Title: Preachers of the Italian ghetto 
Author: Ruderman, David B
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Jewish Studies | Medieval History | European History | History
Publisher's Description: By the mid-sixteenth century, Jews in the cities of Italy were being crowded into compulsory ghettos as a result of the oppressive policies of Pope Paul IV and his successors.The sermons of Jewish preachers during this period provide a remarkable vantage point from which to view the early modern Jewish social and cultural landscape.In this eloquent collection, six leading scholars of Italian Jewish history reveal the important role of these preachers: men who served as a bridge between the ghetto and the Christian world outside, between old and new conventions, and between elite and popular modes of thought. The story of how they reflected and shaped the culture of their listeners, who felt the pressure of cramped urban life as well as of political, economic, and religious persecution, is finally beginning to be told. Through the words of the Italian ghetto preachers, we discover a richly textured panorama of Jewish life more than 400 years ago.   [brief]
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Title: King Charles I 
Author: Gregg, Pauline
Published: University of California Press,  1984
Subjects: History | European History
Publisher's Description: This is a lucid, fair-minded account of a difficult and tragic man. Pauline Gregg has drawn heavily on original documents, letters, and speeches to show how Charles's heritage, upbringing, and personality, as well as his relationships with friends, advisors, and favorites, all took place against a b . . . [more]
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Title: A Renaissance court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza
Author: Lubkin, Gregory
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | Renaissance History
Publisher's Description: Ambitious, extravagant, progressive, and sexually notorious, Galeazzo Maria Sforza inherited the ducal throne of Milan in 1466, at the age of twenty-two. Although his reign ended tragically only ten years later, the young prince's court was a dynamic community where arts, policy making, and the panoply of state were integrated with the rhythms and preoccupations of daily life. Gregory Lubkin explores this vital but overlooked center of power, allowing the members of the Milanese court to speak for themselves and showing how dramatically Milan and its ruler exemplified the political, cultural, religious, and economic aspirations of Renaissance Italy.   [brief]
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Title: Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and reform 
Author: Gleason, Elisabeth G
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Religion | Renaissance History | European History | Christianity
Publisher's Description: Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) was a major protagonist in the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century. A worldly Venetian patrician, he later became an ascetic advocate of Church reform and, as a Catholic cardinal, was sent to the important Colloquy of Regensburg. He failed in his mission to bring about an agreement between Lutherans and Catholics; nevertheless, his life and thought, as well as his friendships with the most vocal proponents of concord, peace, and toleration, make him an impressive and significant historical figure.In the first biography of Contarini since 1885, Elisabeth Gleason greatly broadens our understanding of the man and his times. As a result, scholars and students will come to see Cardinal Gasparo Contarini as a reminder of alternative concepts of authority and liberty in both church and state.   [brief]
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Title: The magic mountains: hill stations and the British raj 
Author: Kennedy, Dane Keith
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: History | Asian History | European History | South Asia
Publisher's Description: Perched among peaks that loom over heat-shimmering plains, hill stations remain among the most curious monuments to the British colonial presence in India. In this engaging and meticulously researched study, Dane Kennedy explores the development and history of the hill stations of the raj. He shows that these cloud-enshrouded havens were sites of both refuge and surveillance for British expatriates: sanctuaries from the harsh climate as well as an alien culture; artificial environments where colonial rulers could nurture, educate, and reproduce themselves; commanding heights from which orders could be issued with an Olympian authority.Kennedy charts the symbolic and sociopolitical functions of the hill stations over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arguing that these highland communities became much more significant to the British colonial government than mere places for rest and play. Particularly after the revolt of 1857, they became headquarters for colonial political and military authorities. In addition, the hill stations provided employment to countless Indians who worked as porters, merchants, government clerks, domestics, and carpenters.The isolation of British authorities at the hill stations reflected the paradoxical character of the British raj itself, Kennedy argues. While attempting to control its subjects, it remained aloof from Indian society. Ironically, as more Indians were drawn to these mountain areas for work, and later for vacation, the carefully guarded boundaries between the British and their subjects eroded. Kennedy argues that after the turn of the century, the hill stations were increasingly incorporated into the landscape of Indian social and cultural life.   [brief]
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Title: Fascist modernities: Italy, 1922-1945
Author: Ben-Ghiat, Ruth
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: European Studies | History | Intellectual History | European History
Publisher's Description: Ruth Ben-Ghiat's innovative cultural history of Mussolini's dictatorship is a provocative discussion of the meanings of modernity in interwar Italy. Eloquent, pathbreaking, and deft in its use of a broad range of materials, this work argues that fascism appealed to many Italian intellectuals as a new model of modernity that would resolve the contemporary European crisis as well as long-standing problems of the national past. Ben-Ghiat shows that - at a time of fears over the erosion of national and social identities - Mussolini presented fascism as a movement that would allow economic development without harm to social boundaries and national traditions. She demonstrates that although the regime largely failed in its attempts to remake Italians as paragons of a distinctly fascist model of mass society, twenty years of fascism did alter the landscape of Italian cultural life. Among younger intellectuals in particular, the dictatorship left a legacy of practices and attitudes that often continued under different political rubrics after 1945.   [brief]
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Title: On account of sex: the politics of women's issues, 1945-1968 
Author: Harrison, Cynthia Ellen
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: History | United States History
Publisher's Description: Examining the political activities of the period between 1920, when women gained the right to vote, and the mid-1960s, when the women's movement revived, Cynthia Harrison illuminates a long-neglected but vital chapter of women's history.
