changing fate of the history of ideas, and the impact of interpretive anthropology and literary theory on current historical scholarship. In a concluding chapter she offers some practical case studies to illustrate how attending to theoretical considerations can illuminate the study of premodernity.

Written with energy and clarity, History, Theory, Text is a clarion call to historians for richer and more imaginative use of contemporary theory.

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History, Tragedy, Theory
Dialogues on Athenian Drama
Edited and with an introduction by Barbara Goff
University of Texas Press, 1995

Greek tragedy has held sway over the imagination of audiences for well over two millennia. This collection of essays on Athenian drama, the proceedings of a conference held at the University of Texas at Austin in 1992, demonstrates that Greek tragedy still retains its power to provoke debate and to engage the interest of specialists and non-classicists alike.

The book includes essays by seven of the foremost scholars of Greek drama—Helene Foley, Michelle Gellrich, Peter W. Rose, David Rosenbloom, Richard Seaford, Bernd Seidensticker, and Froma I. Zeitlin. These writers explore the work of all three great tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and approach them from a variety of perspectives on history and theory, including poststructuralism and Marxism. They investigate the possibilities for coordinating theoretically informed readings of tragedy with a renewed attention to the pressure of material history within those texts. The collection thus represents a response within classics to "New Historicism" and the debates it has generated within related literary disciplines.

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History, Volume I
Books 14–19
Ammianus Marcellinus
Harvard University Press

A soldier’s chronicle of Rome in decline.

Ammianus Marcellinus (ca. AD 325–ca. 395), a Greek of Antioch, joined the army when still young and served under the governor Ursicinus and the emperor of the East Constantius II, and later under the emperor Julian, whom he admired and accompanied against the Alamanni and the Persians. He subsequently settled in Rome, where he wrote in Latin a history of the Roman empire in the period AD 96–378, entitled Rerum Gestarum Libri XXXI. Of these 31 books only 14–31 (AD 353–378) survive, a remarkably accurate and impartial record of his own times. Soldier though he was, he includes economic and social affairs. He was broadminded towards non-Romans and towards Christianity. We get from him clear indications of causes of the fall of the Roman empire. His style indicates that his prose was intended for recitation.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ammianus Marcellinus is in three volumes.

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History, Volume II
Books 20–26
Ammianus Marcellinus
Harvard University Press

A soldier’s chronicle of Rome in decline.

Ammianus Marcellinus (ca. AD 325–ca. 395), a Greek of Antioch, joined the army when still young and served under the governor Ursicinus and the emperor of the East Constantius II, and later under the emperor Julian, whom he admired and accompanied against the Alamanni and the Persians. He subsequently settled in Rome, where he wrote in Latin a history of the Roman empire in the period AD 96–378, entitled Rerum Gestarum Libri XXXI. Of these 31 books only 14–31 (AD 353–378) survive, a remarkably accurate and impartial record of his own times. Soldier though he was, he includes economic and social affairs. He was broadminded towards non-Romans and towards Christianity. We get from him clear indications of causes of the fall of the Roman empire. His style indicates that his prose was intended for recitation.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ammianus Marcellinus is in three volumes.

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History, Volume III
Books 27–31. Excerpta Valesiana
Ammianus Marcellinus
Harvard University Press

A soldier’s chronicle of Rome in decline.

Ammianus Marcellinus (ca. AD 325–ca. 395), a Greek of Antioch, joined the army when still young and served under the governor Ursicinus and the emperor of the East Constantius II, and later under the emperor Julian, whom he admired and accompanied against the Alamanni and the Persians. He subsequently settled in Rome, where he wrote in Latin a history of the Roman empire in the period AD 96–378, entitled Rerum Gestarum Libri XXXI. Of these 31 books only 14–31 (AD 353–378) survive, a remarkably accurate and impartial record of his own times. Soldier though he was, he includes economic and social affairs. He was broadminded towards non-Romans and towards Christianity. We get from him clear indications of causes of the fall of the Roman empire. His style indicates that his prose was intended for recitation.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ammianus Marcellinus is in three volumes.

