The Unmentionable History of the West


Book Description

The Unmentionable History of the West is a fond romp through the underwear that men and women wore in days gone by. Think of corsets, navy blue bloomers, long underwear with its trap door and brassieres that could kill. Think also of the other unmentionables that came along with being sexual beings. Women had to hide their pregnancies, talk of birth control was illegal, seduction was a crime, prostitution likewise. There were so many silences, so many secrets about the private lives of men and women. Then along came the 1960s and the social revolution known as the women's movement. Suddenly, underwear was out, girdles were gone and women began wearing pants. What came first then . . . the women's movement or pants? The removal of restrictive underwear or the force that was Gloria Steinem? The Unmentionable History of the West tackles these questions seriously, but with a good dose of humour.




Unmentionables


Book Description

In ancient Greece, women strapped lengths of cloth across their breasts and then covered them with tunics. These bosom protectors were the antecedents of the brassiere, which didn't come along until the 20th century. With the use of fine art, photography, film stills, cartoons, and ads, Unmentionables describes the social history of a subject that holds a powerful fascination for us all. 120 full color and b&w illustrations.




A Buddhist History of the West


Book Description

Buddhism teaches that to become happy, greed, ill-will, and delusion must be transformed into their positive counterparts: generosity, compassion, and wisdom. The history of the West, like all histories, has been plagued by the consequences of greed, ill-will, and delusion. A Buddhist History of the West investigates how individuals have tried to ground themselves to make themselves feel more real. To be self-conscious is to experience ungroundedness as a sense of lack, but what is lacking has been understood differently in different historical periods. Author David R. Loy examines how the understanding of lack changes at historical junctures and shows how those junctures were so crucial in the development of the West.




History Now


Book Description




Unmentionables


Book Description

As weavers, garment workers, and peddlers, Syrian immigrants in the Americas fed the early twentieth-century transnational textile trade. These migrants and the commodities they produced—silk, linen, and cotton; lace and embroidery; undergarments and ready-wear clothing—moved along steamship routes from Beirut through Marseille and Madeira to New York City, New England, and Veracruz. As migrants and merchants crisscrossed the Atlantic in pursuit of work, Syrian textile manufacturing expanded across the hemisphere. Unmentionables offers a history of the global textile industry and the Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians who worked in it. Stacy Fahrenthold examines how Arab workers navigated processes of racialization, immigration restriction, and labor contestation. She writes women workers—the majority of Syrian garment workers—back into US labor history. She also situates the rise of Syrian American industrial elites, who exerted supply chain power to combat labor uprisings, resist unionization, and stake claim to the global textile industry. Critiquing the hegemony of the Syrian peddler in histories of this diaspora, Unmentionables introduces alternative narrators: union activists who led street demonstrations, women garment workers who shut down kimono factories, child laborers who threw snowballs at police, and the diasporic merchant capitalists who contended with all of them.




Clothing through American History


Book Description

Learn what men, women, and children have worn—and why—in American history, from the deprivations of the Civil War through the prosperous 1890s. In Clothing through American History: The Civil War through the Gilded Age, 1861–1899, authors Anita Stamper and Jill Condra provide information on fabrics, materials, and manufacturing; a discussion of daily life and dress; and the types of clothes worn by men, women, and children of all levels of society. The volume features numerous illustrations, helpful timelines, resource guides recommending Web sites, videos, and print publications, and extensive glossaries. Among the many topics discussed include: • The hours that middle class women of the nineteenth century spent making clothes for themselves and their families • The plain, rough clothes assigned to slaves to ensure that they did not enhance their appearance and their later trouble in buying clothes after emancipation • The Bloomer dress reform movement in the mid to late 19th century, where women who adopted loose, baggy trousers for practicality were called evil and unnatural • The beginnings of clothing and department stores




Material Traces of War


Book Description

This volume looks at Canadian women’s experiences of, and contributions to, the world wars through objects, images, and archival documents. The book tells the stories of women who worked as civilians, served in the military, volunteered their time, and grieved lost loved ones, through thematically organized vignettes. The authors place these personal narratives of individual woman, and their related material culture, in the wider context of the world wars while demonstrating that the experience of living through global conflict was as individual as a woman’s particular circumstances. Drawing from the collections of the Canadian War Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and other public and private collections in Canada, Material Traces of War brings largely unknown material culture collections to public view and draws attention to the untold stories of women and war.




