|
|
New Releases by James MJames M is the author of Peter Pan(Illustrated) (2024), Congress and Its Members (2023), Area Handbook for Romania (2022), Peter Pan (2021), Inside the Spanish-American War (2020).
release date: Jun 01, 2024
release date: Sep 05, 2023
Area Handbook for Romania
release date: Aug 10, 2022
release date: Oct 15, 2021
Inside the Spanish-American War
release date: Jan 24, 2020
Deborah: A tale of the times of Judas Maccabaeus
release date: Dec 06, 2019
Peter Pan (Peter Pan and Wendy)
release date: May 28, 2019
Introduction to Bayesian Statistics
release date: Oct 03, 2016
release date: Oct 01, 2016
Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages
release date: Apr 19, 2016
release date: Apr 21, 2015
Fifteen Hundred Years of Europe
release date: Jun 01, 2013
release date: Sep 18, 2012
release date: Jun 26, 2012
The Leadership Challenge Workbook
release date: Jun 14, 2012
Reconstructing Individualism
release date: Mar 01, 2012
Historical Dictionary of the United States Navy
release date: Apr 01, 2011
release date: Jan 01, 2011
The Psalms as Christian Worship
release date: Nov 22, 2010
Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction
release date: Mar 02, 2010
Daily Life in Civil War America
release date: Oct 13, 2009
release date: Nov 05, 2008
General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.
release date: Oct 07, 2008
release date: Jun 17, 2008
Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook, Fully Revised and Updated
release date: Dec 01, 2007
Family Life in Native America
release date: Oct 30, 2007
Daily Life During the French Revolution
release date: Feb 28, 2007
release date: Jan 29, 2007
Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment
release date: Jan 01, 2007
The Magdalen laundries were workhouses in which many Irish women and girls were effectively imprisoned because they were perceived to be a threat to the moral fiber of society. Mandated by the Irish state beginning in the eighteenth century, they were operated by various orders of the Catholic Church until the last laundry closed in 1996. A few years earlier, in 1993, an order of nuns in Dublin sold part of their Magdalen convent to a real estate developer. The remains of 155 inmates, buried in unmarked graves on the property, were exhumed, cremated, and buried elsewhere in a mass grave. This triggered a public scandal in Ireland and since then the Magdalen laundries have become an important issue in Irish culture, especially with the 2002 release of the film "The Magdalene Sisters." Focusing on the ten Catholic Magdalen laundries operating between 1922 and 1996, Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment offers the first history of women entering these institutions in the twentieth century. Because the religious orders have not opened their archival records, Smith argues that Ireland's Magdalen institutions continue to exist in the public mind primarily at the level of story (cultural representation and survivor testimony) rather than history (archival history and documentation). Addressed to academic and general readers alike, James M. Smith's book accomplishes three primary objectives. First, it connects what history we have of the Magdalen laundries to Ireland's "architecture of containment" that made undesirable segments of the female population such as illegitimate children, single mothers, and sexually promiscuous women literally invisible. Second, it critically evaluates cultural representations in drama and visual art of the laundries that have, over the past fifteen years, brought them significant attention in Irish culture. Finally, Smith challenges the nation--church, state, and society--to acknowledge its complicity in Ireland's Magdalen scandal and to offer redress for victims and survivors alike. "This book offers at once a critical examination of society's understanding of the Magdalen institutions and provides a means of refocusing attention on the ways in which memory, commemoration, and responsibility work in Irish society, especially in relation to these particular institutions. I have no doubt that this will be an important book. It will prove controversial, it will restart the debate on the Magdalen institutions in Ireland, and it should receive considerable publicity." --Maria Luddy, University of Warwick "Ireland's Magdalen Laundries is the story of young women locked away for a lifetime, without due process or appeal, for perceived sins of the flesh, a violation of a moral code established not by the government but by the most powerful force in the country, the Catholic Church. James M. Smith has provided the first comprehensive history of the magdalen laundries; unlocking the secrets, dispelling the myths, and providing the context for a most regrettable era that shocked and embarrassed not just the church, but the Irish people." --Steve Kroft, correspondent, 60 Minutes "Ireland's Magdalen Laundries is an important book, written with scrupulous attention to detail and impeccably researched. This is a dark and deeply emotional subject about which James M. Smith manages to be fair-minded and calm in his judgments. It is an essential book for anyone interested in the fear and cruelty surrounding women's sexuality in the Ireland of the recent past." --Colm Tóibín "This is a book about amnesia, acknowledgment and atonement. It weaves history, politics, and art together in one of the most compelling and best-written studies I've read in recent years. Smith is able to stand outside his subject, independent of affiliation, and he manages to resist the urge for cheap outrage. It is a serious, brilliant, art-driven examination of a story, or history, that needs to be told over and over and over again, lest it be forgotten or allowed to seep into the ambient noise." --Colum McCann
Family Life in 17th- and 18th-Century America
release date: Dec 30, 2005
|
|