When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India. Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state.

A history of the idea of "black holes" explores the tumultuous debate over the existence of this now well-accepted phenomenon, focusing particular attention on Indian scientist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India. Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

The story of the Black Hole of Calcutta was once drilled into every British schoolchild: how in 1756 the Nawab of Bengal attacked Fort William and locked the survivors in a tiny cell, where over a hundred souls died in insufferable heat. British retribution was swift and merciless, and led to much of India falling completely under colonial dominion. The Black Holeis the story of the propogation of a myth that arose as the British Empire came into being: a myth about the barbarism of a people the colonials sought to rule, and how that myth - based on improbable exaggeration and half-truth - helped justify the march of empire for two hundred years.

"George Black rediscovers the history and lore of one of the planet's most magnificent landscapes. Read Empire of Shadows, and you'll never think of our first—in many ways our greatest—national park in the same way again." —Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder Empire of Shadows is the epic story of the conquest of Yellowstone, a landscape uninhabited, inaccessible and shrouded in myth in the aftermath of the Civil War. In a radical reinterpretation of the nineteenth century West, George Black casts Yellowstone's creation as the culmination of three interwoven strands of history - the passion for exploration, the violence of the Indian Wars and the "civilizing" of the frontier - and charts its course through the lives of those who sought to lay bare its mysteries: Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a gifted but tormented cavalryman known as "the man who invented Wonderland"; the ambitious former vigilante leader Nathaniel Langford; scientist Ferdinand Hayden, who brought photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran to Yellowstone; and Gen. Phil Sheridan, Civil War hero and architect of the Indian Wars, who finally succeeded in having the new National Park placed under the protection of the US Cavalry. George Black1s Empire of Shadows is a groundbreaking historical account of the origins of America1s majestic national landmark.

"This book is about a story that entered the national myth-bank, and lodged there with unusual tenacity. As so often with the historical episodes the British take to their hearts, it is a story of heroism in failure, turning a miserable defeat into a matter of national pride. The story was used for good and for ill. All tales of exceptional human bravery and resilience have an important place in our minds, and this one came with other attractive characteristics: the aura of money and battles, of exotic places and people, of youth and daring and living against the odds. There is probably no great harm if a little exaggeration creeps in to such narratives. However, the way in which this particular episode also resonated as a fear of strangeness, and came to epitomize through its very name the savagery of other peoples, is much less savoury."--BOOK JACKET.

"A black hole is a region of space-time with such strong gravitational effects that nothing not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light can escape from inside it. In BLACK HOLE FACTORY, poet Eric Smith writes his way into and out of such holes with a commitment to the history and craftsmanship of the well-shaped poem. He compresses experience, intellect, and feeling within concentrated stanzas of compelling density. Even traditional rhyme and meter become sources of surprise and innovation in his hands. The book has poems that communicate impressive control, intellect, and wit poems that cultivate ironic self-awareness and detachment on the part of both poet and reader. And then there are breakthrough moments giving up both irony and control in which poet and reader experience a kind of gravitational collapse powerful enough to deform and reshape space and time. In the end, Eric Smith has shaped a profound and accomplished manuscript of deep personal engagement graced by moving, open flights of lyricism."-From Amazon.

Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

In a time of spectacular developments in the new astronomy, the concept of black holes captures top honors. As scientific evidence for them mounts, black holes loom as an ominous development in the life, measured in billions of years, of the universe.