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History Within
The Science, Culture, and Politics of Bones, Organisms, and Molecules
Marianne Sommer
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Personal genomics services such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com now offer what once was science fiction: the ability to sequence and analyze an individual’s entire genetic code—promising, in some cases, facts about that individual’s ancestry that may have remained otherwise lost. Such services draw on and contribute to the science of human population genetics that attempts to reconstruct the history of humankind, including the origin and movement of specific populations. Is it true, though, that who we are and where we come from is written into the sequence of our genomes? Are genes better documents for determining our histories and identities than fossils or other historical sources?
           
Our interpretation of gene sequences, like our interpretation of other historical evidence, inevitably tells a story laden with political and moral values. Focusing on the work of Henry Fairfield Osborn, Julian Sorell Huxley, and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in paleoanthropology, evolutionary biology, and human population genetics, History Within asks how the sciences of human origins, whether through the museum, the zoo, or the genetics lab, have shaped our idea of what it means to be human. How have these biologically based histories influenced our ideas about nature, society, and culture? As Marianne Sommer shows, the stories we tell about bones, organisms, and molecules often change the world.
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History without Chronology
Stefan Tanaka
Lever Press, 2019
Although numerous disciplines recognize multiple ways of conceptualizing time, Stefan Tanaka argues that scholars still overwhelmingly operate on chronological and linear Newtonian or classical time that emerged during the Enlightenment. This short, approachable book implores the humanities and humanistic social sciences to actively embrace the richness of different times that are evident in non-modern societies and have become common in several scientific fields throughout the twentieth century. Tanaka first offers a history of chronology by showing how the social structures built on clocks and calendars gained material expression. Tanaka then proposes that we can move away from this chronology by considering how contemporary scientific understandings of time might be adapted to reconceive the present and pasts. This opens up a conversation that allows for the possibility of other ways to know about and re-present pasts. A multiplicity of times will help us broaden the historical horizon by embracing the heterogeneity of our lives and world via rethinking the complex interaction between stability, repetition, and change. This history without chronology also allows for incorporating the affordances of digital media.
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History's Babel
Scholarship, Professionalization, and the Historical Enterprise in the United States, 1880 - 1940
Robert B. Townsend
University of Chicago Press, 2012
From the late nineteenth century until World War II, competing spheres of professional identity and practice redrew the field of history, establishing fundamental differences between the roles of university historians, archivists, staff at historical societies, history teachers, and others.
 
In History’s Babel, Robert B. Townsend takes us from the beginning of this professional shift—when the work of history included not just original research, but also teaching and the gathering of historical materials—to a state of microprofessionalization that continues to define the field today. Drawing on extensive research among the records of the American Historical Association and a multitude of other sources, Townsend traces the slow fragmentation of the field from 1880 to the divisions of the 1940s manifest today in the diverse professions of academia, teaching, and public history. By revealing how the founders of the contemporary historical enterprise envisioned the future of the discipline, he offers insight into our own historical moment and the way the discipline has adapted and changed over time. Townsend’s work will be of interest not only to historians but to all who care about how the professions of history emerged, how they might go forward, and the public role they still can play.
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History's Erratics
Irish Catholic Dissidents and the Transformation of American Capitalism, 1870-1930
David M. Emmons
University of Illinois Press, 2024

As Ice Age glaciers left behind erratics, so the external forces of history tumbled the Irish into America. Existing both out of time and out of space, a diverse range of these Roman-Catholic immigrants saw their new country in a much different way than did the Protestants who settled and claimed it. These erratics chose backward looking tradition and independence over assimilation and embraced a quintessentially Irish form of subversiveness that arose from their culture, faith, and working-class outlook. David M. Emmons draws on decades of research and thought to plumb the mismatch of values between Protestant Americans hostile to Roman Catholicism and the Catholic Irish strangers among them. Joining ethnicity and faith to social class, Emmons explores the unique form of dissidence that arose when Catholic Irish workers and their sympathizers rejected the beliefs and symbols of American capitalism.

A vibrant and original tour de force, History’s Erratics explores the ancestral roots of Irish nonconformity and defiance in America.

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History's Memory
Writing America’s Past, 1880-1980
Ellen Fitzpatrick
Harvard University Press, 2004

Enthusiasts and critics both have looked to the political upheavals of the 1960s to explain recent transformations in historical study. But how new, in fact, are our contemporary approaches to the study and writing of American history? This question lies at the heart of History's Memory, Ellen Fitzpatrick's sweeping study of the past century of American historical writing.