Unspeakable


Book Description

We are still surprised by evil. From Auschwitz to the events of September 11, we have been shocked into recognizing the startling capacity for evil within the human heart. We now know 9/11 revealed that our country was unprepared in terms of national security, but it also showed we were intellectually and morally unprepared to deal with such a barbaric act. Our language to describe evil and our ethical will to resist it have grown uncertain and confused. Many who speak unabashedly of evil are dismissed as simplistic, old–fashioned, and out of tune with the realities of modern life. Yet we must have some kind of language to help us understand the pain and suffering at the heart of human experience. Author and speaker Os Guinness confronts our inability to understand evil – let alone respond to it effectively – by providing both a lexicon and a strategy for finding a way forward. Since 9/11, much public discussion has centered on the destructiveness of extremist religion. Guinness provocatively argues that this is far from an accurate picture and too easy an explanation. In this expansive exploration of both the causes of modern evil and solutions for the future, he faces our tragic recent past and our disturbing present with courageous honesty. In order to live an "examined life," Guinness writes, we must come to terms with our beliefs regarding evil and ultimately join the fight against it. Addressing individuals as well as a traumatized culture, Unspeakable is an invitation to explore the challenge of contemporary evil, a call to confront our culture of fear, and a journey to find words to come to terms with the unspeakable so that it will no longer leave us mute.




The Second Life of Mirielle West


Book Description

The glamorous world of a silent film star’s wife abruptly crumbles when she’s forcibly quarantined at the Carville Lepers Home in this page-turning story of courage, resilience, and reinvention set in 1920s Louisiana and Los Angeles. Based on little-known history, this timely book will strike a chord with readers of Fiona Davis, Tracey Lange, and Marie Benedict. Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century. For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life of bootlegged champagne and the star-studded parties of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When a doctor notices a pale patch of skin on her hand, she’s immediately branded a leper and carted hundreds of miles from home to Carville, taking a new name to spare her family and famous husband the shame that accompanies the disease. At first she hopes her exile will be brief, but those sent to Carville are more prisoners than patients and their disease has no cure. Instead she must find community and purpose within its walls, struggling to redefine her self-worth while fighting an unchosen fate. As a registered nurse, Amanda Skenandore’s medical background adds layers of detail and authenticity to the experiences of patients and medical professionals at Carville – the isolation, stigma, experimental treatments, and disparate community. A tale of repulsion, resilience, and the Roaring ‘20s, The Second Life of Mirielle West is also the story of a health crisis in America’s past, made all the more poignant by the author’s experiences during another, all-too-recent crisis. PRAISE FOR AMANDA SKENANDORE’S BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY “Intensely emotional…Skenandore’s deeply introspective and moving novel will appeal to readers of American history.” —Publishers Weekly




Black Huntington


Book Description

How African Americans thrived in a West Virginia city By 1930, Huntington had become West Virginia's largest city. Its booming economy and relatively tolerant racial climate attracted African Americans from across Appalachia and the South. Prosperity gave these migrants political clout and spurred the formation of communities that defined black Huntington--factors that empowered blacks to confront institutionalized and industrial racism on the one hand and the white embrace of Jim Crow on the other. Cicero M. Fain III illuminates the unique cultural identity and dynamic sense of accomplishment and purpose that transformed African American life in Huntington. Using interviews and untapped archival materials, Fain details the rise and consolidation of the black working class as it pursued, then fulfilled, its aspirations. He also reveals how African Americans developed a host of strategies--strong kin and social networks, institutional development, property ownership, and legal challenges--to defend their gains in the face of the white status quo. Eye-opening and eloquent, Black Huntington makes visible another facet of the African American experience in Appalachia.