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Well of Souls: Uncovering The Banjo's Hidden History
Par Kristina R. Gaddy. 2022
One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year Named one of the Most Memorable Music Books of the…
Year by No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music “Compelling.… [R]eveals [an instrument] intimately rooted in the African diaspora and capable of expressing flights of sorrow and joy.” —David Yezzi, Wall Street Journal An illuminating history of the banjo, revealing its origins at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives, and art, she traces the banjo’s beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood. Gaddy shows how the enslaved carried this unique instrument as they were transported and sold by slaveowners throughout the Americas, to Suriname, the Caribbean, and the colonies that became U.S. states, including Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland, and New York. African Americans came together at rituals where the banjo played an essential part. White governments, rightfully afraid that the gatherings could instigate revolt, outlawed them without success. In the mid-nineteenth century, Blackface minstrels appropriated the instrument for their bands, spawning a craze. Eventually the banjo became part of jazz, bluegrass, and country, its deepest history forgotten.The Reconstruction of Chinese Sociology: An Oral History of 40 Sociologists (1979–2019)
Par Zhou Xiaohong. 2023
Tracing the evolution of Chinese Sociology from the late 1970s to the present day, the book aims to record the…
path of reconstruction, localization, change, and reform of Chinese Sociology through interviews with 40 Chinese top sociologists such as Su Guoxun, Zhou Xiaohong, Bian Yanjie, Zhao Dingxin, Zhou Xueguang et al. Divided into three sections, this insightful book is the best proof of the rapid development and overall improvement of the discipline since the reform and opening-up in China. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the restoration and reconstruction of Chinese Sociology, this book is expected to inspire the younger generation of sociology researchers and deepen public’s understanding of sociology.The Rastafarians: Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Par Leonard Barrett, Leonard E. Barrett. 1997
The classic work on the history and beliefs of the Rastafarians, whose roots of protest go back to the seventeenth-century…
maroon societies of escaped slaves in Jamaica. Based on an extensive study of the Rastafarians, their history, their ideology, and their influence in Jamaica, The Rastafarians is an important contribution to the sociology of religion and to our knowledge of the variety of religious expressions that have grown up during the West African Diaspora in the Western Hemisphere.The Malay Archipelago
Par Alfred Russel Wallace. 2014
Of all the extraordinary Victorian travelogues, The Malay Archipelago has a fair claim to be the greatest - both as…
a beautiful, alarming, vivid and gripping account of some eight years' travel across the entire Malay world - from Singapore to the western edges of New Guinea - and as the record of a great mind. As Wallace, often under conditions of terrible hardship and sickness, battles through jungles, lives with headhunters, and collects beetles, butterflies and birds-of-paradise, he makes discoveries about the workings of biology that have shaped our view of the world ever since.Landmarks
Par Robert Macfarlane. 2015
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZEFrom the bestselling author of UNDERLAND, THE OLD WAYS and THE…
LOST WORDS'Few books give such a sense of enchantment; it is a book to give to many, and to return to repeatedly' Independent 'Enormously pleasurable, deeply moving. A bid to save our rich hoard of landscape language, and a blow struck for the power of a deep creative relationship to place' Financial Times'A book that ought to be read by policymakers, educators, armchair environmentalists and active conservationists the world over' Guardian 'Gorgeous, thoughtful and lyrical' Independent on Sunday'Feels as if [it] somehow grew out of the land itself. A delight' Sunday TimesDiscover Robert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two.Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather.Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it.Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders: The Pioneering Adventures of the First Professional Women
Par Jane Robinson. 2020
It is a myth that either of the World Wars liberated women.The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was one…
of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern Britain. It marked at once political watershed and a social revolution; the point at which women of 21 and over were recognised in law as being as competent as men. But were they? What actually happened when this bill was passed? This is the story of what happened next.Ladies Can't Climb Ladders focuses on the lives of six women - six pioneers - forging paths in the fields of medicine, law, academia, architecture, engineering and the church. Robinson's startling study into the public and private lives of these women sheds light not on the desires and ambitions of her subjects but how family and society responded to the working woman and what their legacy looks like today. This book is written in their honour. It is a book about live subjects: equal opportunity, the gender pay gap, and whether women can expect, or indeed deserve, to have it at all.'An important and crackingly good read.' - TelegraphThe Making of the British Landscape: How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today
Par Francis Pryor. 2010
This is the changing story of Britain as it has been preserved in our fields, roads, buildings, towns and villages,…
mountains, forests and islands. From our suburban streets that still trace out the boundaries of long vanished farms to the Norfolk Broads, formed when medieval peat pits flooded, from the ceremonial landscapes of Stonehenge to the spread of the railways - evidence of how man's effect on Britain is everywhere. In The Making of the British Landscape, eminent historian, archaeologist and farmer, Francis Pryor explains how to read these clues to understand the fascinating history of our land and of how people have lived on it throughout time. Covering both the urban and rural and packed with pictures, maps and drawings showing everything from how we can still pick out Bronze Age fields on Bodmin Moor to how the Industrial Revolution really changed our landscape, this book makes us look afresh at our surroundings and really see them for the first time.The Making of Tesco: A Story of British Shopping
