The Battle over America's Origin Story

The Battle over America's Origin Story PDF Author: Brian Regal
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030995380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This book examines the legends of who ‘really’ discovered America. It argues that histories of America's origins were always based less on empirical evidence and more on social, political, and cultural wish fulfillment. Influenced by a complex interplay of Nativist hatred of immigrants and Aboriginal people, as well as distrust of academic scholarship, these legends ebbed and flowed with changing conditions in wider American society. The book focuses on the actions of a collection of quirky, obsessed amateur investigators who spent their lives trying to prove their various theories by promoting Welsh princes, Vikings, Chinese admirals, Neo-lithic Europeans, African explorers, and others who they say arrived centuries before Columbus. These myths acted as mitigating agencies for those who embraced them. Along with recent scholarship, this book makes extensive use of archival materials—some of which have never been employed before. It covers the period from the sixteenth century to the present. It brings together separate historiographic ideas to create a unified history rather than focusing on one particular legend as most books on the subject do. It shows how questions of who discovered America helped create the field of historical scholarship in this country. This book does not attempt to prove who discovered America, rather it tells the story of those who think they did.

The Battle over America's Origin Story

The Battle over America's Origin Story PDF Author: Brian Regal
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030995380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the legends of who ‘really’ discovered America. It argues that histories of America's origins were always based less on empirical evidence and more on social, political, and cultural wish fulfillment. Influenced by a complex interplay of Nativist hatred of immigrants and Aboriginal people, as well as distrust of academic scholarship, these legends ebbed and flowed with changing conditions in wider American society. The book focuses on the actions of a collection of quirky, obsessed amateur investigators who spent their lives trying to prove their various theories by promoting Welsh princes, Vikings, Chinese admirals, Neo-lithic Europeans, African explorers, and others who they say arrived centuries before Columbus. These myths acted as mitigating agencies for those who embraced them. Along with recent scholarship, this book makes extensive use of archival materials—some of which have never been employed before. It covers the period from the sixteenth century to the present. It brings together separate historiographic ideas to create a unified history rather than focusing on one particular legend as most books on the subject do. It shows how questions of who discovered America helped create the field of historical scholarship in this country. This book does not attempt to prove who discovered America, rather it tells the story of those who think they did.

The Story of America

The Story of America PDF Author: Jill Lepore
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691159599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories -- from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address -- to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print.

Early Civilization and the American Modern

Early Civilization and the American Modern PDF Author: Eva Miller
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1800087209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a particular story about the United States’ role in the long history of world civilization was constructed in public spaces, through public art and popular histories. This narrative posited that civilization and its benefits – science, law, writing, art and architecture – began in Egypt and Mesopotamia before passing ever further westward, towards a triumphant culmination on the American continent. Early Civilization and the American Modern explores how this teleological story answered anxieties about the United States’ unique role in the long march of progress. Eva Miller focuses on important figures who collaborated on the creation of a visual, progressive narrative in key institutions, world’s fairs and popular media: Orientalist and public intellectual James Henry Breasted, astronomer George Ellery Hale, architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and decorative artists Lee Lawrie and Hildreth Meière. At a time when new information about the ancient Middle East was emerging through archaeological excavation, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia appeared simultaneously old and new. This same period was crucial to the development of public space and civic life across the United States, as a shared sense of historical consciousness was actively pursued by politicians, philanthropists, intellectuals, architects and artists.

Romantik 2022

Romantik 2022 PDF Author: Gísli Magnússon
Publisher: V&R unipress
ISBN: 3737016658
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
“Romantik. Journal for the Study of Romanticisms” is a multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of romantic-era cultural productions and concepts. The journal promotes innovative research across disciplinary borders. It aims to advance new historical discoveries, forward-looking theoretical insights and cutting-edge methodological approaches. The articles range over the full variety of cultural practices, including the written word, visual arts, history, philosophy, religion, and theatre during the romantic period (c. 1780–1840). But contributions to the discussion of pre- or post-romantic representations are also welcome. Since the romantic era was characterized by an emphasis on the vernacular, the title of the journal has been chosen to reflect the Germanic root of the word. But the journal is interested in all European romanticisms – and not least the connections and disconnections between them – hence, the use of the plural in the subtitle.

