Author: Randy Roberts
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743222792
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
In late February and early March of 1836, the Mexican Army under the command of General Antonio López de Santa Anna besieged a small force of Anglo and Tejano rebels at a mission known as the Alamo. The defenders of the Alamo were in an impossible situation. They knew very little of the events taking place outside the mission walls. They did not have much of an understanding of Santa Anna or of his government in Mexico City. They sent out contradictory messages, they received contradictory communications, they moved blindly and planned in the dark. And in the dark early morning of March 6, they died. In that brief, confusing, and deadly encounter, one of America's most potent symbols was born. The story of the last stand at the Alamo grew from a Texas rallying cry, to a national slogan, to a phenomenon of popular culture and presidential politics. Yet it has been a hotly contested symbol from the first. Questions remain about what really happened: Did William Travis really draw a line in the sand? Did Davy Crockett die fighting, surrounded by the bodies of two dozen of the enemy? And what of the participants' motives and purposes? Were the Texans justified in their rebellion? Were they sincere patriots making a last stand for freedom and liberty, or were they a ragtag collection of greedy men-on-the-make, washed-up politicians, and backwoods bullies, Americans bent on extending American slavery into a foreign land? The full story of the Alamo -- from the weeks and months that led up to the fateful encounter to the movies and speeches that continue to remember it today -- is a quintessential story of America's past and a fascinating window into our collective memory. In A Line in the Sand, acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and James Olson use a wealth of archival sources, including the diary of José Enrique de la Peña, along with important and little-used Mexican documents, to retell the story of the Alamo for a new generation of Americans. They explain what happened from the perspective of all parties, not just Anglo and Mexican soldiers, but also Tejano allies and bystanders. They delve anew into the mysteries of Crockett's final hours and Travis's famous rhetoric. Finally, they show how preservationists, television and movie producers, historians, and politicians have become the Alamo's major interpreters. Walt Disney, John Wayne, and scores of journalists and cultural critics have used the Alamo to contest the very meaning of America, and thereby helped us all to "remember the Alamo."
Author: Rachel St. John
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691156131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
The first transnational history of the U.S.-Mexico border Line in the Sand details the dramatic transformation of the western U.S.-Mexico border from its creation at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 to the emergence of the modern boundary line in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this sweeping narrative, Rachel St. John explores how this boundary changed from a mere line on a map to a clearly marked and heavily regulated divide between the United States and Mexico. Focusing on the desert border to the west of the Rio Grande, this book explains the origins of the modern border and places the line at the center of a transnational history of expanding capitalism and state power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moving across local, regional, and national scales, St. John shows how government officials, Native American raiders, ranchers, railroad builders, miners, investors, immigrants, and smugglers contributed to the rise of state power on the border and developed strategies to navigate the increasingly regulated landscape. Over the border's history, the U.S. and Mexican states gradually developed an expanding array of official laws, ad hoc arrangements, government agents, and physical barriers that did not close the line, but made it a flexible barrier that restricted the movement of some people, goods, and animals without impeding others. By the 1930s, their efforts had created the foundations of the modern border control apparatus. Drawing on extensive research in U.S. and Mexican archives, Line in the Sand weaves together a transnational history of how an undistinguished strip of land became the significant and symbolic space of state power and national definition that we know today.
Author: David A. Andelman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643136496
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
A longtime CNN columnist astutely combines history and global politics to help us better understanding the exploding number of military, political, and diplomatic crises around the globe. The riveting and illuminating behind-the-scenes stories of the world's most intense “red lines," from diplomatic and military challenges at particular turning points in history to the ones that set the tone of geopolitics today. Whether it was the red line in Munich that led to the start of the Second World War, to the red lines in the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, Syria and the Middle East. As we traverse the globe, Andelman uses original documentary research, previously classified material, and interviews with key players, to help us understand the growth, the successes and frequent failures that have shaped our world today. Andelman provides not just vivid historical context, but a political anatomy of these red lines. How might their failures be prevented going forward? When and how can such lines in the sand help preserve peace rather than tempt conflict? A Red Line in the Sand is a vital examination of our present and the future—where does diplomacy end and war begin? It is an object lesson of tantamount importance to every leader, diplomat, citizen, and voter. As America establishes more red lines than it has pledged to defend, every American should understand the volatile atmosphere and the existential stakes of the red web that encompasses the globe.
Author: Timothy James Lockley
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820325972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
Lines in the Sandis Timothy Lockley’s nuanced look at the interaction between nonslaveholding whites and African Americans in lowcountry Georgia from the introduction of slavery in the state to the beginning of the Civil War. The study focuses on poor whites living in a society where they were dominated politically and economically by a planter elite and outnumbered by slaves. Lockley argues that the division between nonslaveholding whites and African Americans was not fixed or insurmountable. Pulling evidence from travel accounts, slave narratives, newspapers, and court documents, he reveals that these groups formed myriad kinds of relationships, sometimes out of mutual affection, sometimes for mutual advantage, but always in spite of the disapproving authority of the planter class. Lockley has synthesized an impressive amount of material to create a rich social history that illuminates the lives of both blacks and whites. His abundant detail and clear narrative style make this first book-length examination of a complicated and overlooked topic both fascinating and accessible.
