The revolutionary ideals of equality, communal living, proletarian morality, and technology worship, rooted in Russian utopianism, generated a range of social experiments which found expression, in the first decade of the Russian revolution, in festival, symbol, science fiction, city planning, and the arts. In this study, historian Richard Stites offers a vivid portrayal of revolutionary life and the cultural factors--myth, ritual, cult, and symbol--that sustained it, and describes the principal forms of utopian thinking and experimental impulse. Analyzing the inevitable clash between the authoritarian elements in the Bolshevik's vision and the libertarian behavior and aspirations of large segments of the population, Stites interprets the pathos of utopian fantasy as the key to the emotional force of the Bolshevik revolution which gave way in the early 1930s to bureaucratic state centralism and a theology of Stalinism.

One day in 1698, Robert Pyle of Pennsylvania decided to buy a black slave. The next night he dreamed of a steep ladder to heaven that he felt he could not climb because he carried a black pot. In the dream, a man told him the ladder was the light of Jesus Christ and would bear any whose faith held strong; otherwise, the climber would fall. Pyle woke that morning positive that he should eschew slaves and slavery, having equated the pot with the slave he wished to buy. In fact, so acutely did this dream awaken him to his sins that he became a dynamic advocate of liberation. This dream literally changed his outlook and his life. Teach Me Dreams delves into the dream world of ordinary Americans and finds that as their self-perception increased, transforming them on a personal level, so did a revolutionary spirit that wrought momentous political changes. Mechal Sobel considers dreams recorded in the life narratives of 100 people, revealing the America of the Revolutionary Era to have been a truly dream-infused culture in which analysis of dreams was encouraged, and subsequent personal reevaluation was striking. Sobel uses a wealth of information--letters, diaries, and over 200 published autobiographies from a wide range of "ordinary" people; black, white, male, female. In these accounts, many previously neglected by historians, dreamers explain how their nighttime adventures opened their eyes to aspects of themselves, or unveiled new paths they should take both personally and politically. Such paths often led them to challenge those in power. Charting the widely dreamed of opposition between blacks and whites, men and women, Sobel offers astounding new insights into how early Americans understood their lives. Her analysis of the dreams and lives of ordinary Revolutionary-Era people demonstrates links between dreaming, self reevaluation, and participation in the radically changing politics of the time. This book will appeal to specialists in the fields of American and African-American history, and anyone interested in dreams and self-development.

Kelley unearths freedom dreams in this exciting history of renegade intellectuals and artists of the African diaspora in the twentieth century. Focusing on the visions of activists from C. L. R. James to Aime Cesaire and Malcolm X, Kelley writes of the hope that Communism offered, the mindscapes of Surrealism, the transformative potential of radical feminism, and of the four-hundred-year-old dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow. From'the preeminent historian of black popular culture' (Cornel West), an inspiring work on the power of imagination to transform society.

Do your dreams seem to have as much in common with real life as a funhouse mirror? Don’t be misled. Dreams contain extraordinarily reliable commentaries on the conflicts and events of everyday life. Properly interpreted, they not only illuminate your anxieties but actually show you how to alter the course of your life – and very much for the better. Dreams are so essential to our health and well-being that almost all of us create them in clusters four or five times every night. In this title, originally published in 1989, Dr Robert Langs, a psychoanalyst and dream researcher, goes far beyond standard interpretation in showing how your dreams tap the wisdom of the deep unconscious part of your mind. Through his unique and groundbreaking technique of trigger decoding, you will learn what your dreams are saying about your life, about the events you must deal with, about the problems you are trying to resolve. Dreams can be a kind of emotional camouflage, difficult and often uncomfortable to interpret. Trigger decoding not only exposes our emotional wounds, it also provides the balm for healing those wounds. In the proper decoding of dreams, there is revealed an intelligence, power, and beauty of mind that is unheard of in direct and conscious experience. Decoding Your Dreams opens a revolutionary new door to self-understanding and self-improvement.

The Ottoman revolution of 1908 is a study in contradictions—a positive manifestation of modernity intended to reinstate constitutional rule, yet ultimately a negative event that shook the fundamental structures of the empire, opening up ethnic, religious, and political conflicts. Shattered Dreams of Revolution considers this revolutionary event to tell the stories of three important groups: Arabs, Armenians, and Jews. The revolution raised these groups' expectations for new opportunities of inclusion and citizenship. But as post-revolutionary festivities ended, these euphoric feelings soon turned to pessimism and a dramatic rise in ethnic tensions. The undoing of the revolutionary dreams could be found in the very foundations of the revolution itself. Inherent ambiguities and contradictions in the revolution's goals and the reluctance of both the authors of the revolution and the empire's ethnic groups to come to a compromise regarding the new political framework of the empire ultimately proved untenable. The revolutionaries had never been wholeheartedly committed to constitutionalism, thus constitutionalism failed to create a new understanding of Ottoman citizenship, grant equal rights to all citizens, and bring them under one roof in a legislative assembly. Today as the Middle East experiences another set of revolutions, these early lessons of the Ottoman Empire, of unfulfilled expectations and ensuing discontent, still provide important insights into the contradictions of hope and disillusion seemingly inherent in revolution.