Mythologizing the Past

Mythologizing the Past PDF Author: Sean Rafferty
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040259693
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
This book examines the origins, development, and current state of myths surrounding 'lost civilizations' and, more importantly, how these myths contribute to modern political ideologies. By examining the myths, legends, and scientific record concerning Atlantis, the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Celts, pre-Contact North America and the Aryans, this book reveals the faulty science, logical fallacies, anti-intellectualism, and outright racism motivating the recurrent interest in them. It delineates the development of pseudohistory from its allegorical Classical origins, through renaissance and enlightenment literature, to nineteenth-century popular writing, and finally to modern pseudoscience. It describes how at every stage pseudohistory has been used to reinforce and reproduce dominant ideologies by marginalizing subordinate groups in favor of social elites. This book is ideal not only for the general reader interested in world history, but also for courses across the humanities, including pseudoarcheology, historiographic and scientific methods, and classics.

Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America

Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America PDF Author: Adam Winkler
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393077411
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
"Gunfight" promises to be a seminal work in its examination of America's four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. Winkler uses the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation's capital, as a springboard for a groundbreaking historical narrative.

The Whites of Their Eyes

The Whites of Their Eyes PDF Author: Jill Lepore
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400839815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
From acclaimed bestselling historian Jill Lepore, the story of the American historical mythology embraced by the far right Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution—so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty—so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America." Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, offers a careful and concerned look at American history according to the far right, from the "rant heard round the world," which launched the Tea Party, to the Texas School Board's adoption of a social-studies curriculum that teaches that the United States was established as a Christian nation. Along the way, she provides rare insight into the eighteenth-century struggle for independencea history of the Revolution, from the archives. Lepore traces the roots of the far right's reactionary history to the bicentennial in the 1970s, when no one could agree on what story a divided nation should tell about its unruly beginnings. Behind the Tea Party's Revolution, she argues, lies a nostalgic and even heartbreaking yearning for an imagined past—a time less troubled by ambiguity, strife, and uncertainty—a yearning for an America that never was. The Whites of Their Eyes reveals that the far right has embraced a narrative about America's founding that is not only a fable but is also, finally, a variety of fundamentalism—anti-intellectual, antihistorical, and dangerously antipluralist. In a new afterword, Lepore addresses both the recent shift in Tea Party rhetoric from the Revolution to the Constitution and the diminished role of scholars as political commentators over the last half century of public debate.

America's Battle for Media Democracy

America's Battle for Media Democracy PDF Author: Victor Pickard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107038332
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Drawing from extensive archival research, the book uncovers the American media system's historical roots and normative foundations. It charts the rise and fall of a forgotten media-reform movement to recover alternatives and paths not taken.

Origin

Origin PDF Author: Jennifer Raff
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 153874970X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! From celebrated anthropologist Jennifer Raff comes the untold story—and fascinating mystery—of how humans migrated to the Americas. ORIGIN is the story of who the first peoples in the Americas were, how and why they made the crossing, how they dispersed south, and how they lived based on a new and powerful kind of evidence: their complete genomes. ORIGIN provides an overview of these new histories throughout North and South America, and a glimpse into how the tools of genetics reveal details about human history and evolution. 20,000 years ago, people crossed a great land bridge from Siberia into Western Alaska and then dispersed southward into what is now called the Americas. Until we venture out to other worlds, this remains the last time our species has populated an entirely new place, and this event has been a subject of deep fascination and controversy. No written records—and scant archaeological evidence—exist to tell us what happened or how it took place. Many different models have been proposed to explain how the Americas were peopled and what happened in the thousands of years that followed. A study of both past and present, ORIGIN explores how genetics is currently being used to construct narratives that profoundly impact Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It serves as a primer for anyone interested in how genetics has become entangled with identity in the way that society addresses the question "Who is indigenous?"

Scars of Independence

Scars of Independence PDF Author: Holger Hoock
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
ISBN: 0804137285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Tory hunting -- Britain's dilemma -- Rubicon -- Plundering protectors -- Violated bodies -- Slaughterhouses -- Black holes -- Skiver them! -- Town-destroyer -- Americanizing the war -- Man for man -- Returning losers