London

London PDF Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 872

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Book Description
In this entertaining and informative volume, a renowned biographer and critic takes on his grandest subject: London--one of the world's most vast and vital cities. in color. 2 maps.

London

London PDF Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 872

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Book Description
In this entertaining and informative volume, a renowned biographer and critic takes on his grandest subject: London--one of the world's most vast and vital cities. in color. 2 maps.

London Fog

London Fog PDF Author: Christine L. Corton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674088352
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A Telegraph Editor’s Choice An Evening Standard “Best Books about London” Selection In popular imagination, London is a city of fog. The classic London fogs, the thick yellow “pea-soupers,” were born in the industrial age of the early nineteenth century. Christine L. Corton tells the story of these epic London fogs, their dangers and beauty, and their lasting effects on our culture and imagination. “Engrossing and magnificently researched...Corton’s book combines meticulous social history with a wealth of eccentric detail. Thus we learn that London’s ubiquitous plane trees were chosen for their shiny, fog-resistant foliage. And since Jack the Ripper actually went out to stalk his victims on fog-free nights, filmmakers had to fake the sort of dank, smoke-wreathed London scenes audiences craved. It’s discoveries like these that make reading London Fog such an unusual, enthralling and enlightening experience.” —Miranda Seymour, New York Times Book Review “Corton, clad in an overcoat, with a linklighter before her, takes us into the gloomier, long 19th century, where she revels in its Gothic grasp. Beautifully illustrated, London Fog delves fascinatingly into that swirling miasma.” —Philip Hoare, New Statesman

London: the Biography of a City

London: the Biography of a City PDF Author: Christopher Hibbert
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description


Meyer London

Meyer London PDF Author: Gordon J. Goldberg
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476600503
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Meyer London (1871-1926), a Russian Jewish immigrant, settled in New York's Lower East Side in 1891. He became a lawyer, labor activist, founding member of the Socialist Party of America, and a three term Congressman who advocated peaceful methods and refused to take rigid doctrinal positions. Elected to Congress in 1914 as the lone Socialist, he demonstrated political skill and courage. London urged unemployment, health and old age insurance, and fought attempts to restrict immigration. At the outbreak of World War I, he urged strict neutrality, but once the U.S. intervened, London supported the war. In 1918, a fusion candidate defeated London, questioning his "Americanism." He returned to Congress in 1920, where in the face of the pro-business Harding Administration he continued to fight for economic and social justice. His untimely death in 1926 caused shock waves among his fellow Lower East Siders for whom the beloved London had become a folk hero. This detailed political biography closely follows London's career, the opposition he faced in politics, and the principled if controversial stands he maintained throughout his life.

London Under

London Under PDF Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385531516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
In this vividly descriptive short study, Peter Ackroyd tunnels down through the geological layers of London, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness and excavating the lore and mythology beneath the surface. There is a Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves rest under St. Pauls, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. To go under London is to penetrate history, and Ackroyd's book is filled with the stories unique to this underworld: the hydraulic device used to lower bodies into the catacombs in Kensal Green cemetery; the door in the plinth of the statue of Boadicea on Westminster Bridge that leads to a huge tunnel packed with cables for gas, water, and telephone; the sulphurous fumes on the Underground's Metropolitan Line. Highly imaginative and delightfully entertaining, London Under is Ackroyd at his best.

London: The Biography

London: The Biography PDF Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0099422581
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 883

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Book Description
Describes London from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century, noting magnificence in both epochs. This title includes chapters on the history of silence and the history of light, the history of childhood and the history of suicide, the history of Cockney speech and the history of drink.

London

London PDF Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1400075513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Here are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-chosen anecdotes, keen observations, and the words of hundreds of its citizens and visitors, Ackroyd reveals the ingenuity and grit and vitality of London. Through a unique thematic tour of the physical city and its inimitable soul, the city comes alive.

