Category: History

On the Dirty Plate Trail: Remembering the Dust Bowl Refugee Camps by Sanora Babb, Douglas Wixson, Dorothy Babb
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 25 MB
Overview: Runner-up, National Council on Public History Book Award, 2008

The 1930s exodus of “Okies” dispossessed by repeated droughts and failed crop prices was a relatively brief interlude in the history of migrant agricultural labor. Yet it attracted wide attention through the publication of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the images of Farm Security Administration photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein. Ironically, their work risked sublimating the subjects—real people and actual experience—into aesthetic artifacts, icons of suffering, deprivation, and despair. Working for the Farm Security Administration in California’s migrant labor camps in 1938-39, Sanora Babb, a young journalist and short story writer, together with her sister Dorothy, a gifted amateur photographer, entered the intimacy of the dispossessed farmers’ lives as insiders, evidenced in the immediacy and accuracy of their writings and photos. Born in Oklahoma and raised on a dryland farm, the Babb sisters had unparalleled access to the day-by-day harsh reality of field labor and family life.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History

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Early Modern Court Culture (Early Modern Themes) edited by Erin Griffey
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 25 MB
Overview: Through a thematic overview of court culture that connects the cultural with the political, confessional, spatial, material and performative, this volume introduces the dynamics of power and culture in the early modern European court.

Exploring the period from 1500-1750, Early Modern Court Culture is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, providing insights into aspects of both community and continuity at courts as well as individual identity, change and difference. Culture is presented as not merely a vehicle for court propaganda in promoting the monarch and the dynasty, but as a site for a complex range of meanings that conferred status and virtue on the patron, maker, court and the wider community of elites. The essays show that the court provided an arena for virtue and virtuosity, intellectual and social play, demonstration of moral authority and performance of social, gendered, confessional and dynastic identity.

Early Modern Court Culture moves from political structures and political players to architectural forms and spatial geographies; ceremonial and ritual observances; visual and material culture; entertainment and knowledge. With thirty-five contributions on subjects including gardens, dress, scent, dance and tapestries, this volumeis a necessary resource for all students and scholars interested in the court in early modern Europe.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History

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Collision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New SpainCollision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New Spain by David M. Carballo
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 58 MB
Overview: Mexico of five centuries ago was witness to one of the most momentous encounters between human societies, when a group of Spaniards led by Hernando Cortés joined forces with tens of thousands of Mesoamerican allies to topple the mighty Aztec Empire. It served as a template for the forging of much of Latin America and initiated the globalized world we inhabit today. The violent clash that culminated in the Aztec-Spanish war of 1519-21 and the new colonial order it created were millennia in the making, entwining the previously independent cultural developments of both sides of the Atlantic.

Collision of Worlds provides a deep history of this encounter, one that considers temporal depth in the richly layered cultures of Mexico and Spain, from their prehistories to the urban and imperial societies they built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Leading Mesoamerican archaeologist David Carballo offers a unique perspective on these fabled events with a focus on the physical world of places and things, their similarities and differences in trans-Atlantic perspective, and their interweaving in an encounter characterized by conquest and colonialism, but also resilience on the part of Native peoples. An engrossing and sweeping account, Collision of Worlds debunks long-held myths and contextualizes the deep roots and enduring consequences of the Aztec-Spanish conflict as never before.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History

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British Gunboats of Victoria’s Empire (Osprey New Vanguard 304) by Angus Konstam
Requirements: .PDF reader, 8.4 MB
Overview: A beautifully illustrated history of the iconic ocean-going gunboats of British ‘gunboat diplomacy’, the hundreds of little warships that for 50 years demonstrated the power of the Royal Navy worldwide, and which maintained and enforced the rule of the British Empire at its peak.
In recent years the phrase ‘gunboat diplomacy’ has been used to describe the crude use of naval power to bully or coerce a weaker nation. During the reign of Queen Victoria, ‘gunboat diplomacy’ was viewed very differently. It was the use of a very limited naval force to encourage global stability and to protect British overseas trade. This very subtle use of naval power was a vital cornerstone of the Pax Britannica. Between the Crimean War (1854-56) and 1904, when the gunboat era came to an abrupt end, the Royal Navy’s ocean-going gunboats underpinned Britain’s position as a global power and fulfilled the country’s role as a ‘global policeman’.
Created during the Crimean War, these gunboats first saw action in China. However, they were also used to hunt down pirates in the coasts and rivers of Borneo and Malaya, to quell insurrections and revolts in the Caribbean or hunt slavers off the African coast. The first gunboats were designed for service in the Crimean War, but during the 1860s a new generation of ships began entering service – vessels designed specifically to fulfill this global policing role. Better-designed gunboats followed, but by the 1880s, the need for them was waning . The axe finally fell in 1904 when Admiral ‘Jackie’ Fisher brought the gunboat era to an end in order to help fund the new age of the dreadnought.
This exciting New Vanguard title describes the rise and fall of the gunboat, the appearance and capability of these vital warships, and what life was like on board. It also examines key actions they were involved in.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History

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Central American Wars 1959–89 (Osprey Men at Arms #221) by Carlos Caballero Jurado, Nigel Thomas, Simon McCouaig (Illustrator)
Requirements: .PDF reader, 17 MB
Overview: Once predicted to be ‘the Middle East of the Year 2000’, Central America and the Caribbean have long been a powder keg of revolutionary activity and guerilla warfare. The United States, with important strategic and economic interests in the region, has traditionally opted for a military solution toward the political upheaval, developing a range of responses, from direct military intervention to the training of tens of thousands of Latin-American soldiers in anti-guerilla warfare techniques. This text, enhanced by colour plates and numerous photographs, examines the history of the Central American Wars by country, from 1959 to 1989, detailing the organization and uniforms of the combatants.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History

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