Best of
Microhistory

2002

The Secret History of the World: And How to Get Out Alive


Laura Knight-Jadczyk - 2002
    The latest edition is ISBN: 1897244169)If you heard the Truth, would you believe it? Ancient civilizations. Hyperdimensional realities. DNA changes. Bible conspiracies. What are the realities? What is disinformation? The Secret History of The World and How To Get Out Alive is the definitive book of the real answers where Truth is more fantastic than fiction. Laura Knight-Jadczyk, wife of internationally known theoretical physicist, Arkadiusz Jadczyk, an expert in hyperdimensional physics, draws on science and mysticism to pierce the veil of reality. Due to the many threats on her life from agents and agencies known and unknown, Laura left the United States to live in France, where she is working closely with Patrick Rivière, student of Eugene Canseliet, the only disciple of the legendary alchemist Fulcanelli. To this day, Laura continues to undergo ad-hominem attacks on her web pages, her blog and even as faux book 'reviews' on book seller websites, by those threatened by the information she reveals in this definitive work.Yet, with sparkling humour and wisdom, she picks up where Fulcanelli left off, sharing over thirty years of research to reveal, for the first time, The Great Work and the esoteric Science of the Ancients in terms accessible to scholar and layperson alike.

The Founding Fish


John McPhee - 2002
    Each spring, American shad-Alosa sapidissima-leave the ocean in hundreds of thousands and run heroic distances upriver to spawn. McPhee--a shad fisherman himself--recounts the shad's cameo role in the lives of George Washington and Henry David Thoreau. He fishes with and visits the laboratories of famous ichthyologists; he takes instruction in the making of shad darts from a master of the art; and he cooks shad in a variety of ways, delectably explained at the end of the book. Mostly, though, he goes fishing for shad in various North American rivers, and he "fishes the same way he writes books, avidly and intensely. He wants to know everything about the fish he's after--its history, its habits, its place in the cosmos" (Bill Pride, The Denver Post). His adventures in pursuit of shad occasion the kind of writing--expert and ardent--at which he has no equal.

Photobooth


Babbette Hines - 2002
    The photobooth was born. Within 20 years there were more than 30,000 in the United States alone, an explosive growth due largely to World War II, as soldiers and loved ones exchanged photos, hoping to cling to memories or moments in a world turned upside down. But by the 1960s the advent of Polaroid photography spelled the doom of the "four strip" that had become a fixture at arcades and drugstores everywhere. The recent resurgence of photo sticker machines has recaptured the fun and intimacy of the photobooth. With no photographer to please, people are at liberty to be whoever they like: brave or sexy, cocksure or wise, without fear of censure or ridicule. Free in the certainty of their solitude, families, couples young and old, best friends, and individual after individual have presented to the camera both real and imagined selves for three-quarters of a century.Photobooth presents over 700 such photographs from the last 75 years, images at turns spontaneous and uninhibited, often goofy, and occasionally touching. It is a fascinating portrait of everyday people and a testament to the ongoing fascination with both the process and the result.

The Chrysler Building: Creating a New York Icon Day by Day


David Stravitz - 2002
    Completed in 1930, the 77-story Art Deco skyscraper--the tallest in the world at the time it was finished--quickly became the symbol of big city glamour, excitement, and style. Its cloud-piercing spire and gleaming, steel-clad ornament depicting gargoyles, hubcaps, and the winged helmets of Mercury came to represent the thrill of the Machine Age at its most exuberant. But, until now, this magnificent building has also been one of the least documented and studied, a simple result of the fact that there were no known archives relating to its design or construction. This material was lost in the decades following its completion, or so everyone believed, until author David Stravitz discovered a box of negatives on the floor of a defunct stock photo company, just days before they were to be shipped off for silver reclamation. The never-before-seen photographs, reproduced as sumptuous duotones in this oversize book, illustrate the day-by-day construction of this American icon.The photographs were taken by professional photo companies hired to document the construction of the building. In so doing, they also captured the day-to-day life taking place on the streets and in the environs of the Chrysler Building in exquisite detail.This book beautifully illustrates the history of one of the most important buildings in New York as it emerged from street level to spire.

Philadelphia Then and Now


Edward Arthur Mauger - 2002
    Part of the highly successful "Then & Now" series, this book looks at the changes in this historic city.