Par Sarah Ryle. 2013
From one man’s Hackney market stall to a company serving fifty million customers in thirteen countries every week, this is…
the extraordinary story of one of Britain’s most remarkable companies. Told by those who themselves feature in it – Tesco’s own employees – it relates a fascinating social history as well as an epic business venture.Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with Tesco staff, collected by National Life Stories at the British Library, these personal accounts from across the decades are frank, insightful, sometimes funny and, above all, very human.How, then, did Tesco grow from Jack Cohen’s barrow in Hackney to the hypermarkets in Hungary and Thailand and a home-delivery service to customers from Cheshire to the Czech Republic? Why and how did Tesco survive and (mostly) thrive where other British companies stalled? And what impact has Tesco’s success had on its employees and consumers? Here is Tesco’s authentic story, carefully researched and engagingly written by Sarah Ryle, told for the first time by the people at the very heart of the business.Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain
Par Clair Wills. 2017
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018 TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017'Generous and empathetic ... opens up postwar migration in…
all its richness' Sukhdev Sandhu, Guardian'Groundbreaking, sophisticated, original, open-minded ... essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not only the transformation of British society after the war but also its character today' Piers Brendon, Literary Review'Lyrical, full of wise and original observations' David Goodhart, The TimesThe battered and exhausted Britain of 1945 was desperate for workers - to rebuild, to fill the factories, to make the new NHS work. From all over the world and with many motives, thousands of individuals took the plunge. Most assumed they would spend just three or four years here, sending most of their pay back home, but instead large numbers stayed - and transformed the country.Drawing on an amazing array of unusual and surprising sources, Clair Wills' wonderful new book brings to life the incredible diversity and strangeness of the migrant experience. She introduces us to lovers, scroungers, dancers, homeowners, teachers, drinkers, carers and many more to show the opportunities and excitement as much as the humiliation and poverty that could be part of the new arrivals' experience. Irish, Bengalis, West Indians, Poles, Maltese, Punjabis and Cypriots battled to fit into an often shocked Britain and, to their own surprise, found themselves making permanent homes. As Britain picked itself up again in the 1950s migrants set about changing life in their own image, through music, clothing, food, religion, but also fighting racism and casual and not so casual violence.Lovers and Strangers is an extremely important book, one that is full of enjoyable surprises, giving a voice to a generation who had to deal with the reality of life surrounded by 'white strangers' in their new country.A Life of Picasso Volume II: 1907 1917: The Painter of Modern Life (Life of Picasso #2)
Par John Richardson. 1988
John Richardson draws on the same combination of lively writing, critical astuteness, exhaustive research, and personal experience which made a…
bestseller out of the first volume and vividly recreates the artist's life and work during the crucial decade of 1907-17 - a period during which Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented Cubism and to that extent engendered modernism. Richardson has had unique access to untapped sources and unpublished material. By harnessing biography to art history, he has managed to crack the code of cubism more successfully than any of his predecessors. And by bringing a fresh light to bear on the artist's often too sensationalised private life, he has succeeded in coming up with a totally new view of this paradoxical man of his paradoxical work. Never before has Picasso's prodigious technique, his incisive vision and not least his sardonic humour been analysed with such clarity.Josephus’ account of a war marked by treachery and atrocity is a superbly detailed and evocative record of the Jewish…
rebellion against Rome between AD 66 and 70. Originally a rebel leader, Josephus changed sides after he was captured to become a Rome-appointed negotiator, and so was uniquely placed to observe these turbulent events, from the siege of Jerusalem to the final heroic resistance and mass suicides at Masada. His account provides much of what we know about the history of the Jews under Roman rule, with vivid portraits of such key figures as the Emperor Vespasian and Herod the Great. Often self-justifying and divided in its loyalties, The Jewish War nevertheless remains one of the most immediate accounts of war, its heroism and its horrors, ever written.The Jewish People: Their History and Their Religion
Par David Goldberg, John Rayner. 2012
The first part of this illustrated volume offers a survey of Jewish history and literature. The second part presents what…
the preface describes as "a thematic analysis of the teachings and practice of Judaism".In Flanders Fields: Scottish Poetry and Prose of the First World War
Par Trevor Royle. 1990
This anthology is the first ever acknowledgement of Scotland's unique contribution to the literature of the First World War. Here…
are gathered together well-known writers like John Buchan, Eric Linklater, Hugh MacDiarmid and Compton Mackenzie, as well as poets like Joseph Lee and Roderick Watson Kerr, who found their true voices fighting in a war to end wars. There is also a substantial contribution from women writers in the work of Violet Jacob, Naomi Mitchison and Mary Symon.The King's Own Scottish Borderers: A Concise History
Par Trevor Royle. 2008
The King's Own Scottish Borderers is one of only two Scottish regiments never to have been amalgamated until it joined…