This collection of "Stitesiana" includes 29 essays on Russian culture, representing the bulk of 20 years of scholarship, in addition to well-known monographs and diverse pieces in popular magazines.

From Harlem rooftops to the drumbeats of the Congo, the poems in The Women and the Men display in full measure the gifts that have made Nikki Giovanni one of the most important, appealing, and broad-reaching American poets: her warmth, her conciseness, her passion, and her wit. First appearing between 1970 and 1975, the poems in this gemlike volume reflect the drastic change that took place--in both the consciousness of the nation and in the sould of the poet. From "Ego Tripping" to "Poem for Flora" and "Africa," The Women and the Men is replete with the greatest hits of Nikki Giovanni's incredible oeuvre. With reverence to the ordinary and in search of the extraordinary, Nikki Giovanni, above all, displays here her caring for the people, things, and places she has observed and touched and captured. As a witness to three generations, Nikki Giovanni has perceptively and poetically recorded her observations of both the outside world and the gentle yet enigmatic territory of the self. When her poems first emerged from the Black Rights Movement in the late 1960's, she immediately became a celebrated and controversial poet of the era. Written in one of the most commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic lanscape at the end of the twentieth century, Nikki Giovanni's poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which she is beloved and revered.

As the British scheme to kidnap George Washington and bring the Revolutionary War to an end in one bold stroke, a tide of espionage ebbs and flows between the two opposing armies. It is 1780, and two very different men are sucked into these vicious currents. Tides that pull the men towards the bewitching embrace of Flora Kuyper, the beautiful spy who holds the future of America in her hands. This is a world of plot and counterplot, where a night of passion could lead to an act of treason and a man's avowed ideals could fashion a noose around his neck. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Winner of the Northern California Book Award for General Nonfiction New York Times bestselling author David Talbot and New Yorker journalist Margaret Talbot illuminate “America’s second revolutionary generation” in this gripping history of one of the most dynamic eras of the twentieth century—brought to life through seven defining radical moments that offer vibrant parallels and lessons for today. The political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s was perhaps one of the most tumultuous in this country's history, shaped by the fight for civil rights, women’s liberation, Black power, and the end to the Vietnam War. In many ways, this second American revolution was a belated fulfillment of the betrayed promises of the first, striving to extend the full protections of the Bill of Rights to non-white, non-male, non-elite Americans excluded by the nation’s founders. Based on exclusive interviews, original documents, and archival research, By the Light of Burning Dreams explores critical moments in the lives of a diverse cast of iconoclastic leaders of the twentieth century radical movement: Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; Heather Booth and the Jane Collective, the first underground feminist abortion clinic; Vietnam War peace activists Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda; Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers; Craig Rodwell and the Gay Pride movement; Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Russell Means and the warriors of Wounded Knee; and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s politics of stardom. Margaret and David Talbot reveal the epiphanies that galvanized these modern revolutionaries and created unexpected connections and alliances between individual movements and across race, class, and gender divides. America is still absorbing—and reacting against—the revolutionary forces of this tumultuous period. The change these leaders enacted demanded much of American society and the human imagination. By the Light of Burning Dreams is an immersive and compelling chronicle of seven lighting rods of change and the generation that engraved itself in American narrative—and set the stage for those today, fighting to bend forward the arc of history. By the Light of Burning Dreams includes a 16-page black-and-white photo insert.

Society of School Librarians International Book Award Honor California Reading Association Eureka! Nonfiction Honor Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year Booklist Top Ten Biography for Youth Young fans of the smash Broadway hit "Hamilton" will enjoy this narrative nonfiction picture book story about the important friendship between George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette during the Revolutionary War. Lafayette has come to America to offer his services to the patriotic cause. Inexperienced but dedicated, he is a much-needed ally and not only earns a military position with the Continental Army but also Washington's respect and admiration. This picture book presents the human side of history, revealing the bond between two famous Revolutionary figures. Both the author and illustrator worked with experts and primary sources to represent both patriots and the war accurately and fairly.