Through careful examination of hundreds of historical essays and books, Fitzpatrick has uncovered striking continuities in the writing of American history. The contributions of earlier scholars, some of them outside the mainstream of the historical profession, reveal that interest in the history of women, African Americans, Native Americans, and the working class has been long-standing. Whether in the Progressive era's attention to issues of class, or in the renewed concern with Native Americans in the 1930s and 1940s, Fitzpatrick demonstrates that over the past century historians have frequently grappled with issues that we think of today as innovative.

This reinterpretation of a century of American historical writing challenges the notion that the politics of the recent past alone explains the politics of history. Fitzpatrick offers a wise historical perspective on today's heated debates, and reclaims the long line of historians who tilled the rich and diverse soil of our past.

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History's Shadow
Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century
Steven Conn
University of Chicago Press, 2004
Who were the Native Americans? Where did they come from and how long ago? Did they have a history, and would they have a future? Questions such as these dominated intellectual life in the United States during the nineteenth century. And for many Americans, such questions about the original inhabitants of their homeland inspired a flurry of historical investigation, scientific inquiry, and heated political debate.

History's Shadow traces the struggle of Americans trying to understand the people who originally occupied the continent claimed as their own. Steven Conn considers how the question of the Indian compelled Americans to abandon older explanatory frameworks for sovereignty like the Bible and classical literature and instead develop new ones. Through their engagement with Native American language and culture, American intellectuals helped shape and define the emerging fields of archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, and art. But more important, the questions posed by the presence of the Indian in the United States forced Americans to confront the meaning of history itself, both that of Native Americans and their own: how it should be studied, what drove its processes, and where it might ultimately lead. The encounter with Native Americans, Conn argues, helped give rise to a distinctly American historical consciousness.

A work of enormous scope and intellect, History's Shadow will speak to anyone interested in Native Americans and their profound influence on our cultural imagination.

History’s Shadow is an intelligent and comprehensive look at the place of Native Americans in Euro-American’s intellectual history. . . . Examining literature, painting, photography, ethnology, and anthropology, Conn mines the written record to discover how non-Native Americans thought about Indians.” —Joy S. Kasson, Los Angeles Times

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Histrionics
Three Plays
Thomas Bernhard
University of Chicago Press, 1990
Although he is best known in the United States as a novelist, Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard has been hailed in Europe as one of the most significant and controversial of contemporary playwrights. George Steiner has predicted that the current era in German-language literature will be recognized as the "Bernhard period"; John Updike compares Bernhard with Kafka, Grass, Handke, and Weiss. His dark, absurdist plays can be likened to those of Beckett and Pinter, but their cultural and political concerns are distinctly Bernhard's. While Austria's recent political history lends particular credibility to Bernhard's satire, his criticisms are directed at the modern world generally; his plays grapple with questions of totalitarianism and the subjection of the individual and with notions of reality and appearance.
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Hitler and His Generals
The Hidden Crisis, January-June 1938
Harold C. Deutsch
University of Minnesota Press, 1974

Hitler and His Generals was first published in 1974. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The author, who told the story of second of four conspiratorial rounds in his earlier book The Conspiracy against Hitler in the Twilight War,describes here the situations and events leading up to the first round of conspiracy. The present volume deals with the virtual coup d'etat by which Hitler sought to establish ascendancy over the Wehrmacht early in 1938.

