Author: William Carlos Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
In the American Grain
Author: William Carlos Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
In the American Grain
Author: William Carlos Williams
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150406545X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
The celebrated poet behind such classics as “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “This Is Just to Say” presents a collection of essays about North American history. In the American Grain is, as William Carlos Williams said, “a study to try to find out for myself what the land of my more or less accidental birth might signify.” Although Williams wrote poetry and prose—and was a doctor—he was not a historian. In this book, he applies a fresh, lyrical perspective to moments in America’s past. Beginning with the bloody Erik the Red, discoverer of Greenland and father of Leif Erikson, Williams revisits episodes from history like the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the Mayflower ship’s journey to America, and the founding of Quebec, as well as the expeditions of explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Juan Ponce de León, Hernando de Soto, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Samuel de Champlain. He then moves along to events like the Salem witch trials, Daniel Boone’s discovery of Kentucky, and Aaron Burr’s romance with Jacataqua. He also discusses important figures such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Abraham Lincoln. By deconstructing America’s history and rebuilding it with a poet’s voice, Williams created “a fundamental book, essential if one proposes to come to terms with American literature” (The Times Literary Supplement).
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150406545X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
The celebrated poet behind such classics as “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “This Is Just to Say” presents a collection of essays about North American history. In the American Grain is, as William Carlos Williams said, “a study to try to find out for myself what the land of my more or less accidental birth might signify.” Although Williams wrote poetry and prose—and was a doctor—he was not a historian. In this book, he applies a fresh, lyrical perspective to moments in America’s past. Beginning with the bloody Erik the Red, discoverer of Greenland and father of Leif Erikson, Williams revisits episodes from history like the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the Mayflower ship’s journey to America, and the founding of Quebec, as well as the expeditions of explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Juan Ponce de León, Hernando de Soto, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Samuel de Champlain. He then moves along to events like the Salem witch trials, Daniel Boone’s discovery of Kentucky, and Aaron Burr’s romance with Jacataqua. He also discusses important figures such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Abraham Lincoln. By deconstructing America’s history and rebuilding it with a poet’s voice, Williams created “a fundamental book, essential if one proposes to come to terms with American literature” (The Times Literary Supplement).
Thinking Across the American Grain
Author: Giles Gunn
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226310770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
In Thinking Across the American Grain Giles Gunn makes a major contribution to the current revival of pragmatism in America by showing how it provides the most critically resilient and constructive response to the intellectual challenges of postmodernism. Gunn reclaims and refurbishes elements of the pragmatic tradition that either have been lost or have undergone important changes and shows how newer critical approaches have strong roots in the pragmatic tradition. For Gunn, pragmatism is no longer concerned solely with the nature of knowledge and the meaning of truth. Because of its insistence on critical self-awareness, its opposition to closed systems of thought, and its concern with the ethical, political, and practical contexts of ideas, pragmatism offers a blueprint for performing intellectual work in a world without absolutes. The world Gunn's pragmatism recognizes is one of multiple truths, unstable interpretations, and competing interests. After critically reexamining the nature and scope of the pragmatic legacy, Gunn explores the way pragmatism successfully responds to conceptual and methodological controversies, from the rebirth of ideology, the spread of interdisciplinarity, and the development of the new historicism, to the revolt against theory, the erosion of public discourse, and the problematics of American civil religion. Drawing throughout on the work of William James, Henry James, Sr., John Dewey, Kenneth Burke, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Poirier, Stanley Cavell, Clifford Geertz, Frank Lentricchia, Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein, and others, Gunn shows that pragmatism, because it offers a way of thinking across the categories of modern intellectual specializations, is located at the intersection of these critical, and often competitive, discourses. The postmodern challenge for the pragmatist thinker is not only how to render these different discourses conversible with one another, but how to turn the salient insights of each into elements of a new democratic and critical public culture, one able to counter the twin threats of ideology and solipsism. Giles Gunn is one of our most acclaimed contemporary critics, and this broad and ambitious book is certain to become one of the central works in the current revival of critical pragmatism and cultural studies.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226310770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
