Howard Zinn was perhaps the best-known and most widely celebrated popular interpreter of American history in the twentieth century, renowned as a bestselling author, a political activist, a lecturer, and one of America's most recognizable and admired progressive voices.
His rich, complicated, and fascinating life placed Zinn at the heart of the signal events of modern American history--from the battlefields of World War II to the McCarthy era, the civil rights and the antiwar movements, and beyond. A bombardier who later renounced war, a son of working-class parents who earned a doctorate at Columbia, a white professor who taught at the historically black Spelman College in Atlanta, a committed scholar who will be forever remembered as a devoted "people's historian"--Howard Zinn blazed a bold, iconoclastic path through the turbulent second half of the twentieth century. For the millions who were moved by Zinn's personal example of political engagement and by his inspiring "bottom up" history, here is an authoritative biography of this towering figure--by Martin Duberman, recipient of the American Historical Association's 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award. Given exclusive access to the previously closed Zinn archives, Duberman's impeccably researched biography is illustrated with never-before-published photos from the Zinn family collection. Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left is a major publishing event that brings to life one of the most inspiring figures of our time.
The footnote emerges in this book as a singular resource which reveals much about the evolution of modern scholarship and the progress of knowledge in written form. Grafton treats the development of the footnote - a form of proof normally supplied by historians in support of their assertions - as writers on science treat the development of laboratory equipment, statistical arguments and reports on experiments as a complex history. The book begins in the Berlin of the 19th century and explores the work of historian, Leopold von Ranke, who is often credited with inventing documentary history in its modern form. It then looks back to antiquity and forward to the 20th century, offering a theory of the true origins and gradual development of the footnote."
A fascinating tour of the past as it exists today, and of the dangers that threaten it, through incisive portraits of our attempts to maintain it: the high-tech struggles to save the Great Sphinx and the Ganges; the efforts to preserve Latin within the Vatican; the digital glut inside the National Archives, which may have caused more information to be lost than ever before; and an oral culture threatened by a "new" technology: writing itself. Stille explores not simply the past, but our ideas about the past-and how they will have to change if our past is to have a future.
The noted military historian evaluates works ranging from accounts of individual campaigns to general histories, biographies, and studies of espionage
From admired historian--and coiner of one of feminism's most popular slogans--Laurel Thatcher Ulrich comes an exploration of what it means for women to make history.
In 1976, in an obscure scholarly article, Ulrich wrote, "Well behaved women seldom make history." Today these words appear on t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, greeting cards, and all sorts of Web sites and blogs. Ulrich explains how that happened and what it means by looking back at women of the past who challenged the way history was written. She ranges from the fifteenth-century writer Christine de Pizan, who wrote The Book of the City of Ladies, to the twentieth century's Virginia Woolf, author of A Room of One's Own. Ulrich updates their attempts to reimagine female possibilities and looks at the women who didn't try to make history but did. And she concludes by showing how the 1970s activists who created "second-wave feminism" also created a renaissance in the study of history.
Telling perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race but also the frequent praise of whiteness for economic, scientific, and political ends. A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People closes a huge gap in literature that has long focused on the non-white and forcefully reminds us that the concept of race is an all-too-human invention whose meaning, importance, and reality have changed as it has been driven by a long and rich history of events."
Britain's leading contemporary historian revisits the grand themes that have run through modern Britain, including the abiding trends of the post-war era--Britain's persistent impulse to punch well above its weight in the world and the secrecy that has too often surrounded state affairs.
In "Distilling the Frenzy" a heavyweight of British scholarship lays bear the historian's art for all to see, incorporating elements of autobiography that gives the book a poignancy lacking in other grand historical works. This is the story of Britain's century through the eyes of its most celebrated chronicler.
Peter Hennessy is the Attlee professor of contemporary British history at Queen Mary, University of London.
From thoughtful pieces on the historian's role to striking insights into America's past and present to trenchant observations on the international scene, Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. Spanning more than four decades of writing in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, The Nation, and The Saturday Evening Post, Tuchman weighs in on a range of eclectic topics, from Israel and Mao Tse-tung to a Freudian reading of Woodrow Wilson. This is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history."
Praise for Practicing History "Persuades and enthralls . . . I can think of no better primer for the nonexpert who wishes to learn history."--Chicago Sun-Times
"Provocative, consistent, and beautifully readable, an event not to be missed by history buffs."--Baltimore Sun
"A delight to read."--The New York Times Book Review
Who was a tweenie? How did an ice house work and where would you find a crinkum-crankum wall? What was a chesterfield for, or a Claude glass, and how did a clock jack improve your dinner? The answers to these and many other questions appear in this dictionary, which is a feast of information and trivia for history buffs everywhere wanting to know more than just dates and dry facts. They want to know how people lived: what they ate, how they spoke, how they dressed, what games they played, what their homes looked like. This unique dictionary reveals the fascinating details of life, allowing the reader to travel back in time and experience a typical day in any century from the sixteenth to our own. A book to give hours of pleasure whether browsed through or used for reference-it contains a wealth of unexpected information.