The account focuses on sensational events centering about Hitler's successful efforts to oust Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, the War Minister, and Colonel General Baron von Fritsch, the Army commander in chief, in order to consolidate control of the military in his own hands. Using as an excuse Blomberg's marriage to a woman with a discreditable past, he forced Blomberg's resignation. He accomplished Fritsch's resignation through charges of homosexuality which were trumped up by Himmler, Heydrich, and Goering. He then appointed Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch, who was under personal obligation to him, as commander in chief. Through these moves, as Dr. Deutsch shows, Hitler closed the door to all means other than conspiracy for the active Opposition movement to express itself against his aggressive policies. The story of the first round of conspiracy will be the subject of another book by Professor Deutsch, to be published later.
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Hitler and the Germans
Eric Voegelin, Edited, Translated, & Intro by Detlev Clemens & Brendan Purcell
University of Missouri Press, 2003
Between 1933 and 1938, Eric Voegelin published four books that brought him into increasingly open opposition to the Hitler regime in Germany. As a result, he was forced to leave Austria in 1938, narrowly escaping arrest by the Gestapo as he fled to Switzerland and later to the United States. Twenty years later, he was invited to return to Germany as director of the new Institute of Political Science at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.
In 1964, Voegelin gave a series of memorable lectures on what he considered "the central German experiential problem" of his time: Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the reasons for it, and its consequences for post-Nazi Germany. For Voegelin, these issues demanded a scrutiny of the mentality of individual Germans and of the order of German society during and after the Nazi period. Hitler and the Germans offers Voegelin's most extensive and detailed critique of the Hitler era.
While most of the lectures deal with what Voegelin called Germany’s "descent into the depths" of the moral and spiritual abyss of Nazism and its aftermath, they also point toward a restoration of order. His lecture "The Greatness of Max Weber" shows how Weber, while affected by the culture within which Hitler came to power, had already gone beyond it through his anguished recovery of the experience of transcendence.
Hitler and the Germans provides a profound alternative approach to the topic of the individual German's entanglement in the Hitler regime and its continuing implications. This comprehensive critique of the Nazi period has yet to be matched.
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Hitler in History
Eberhard Jäckel
Brandeis University Press, 1989
A leading interpreter of the Nazi period addresses crucial issues in modern European and contemporary history.
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Hitler Youth
Michael H. Kater
Harvard University Press, 2004

In modern times, the recruitment of children into a political organization and ideology reached its boldest embodiment in the Hitler Youth, founded in 1933 soon after the Nazi Party assumed power in Germany. Determining that by age ten children's minds could be turned from play to politics, the regime inducted nearly all German juveniles between the ages of ten and eighteen into its state-run organization. The result was a potent tool for bending young minds and hearts to the will of Adolf Hitler.

Baldur von Schirach headed a strict chain of command whose goal was to shift the adolescents' sense of obedience from home and school to the racially defined Volk and the Third Reich. Luring boys and girls into Hitler Youth ranks by offering them status, uniforms, and weekend hikes, the Nazis turned campgrounds into premilitary training sites, air guns into machine guns, sing-alongs into marching drills, instruction into indoctrination, and children into Nazis. A few resisted for personal or political reasons, but the overwhelming majority enlisted.

Drawing on original reports, letters, diaries, and memoirs, Kater traces the history of the Hitler Youth, examining the means, degree, and impact of conversion, and the subsequent fate of young recruits. Millions of Hitler Youth joined the armed forces; thousands gleefully participated in the subjugation of foreign peoples and the obliteration of "racial aliens." Although young, they committed crimes against humanity for which they cannot escape judgment. Their story stands as a harsh reminder of the moral bankruptcy of regimes that make children complicit in crimes of the state.

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A Hitler Youth in Poland
The Nazi Children's Evacuation Program During World War II
Jost Hermand
Northwestern University Press, 1997
Jost Hermand's A Hitler Youth in Poland is an invaluable first-hand account of his experience in Nazi education camps for German children, four in Poland. An important addition to the growing record of the childhood experiences of so-called Kriegskinder (children of war) in Germany during the Nazi regime, A Hitler Youth in Poland is a memoir of Germany's Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) program, by which German children were evacuated from large cities to countryside camps designed to toughen and prepare them for future careers in the military.

During the Nazi era, millions of German children between the ages of seven and sixteen were taken from their homes and sent to Hitler Youth paramilitary camps to be toughened up and taught how to be "German." Separated from their families and sent to the far-flung corners of Europe, these children often endured incredible abuse by the adults in charge. In this memoir, Jost Hermand, a cultural critic and historian who spent much of his youth in five different camps, writes about his experiences as a small, unathletic boy thrown into a "wolf pack" governed by brutalization, dreary routine, and sadism.

Intelligent and persuasive, A Hitler Youth in Poland should be read by anyone interested in psychology or the history of everyday life in Hitler's Germany and the mental scars of adults born during the Nazi regime.
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Hitler’s Economy
Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933–1936
Dan P. Silverman
Harvard University Press, 1998

When Hitler assumed the German chancellorship in January 1933, 34 percent of Germany’s work force was unemployed. By 1936, before Hitler’s rearmament program took hold of the economy, most of the jobless had disappeared from official unemployment statistics. How did the Nazis put Germany back to work? Was the recovery genuine? If so, how and why was it so much more successful than that of other industrialized nations? Hitler’s Economy addresses these questions and contributes to our understanding of the internal dynamics and power structure of the Nazi regime in the early years of the Third Reich.

