LITMIR.BIZ

Simon P. Newman vividly evokes the celebrations of America's first national holidays in the years between the ratification of the Constitution and the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson. He demonstrates how, by taking part in the festive culture of the streets, ordinary American men and women were able to play a significant role in forging the political culture of the young nation. The creation of many of the patriotic holidays we still celebrate coincided with the emergence of the first two-party system. With the political songs they sang, the liberty poles they raised, and the partisan badges they wore, Americans of many walks of life helped shape a new national politics destined to replace the regional practices of the colonial era.

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A Cross of Thorns challenges this mythologized history and presents the facts of the Spanish occupation of California, describing the dark and cruel reality of Mission life. Beginning in 1769, California Indians were en­ticed into the missions, where they and their descendents were imprisoned for 60 years of forced labor and daily beatings. The chilling depictions of colonial cruelty in A Cross of Thorns are based on little known church and Spanish government archives and letters written by the founder of California’s mission, Friar Junipero Serra (who advo­cated the whipping of Mission Indians as a standard policy), and published first-hand accounts of 18th and 19th century travelers.

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Early one spring morning, disaster struck San Francisco, and a young man grabbed his camera and started documenting the destruction and death surrounding him. Fearlessly going to the center of the devastation, the man captured scenes of fires, collapsing buildings, and people fleeing for their lives―scenes that no one else had a chance to record. His photographs were preserved in a family photo album, unseen by the public for over a hundred years.
When San Francisco Burned presents for the first time the photographs that young man, Louis P. Selby, took of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. These amazingly detailed and dramatic photographs show the earthquake and its aftermath from a street-level perspective, giving readers an unprecedented look at what it was really like to be in San Francisco during those terrible days. Selby’s photographs document the immediate damage of the earthquake; horrific action shots of fire consuming San Francisco; the heroic efforts of police, soldiers, and ordinary citizens to maintain order and protect the people; the somber ruins of San Francisco after the blaze; the misery and pluck of the refugee camps; and the city’s earliest days of rebirth and rebuilding. These unique, never-before-published photographs show the horrors of the earthquake and fire―and the stubborn resistance of the people of San Francisco―like you’ve never seen them before. An invaluable addition to the historical record, When San Francisco Burned is a must-have book for anyone who loves San Francisco and its history.

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It’s Tokyo, 1941. Teddy Maki and Jimmy Yakamoto are Japanese-American friends and jazz musicians playing Tokyo’s lively nightclub scene. Stranded in Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Teddy and Jimmy are drafted into the Japanese army and sent to fight against American troops in the Philippines. Their perilous attempts to remain neutral in a conflict where their loyalties are deeply divided are shattered when Jimmy is killed by the commanding officer for refusing to shoot an American prisoner. The deed then falls to Teddy. Thirty years later, Teddy is married to Jimmy’s widow, father to his son, a star on Japanese TV — and still wrestling with the guilt over Jimmy's death.Winner of the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award for Best American Fiction, Soldiers in Hiding is a haunting portrayal of war’s lingering emotional burdens. This revised edition features a new preface by the author and an introduction by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka.

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PETER DONAHUE’S DEBUT NOVEL MADISON HOUSE, which won the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction 2005, chronicles turn-of-the-century Seattle’s explosive transformation from frontier outpost to major metropolis. Maddie Ingram, owner of Madison House, and her quirky and endearing boarders find their lives inextricably linked when the city decides to re-grade Denny Hill and the fate of Madison House hangs in the balance–Maddie’s albino handyman and furtive love interest, a muckraking black journalist who owns and publishes the Seattle Sentry newspaper, and an aspiring stage actress forced into prostitution and morphine addiction while working in the city’s corrupt vaudeville theater, all call Madison House home. Had E.L. Doctorow and Charles Dickens met on the streets of Seattle, they couldn’t have created a better book.

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IN COLONIAL INDIA, at a time of growing friction between the ruling British and the restless Indian populace, a Victorian woman and her young Tamil Indian servant defy convention, class, and heartbreak to investigate what is gained – and lost – by holding life still. Suggested by the life and work of photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron, The Luminist filters 19th century Ceylon through the lens of an English woman, Catherine Colebrook and a 15 year old Tamil boy, Eligius Shourie. Left fatherless by soldiers, Eligius is brought as a servant to the Colebrooks' neglected estate. In the shadow of Catherine's obsession to arrest beauty – to select a moment from the thousands comprising her life in Ceylon and hold it apart from mere memory – Eligius transforms into her apprentice in the creation of the first haunting photographs in history.

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First pulished edition (1981) sold 1,000 HC and 2,000 PB copies. (Holy Cow!) Has long been unavailable. OP for 3 years. Over 30 favorable reviews (Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, Choice, et al.). Wide use as classroom text in Amercian Literature, etc. New Edition will include new contributions form: Gary Snyder Adrien Rich Meridel Le Sueur Patricia Hample among others…

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Macedonia and its Questions: Origins, Margins, Ruptures and Continuity is a multi-disciplinary book of 11 chapters, containing contributions that span the fields of linguistics, political science, sociology, history and law. The title of the book purposefully references but simultaneously interrogates and challenges the idea that certain nation-states and certain ethnicities can in some way constitute a «question» while others do not. The «Macedonian Question» generally has the status of a problem that involves questioning the very existence of Macedonians and one of the aims of this volume is to reframe the nature of the discussion.

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This book explains and illustrates as many varieties of Ming ceramics as possible. The text is based primarily on information obtained from Chinese sources and the occasional notes made by Europeans who visited China in Ming times. To these, Mr. Hobson has added his own penetrating deductions, made after careful study of well-authenticated specimens and of observation by earlier scholars. His presentation is not only clear and precise but also incontestably authoritative and at the same time highly readable.The first twelve chapters of the book deal almost exclusively with the porcelain produced at Ching-te Chen; the next four, with the porcelain and pottery made at other centers. The bulk of the 129 pieces illustrated (12 in color) are drawn from private collections, but references is also made to important examples in museums. Of particular interest are Mr. Hobson's comments on collecting and on the identification of genuine Ming wares. A special chapter on marks, inscriptions, and Chinese characters is included, together with a selected bibliography.

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Brides from Bridewell is the story of the female felons from England and France who were sent to Colonial America to serve their prison sentences.It sets forth the harsh, often inhuman, penal conditions then prevailing in those lands, and the fact that these thousands of feminine felons constituted one of the primary marital elements in the mothering of early America. Many women whose offenses were minor were deported. Others were confessed criminals. The facts constitute one of the neglected (or hidden) retrospects to the American past. Descent from the Mayflower lineage is stressed by genealogists; but the fact is forgotten that many unknowing present–day Americans of colonial descent derive their American beginnings from female prisoners sent against their will.Says the author: «Many of the transported felons after their servitude had expired, became reputable dwellers in the new environment; and if not they, then their offspring. No stigma attaches to their descendants. But the tale needs telling.»

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