The Republic for which it Stands


Book Description

The newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands argues that the Gilded Age, along with Reconstruction--its conflicts, rapid and disorienting change, hopes and fears--formed the template of American modernity.




For Which It Stands


Book Description

This second installment of The Finish Line Series finds Ireland Murphy and Michael Farino fighting for their relationship, and for their lives. Unknown forces threaten them, causing both to take matters into their own hands. Michael and Ilee need to find out who is behind this in order to stop it. The list of suspects runs deep, thanks to both of their crime families and their personal life choices. Revelations about both of them, and their families, lead to intense passion, suspicion, betrayal, revealed secrets and a desperate attempt at regaining control of their future. What that future looks like, and who will or will not be in it, is decided.




For Which It Stands


Book Description

Our national anthem celebrates it. Patriots wave it. Politicians of all kinds try to wrap themselves in it. It is saluted at baseball games, in parades, and on the most solemn of commemorative occasions. It was salvaged in the first hours following the dreadful events of September 11, and it stands outstretched just above the surface of the moon. It is, of course, the American flag, and there are few symbols as potent. With all the reverence and sacrifice and emotion it inspires, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it is ultimately just a symbol. Why is it so powerful? Why does a piece of cloth resonate so loudly for so many? Why a flag, and why this flag, these stripes, those stars? In For Which It Stands, his timely, comprehensive, and engaging "biography" of the American flag, Michael Corcoran examines those questions and more as he explores the evolution of our most cherished emblem, from the days preceding the Revolution through the nationwide resurgence of patriotism in the aftermath of September 11. Corcoran traces the entire life of the colors, holding forth on a number of engrossing topics, including: • The fluid design of the flag, the subject of much contentious debate on the part of the founding fathers, and until fairly recently, not officially codified. • The various alternative flags ingrained in the national consciousness, among them the defiant, rattlesnake-adorned "Don't Tread on Me" banner and the "Stars and Bars" of the Confederacy. • The role of the colors in war, from how to start a fight with England (raising a flag declaring indepen-dence, high enough for the British Army in Boston to see it, ought to do the trick) to the question of whether to remove from the banner the stars emblematic of the states that seceded during the Civil War, to the giddy ubiquity of the flag following World War II. Corcoran addresses all these matters and more (including the particularly vexing questions raised by flag burning: Is it such an affront that it warrants a constitutional amendment outlawing that method of protest, or is it perhaps the single most potent expression of our right to free speech, and therefore profoundly American?) as he delves into the wind-tangled history of "Old Glory," an entertaining jumble of much-loved myth and obscure facts. Thoughtful, droll, and fast-paced, For Which It Stands definitively tells the story of America's most recognizable icon, from Bunker Hill to Iwo Jima to Tranquillity Base -- and beyond.




For which it Stands


Book Description

The American flag is the quintessential symbol of the land of opportunity in which our highest dreams and aspirations are united. As a representation of the greatest heights of freedom and human attainment, it inspires the imagination. Conceived of as a joyous exclamation of progress, the flag provokes the most spirited emotional responses the world over. This book presents a collection of contemporary artists, working in diverse media, who use this revered emblem to relate their own ideals.00.




The Republic for Which It Stands


Book Description

The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multivolume history of the American nation. In the newest volume in the series, The Republic for Which It Stands, acclaimed historian Richard White offers a fresh and integrated interpretation of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age as the seedbed of modern America. At the end of the Civil War the leaders and citizens of the victorious North envisioned the country's future as a free-labor republic, with a homogenous citizenry, both black and white. The South and West were to be reconstructed in the image of the North. Thirty years later Americans occupied an unimagined world. The unity that the Civil War supposedly secured had proved ephemeral. The country was larger, richer, and more extensive, but also more diverse. Life spans were shorter, and physical well-being had diminished, due to disease and hazardous working conditions. Independent producers had become wage earners. The country was Catholic and Jewish as well as Protestant, and increasingly urban and industrial. The "dangerous" classes of the very rich and poor expanded, and deep differences -- ethnic, racial, religious, economic, and political -- divided society. The corruption that gave the Gilded Age its name was pervasive. These challenges also brought vigorous efforts to secure economic, moral, and cultural reforms. Real change -- technological, cultural, and political -- proliferated from below more than emerging from political leadership. Americans, mining their own traditions and borrowing ideas, produced creative possibilities for overcoming the crises that threatened their country. In a work as dramatic and colorful as the era it covers, White narrates the conflicts and paradoxes of these decades of disorienting change and mounting unrest, out of which emerged a modern nation whose characteristics resonate with the present day.