Dan Silverman focuses on Nazi direct work creation programs, utilizing rich archival sources to trace the development and implementation of these programs at the regional and local level. He rigorously evaluates the validity of Nazi labor market statistics and reassesses the relative importance of road construction, housing, land reclamation, and resettlement in Germany’s economic recovery, while providing new insights into how these projects were financed. He illuminates the connection between work creation and Nazi race, agriculture, and resettlement policies. Capping his work is a comparative analysis of economic recovery during the 1930s in Germany, Britain, and the United States.

Silverman concludes that the recovery in Germany between 1933 and 1936 was real, not simply the product of statistical trickery and the stimulus of rearmament, and that Nazi work creation programs played a significant role. However, he argues, it was ultimately the workers themselves, toiling under inhumane conditions in labor camps, who paid the price for this recovery. Nazi propaganda glorifying the “dignity of work” masked the brutal reality of Hitler’s “economic miracle.”

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Hitler's Geographies
The Spatialities of the Third Reich
Edited by Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Lebensraum: the entitlement of “legitimate” Germans to living space. Entfernung: the expulsion of “undesirables” to create empty space for German resettlement. During his thirteen years leading Germany, Hitler developed and made use of a number of powerful geostrategical concepts such as these in order to justify his imperialist expansion, exploitation, and genocide. As his twisted manifestation of spatial theory grew in Nazi ideology, it created a new and violent relationship between people and space in Germany and beyond.
 
With Hitler’s Geographies, editors Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca examine the variety of ways in which spatial theory evolved and was translated into real-world action under the Third Reich. They have gathered an outstanding collection by leading scholars, presenting key concepts and figures as well exploring the undeniable link between biopolitical power and spatial expansion and exclusion.
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Hitler's Heroines
Stardom & Womanhood In Nazi Cinema
Antje Ascheid
Temple University Press, 2003
German film-goers flocked to see musicals and melodramas during the Nazi era. Although the Nazis seemed to require that every aspect of ordinary life advance the fascist project, even the most popular films depicted characters and desires that deviated from the politically correct ideal. Probing into the contradictory images of womanhood that surfaced in these films, Antje Ascheid shows how Nazi heroines negotiated the gender conflicts that confronted contemporary women.The careers of Kristina Soderbaum, Lilian Harvey, and Zarah Leander speak to the Nazis' need to address and contain the "woman question," to redirect female subjectivity and desires to self sacrifice for the common good (i.e., national socialism). Hollywood's new women and glamorous dames were out; the German wife and mother were in. The roles and star personas assigned to these actresses, though intended to entertain the public in a politically conformist way, point to the difficulty of yoking popular culture to ideology.
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Hitler's Justice
The Courts of the Third Reich, with an introduction by Detlev Vagts
Ingo Müller
Harvard University Press, 1991

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Hitler’s Shadow Empire
Nazi Economics and the Spanish Civil War
Pierpaolo Barbieri
Harvard University Press, 2015

Pitting fascists and communists in a showdown for supremacy, the Spanish Civil War has long been seen as a grim dress rehearsal for World War II. Francisco Franco’s Nationalists prevailed with German and Italian military assistance—a clear instance, it seemed, of like-minded regimes joining forces in the fight against global Bolshevism. In Hitler’s Shadow Empire Pierpaolo Barbieri revises this standard account of Axis intervention in the Spanish Civil War, arguing that economic ambitions—not ideology—drove Hitler’s Iberian intervention. The Nazis hoped to establish an economic empire in Europe, and in Spain they tested the tactics intended for future subject territories.

“The Spanish Civil War is among the 20th-century military conflicts about which the most continues to be published…Hitler’s Shadow Empire is one of few recent studies offering fresh information, specifically describing German trade in the Franco-controlled zone. While it is typically assumed that Nazi Germany, like Stalinist Russia, became involved in the Spanish Civil War for ideological reasons, Pierpaolo Barbieri, an economic analyst, shows that the motives of the two main powers were quite different.
—Stephen Schwartz, Weekly Standard

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Hitler's Tyranny
A History in Ten Chapters
Ralf Georg Reuth
Haus Publishing, 2022
A fresh, stimulating look at Adolf Hitler and his dictatorship throughout the study of ten key aspects.
 