forces with The Royal Scots to form the 1st battalion of The Royal Regiment of Scotland in 2006. It is also unusual in that it lost its Scottish status between 1782 and 1887 when it served as the 25th (Sussex) Regiment of Foot.Formed in Edinburgh in 1689, its first operational role was to defend the city during the period of turmoil following the accession of William and Mary of Orange. That same year the regiment fought at the Battle of Killiecrankie, where they withstood a ferocious charge by the Highlanders supporting James II. Since then, the regiment has fought in most of the major campaigns fought by the British Army.In 1887, the regiment became The King's Own Scottish Borderers. It served with distinction during the two World Wars and achieved nationwide fame in 1915 when Sergeant Piper Daniel Laidlaw won the Victoria Cross during the Battle of Loos. Despite coming under heavy fire he played his pipes in full view of the enemy, encouraging the Borderers with the sound of 'Blue Bonnets o'er the Border' and 'The Standard on the Braes o' Mar'.This concise account of the King's Own Scottish Borderers puts its story into the context of British military history and makes use of personal testimony to reveal the life of the regiment.Imperial Spain 1469-1716
Par J. H Elliott. 2002
The story of Spain's rise to greatness from its humble beginnings as one of the poorest and most marginal of…
European countries is a remarkable and dramatic one. With the marriage of Ferdinand & Isabella, the final expulsion of the Moslems and the discovery of America, Spain took on a seemingly unstoppable dynamism that made it into the world's first global power. This amazing success however created many powerful enemies and Elliott's famous book charts the dramatic fall of Habsburg Spain with the same elan as it charts the rise.James II: The Last Catholic King (Penguin Monarchs)
Par David Womersley. 2014
'James was a king tragically trapped by principle. Yet was it wise to attempt to change the national religion?'The short…
reign of James II is generally seen as one of the most catastrophic in British history, ending in his exile after he unsuccessfully tried to convert England to Catholicism, a crisis that would haunt the monarchy for generations. Ultimately, David Womersley's biography shows, James was a man whose blindness to subtlety and political reality brought about his ruinous downfall.James I: The Phoenix King (Penguin Monarchs)
Par Thomas Cogswell. 2016
James's reign marked one of the very rare major breaks in England's monarchy. Already James VI of Scotland and a…
highly experienced ruler who had established his authority over the Scottish Kirk, he marched south on Elizabeth I's death to become James I of England and Ireland, uniting the British Isles for the first time and founding the Stuart dynasty which would, with several lurches, reign for over a century. Indeed his descendant still occupies the throne. A complex, curious man and great survivor, James drastically changed court life in London and presided over such major projects as the Authorized Version of the Bible and the establishment of English settlements in Virginia, Massachusetts, Gujarat and the Caribbean. Although he failed to unite England and Scotland, he insisted that ambassadors acknowledge him as King of Great Britain and that vessels from both countries display a version of the current Union Flag. He was often accused of being too informal and insufficiently regal - but when his son, Charles I, decided to redress these criticisms in his own reign he was destroyed. How much of the roots of this disaster were to be found in James's reign is one of the many problems dramatized in Thomas Cogswell's brilliant and highly entertaining new book.THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER - NOW UPDATED WITH FOUR NEW CHAPTERS'This swashbuckling book is a furious attack on the…
Russian president. Killer in the Kremlin traces Putin's bloody career... a life littered with corpses.' - THE TIMESA gripping and explosive account of Vladimir Putin's tyranny, charting his rise from spy to tsar, exposing the events that led to his invasion of Ukraine and his assault on Europe.In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes readers from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine.In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting - from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 - to understand the true extent of Putin's long war.Drawing on eyewitness accounts and compelling testimony from those who have suffered at Putin's hand, we see the heroism of the Russian opposition, the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance, and the brutality with which the Kremlin responds to such acts of defiance, assassinating or locking away its critics, and stopping at nothing to achieve its imperialist aims.In the midst of one of the darkest acts of aggression in modern history - Russia's invasion of Ukraine - this book shines a light on Putin's rule and poses urgent questions about how the world must respond.'An extraordinarily prescient and fascinating book.' - NIHAL ARTHANAYAKEInstant Sunday Times bestseller, March 2023The Journals of Captain Cook: A Literal Transcription Of The Original Mss
Par Captain James Cook. 2003
Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic…
circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. Accounts based on Cook's journals were issued at the time, but it was not until this century that the original journals were published in Beaglehole's definitive edition. The JOURNALS tells the story of these voyages as Cook wanted it to be told, radiating the ambition, courage and skill which enabled him to carry out an unrivalled series of expeditions in dangerous waters.I'll Tell Me Ma: A Childhood Memoir
Par Brian Keenan. 2009
Local rather than international, the dramas and privations described in this memoir are not the stuff of headlines. This is…
the story of an ordinary boy growing up in Belfast after the war; an ordinary boy who would go on to become world-famous as a hostage in Beirut and author of the extraordinary testimony of imprisonment and survival that was An Evil Cradling. Brian Keenan has captured the vanished world of 1950s Belfast in all its vivid vernacular and grey, post-war austerity. I'll Tell Me Ma is an affectionate story of a disaffected childhood. At the centre is a shy, self-conscious boy of unusual moral integrity; a boy puzzled by religion and sectarianism, in love with books and music and full of curiosity about the world outside. It is also a book about coming-to-terms with the past: a resounding, thrilling record of redemption.