Witnessing America

Witnessing America PDF Author: Library of Congress
Publisher: Viking Adult
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
Presents a portait of America's social and cultural history between 1600 and 1900, told through letters, diaries, memoirs, tracts, and other articles and first-hand accounts found in the collections of the Library of Congress.

Witnessing America

Witnessing America PDF Author: Library of Congress
Publisher: Viking Adult
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presents a portait of America's social and cultural history between 1600 and 1900, told through letters, diaries, memoirs, tracts, and other articles and first-hand accounts found in the collections of the Library of Congress.

Witness to a Century

Witness to a Century PDF Author: George Seldes
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307775429
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
"This extraordinary book . . . is a reminder . . . of the sins of suppression and untruth that have been and can be committed in the name of American journalism . . . One of the last first-person statements from a generation that included Hitler, Nehru, and Mao . . . and Seldes too." --Columbia Journalism Review

Is the American Century Over?

Is the American Century Over? PDF Author: Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745696511
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
For more than a century, the United States has been the world's most powerful state. Now some analysts predict that China will soon take its place. Does this mean that we are living in a post-American world? Will China's rapid rise spark a new Cold War between the two titans? In this compelling essay, world renowned foreign policy analyst, Joseph Nye, explains why the American century is far from over and what the US must do to retain its lead in an era of increasingly diffuse power politics. America's superpower status may well be tempered by its own domestic problems and China's economic boom, he argues, but its military, economic and soft power capabilities will continue to outstrip those of its closest rivals for decades to come.

Disappearing Witness

Disappearing Witness PDF Author: Gretchen Garner
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801871672
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
In documenting this transformation in American photography, Disappearing Witness forcefully rethinks the history of photography itself.

Lynching and Spectacle

Lynching and Spectacle PDF Author: Amy Louise Wood
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807878111
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Lynch mobs in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America exacted horrifying public torture and mutilation on their victims. In Lynching and Spectacle, Amy Wood explains what it meant for white Americans to perform and witness these sadistic spectacles and how lynching played a role in establishing and affirming white supremacy. Lynching, Wood argues, overlapped with a variety of cultural practices and performances, both traditional and modern, including public executions, religious rituals, photography, and cinema, all which encouraged the horrific violence and gave it social acceptability. However, she also shows how the national dissemination of lynching images ultimately fueled the momentum of the antilynching movement and the decline of the practice. Using a wide range of sources, including photos, newspaper reports, pro- and antilynching pamphlets, early films, and local city and church records, Wood reconfigures our understanding of lynching's relationship to modern life. Wood expounds on the critical role lynching spectacles played in establishing and affirming white supremacy at the turn of the century, particularly in towns and cities experiencing great social instability and change. She also shows how the national dissemination of lynching images fueled the momentum of the antilynching movement and ultimately led to the decline of lynching. By examining lynching spectacles alongside both traditional and modern practices and within both local and national contexts, Wood reconfigures our understanding of lynching's relationship to modern life.

Witnessing the American Century

Witnessing the American Century PDF Author: Capt. Allen Colby Brady
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781612778105
Category : Fighter pilots
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
"The rise of Adolf Hitler, America's Great Depression in the heartland, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American life following World War II, the Korean War, America's development of atomic weapons in the Cold War age, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Mariel boatlift. Captain Allen Brady not only witnessed all of these events but actually participated in them, in many instances as a US Naval Aviator. So many Americans and global citizens alike are not even aware of the importance of these pivotal moments; as generations age and pass on, without important accounts like this one, much is forgotten. More than just a memoir, Brady's book is an important document from one of the last of his generation, reminding us of the pivotal moments that should not be lost to history. Witnessing the American Century is Captain Brady's firsthand account of his incredible life, and his memories elucidate America's role in the most significant world events from the previous century."--Provided by publisher.

Witness to America

Witness to America PDF Author: Douglas Brinkley
Publisher: Harper
ISBN: 9780062716118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
In this newly updated edition, Douglas Brinkley, one of our most distinguished historians, brings together a stunning collection of eyewitness accounts that chronicles the American experience from the perspectives of those who participated in its making. Witness to America includes nearly 150 works drawn from America's history, from the first shots of the Revolutionary War to the twenty-first century. From Patrick Henry's rousing "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" speech to John Brown's stand at Harpers Ferry; from Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise of a New Deal to Neil Armstrong's account of walking on the moon; from 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to Barack Obama's landmark speech on race: this sweeping volume brings the milestones in American history vividly to life. Here are unique and revealing selections from such historical figures as John Adams, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy, as well as influential individuals, among them Booker T. Washington, Charles Lindbergh, Ernie Pyle, Rosa Parks, and Betty Friedan. While many of the selections come from notable citizens, most are from ordinary Americans—schoolteachers, students, homemakers, pioneers, and soldiers—who describe the everyday events that have epitomized American life over the course of its history, indelibly demonstrating both the variety and vitality of the American character. Witness to America sweeps across the vast territory that is our nation, illuminating the movements, ideas, inventions, and events that have shaped and defined us—from the Pony Express to the personal computer; from the frontier to the rise of suburbia; from farming to modernization and the information age. Within these pages discover the art of whaling, learn about survival on the Gold Rush trail, experience the glory and trauma of war, and glean new insight on the great leaders. Here are debates and speeches, diary entries, letters, memoirs, court records, and more—including many first-person accounts that make history come alive as never before, such as a powerful description of the atomic explosion from a correspondent on the Enola Gay and a young student's evaluation of the changing roles of women at her high school. Witness to America is a fascinating, highly readable, and entertaining collection that shows us what America is and where it may go.

Our Man

Our Man PDF Author: George Packer
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958035
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography* *Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography* *Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize* "Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it."--Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review "By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -- sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself."--David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.

Hidden Witness

Hidden Witness PDF Author: Jackie Napolean Wilson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312267476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Few images of black Americans in the Civil War period exist or have survived, but now the granddaughter of a South Carolina slave has assembled the most comprehensive and significant collection of such rare images ever compiled. Bringing the truth of their daily lives to light, scenes of maternal affection, matrimony, war, and the grim reality of the master-slave relationship will help readers focus their perceptions of the black American experience in ways not otherwise available in modern history studies.

Witness Tree

Witness Tree PDF Author: Lynda Mapes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632862530
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
An intimate look at one majestic hundred-year-old oak tree through four seasons--and the reality of global climate change it reveals. In the life of this one grand oak, we can see for ourselves the results of one hundred years of rapid environmental change. It's leafing out earlier, and dropping its leaves later as the climate warms. Even the inner workings of individual leaves have changed to accommodate more CO2 in our atmosphere. Climate science can seem dense, remote, and abstract. But through the lens of this one tree, it becomes immediate and intimate. In Witness Tree, environmental reporter Lynda V. Mapes takes us through her year living with one red oak at the Harvard Forest. We learn about carbon cycles and leaf physiology, but also experience the seasons as people have for centuries, watching for each new bud, and listening for each new bird and frog call in spring. We savor the cadence of falling autumn leaves, and glory of snow and starry winter nights. Lynda takes us along as she climbs high into the oak's swaying boughs, and scientists core deep into the oak's heartwood, dig into its roots and probe the teeming life of the soil. She brings us eye-level with garter snakes and newts, and alongside the squirrels and jays devouring the oak's acorns. Season by season she reveals the secrets of trees, how they work, and sustain a vast community of lives, including our own. The oak is a living timeline and witness to climate change. While stark in its implications, Witness Tree is a beautiful and lyrical read, rich in detail, sweeps of weather, history, people, and animals. It is a story rooted in hope, beauty, wonder, and the possibility of renewal in people's connection to nature.