In Thinking Across the American Grain Giles Gunn makes a major contribution to the current revival of pragmatism in America by showing how it provides the most critically resilient and constructive response to the intellectual challenges of postmodernism. Gunn reclaims and refurbishes elements of the pragmatic tradition that either have been lost or have undergone important changes and shows how newer critical approaches have strong roots in the pragmatic tradition. For Gunn, pragmatism is no longer concerned solely with the nature of knowledge and the meaning of truth. Because of its insistence on critical self-awareness, its opposition to closed systems of thought, and its concern with the ethical, political, and practical contexts of ideas, pragmatism offers a blueprint for performing intellectual work in a world without absolutes. The world Gunn's pragmatism recognizes is one of multiple truths, unstable interpretations, and competing interests. After critically reexamining the nature and scope of the pragmatic legacy, Gunn explores the way pragmatism successfully responds to conceptual and methodological controversies, from the rebirth of ideology, the spread of interdisciplinarity, and the development of the new historicism, to the revolt against theory, the erosion of public discourse, and the problematics of American civil religion. Drawing throughout on the work of William James, Henry James, Sr., John Dewey, Kenneth Burke, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Poirier, Stanley Cavell, Clifford Geertz, Frank Lentricchia, Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein, and others, Gunn shows that pragmatism, because it offers a way of thinking across the categories of modern intellectual specializations, is located at the intersection of these critical, and often competitive, discourses. The postmodern challenge for the pragmatist thinker is not only how to render these different discourses conversible with one another, but how to turn the salient insights of each into elements of a new democratic and critical public culture, one able to counter the twin threats of ideology and solipsism. Giles Gunn is one of our most acclaimed contemporary critics, and this broad and ambitious book is certain to become one of the central works in the current revival of critical pragmatism and cultural studies.
Against the American Grain
Author: Vera M. Kutzinski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
Masscult and Midcult
Author: Dwight Macdonald
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590174682
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
A New York Review Books Original An uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of America’s susceptibility to well-meaning cultural fakery: all those estimable, eminent, prizewinning works of art that are said to be good and good for you and are not. He dubbed this phenomenon “Midcult” and he attacked it not only on aesthetic but on political grounds. Midcult rendered people complacent and compliant, secure in their common stupidity but neither happy nor free. This new selection of Macdonald’s finest essays, assembled by John Summers, the editor of The Baffler, reintroduces a remarkable American critic and writer. In the era of smart, sexy, and everything indie, Macdonald remains as pertinent and challenging as ever.
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590174682
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
A New York Review Books Original An uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of America’s susceptibility to well-meaning cultural fakery: all those estimable, eminent, prizewinning works of art that are said to be good and good for you and are not. He dubbed this phenomenon “Midcult” and he attacked it not only on aesthetic but on political grounds. Midcult rendered people complacent and compliant, secure in their common stupidity but neither happy nor free. This new selection of Macdonald’s finest essays, assembled by John Summers, the editor of The Baffler, reintroduces a remarkable American critic and writer. In the era of smart, sexy, and everything indie, Macdonald remains as pertinent and challenging as ever.
Rural Radicals
Author: Catherine McNicol Stock
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801432941
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Stock examines recurring themes in rural radical movements, including anti-federalism, white supremacy, populism, and vigilantism. She beleives we need to understand both the historic roots and the diverse manifestations of rural radicalism in order to make some sense of the action that tore a hole in this country's heartland in the spring of 1995. 8 photos. 2 maps.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801432941
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Stock examines recurring themes in rural radical movements, including anti-federalism, white supremacy, populism, and vigilantism. She beleives we need to understand both the historic roots and the diverse manifestations of rural radicalism in order to make some sense of the action that tore a hole in this country's heartland in the spring of 1995. 8 photos. 2 maps.
Oceans of Grain
Author: Scott Reynolds Nelson
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541646452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
An "incredibly timely" global history journeys from the Ukrainian steppe to the American prairie to show how grain built and toppled the world's largest empires (Financial Times). To understand the rise and fall of empires, we must follow the paths traveled by grain—along rivers, between ports, and across seas. In Oceans of Grain, historian Scott Reynolds Nelson reveals how the struggle to dominate these routes transformed the balance of world power. Early in the nineteenth century, imperial Russia fed much of Europe through the booming port of Odessa, on the Black Sea in Ukraine. But following the US Civil War, tons of American wheat began to flood across the Atlantic, and food prices plummeted. This cheap foreign grain spurred the rise of Germany and Italy, the decline of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, and the European scramble for empire. It was a crucial factor in the outbreak of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. A powerful new interpretation, Oceans of Grain shows that amid the great powers’ rivalries, there was no greater power than control of grain.