Hitler’s tyranny is still difficult to understand today. In this book, Ralf Georg Reuth examines ten aspects of this catastrophe. Among other things, he asks: Was anti-Semitism more pronounced in Germany than elsewhere? Was Versailles really responsible for Hitler’s rise and why did the Germans follow a racial fanatic like him? How did his war differ from all others before it? The disturbing answers provide an overall picture that shows Hitler was not the consequence of the depths of German history, but the result of chance, deception, and seduction.

This thought-provoking new study takes aim at several of the norms of Hitler scholarship from the past forty years. Reuth interrogates and challenges a range of orthodox views on such topics as how mainstream politicians facilitated Hitler’s rise to power, the Führer’s infamous pact with Stalin, and the complicity of ordinary Germans in his genocidal tyranny. Eschewing a conventional chronological approach in favor of a forensic analysis of Hitler’s mainsprings of action both as chancellor and military commander, Reuth portrays Hitler as the apotheosis of what he argues is a specifically German strain of militarism and imperialism, shifting the focus firmly back to the mindset and modus operandi of Hitler himself. The portrait that emerges is one of a murderous fantasist and political opportunist driven by an all-embracing ideology of racial superiority. Reuth’s account courts controversy on a number of points and offers a fascinating counterpoint to much recent scholarship.
 
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Hitler’s World View
A Blueprint for Power
Eberhard Jäckel
Harvard University Press
Even the demonic Hitler had a comprehensive philosophy, and Eberhard Jäckel probes deeply into the dictator’s mind to determine how he viewed the world.
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Hitting A Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston
Susan E Meisenhelder
University of Alabama Press, 2001
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick examines the ways Zora Neale Hurston circumvented the constraints of the white publishing world and a predominantly white readership to critique white culture and its effects on the black community. A number of critics have concluded that Hurston simply capitulated to external demands, writing stories white people wanted to hear. Susan Edwards Meisenhelder, however, argues that Hurston’s response to her situation is much more sophisticated than her detractors recognized. Meisenhelder suggests, in fact, that Hurston’s work, both fictional and anthropological, constitutes an extended critique of the values of white culture and a rejection of white models for black people. Repeatedly, Hurston’s work shows the diverse effects that traditional white values, including class divisions and gender imbalances, have on blacks.
 
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Hitting the Brakes
Engineering Design and the Production of Knowledge
Ann Johnson
Duke University Press, 2009
In Hitting the Brakes, Ann Johnson illuminates the complex social, historical, and cultural dynamics of engineering design, in which knowledge communities come together to produce new products and knowledge. Using the development of antilock braking systems for passenger cars as a case study, Johnson shows that the path to invention is neither linear nor top-down, but highly complicated and unpredictable. Individuals, corporations, university research centers, and government organizations informally coalesce around a design problem that is continually refined and redefined as paths of development are proposed and discarded, participants come and go, and information circulates within the knowledge community. Detours, dead ends, and failures feed back into the developmental process, so that the end design represents the convergence of multiple, diverse streams of knowledge.

The development of antilock braking systems (ABS) provides an ideal case study for examining the process of engineering design because it presented an array of common difficulties faced by engineers in research and development. ABS did not develop predictably. Research and development took place in both the public and private sectors and involved individuals working in different disciplines, languages, institutions, and corporations. Johnson traces ABS development from its first patents in the 1930s to the successful 1978 market introduction of integrated ABS by Daimler and Bosch. She examines how a knowledge community first formed around understanding the phenomenon of skidding, before it turned its attention to building instruments to measure, model, and prevent cars’ wheels from locking up. While corporations’ accounts of ABS development often present a simple linear story, Hitting the Brakes describes the full social and cognitive complexity and context of engineering design.

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Hittite Local Cults
Michele Cammarosano
SBL Press, 2018

An innovative translation and analysis of Hittite local festivals and of their economic and social dimensions for students and scholars

This English translation of the Hittite cult inventories provides a vivid portrait of the religion, economy, and administration of Bronze Age provincial towns and villages of the Hittite Empire. These texts report the state of local shrines and festivals and document the interplay between the central power and provincial communities on religious affairs. Brief introductions to each text make the volume accessible to students and scholars alike.

