Ruin Nation

Ruin Nation PDF Author: Megan Kate Nelson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820333972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
During the Civil War, cities, houses, forests, and soldiers' bodies were transformed into “dead heaps of ruins,” novel sights in the southern landscape. How did this happen, and why? And what did Americans—northern and southern, black and white, male and female—make of this proliferation of ruins? Ruin Nation is the first book to bring together environmental and cultural histories to consider the evocative power of ruination as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change. Megan Kate Nelson examines the narratives and images that Americans produced as they confronted the war's destructiveness. Architectural ruins—cities and houses—dominated the stories that soldiers and civilians told about the “savage” behavior of men and the invasions of domestic privacy. The ruins of living things—trees and bodies—also provoked discussion and debate. People who witnessed forests and men being blown apart were plagued by anxieties about the impact of wartime technologies on nature and on individual identities. The obliteration of cities, houses, trees, and men was a shared experience. Nelson shows that this is one of the ironies of the war's ruination—in a time of the most extreme national divisiveness people found common ground as they considered the war's costs. And yet, very few of these ruins still exist, suggesting that the destructive practices that dominated the experiences of Americans during the Civil War have been erased from our national consciousness.

Ruin Nation

Ruin Nation PDF Author: Megan Kate Nelson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820333972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description
During the Civil War, cities, houses, forests, and soldiers' bodies were transformed into “dead heaps of ruins,” novel sights in the southern landscape. How did this happen, and why? And what did Americans—northern and southern, black and white, male and female—make of this proliferation of ruins? Ruin Nation is the first book to bring together environmental and cultural histories to consider the evocative power of ruination as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change. Megan Kate Nelson examines the narratives and images that Americans produced as they confronted the war's destructiveness. Architectural ruins—cities and houses—dominated the stories that soldiers and civilians told about the “savage” behavior of men and the invasions of domestic privacy. The ruins of living things—trees and bodies—also provoked discussion and debate. People who witnessed forests and men being blown apart were plagued by anxieties about the impact of wartime technologies on nature and on individual identities. The obliteration of cities, houses, trees, and men was a shared experience. Nelson shows that this is one of the ironies of the war's ruination—in a time of the most extreme national divisiveness people found common ground as they considered the war's costs. And yet, very few of these ruins still exist, suggesting that the destructive practices that dominated the experiences of Americans during the Civil War have been erased from our national consciousness.

The Destruction of Memory

The Destruction of Memory PDF Author: Robert Bevan
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861896387
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Crumbled shells of mosques in Iraq, the bombing of British cathedrals in World War II, the fall of the World Trade Center towers on September 11: when architectural totems such as these are destroyed by conflicts and the ravages of war, more than mere buildings are at stake. The Destruction of Memory reveals the extent to which a nation weds itself to its landscape; Robert Bevan argues that such destruction not only shatters a nation’s culture and morale but is also a deliberate act of eradicating a culture’s memory and, ultimately, its existence. Bevan combs through world history to highlight a range of wars and conflicts in which the destruction of architecture was pivotal. From Cortez’s razing of Aztec cities to the carpet bombings of Dresden and Tokyo in World War II to the war in the former Yugoslavia, The Destruction of Memory exposes the cultural war that rages behind architectural annihilation, revealing that in this subliminal assault lies the complex aim of exterminating a people. He provocatively argues for “the fatally intertwined experience of genocide and cultural genocide,” ultimately proposing the elevation of cultural genocide to a crime punishable by international law. In an age in which Frank Gehry, I. M. Pei, and Frank Lloyd Wright are revered and yet museums and temples of priceless value are destroyed in wars around the world, Bevan challenges the notion of “collateral damage,” arguing that it is in fact a deliberate act of war.

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books PDF Author: Fernando Báez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Examines the many reasons and motivations for the destruction of books throughout history, citing specific acts from the smashing of ancient Sumerian tablets to the looting of libraries in post-war Iraq.

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt PDF Author: Chris Hedges
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0307363007
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
With illustrations by award-winning comic artist Joe Sacco, Chris Hedges portrays a suffering nation on the cusp of widespread revolt and addresses Occupy Wall Street in his first book since the international protests began. In the tradition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Hedges and Sacco travel to the depressed pockets of the United States to report on recession-era America. What they find in Camden, New Jersey, the devastated coalmines of West Virginia, on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota, and in undocumented farmworker colonies in California is a thriving neofeudalism. With extraordinary on-the-ground reportage and illustration, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt provides a terrifying glimpse of a future for America and the nations that follow her lead--a future that will be avoided with nothing short of revolution.

100 Years of Deception: A Blueprint for the Destruction of a Nation

100 Years of Deception: A Blueprint for the Destruction of a Nation PDF Author: Alan R. Adaschik
Publisher: Booklocker.com
ISBN: 9781958890332
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
100 Years of Deception, is a book about how an international banking cartel took control of our government, and used it to shape world events, not for our benefit, but to our detriment and the detriment of everybody else in the world.

Books on Fire

Books on Fire PDF Author: Lucien X. Polastron
Publisher: Lucien X. POLASTRON
ISBN: 9781594771675
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Almost as old as the idea of the library is the urge to destroy it. Author Lucien X. Polastron traces the history of this destruction, examining the causes for these disasters, the treasures that have been lost, and where the surviving books, if any, have ended up. Books on Fire received the 2004 Societe des Gens de Lettres Prize for Nonfiction/History in Paris.

Destroying a Nation

Destroying a Nation PDF Author: Nikolaos Van Dam
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786722488
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Following the Arab Spring, Syria descended into civil and sectarian conflict. It has since become a fractured warzone which operates as a breeding ground for new terrorist movements including ISIS as well as the root cause of the greatest refugee crisis in modern history. In this important book, former Special Envoy of the Netherlands to Syria, Nikolaos van Dam, explains the recent history of Syria, covering the growing disenchantment with the Asad regime, the chaos of civil war and the fractures which led to an immense amount of destruction in the refined social fabric of what used to be the Syrian nation. Through an in-depth examination, van Dam traces political developments within the Asad regime and the various opposition groups from the Arab Spring to the present day, and provides a deeper insight into the conflict and the possibilities and obstacles for reaching a political solution.

The Destruction of Memory

The Destruction of Memory PDF Author: Robert Bevan
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780235976
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Robert Bevan examines the effects of conflict upon architecture and argues that the deliberate destruction of built artefacts, by terrorists or an invading army, can be seen as an attack on the culture of a nation itself.

Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865

Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 PDF Author: James Oakes
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393065316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
"Traces the history of emancipation and its impact on the Civil War, discussing how Lincoln and the Republicans fought primarily for freeing slaves throughout the war, not just as a secondary objective in an effort to restore the country"--OCLC

Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307719227
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity” “A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: • Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? • Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? “This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.”—BusinessWeek