Private Lives, Public Spirit

Private Lives, Public Spirit PDF Author: José Harris
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a lively and original new study of the social history of Britain between 1870 and 1914. Jose Harris surveys and reinterprets many themes: demography and disease, work and religion, social reform and social theory, feminism and family life. The period was marked by the co-existence of many trends and principles often believed to be mutually exclusive. Dr Harris vividly conveys a sense of the diversity which characterized the age, and reveals the doubts and ambivalencies of contemporaries. She shows that in many respects Great Britain at this period was a ramshackle and amorphous society, characterized by a myriad of contradictory opinions, at every level from parish pump to empire. Private Lives, Public Spirit suggests that many 'Victorians' and 'Edwardians' were remarkably different from their modern stereotypes, and that much of what are now thought of as quintessentially 'Victorian values' stemmed less from traditional ideas and structures than from 'progressive' reformist movements of the very end of Victoria's reign. It is a readable and compelling depiction of Britain during the watershed period before the First World War: a period whose characteristic ideas and structures did not vanish with the war but survived with great tenacity over the next half-century.

Private Lives, Public Spirit

Private Lives, Public Spirit PDF Author: José Harris
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a lively and original new study of the social history of Britain between 1870 and 1914. Jose Harris surveys and reinterprets many themes: demography and disease, work and religion, social reform and social theory, feminism and family life. The period was marked by the co-existence of many trends and principles often believed to be mutually exclusive. Dr Harris vividly conveys a sense of the diversity which characterized the age, and reveals the doubts and ambivalencies of contemporaries. She shows that in many respects Great Britain at this period was a ramshackle and amorphous society, characterized by a myriad of contradictory opinions, at every level from parish pump to empire. Private Lives, Public Spirit suggests that many 'Victorians' and 'Edwardians' were remarkably different from their modern stereotypes, and that much of what are now thought of as quintessentially 'Victorian values' stemmed less from traditional ideas and structures than from 'progressive' reformist movements of the very end of Victoria's reign. It is a readable and compelling depiction of Britain during the watershed period before the First World War: a period whose characteristic ideas and structures did not vanish with the war but survived with great tenacity over the next half-century.

Private Lives, Public Deaths

Private Lives, Public Deaths PDF Author: Jonathan Strauss
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823251322
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
Private Lives, Public Deaths draws on classical studies, Hegel, and modern philosophical analyses to describe how Sophocle's tragedy Antigone expresses a key concern of ancient Greek culture: the value of a living individual.

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams PDF Author: Paul C. Nagel
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307828190
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 636

Get Book Here

Book Description
February 21, 1848, the House of Representatives, Washington D.C.: Congressman John Quincy Adams, rising to speak, suddenly collapses at his desk; two days later, he dies in the Speaker’s chamber. The public mourning that followed, writes Paul C. Nagel, “exceeded anything previously seen in America. Forgotten was his failed presidency and his often cold demeanor. It was the memory of an extraordinary human being—one who in his last years had fought heroically for the right of petition and against a war to expand slavery—that drew a grateful people to salute his coffin in the Capitol and to stand by the railroad tracks as his bier was transported from Washington to Boston.” Nagel probes deeply into the psyche of this cantankerous, misanthropic, erudite, hardworking son of a former president whose remarkable career spanned many offices: minister to Holland, Russia, and England, U.S. senator, secretary of state, president of the United States (1825-1829), and, finally, U.S. representative (the only ex-president to serve in the House). On the basis of a thorough study of Adams’ seventy-year diary, among a host of other documents, the author gives us a richer account than we have yet had of JQA’s life—his passionate marriage to Louisa Johnson, his personal tragedies (two sons lost to alcoholism), his brilliant diplomacy, his recurring depression, his exasperating behavior—and shows us why, in the end, only Abraham Lincoln’s death evoked a great out-pouring of national sorrow in nineteenth-century America. We come to see how much Adams disliked politics and hoped for more from life than high office; how he sought distinction in literacy and scientific endeavors, and drew his greatest pleasure from being a poet, critic, translator, essayist, botanist, and professor of oratory at Harvard; how tension between the public and private Adams vexed his life; and how his frustration kept his masked and aloof (and unpopular). Nagel’s great achievement, in this first biography of America’s sixth president in a quarter century, is finally to portray Adams in all his talent and complexity.

Blindfold and Alone

Blindfold and Alone PDF Author: John Hughes-Wilson
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 147460319X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469

Get Book Here

Book Description
Three hundred and fifty-one men were executed by British Army firing squads between September 1914 and November 1920. By far the greatest number, 266 were shot for desertion in the face of the enemy. The executions continue to haunt the history of the war, with talk today of shell shock and posthumous pardons. Using material released from the Public Records Office and other sources, the authors reveal what really happened and place the story of these executions firmly in the context of the military, social and medical context of the period.

An Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase

An Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase PDF Author: Robert Bruce Warden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cabinet officers
Languages : en
Pages : 868

Get Book Here

Book Description


Private Lives/Public Consequences

Private Lives/Public Consequences PDF Author: William Henry Chafe
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029321
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 431

Get Book Here

Book Description
A political leader's decisions can determine the fate of a nation, but what determines how and why that leader makes certain choices? William H. Chafe, a distinguished historian of twentieth century America, examines eight of the most significant political leaders of the modern era in order to explore the relationship between their personal patterns of behavior and their political decision-making process. The result is a fascinating look at how personal lives and political fortunes have intersected to shape America over the past fifty years. One might expect our leaders to be healthy, wealthy, genteel, and happy. In fact, most of these individuals--from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Martin Luther King, Jr., from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton--came from dysfunctional families, including three children of alcoholics; half grew up in poor or only marginally secure homes; most experienced discord in their marriages; and at least two displayed signs of mental instability. What links this extraordinarily diverse group is an intense ambition to succeed, and the drive to overcome adversity. Indeed, adversity offered a vehicle to develop the personal attributes that would define their careers and shape the way they exercised power. Chafe probes the influences that forged these men's lives, and profiles the distinctive personalities that molded their exercise of power in times of danger and strife. The history of the United States from the Depression into the new century cannot be understood without exploring the dynamic and critical relationship between personal history and political leadership that these eight life stories so poignantly reveal.

Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600-2000

Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600-2000 PDF Author: Steve Sturdy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134467923
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Medicine is concerned with the most intimate aspects of private life. Yet it is also a focus for diverse forms of public organization and action. In this volume, an international team of scholars use the techniques of medical history to analyse the changing boundaries and constitution of the public sphere from early modernity to the present day. In a series of detailed historical case studies, contributors examine the role of various public institutions - both formal and informal, voluntary and statutory - in organizing and coordinating collective action on medical matters. In so doing, they challenge the determinism and fatalism of Habermas's overarching and functionalist account of the rise and fall of the public sphere. Of essential interest to historians and sociologists of medicine, this book will also be of value to historians of modern Britain, historical sociologists, and those engaged in studying the work of Jürgen Habermas.

Re-forming Britain

Re-forming Britain PDF Author: Elizabeth Darling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134314973
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
A study of how architects from the late 1920s onwards sought to establish modernism as the dominant ideology in British architecture and to convert the nation to their ideology.

Mary Gladstone and the Victorian Salon

Mary Gladstone and the Victorian Salon PDF Author: Phyllis Weliver
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316884929
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Get Book Here

Book Description
The daughter of one of Britain's longest-serving Prime Ministers, Mary Gladstone was a notable musician, hostess of one of the most influential political salons in late-Victorian London, and probably the first female prime ministerial private secretary in Britain. Pivoting around Mary's initiatives, this intellectual history draws on a trove of unpublished archival material that reveals for the first time the role of music in Victorian liberalism, explores its intersections with literature, recovers what the high Victorian salon was within a wider cultural history, and shows Mary's influence on her father's work. Paying close attention to literary and biographical details, the book also sheds new light on Tennyson's poetry, George Eliot's fiction, the founding of the Royal College of Music, the Gladstone family, and a broad plane of wider British culture, including political liberalism and women, sociability, social theology, and aesthetic democracy.

Designing Modern Britain

Designing Modern Britain PDF Author: Cheryl Buckley
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861894716
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
British culture is marked by indelible icons—red double-decker buses, large oak wardrobes, and the compact sleekness of the Mini. But British industrial and product design have long lived in the shadows of architecture and fashion. Cheryl Buckley here delves into the history of British design culture, and in doing so uniquely tracks the evolution of the British national identity. Designing Modern Britain demonstrates how interior design, ceramics, textiles, and furniture craft of the twentieth century contain numerous hallmark examples of British design. The book explores topics connected to the British design aesthetic, including the spread of international modernism, the eco-conscious designs of the 1980s and 1990s, and the influence of celebrity product designers and their labels. Buckley also investigates popular nostalgia in recent times, considering how museum and gallery exhibitions have been instrumental in reimagining Britain’s past and how the heritage industry has fueled a growing trend among designers of employing images of British culture in their work. A thoughtful look at the aesthetic heritage of a nation that has left its footprint around the globe, Designing Modern Britain will be a valuable text for students and professionals in design.