Features:

  • Critical editions of Hittite cult inventories, some of which are edited for the first time, with substantial improvements in readings and interpretations
  • The first systematic study of the linguistic aspects of Hittite administrative jargon
  • An up-to-date study of Hittite cult images and iconography of the gods

Michele Cammarosano currently leads a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft-funded project on Hittite cultic administration at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg. His research interests focus on cuneiform palaeography and Hittite religion.

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The Hittites and Their World
Billie Jean Collins
SBL Press, 2007
Lost to history for millennia, the Hittites have regained their position among the great civilizations of the Late Bronze Age Near East, thanks to a century of archaeological discovery and philological investigation. The Hittites and Their World provides a concise, current, and engaging introduction to the history, society, and religion of this Anatolian empire, taking the reader from its beginnings in the period of the Assyrian Colonies in the nineteenth century B.C.E. to the eclipse of the Neo-Hittite cities at the end of the eighth century B.C.E. The numerous analogues with the biblical world featured throughout the volume together represent a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the varied and significant contributions of Hittite studies to biblical interpretation.
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The Hittites
Lost Civilizations
Damien Stone
Reaktion Books, 2023
An accessible introduction to the Bronze Age culture in Asia Minor. 
 
Famed for their warriors, the Hittites flourished in the region of modern Turkey from the seventeenth to thirteenth centuries BC. In this book, archaeologist Damien Stone explores the rich history of the Hittite civilization beyond their skill in battle, from religious reverence for the sun and storms to eclectic rock carvings which survive to this day. Stone describes the colorful succession of Hittite rulers, complete with assassinations, intrigue, and an evil stepmother, but he also parses the development of the Hittite language and considers the Hittites’ legacy in religion, art, and culture today. In short, The Hittites is a wide-ranging, accessible introduction to this vibrant ancient culture.
 
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HIV Exceptionalism
Development through Disease in Sierra Leone
Adia Benton
University of Minnesota Press, 2015

WINNER, 2017 RACHEL CARSON PRIZE, SOCIETY FOR THE SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE

In 2002, Sierra Leone emerged from a decadelong civil war. Seeking international attention and development aid, its government faced a dilemma. Though devastated by conflict, Sierra Leone had a low prevalence of HIV. However, like most African countries, it stood to benefit from a large influx of foreign funds specifically targeted at HIV/AIDS prevention and care.

What Adia Benton chronicles in this ethnographically rich and often moving book is how one war-ravaged nation reoriented itself as a country suffering from HIV at the expense of other, more pressing health concerns. During her fieldwork in the capital, Freetown, a city of one million people, at least thirty NGOs administered internationally funded programs that included HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Benton probes why HIV exceptionalism—the idea that HIV is an exceptional disease requiring an exceptional response—continues to guide approaches to the epidemic worldwide and especially in Africa, even in low-prevalence settings.

In the fourth decade since the emergence of HIV/AIDS, many today are questioning whether the effort and money spent on this health crisis has in fact helped or exacerbated the problem. HIV Exceptionalism does this and more, asking, what are the unanticipated consequences that HIV/AIDS development programs engender?

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Hives of Sickness
Public Health and Epidemics in New York City
Rosner, David
Rutgers University Press, 1995

An 1865 report on public health in New York painted a grim picture of "high brick blocks and closely-packed houses . . . literally hives of sickness" propagating epidemics of cholera, smallpox, typhoid, typhus, and yellow fever, which swept through the whole city. In this stimulating collection of essays, nine historians of American medicine explore New York's responses to its public health crises from colonial times to the present. The essays illustrate the relationship between the disease environment of New York and changes in housing, population, social conditions, and the success of medical science, linking such factors to New York's experiences with smallpox, polio, and AIDS.

The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in American public health and the social history of New York.

The contributors are Ronald Bayer, Elizabeth Blackmar, Gretchen A. Condran, Elizabeth Fee, Daniel M. Fox, Evelynn M. Hammonds, Alan M. Kraut, Judith Walzer Leavitt, and Naomi Rogers. David Rosner is a professor of history at Baruch College and The Graduate School of the City University of New York. Robert R. Macdonald is the director of the Museum of the City of New York.

