Monthly Bulletin


Book Description




Corcoran Gallery of Art


Book Description

This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.




Grand Strategy and Military Alliances


Book Description

A broad-ranging study of the relationship between alliances and the conduct of grand strategy, examined through historical case studies.




Postwar


Book Description

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award • One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year “Impressive . . . Mr. Judt writes with enormous authority.” —The Wall Street Journal “Magisterial . . . It is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive, authoritative, and yes, readable postwar history.” —The Boston Globe Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy. Judt's book, Ill Fares the Land, republished in 2021 featuring a new preface by bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.




On Gold Mountain


Book Description

When she was a girl, Lisa See spent summers in the cool, dark recesses of her family`s antiques store in Los Angeles' Chinatown. There, her grandmother and great-aunt told her intriguing, colourful stories about their family`s past - stories of missionaries, concubines, tong wars, glamorous nightclubs, and the determined struggle to triumph over racist laws and discrimination. They spoke of how Lisa`s great-great-grandfather emigrated from his Chinese village to the United States, and how his son followed him. As an adult, See spent fives years collecting the details of her family`s remarkable history. She interviewd nearly one hundred relatives and pored over documents at the National Archives, the immigration office, and in countless attics, basements, and closets for the initmate nuances of her ancestors` lives. The result is a vivid, sweeping family portriat that is att once particular and universal, telling the story not only of one family, but of the Chinese people in America - and of America itself, a country that both welcomes and reviles its immigrants like no other culture in the world.




My Antonia


Book Description

A haunting tribute to the heroic pioneers who shaped the American Midwest This powerful novel by Willa Cather is considered to be one of her finest works and placed Cather in the forefront of women novelists. It tells the stories of several immigrant families who start new lives in America in rural Nebraska. This powerful tribute to the quiet heroism of those whose struggles and triumphs shaped the American Midwest highlights the role of women pioneers, in particular. Written in the style of a memoir penned by Antonia’s tutor and friend, the book depicts one of the most memorable heroines in American literature, the spirited eldest daughter of a Czech immigrant family, whose calm, quite strength and robust spirit helped her survive the hardships and loneliness of life on the Nebraska prairie. The two form an enduring bond and through his chronicle, we watch Antonia shape the land while dealing with poverty, treachery, and tragedy. “No romantic novel ever written in America...is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.” -H. L. Mencken Willa Cather (1873–1947) was an American writer best known for her novels of the Plains and for One of Ours, a novel set in World War I, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943 and received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1944, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments. By the time of her death she had written twelve novels, five books of short stories, and a collection of poetry.




The Year-Round Hoophouse


Book Description

Design and build a hoophouse or polytunnel, and grow abundant produce year-round in any climate The Year-Round Hoophouse is the comprehensive guide to designing and building a hoophouse and making a success of growing abundant, delicious fresh produce all year, whatever your climate and land size. Chapters include: Hoophouse siting, size, style, frame construction, and tools Bed layout, soil, crop rotations, and extensive coverage of various crops for all seasons Organic solutions to pests and diseases Disaster preparation Tested resources for each chapter. The Year-Round Hoophouse is ideal for farmers who wish to move into protected growing, as well as beginning farmers in rural and urban spaces. It is an essential reference resource for professors and students of courses in sustainable agriculture, as well as interns and apprentices learning on the job. Growing in hoophouses – also known as high tunnels or polytunnels – reduces the impact of an increasingly unpredictable climate on crops, mitigates soil erosion, extends the growing season, keeps leafy greens alive through the winter, and enables growers to supply more regional food needs.




The Phasian Bird


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A History of Appalachia


Book Description

Richard Drake has skillfully woven together the various strands of the Appalachian experience into a sweeping whole. Touching upon folk traditions, health care, the environment, higher education, the role of blacks and women, and much more, Drake offers a compelling social history of a unique American region. The Appalachian region, extending from Alabama in the South up to the Allegheny highlands of Pennsylvania, has historically been characterized by its largely rural populations, rich natural resources that have fueled industry in other parts of the country, and the strong and wild, undeveloped land. The rugged geography of the region allowed Native American societies, especially the Cherokee, to flourish. Early white settlers tended to favor a self-sufficient approach to farming, contrary to the land grabbing and plantation building going on elsewhere in the South. The growth of a market economy and competition from other agricultural areas of the country sparked an economic decline of the region's rural population at least as early as 1830. The Civil War and the sometimes hostile legislation of Reconstruction made life even more difficult for rural Appalachians. Recent history of the region is marked by the corporate exploitation of resources. Regional oil, gas, and coal had attracted some industry even before the Civil War, but the postwar years saw an immense expansion of American industry, nearly all of which relied heavily on Appalachian fossil fuels, particularly coal. What was initially a boon to the region eventually brought financial disaster to many mountain people as unsafe working conditions and strip mining ravaged the land and its inhabitants. A History of Appalachia also examines pockets of urbanization in Appalachia. Chemical, textile, and other industries have encouraged the development of urban areas. At the same time, radio, television, and the internet provide residents direct links to cultures from all over the world. The author looks at the process of urbanization as it belies commonly held notions about the region's rural character.




Nuclear War


Book Description

Nuclear War: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and A Workable Moral Strategy for Achieving and Preserving World Peace Raymond G. Wilson "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the United States since the days of Andrew Jackson." Franklin D. Roosevelt There is considerable reason to believe President Roosevelt's statement is quite true, thus the "financial element in the large centers" shares responsibility and blame for the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of war deaths in the last two decades. The people of the world need protection from those responsible for provoking nations to war. In the United States this responsibility lies with all elements in the highest levels of government, the decision makers. It lies with those who tinker with political and economic machinations, most likely for the advantage of "a financial element in the large centers." These are probably people young enough and sufficiently uninformed to have no conception of the atrocity of the nuclear confrontations and conflagrations to which they are quite possibly leading the world. This group of people may include most people serving in the U.S. Congress and from personal experience many in the U.S. Military. I have my doubts whether Presidents have seen all of the results of the world's first nuclear war; they are probably shielded from this. Photographs of the victims were confiscated and held confidential for more than 22 years after 1945. There were well more than 210,000 victims; not many photographs were made and survived. You can learn from this book a tiny fraction of the truth about what happens to people caught in nuclear war. (Although the truth from more than 210,000 will never be heard.) In a future war there would be hundreds of thousands, more likely hundreds of millions, of victims. The United States government has not revealed this kind of truth about its first nuclear war. As of early 2014 no sitting president has ever visited Hiroshima or Nagasaki. In Chapter 5 a solution is suggested to save us all from our "nuclear madness". "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." --Dwight D. Eisenhower, "...we also possess the seeds of goodness and justice that humankind was given by nature and has fostered over the ages. We have the ability to cultivate self-control and consideration for others and to strive to live together in a humane and harmonious manner with others. The revival of such true humanity--not only between individuals, but also between nations--is an absolute necessity today, for the age has come when one nation's self-centered behavior could lead all humanity to annihilation." --Naomi Shohno, 1986 "America can do whatever we set our mind to." ―Barack Obama