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541646452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
An "incredibly timely" global history journeys from the Ukrainian steppe to the American prairie to show how grain built and toppled the world's largest empires (Financial Times). To understand the rise and fall of empires, we must follow the paths traveled by grain—along rivers, between ports, and across seas. In Oceans of Grain, historian Scott Reynolds Nelson reveals how the struggle to dominate these routes transformed the balance of world power. Early in the nineteenth century, imperial Russia fed much of Europe through the booming port of Odessa, on the Black Sea in Ukraine. But following the US Civil War, tons of American wheat began to flood across the Atlantic, and food prices plummeted. This cheap foreign grain spurred the rise of Germany and Italy, the decline of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, and the European scramble for empire. It was a crucial factor in the outbreak of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. A powerful new interpretation, Oceans of Grain shows that amid the great powers’ rivalries, there was no greater power than control of grain.
Crossing the American Grain
Author: Grady Clay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781884532511
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Book Description
Grady Clay has spent a lifetime trying to understand America's natural and man-made environments, their history, their design and their visual landscapes. With these carefully-selected excerpts from his long-running and popular public radio essay series, Clay scratches down into the surface of his investigations, discussing such unique concepts as "Arrival Zones," "Haunts," "Meeting Places," "Walking Distances," "The Boondocks" and the "Twilight Zone", and exploring the meanings of terms like "Disorder," "The Dark," "Out Back," "Uptown" and in "Earshot". Longtime fans will recognize old favorites from Clay's repertoire, and newcomers will delight in discovering his language-centric approach to contemplating this curious and fascinating world in which we live.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781884532511
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Book Description
Grady Clay has spent a lifetime trying to understand America's natural and man-made environments, their history, their design and their visual landscapes. With these carefully-selected excerpts from his long-running and popular public radio essay series, Clay scratches down into the surface of his investigations, discussing such unique concepts as "Arrival Zones," "Haunts," "Meeting Places," "Walking Distances," "The Boondocks" and the "Twilight Zone", and exploring the meanings of terms like "Disorder," "The Dark," "Out Back," "Uptown" and in "Earshot". Longtime fans will recognize old favorites from Clay's repertoire, and newcomers will delight in discovering his language-centric approach to contemplating this curious and fascinating world in which we live.
In the American Grain
Author: William Carlos Williams
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811202305
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
William Carlos Williams's examination of American history in a series of reflective essays.
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811202305
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
William Carlos Williams's examination of American history in a series of reflective essays.
Grain by Grain
Author: Bob Quinn
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610919955
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
"A compelling agricultural story skillfully told; environmentalists will eat it up." - Kirkus Reviews When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family’s farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn’t health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics. But as demand for organics grew, so too did Bob’s experiments. He discovered that through time-tested practices like cover cropping and crop rotation, he could produce successful yields—without pesticides. Regenerative organic farming allowed him to grow fruits and vegetables in cold, dry Montana, providing a source of local produce to families in his hometown. He even started producing his own renewable energy. And he learned that the grain he first tasted at the fair was actually a type of ancient wheat, one that was proven to lower inflammation rather than worsening it, as modern wheat does. Ultimately, Bob’s forays with organics turned into a multimillion dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. In Grain by Grain, Quinn and cowriter Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, show how his story can become the story of American agriculture. We don’t have to accept stagnating rural communities, degraded soil, or poor health. By following Bob’s example, we can grow a healthy future, grain by grain.
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610919955
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
"A compelling agricultural story skillfully told; environmentalists will eat it up." - Kirkus Reviews When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family’s farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn’t health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics. But as demand for organics grew, so too did Bob’s experiments. He discovered that through time-tested practices like cover cropping and crop rotation, he could produce successful yields—without pesticides. Regenerative organic farming allowed him to grow fruits and vegetables in cold, dry Montana, providing a source of local produce to families in his hometown. He even started producing his own renewable energy. And he learned that the grain he first tasted at the fair was actually a type of ancient wheat, one that was proven to lower inflammation rather than worsening it, as modern wheat does. Ultimately, Bob’s forays with organics turned into a multimillion dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. In Grain by Grain, Quinn and cowriter Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, show how his story can become the story of American agriculture. We don’t have to accept stagnating rural communities, degraded soil, or poor health. By following Bob’s example, we can grow a healthy future, grain by grain.