A publication of the Museum of the City of New York


Choice Reviews 1995 November

This is one of a series of books focusing on the impact of disease intended to enhance the understanding of both past and present regarding reactions to periodic epidemics. Robert B. Macdonald, director of the Museum of the City of New York, which supports this series, states: "The individual and collective responses to widespread sickness are mirrors to the cultural, religious, economic, political, and social histories of cities and nations." Rosner selected eight renowned and respected individuals to describe the reactions and responses to smallpox, polio, and AIDS epidemics in New York City since 1860, and the efforts of officials and professionals to deal with the impact of disease. Essayists present disease broadly from economic, social, political, and health perspectives. Causes of epidemics include the expected and usual: thousands of immigrants pouring into the city, inadequate water and food supplies, lack of sewage disposal, unemployment leading to poverty. An unexpected cause was the avarice of real estate investors, inexorably driving up housing costs.

Highly recommended for all students of history, public health, health policy, and sociology. Upper-division undergraduate through professional. Copyright 1999 American Library Association

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Hizbullah's Documents
From the 1985 Open Letter to the 2009 Manifesto
Joseph Alagha
Amsterdam University Press, 2011

Despite the controversial reputation of Hizbullah in the West, and the significant role this powerful Islamist organization plays in Lebanese politics, there are few reliable, published English translations of the party’s primary documents. With this extensive work, Joseph Alagha seeks to remedy this problem and rectify the distortions and misrepresentations that have resulted from inaccurate translations.

Through privileged access to the party, Alagha was able to compile and meticulously translate a host of original primary documents, from the party’s 1985 Open Letter; through its eight clandestine conclaves from 1989 to 2009; to all of its election programs from 1992 to 2010, as well as all of the agreements, understandings, and pacts the party has ratified over the years; ending with the 2009 Political Manifesto. This firsthand portrait of Hizbullah’s metamorphosis, especially in the past decade, is complete with thorough footnotes, commentary, background information, chronology, and a detailed introductory chapter that maps the party’s transformation by analytically comparing the Open Letter with the 2009 Manifesto. This volume will be an invaluable companion for both scholars and policy makers.

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Hizbullah's Identity Construction
Joseph Alagha
Amsterdam University Press, 2011

As the dominant political force in Lebanon and one of the most powerful post-Islamist organizations in the world, Hizbullah is a source of great controversy and uncertainty in the West. Despite the significant attention paid to this group by the media, the details of Hizbullah’s evolution have frequently confounded politicians—and even scholars. In this important study, Joseph Alagha, a scholar with unprecedented access to the organization, exhaustively and objectively analyzes Hizbullah’s historical evolution and offers a revolutionary new perspective on the political phenomenon of the organization.

Hizbullah’s Identity Construction is a timely examination of one of the world’s most turbulent regions; a major contribution to the study of contemporary Islamic political movements in the Middle East; and a refreshing departure from the bland hagiographies and ad hominem attacks that are all too common in studies of Hizbullah’s murky history. Superbly documented and argued, and rooted in broad knowledge of contemporary Islamist political thought, this study brings much-needed clarity to a hot-button subject.
 
“Joseph Alagha remains one of the most thorough and careful analysts of Hizbullah’s political ideology and practice. Scholars, analysts, and policy makers will find in this work a veritable treasure trove of research and insights into this complex organization.”—Michaelle Browers, Wake Forest University
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Hmong America
Reconstructing Community in Diaspora
Chia Youyee Vang
University of Illinois Press, 2010
The first scholarly work to come from inside the Hmong community, Hmong America documents Chia Youyee Vang's own migration from Laos to Minnesota at age nine and the transformations she has witnessed in Hmong communities throughout the migration and settlement processes.

Vang depicts Hmong experiences in Asia and examines aspects of community building in America to reveal how new Hmong identities have been formed and how they have challenged popular assumptions about race and ethnicity in multicultural America. Combining participant observation and archival research with personal experience, Vang constructs a nuanced and complex portrait of the more than 130,000 Hmong people who came to the United States as political refugees beginning in the mid-1970s. Her critique of previous representations of the Hmong community provides the sociological underpinnings for a bold reassessment of Hmong history in the greater context of globalization. This new understanding redefines concepts of Hmong homogeneity and characterizes ordinary Hmong migrants not as passive victims but as dynamic actors who have exercised much power over their political and social destinies.

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