JFKUs heroic efforts to save the 11-man crew of "PT 109" are brought to vivid life, interwoven with a comprehensive history of PT boats and the World War II campaign in the Solomon Islands.

"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 Cortâes 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 began the globalized world we inhabit today. This violent encounter and the new colonial order it created, a New Spain, was millennia in the making, with independent cultural developments on both sides of the Atlantic and their fateful entanglement during the pivotal Aztec-Spanish war of 1519-1521. Collision of World examines the deep history of this encounter with an archaeological lens-one that considers depth in the richly layered cultures of Mexico and Spain, like the depths that archaeologists reveal through excavation to chart early layers of human history. It offers a unique perspective on the encounter through its temporal depth and 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 active agency and resilience on the part of Native peoples"--

Winner, 2019 Ron Tyler Award for Best Illustrated Book, sponsored by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) In this expansive and vigorous survey of the Houston art scene of the 1970s and 1980s, author Pete Gershon describes the city’s emergence as a locus for the arts, fueled by a boom in oil prices and by the arrival of several catalyzing figures, including museum director James Harithas and sculptor James Surls. Harithas was a fierce champion for Texan artists during his tenure as the director of the Contemporary Arts Museum–Houston (CAM). He put Texas artists on the map, but his renegade style proved too confrontational for the museum’s benefactors, and after four years, he wore out his welcome. After Harithas’s departure from the CAM, the chainsaw-wielding Surls established the Lawndale Annex as a largely unsupervised outpost of the University of Houston art department. Inside this dirty, cavernous warehouse, a new generation of Houston artists discovered their identities and began to flourish. Both the CAM and the Lawndale Annex set the scene for the emergence of small, downtown, artist-run spaces, including Studio One, the Center for Art and Performance, Midtown Arts Center, and DiverseWorks. Finally, in 1985, the Museum of Fine Arts presented Fresh Paint: The Houston School, a nationally publicized survey of work by Houston painters. The exhibition capped an era of intensive artistic development and suggested that the city was about to be recognized, along with New York and Los Angeles, as a major center for art-making activity. Drawing upon primary archival materials, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and over sixty interviews with significant figures, Gershon presents a narrative that preserves and interweaves the stories and insights of those who transformed the Houston art scene into the vibrant community that it is today.

Our genetic markers have come to be regarded as portals to the past. Analysis of these markers is increasingly used to tell the story of human migration; to investigate and judge issues of social membership and kinship; to rewrite history and collective memory; to right past wrongs and to arbitrate legal claims and human rights controversies; and to open new thinking about health and well-being. At the same time, in many societies genetic evidence is being called upon to perform a kind of racially charged cultural work: to repair the racial past and to transform scholarly and popular opinion about the “nature” of identity in the present. Genetics and the Unsettled Past considers the alignment of genetic science with commercial genealogy, with legal and forensic developments, and with pharmaceutical innovation to examine how these trends lend renewed authority to biological understandings of race and history. This unique collection brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines—biology, history, cultural studies, law, medicine, anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology—to explore the emerging and often contested connections among race, DNA, and history. Written for a general audience, the book’s essays touch upon a variety of topics, including the rise and implications of DNA in genealogy, law, and other fields; the cultural and political uses and misuses of genetic information; the way in which DNA testing is reshaping understandings of group identity for French Canadians, Native Americans, South Africans, and many others within and across cultural and national boundaries; and the sweeping implications of genetics for society today.

In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called an illegal strike. The new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the strikers, establishing a reputation for both decisiveness and hostility to organized labor. As Joseph A. McCartin writes, the strike was the culmination of two decades of escalating conflict between controllers and the government that stemmed from the high-pressure nature of the job and the controllers' inability to negotiate with their employer over vital issues. PATCO's fall not only ushered in a long period of labor decline; it also served as a harbinger of the campaign against public sector unions that now roils American politics. Now available in paperback, Collision Course sets the strike within a vivid panorama of the rise of the world's busiest air-traffic control system. It begins with an arresting account of the 1960 midair collision over New York that cost 134 lives and exposed the weaknesses of an overburdened system. Through the stories of controllers like Mike Rock and Jack Maher, who were galvanized into action by that disaster and went on to found PATCO, it describes the efforts of those who sought to make the airways safer and fought to win a secure place in the American middle class. It climaxes with the story of Reagan and the controllers, who surprisingly endorsed the Republican on the promise that he would address their grievances. That brief, fateful alliance triggered devastating miscalculations that changed America, forging patterns that still govern the nation's labor politics. Written with an eye for detail and a grasp of the vast consequences of the PATCO conflict for both air travel and America's working class, Collision Course is a stunning achievement.

"This exhibition was organized to help celebrate the sesquicentennial of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)"--Acknowledgements.

Publisher description

The true story of two elite runners and a disastrous race at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The Olympic crowds—as well as millions of viewers at home—were looking forward to watching South African-born barefoot runner Zola Budd, representing Britain, in competition against the American favorite Mary Decker. But as the two ran in close proximity during the 3000-meter race in Los Angeles, disaster struck. Decker tumbled to the inside of the track after her legs tangled with Budd’s while the two competed for pole position. A distraught and frustrated Decker, unable to carry on, watched in tears as Maricica Puica of Romania stormed to gold while Budd, who was heavily booed by the partisan crowd in the closing stages, faded to seventh. Using the famous Olympic moment as its focal point, Collision Course tells the story of two of the best-known athletes of the twentieth century, analyzes their place in history as pioneers of women's sport, and lifts the lid on two lives that have been filled with sporting and political intrigue that, until now, has never been fully told.

With this book Immanuel Velikovsky first presented the revolutionary results of his 10-year-long interdisciplinary research to the public, founded modern catastrophism - based on eyewitness reports by our ancestors - shook the doctrine of uniformity of geology as well as Darwin's theory of evolution, put our view of the history of our solar system, of the Earth and of humanity on a completely new basis - and caused an uproar that is still going on today. Worlds in Collision - written in a brilliant, easily understandable and entertaining style and full to the brim with precise information - can be considered one of the most important and most challenging books in the history of science. Not without reason was this book found open on Einstein's desk after his death. For all those who have ever wondered about the evolution of the earth, the history of mankind, traditions, religions, mythology or just the world as it is today, Worlds in Collision is an absolute MUST-READ!