Posts tagged “history”
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Howard Zinn on Race
June 14, 2011
Zinn’s choice of the shorter writings and speeches that best reflect his views on America’s most taboo topic.
Tags: history, howard zinn, howard zinn on race
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Kirkus reviews Elizabeth Abbott’s A History of Marriage
February 18, 2011
Engaging . . . [History of Marriage] weaves stories and facts in a kind of loosely fluid narrative that makes pleasant reading. The author has a flair for sweetening the facts with her palatable style . . . A rich tapestry and colorful snapshot of an evolving institution.
Tags: elizabeth abbott, history, history of marriage, kirkus, review
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Elizabeth Abbott: Marriage is often a casualty of war
November 12, 2010
Rampant alcoholism and drug addiction, the “soldier’s disease,” wrecked havoc on marriages. So did venereal disease, contracted from prostitutes known as “horizontal refreshments.” Symptoms included incontinence and impotence, and “No one knows how many Union and Confederate wives and widows went to their graves, rotted and ravaged by the pox that their men brought home,” writes Civil War medical historian Thomas Lowry.
Some demobilized husbands had grown closer to their wives through letters describing their experiences, including their fears, hopes, and emotional responses. Others, alienated by years of separation and hardship, had difficulty reconnecting with spouses. (”While you all was Haveing Such good times… on the 4th. we was Shooting Rebels,” one young soldier observed.) Some women had had extramarital sex. Others, expecting their husbands to die in combat, entered new relationships. Some sold themselves to survive. When many veterans and their waiting wives reunited, they made each other miserable until they finally sought relief in separation or divorce.
. . . What’s wrong? Are broken marriages an inherent risk of military service? The sad answer is yes. —Elizabeth Abbott
Tags: articles, elizabeth abbott, history, history of marriage, huffington post
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Chris Hedges on the Howard Zinn FBI file
August 3, 2010
By the end of the file one walks away with a profound respect for Zinn and a deep distaste for the buffoonish goons in the FBI who followed and monitored him. … We are amassing unprecedented volumes of secret files, and carrying out extensive surveillance and harassment, as stupid and useless as those that were directed against Zinn. And a few decades from now maybe we will be able to examine the work of the latest generation of dimwitted investigators who have been unleashed upon us in secret by the tens of thousands. Did any of the agents who followed Zinn ever realize how they wasted their time? Do those following us around comprehend how manipulated they are? Do they understand that their primary purpose, as it was with Zinn, is not to prevent terrorism but discredit and destroy social movements as well as protect the elite from those who would expose them? — Chris Hedges
Tags: articles, chris hedges, current events, history, howard zinn, truthdig, zinn fbi file
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Howard Zinn’s 423-page FBI file released
July 30, 2010
Q: What is the greatest tribute an activist can be given?
A: The enmity of those in power.To that end, the FBI has today offered a great tribute to the late, great Howard Zinn, in the form of a 423-page declassified FBI file, covering Zinn’s activities from 1949 to 1974: essentially a list — vetted by America’s “best and brightest” and their faithful assistants of the period — of everything Howard Zinn did during the McCarthy Era, the Vietnam War, and all points in between to stymie the government and promote social justice and a more open society.
Happy reading — and thanks, Howard; you will be forever missed.
Tags: fbi file, history, howard zinn, politics/government, voices of a people's history, young people's history, zinn reader
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Edward Lucas reviews Towers of Stone for The Economist
December 10, 2009
From the upcoming Economist review by Edward Lucas of Wojciech Jagielski’s Towers of Stone (as it appears on Lucas’s blog):
Formidable, useful in war and, though picturesque, impractical in peacetime, the stone towers that dot Chechnya’s mountains could be regarded as symbols of its people. Wojciech Jagielski’s book sets new standards for gritty reporting of Russia’s most miserable corner, and the dreadful damage done to it by both outsiders and the Chechens’ own leaders.
Tags: economist, edward lucas, history, journalism, reviews, towers of stone, wojciech jagielski
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Dreaming Up America: A Conversation With Russell Banks and Dan Simon
December 10, 2009
In honor of the new paperback release of Dreaming Up America, Russell Banks’s first work of nonfiction, we present, once again, this 2008 audio interview between Seven Stories Press publisher Dan Simon and author Russell Banks, on the subject of storytelling, on the activist mentality, and the invention and mythology of America.
Tags: Dan Simon, dreaming up america, history, interviews, russell banks, videos
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The People Speak to air on HISTORY in December
October 22, 2009
From Dr. Libby H. O’Connell’s article on Howard Zinn and The People Speak from History magazine:
If our textbooks present the story of America only through the eyes of its generals and presidents, Zinn argues, it gives “a distorted view of the past.” Certainly he provides a powerful counterbalance to the hero-centric approach of traditional textbooks. In 2004 Zinn joined with Dr. Anthony Arnove to publish a collection of primary source documents titled Voices of a People’s History of the United States, an academic bestseller on college and high school campuses. The materials range across the length of American history and feature letters, petitions, poems, speeches, and songs from “women and slaves, immigrants and youth, soldiers and students.”
Zinn and Arnove began to organize public performances of selections from Voices in 2003, before its official release, when A People’s History of the United States sold its 1 millionth copy (it has now surpassed the 2 million mark). Today, Voices brings alive the words and emotions of the past with songs and dramatic readings performed by well-established artists. At a presentation this past May celebrating the publication of A Young People’s History of the United States in New York City, seven performers gave new life to the words of famous dissenters — such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King Jr. — and lesser known, but equally stirring, voices from the past. . . It is performances like this in theaters around the country that inspired the latest incarnation of Zinn’s work, The People Speak. Scheduled to air on HISTORY in December 2009, the film weaves archival footage and interviews with performances by actors and artists such as Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, Viggo Mortensen, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Bruce Springsteen, and John Legend.
Tags: anthony arnove, history, howard zinn, matt damon, morgan freeman, television, the people speak, voices of a people's history
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Wojciech Jagielski on the “After Kapuscinski: The Art of Reportage in the 21st Century” panel in New York City
October 20, 2009
On October 6, Wojciech Jagielski, author of Towers of Stone, joined Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Alistair Reid, and Lawrence Weschler in a symposium given by the New York Institute for the Humanities entitled “After Kapuscinski: The Art of Reportage in the 21st Century.” Watch it below.
Tags: after kapuscinski, foreign affairs, history, towers of stone, videos, wojciech jagielski
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Clayton Patterson’s Captured
October 13, 2009
Now available for free online, enjoy Clayton Patterson’s 2008 documentary, Captured, featuring footage from the Lower East Side from 1979 to 1997, and the perfect companion to Patterson’s Captured, the definitive LES anthology from Seven Stories Press.
Tags: Captured, Clayton Patterson, films, history
“history” Posts
- Jun 14, Howard Zinn on Race
- Feb 18, Kirkus reviews Elizabeth Abbott’s A History of Marriage
- Nov 12, Elizabeth Abbott: Marriage is often a casualty of war
- Aug 3, Chris Hedges on the Howard Zinn FBI file
- Jul 30, Howard Zinn’s 423-page FBI file released
- Dec 10, Edward Lucas reviews Towers of Stone for The Economist
- Dec 10, Dreaming Up America: A Conversation With Russell Banks and Dan Simon
- Oct 22, The People Speak to air on HISTORY in December
- Oct 20, Wojciech Jagielski on the “After Kapuscinski: The Art of Reportage in the 21st Century” panel in New York City
- Oct 13, Clayton Patterson’s Captured