When the Game Stands Tall


Book Description

De La Salle High School in Concord, California, is home to perhaps the greatest dynasty in sports history. At age 23, Coach Bob Ladouceur launched a legend, "The Streak," with no teaching or head-coaching experience, and with his teams amassed the highest winning percentage in all of football history with 138 consecutive victories. This book takes readers behind the scenes, closely following individual players, as Ladouceur guides his team through the most daunting schedule in school history, the 2002 season. Numerous interviews with major-league coaches such as Bill Walsh, Steve Mariucci, and John Gruden show the depth of respect accorded to Ladouceur and his methods and philosophies. Written with full cooperation from the coach and including dozens of photographs, this book is perfect for anyone interested in the factors behind phenomenal team success.




Where a Man Stands


Book Description

When Beverly Hills High School welcomed a skinny boy from the other side of the tracks, no one knew just how life-changing the decision would be, not just for Carter Paysinger but for all of Beverly Hills. Carter grew up hearing his parents say, “Don’t just strive to be good. Always strive to be great.” He dreamed of finding greatness in playing professional baseball or becoming a black Donald Trump, but fate had different plans and, ultimately, he found his calling as a teacher and coach at the school that once embraced him, becoming a rock for the innumerable kids who came seeking an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on. One such kid, a scrappy Jewish boy from a prominent family, would change the course of Carter’s life. His name was Steven Fenton. Twenty years later, as Beverly Hills High fell into disarray—with principals hired and fired and families fleeing the school—as well as his own life coming apart, Carter ran into Steven Fenton again. Together, they found renewed passion and hope to fight for their school and test the limits of what community means. But when Steven convinced Carter to throw his hat into the ring as principal, the progressive Beverly Hills suddenly thought that its winningest and most beloved coach didn’t fit the profile for the Beverly Hills image. It was the beginning of a long road, but Carter could hear his father saying, “Don’t listen to those voices. Do what you have to do.” Filled with hope, triumph, and the struggles that come to define us, Where a Man Stands is a beautiful fish-out-of-water story about the families formed in unlikely places and how, in the end, where you stand, and with whom, and for what, matters as much as anything.




Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition)


Book Description

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.




The radiation regime and architecture of plant stands


Book Description

The solar radiant energy is in fact the only source of energy for the basic physical processes taking place in the atmosphere and on the earth's surface. When passing through the atmosphere and being reflected by the ground surface, solar radiation undergoes changes and conversions. Some of it is absorbed in the atmosphere and converted into other forms of energy, mainly into heat, and some is scattered by gases, by dust and by water vapour. Because of absorption and scattering in the atmosphere, solar radiation is changed by the time it reaches the earth's surface. That part of it which arrives as a beam of parallel rays is referred to as direct solar radiation, and that which is scattered in the atmosphere and reaches the earth's surface from all directions of the sky is called diffuse solar radiation. Both of them are reflected back into the atmosphere when they reach the earth's surface, and this third type of radiation is defined as reflected radiation. All of these radiations differ from solar radiation arriving at the upper level of the atmosphere in intensity as well as in spectral composition although they all fall within the spectral region of solar radiation. In atmospheric physics these types of radiation are known as short-wave radiation (SWR) as distinguished from long-wave or irifrared radiation (L WR) emitted by the atmosphere and the earth's surface.




A Girl Stands at the Door


Book Description

A new history of school desegregation in America, revealing how girls and women led the fight for interracial education The struggle to desegregate America's schools was a grassroots movement, and young women were its vanguard. In the late 1940s, parents began to file desegregation lawsuits with their daughters, forcing Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights lawyers to take up the issue and bring it to the Supreme Court. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, girls far outnumbered boys in volunteering to desegregate formerly all-white schools. In A Girl Stands at the Door, historian Rachel Devlin tells the remarkable stories of these desegregation pioneers. She also explains why black girls were seen, and saw themselves, as responsible for the difficult work of reaching across the color line in public schools. Highlighting the extraordinary bravery of young black women, this bold revisionist account illuminates today's ongoing struggles for equality.