Author: James Barr
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393070654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479
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Book Description
Uses recently declassified French and British government documents to describe how the two countries secretly divided the Middle East during World War I and the effect these mandates had on local Arabs and Jews.
Author: Teri Wilson
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1728214831
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
The perfect summertime rom com with a bright, sparkling love story. Sparks fly when Molly Prince's puppy digs up the beachfront where marine biologist Max Miller is studying sea turtles. Max and Molly are instantly attracted to each other, but Molly thinks Max is a jerk andMax refuses to take Molly seriously in her job as the local aquarium's mermaid. But when the puppy turns out to have the unique ability to sniff out sea turtle nests, she might bring Max and Molly close enough to help save the turtles, revive business at the struggling aquarium, and maybe even fall in love. Praise for Teri Wilson: "Teri Wilson is the queen of romantic comedy."—Sarah Morgan, USA Today bestselling author "Hilarious... A laugh-out-loud journey!"—Woman's World for The Accidental Beauty Queen "A delightful romp."—Library Journal Starred Review for Royally Roma "Fans of Kate Angell and Julie James will appreciate this fun, lighthearted story."—Publishers Weekly for A Spot of Trouble
Author: Steve Bickerstaff
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292783051
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 485
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Book Description
The events of 2003 in Texas were important to the political history of this country. Congressman Tom DeLay led a Republican effort to gerrymander the state's thirty-two congressional districts to defeat all ten of the Anglo Democratic incumbents and to elect more Republicans; Democratic state lawmakers fled the state in an effort to defeat the plan. The Lone Star State uproar attracted attention worldwide. The Republicans won this showdown, gaining six additional seats from Texas and protecting the one endangered Republican incumbent. Some of the methods used by DeLay to achieve this result, however, led to his criminal indictment and ultimately to his downfall. With its eye-opening research, readable style, and insightful commentary, Lines in the Sand provides a front-line account of what happened in 2003, often through the personal stories of members of both parties and of the minority activist groups caught in a political vortex. Law professor Steve Bickerstaff provides much-needed historical perspective and also probes the aftermath of the 2003 redistricting, including the criminal prosecutions of DeLay and his associates and the events that led to DeLay's eventual resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives. As a result, Bickerstaff graphically shows a dark underside of American politics—the ruthless use of public institutional power for partisan gain.
Author: David H. Finnie
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674806399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
During the 1991 Gulf War, pundits and experts scrambled unsuccessfully to explain Iraq's "claim" to Kuwait. In a lucid and measured account of a complex historical and geographic drama that culminated in Operation Desert Storm, David Finnie elucidates the long Kuwaiti-Iraqi border dispute and lays Saddam Hussein's dubious claim to rest. He also raises larger questions about European colonialism and about the creation of new nation-states in the Middle East in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finnie vividly portrays how arbitrary the drawing of frontiers can be, and how they come to serve internal, regional, and international rivalries and ambitions. This history begins in the eighteenth century, when Kuwait was first settled by nomads from the Arabian desert. Finnie describes the country's growing prosperity under a merchant oligarchy, then shows how the Kuwaitis, seeking British protection from the sprawling Ottoman Empire, came to serve England's imperial strategy. He details the ways in which Britain parlayed its mandatory control of Iraq and its protectorate over Kuwait to curb the larger nation's ambitions and to ensure Kuwait's independence under British auspices. A fresh look at British diplomatic documents reveals how Whitehall covered its tracks, heading off the Iraqis, obfuscating League of Nations proceedings, and confounding scholars and researchers down to the present day. Pursuing his story through Britain's withdrawal from the Persian Gulf and Iraq's 1963 recognition of Kuwait's boundaries, Finnie examines the U.N. post-war measures to secure the frontier in the face of Iraq's continuing pressure for better access to Gulf waters.
Author: A. A. Gill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781474605151
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A.A. Gill's writing: an embarrassment of riches. This selection of some of his recent pieces, spanning the last five years, sees him at his most perceptive, brilliant and funny. His subjects range from the controversial - fur - to the heartfelt - a fantastic crystallisation of what it means to be European. He tackles life drawing, designs his own tweed, considers boyhood through the prism of the Museum of Childhood and spends a day at Donald Trump's university. His award-winningly acerbic review of Morrissey's autobiography sits alongside the insight he brings to the work of Rudyard Kipling, Don McCullin and Lord Snowdon. And he turns that insight on himself in the terrific article "Life at Sixty"
Author: Ariana Reines
Publisher: Tin House Books
ISBN: 1947793330
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
Longlisted for the National Book Award "Mind-blowing." —Kim Gordon DEADPAN, EPIC, AND SEARINGLY CHARISMATIC, A Sand Book chronicles climate change and climate grief, gun violence and bystanderism, state violence and complicity, mourning and ecstasy, sex and love, and the transcendent shock of prophecy, tracking new dimensions of consciousness for our strange and desperate times.