Jack London

Jack London PDF Author: Earle Labor
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466863161
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
A revelatory look at the life of the great American author—and how it shaped his most beloved works Jack London was born a working class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast—an oyster pirate, a hobo, a sailor, and a prospector by turns. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed bestselling books The Call of theWild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf. The bare outlines of his story suggest a classic rags-to-riches tale, but London the man was plagued by contradictions. He chronicled nature at its most savage, but wept helplessly at the deaths of his favorite animals. At his peak the highest paid writer in the United States, he was nevertheless forced to work under constant pressure for money. An irrepressibly optimistic crusader for social justice and a lover of humanity, he was also subject to spells of bitter invective, especially as his health declined. Branded by shortsighted critics as little more than a hack who produced a couple of memorable dog stories, he left behind a voluminous literary legacy, much of it ripe for rediscovery. In Jack London: An American Life, the noted Jack London scholar Earle Labor explores the brilliant and complicated novelist lost behind the myth—at once a hard-living globe-trotter and a man alive with ideas, whose passion for seeking new worlds to explore never waned until the day he died. Returning London to his proper place in the American pantheon, Labor resurrects a major American novelist in his full fire and glory.

Jack London's Racial Lives

Jack London's Racial Lives PDF Author: Jeanne Campbell Reesman
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820339709
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Jack London (1876-1916), known for his naturalistic and mythic tales, remains among the most popular and influential American writers in the world. Jack London's Racial Lives offers the first full study of the enormously important issue of race in London's life and diverse works, whether set in the Klondike, Hawaii, or the South Seas or during the Russo-Japanese War, the Jack Johnson world heavyweight bouts, or the Mexican Revolution. Jeanne Campbell Reesman explores his choices of genre by analyzing racial content and purpose and judges his literary artistry against a standard of racial tolerance. Although he promoted white superiority in novels and nonfiction, London sharply satirized racism and meaningfully portrayed racial others--most often as protagonists--in his short fiction. Why the disparity? For London, racial and class identity were intertwined: his formation as an artist began with the mixed "heritage" of his family. His mother taught him racism, but he learned something different from his African American foster mother, Virginia Prentiss. Childhood poverty, shifting racial allegiances, and a "psychology of want" helped construct the many "houses" of race and identity he imagined. Reesman also examines London's socialism, his study of Darwin and Jung, and the illnesses he suffered in the South Seas. With new readings of The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, and many other works, such as the explosive Pacific stories, Reesman reveals that London employed many of the same literary tropes of race used by African American writers of his period: the slave narrative, double-consciousness, the tragic mulatto, and ethnic diaspora. Hawaii seemed to inspire his most memorable visions of a common humanity.

Queer City

Queer City PDF Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1683353013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
A history of the development of London as a European epicenter of queer life. In Queer City, the acclaimed Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way–through the complete history and experiences of its gay and lesbian population. In Roman Londinium, the city was dotted with lupanaria (“wolf dens” or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels), and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks, and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure. Ackroyd takes us right into the hidden history of the city; from the notorious Normans to the frenzy of executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. He journeys through the coffee bars of sixties Soho to Gay Liberation, disco music, and the horror of AIDS. Ackroyd reveals the hidden story of London, with its diversity, thrills, and energy, as well as its terrors, dangers, and risks, and in doing so, explains the origins of all English-speaking gay culture. Praise for Queer City “Spanning centuries, the book is a fantastically researched project that is obviously close to the author’s heart.... An exciting look at London’s queer history and a tribute to the “various human worlds maintained in [the city’s] diversity despite persecution, condemnation, and affliction.””—Kirkus Reviews “[Ackroyd’s] work is highly anecdotal and near encyclopedic . . . the book is fascinating in its careful exposition of the singularities—and commonalities—of gay life, both male and female. Ultimately it is, as he concludes, a celebration as well as a history,” —Booklist “A witty history-cum-tribute to gay London, from the Roman “wolf dens” through Oscar Wilde and Gay Pride marches to the present day,” —ShelfAwareness