Scholars and enthusiasts of western American history have praised Elliott West as a distinguished historian and an accomplished writer, and this book proves them right on both counts. Capitalizing on West’s wide array of interests, this collection of his essays touches on topics ranging from viruses and the telegraph to children, bison, and Larry McMurtry. Drawing from the past three centuries, West weaves the western story into that of the nation and the world beyond, from Kansas and Montana to Haiti, Africa, and the court of Louis XV. Divided into three sections, the volume begins with conquest. West is not the first historian to write about Lewis and Clark, but he is the first to contrast their expedition with Mungo Park’s contemporaneous journey in Africa. “The Lewis and Clark expedition,” West begins, “is one of the most overrated events in American history—and one of the most revealing.” The humor of this insightful essay is a chief characteristic of the whole book, which comprises ten chapters previously published in major journals and magazines—but revised for this edition—and four brand-new ones. West is well known for his writings about frontier family life, especially the experiences of children at work and play. Fans of his earlier books on these subjects will not be disappointed. In a final section, he looks at the West of myth and imagination, in part to show that our fantasies about the West are worth studying precisely because they have been so at odds with the real West. In essays on buffalo, Jesse James and the McMurtry novel Lonesome Dove, West directs his formidable powers to subjects that continue to shape our understanding—and often our misunderstanding—of the American West, past and present.

This book examines the regional history of the American West in relation to the rest of the United States, emphasizing cultural and political history.

The journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark remain the single most important document in the history of American exploration. Through these tales of adventure, edited and annotated by American Book Award nominee Landon Jones, we meet Indian peoples and see the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and western rivers the way Lewis and Clark first observed them -- majestic, pristine, uncharted, and awe-inspiring.

A selection of Lewis' work, including essays, letters, poems, and texts of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," "Perelandra" and "Abolition of Man."

This grammar provides a clear and comprehensive overview of contemporary West Greenlandic. It follows a systematic order of topics beginning with the alphabet and phonology, continuing with nominal and verbal morphology and syntax, and concluding with more advanced topics such as complex sentences and word formation. Grammatical points are illustrated with authentic examples reflecting current life in Greenland. Grammatical terminology is explained fully for the benefit of readers without a background in linguistics. Features include: Full grammatical breakdowns of all examples for ease of identifying individual components of complex words. A detailed contents list and index for easy access to information. An alphabetical list of the most commonly used West Greenlandic suffixes. A glossary of grammatical abbreviations used in the volume. The book is suitable for a wide range of users, including independent and classroom-based learners of West Greenlandic, as well as linguists and anyone with an interest in Greenland’s official language.

Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of 'domicide' or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology.

From his arrival in Britain in the 1950s and involvement in the New Left, to founding the field of cultural studies and examining race and identity in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuart Hall has been central to shaping many of the cultural and political debates of our time. Essential Essays—a landmark two-volume set—brings together Stuart Hall's most influential and foundational works. Spanning the whole of his career, these volumes reflect the breadth and depth of his intellectual and political projects while demonstrating their continued vitality and importance. Volume 2: Identity and Diaspora draws from Hall's later essays, in which he investigated questions of colonialism, empire, and race. It opens with “Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” which frames the volume and finds Hall rethinking received notions of racial essentialism. In addition to essays on multiculturalism and globalization, black popular culture, and Western modernity's racial underpinnings, Volume 2 contains three interviews with Hall, in which he reflects on his life to theorize his identity as a colonial and diasporic subject.

A study of the changes initiated into the systems and culture of the plain dwellers

Cruise offerings abound, but making the most of your experience takes information that is harder to come by. The Essential Little Cruise Book, now in its fourth edition, is a compact collection of cruise wisdom. It holds everything you need to know for a perfect vacation at sea and answers such questions as how do you snag the best cabin in your price range, which is the best table in the dining room, and how can you get the best service from the crew.

Hardbound - New, hardbound print book.