The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England


Valerie Traub - 2002
    Contrary to the silence ascribed to lesbianism in the Renaissance, Traub argues that the early modern period witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of representations of such desire. As a contribution to the history of sexuality and to feminist and queer theory, the book addresses current theoretical preoccupations through the lens of historical inquiry.

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter: A Descriptive Catalogue


Andrew Alpern - 2002
    The book is illustrated with period photographs and floor plans.

Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage


Pascal Blanchard - 2002
    Freak shows, the circuses of Buffalo Bill and P.T. Barnum and European colonial exhibitions provided the occasions for most of these images, several of which were incorporated into posters, postcards and other ephemera, designed with an improbable jauntiness. "Human Zoos "traces the evolution of such paradigmatic conceptions as "specimen," "savage" and "native" for the designation of peoples as various as Native Americans, Asians and Africans from all corners of the continent. As horrific and compelling as it is brilliantly researched and compiled, this volume unflinchingly surveys the very recent history of the West's arrogant abuse of those deemed to fall outside its brutal terms of civilization.

Why We Rule!: 101 Great Reasons to Love Our Country


Rob Cohen - 2002
    Inspiring, educational, and almost as much fun as getting high and watching TV!Why do we love our country so much? We're the home of the free, the land of the brave, and the wacky inventors of everything from toilet paper to People magazine. Join us as we take one giant leap for mankind with lists, stats, and facts on:Rock 'n' RollFrom Elvis to Britney...the lindy hop to hip-hop!HollywoodThe best flicks, from Jaws to Deep Throat!InventionsThe internet, martinis, and the slinky!MedicinePioneers in kidney transplants and breast implants!EatsHome of hot apple pie, and hot pizza delivered in thirty minutes or less!Sexy ChicksFrom Angelina Jolie to the Statue of Liberty!#1In Nobel prizes, Olympic gold medals, and worldwide production of salt!If that's not enough, how about celebrating our entrepreneurial spirit, landing on the moon, hot-and-cold running showers, big national monuments, and oh, yeah...a little thing called freedom.

Artificial Sunshine: A Social History of Lighting


Maureen Dillon - 2002
    An exploration of domestic lighting from the middle ages to the 1990s, ranging from the practical considerations to the influence of lighting upon the clothes people wore and the way that they furnished their houses.

Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500-1840


William W. Hagen - 2002
    The trials and fortunes of everyday life come into view - in the family, the workplace, in the private lives of both men and women, in courtroom and jailhouse, and under the gaze of the rising Prussian monarchy's officials and army officers. What emerges is a many-dimensioned, long-term study of a rural society, inviting comparisons on a world-historical level. The book also puts to a new test the possibilities of empirical historical knowledge at the microhistorical or 'grass-roots' level. But it also reconceptualises, on the scale of Prussian-German and European history, the rise of agrarian capitalism, challenging views widespread in the economic history literature on the common people's working standards, and including massive new documentation on women's condition, rights, and social roles.

A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance


Guido Ruggiero - 2002
    This volume brings together some of the most exciting renaissance scholars to suggest new ways of thinking about the period and to set a new series of agendas for Renaissance scholarship.Overturns the idea that it was a period of European cultural triumph and highlights the negative as well as the positive.Looks at the Renaissance from a world, as opposed to just European, perspective.Views the Renaissance from perspectives other than just the cultural elite.Gender, sex, violence, and cultural history are integrated into the analysis.

The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France


Joan DeJean - 2002
    But as Joan DeJean suggests, its modern form, the same version that today's politicians decry and savvy artists exploit, was invented in seventeenth-century France.The Reinvention of Obscenity casts a fresh light on the mythical link between sexual impropriety and things French. Exploring the complicity between censorship, print culture, and obscenity, DeJean argues that mass market printing and the first modern censorial machinery came into being at the very moment that obscenity was being reinvented—that is, transformed from a minor literary phenomenon into a threat to society. DeJean's principal case in this study is the career of Moliére, who cannily exploited the new link between indecency and female genitalia to found his career as a print author; the enormous scandal which followed his play L'école des femmes made him the first modern writer to have his sex life dissected in the press.Keenly alert to parallels with the currency of obscenity in contemporary America, The Reinvention of Obscenity will concern not only scholars of French history, but anyone interested in the intertwined histories of sex, publishing, and censorship.