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Title: Aryans and British India
Author: Trautmann, Thomas R
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | South Asia | Asian History | European History
Publisher's Description: "Aryan," a word that today evokes images of racial hatred and atrocity, was first used by Europeans to suggest bonds of kinship, as Thomas Trautmann shows in his far-reaching history of British Orientalism and the ethnology of India. When the historical relationship uniting Sanskrit with the languages of Europe was discovered, it seemed clear that Indians and Britons belonged to the same family. Thus the Indo-European or Aryan idea, based on the principle of linguistic kinship, dominated British ethnological inquiry.In the nineteenth century, however, an emergent biological "race science" attacked the authority of the Orientalists. The spectacle of a dark-skinned people who were evidently civilized challenged Victorian ideas, and race science responded to the enigma of India by redefining the Aryan concept in narrowly "white" racial terms. By the end of the nineteenth century, race science and Orientalism reached a deep and lasting consensus in regard to India, which Trautmann calls "the racial theory of Indian civilization," and which he undermines with his powerful analysis of colonial ethnology in India. His work of reassessing British Orientalism and the Aryan idea will be of great interest to historians, anthropologists, and cultural critics.   [brief]
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Title: The making of Elizabethan foreign policy, 1558-1603
Author: Wernham, R. B. (Richard Bruce) 1906-
Published: University of California Press,  1980
Subjects: History | European History
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Title: Two churches: England and Italy in the thirteenth century
Author: Brentano, Robert 1926-
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: History | European History | Medieval History | Medieval Studies | Religion
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Title: Cultural encounters: the impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World 
Author: Perry, Mary Elizabeth 1937-
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | Anthropology | European History | Religion | Renaissance History
Publisher's Description: More than just an expression of religious authority or an instrument of social control, the Inquisition was an arena where cultures met and clashed on both shores of the Atlantic. This pioneering volume examines how cultural identities were maintained despite oppression.Persecuted groups were able to survive the Inquisition by means of diverse strategies - whether Christianized Jews in Spain preserving their experiences in literature, or native American folk healers practicing medical care. These investigations of social resistance and cultural persistence will reinforce the cultural significance of the Inquisition.   [brief]
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Title: Romain Rolland and the politics of intellectual engagement 
Author: Fisher, David James
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: History | European History
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Title: A place in the sun: Africa in Italian colonial culture from post-unification to the present
Author: Palumbo, Patrizia
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: History | Postcolonial Studies | European History | African History | Immigration
Publisher's Description: Given the centrality of Africa to Italy's national identity, a thorough study of Italian colonial history and culture has been long overdue. Two important developments, the growth of postcolonial studies and the controversy surrounding immigration from Africa to the Italian peninsula, have made it clear that the discussion of Italy's colonial past is essential to any understanding of the history and construction of the nation. This collection, the first to gather articles by the most-respected scholars in Italian colonial studies, highlights the ways in which colonial discourse has pervaded Italian culture from the post-unification period to the present. During the Risorgimento, Africa was invoked as a limb of a proudly resuscitated Imperial Rome. During the Fascist era, imperialistic politics were crucial in shaping both domestic and international perceptions of the Italian nation. These contributors offer compelling essays on decolonization, exoticism, fascist and liberal politics, anthropology, and historiography, not to mention popular literature, feminist studies, cinema, and children's literature. Because the Italian colonial past has had huge repercussions, not only in Italy and in the former colonies but also in other countries not directly involved, scholars in many areas will welcome this broad and insightful panorama of Italian colonial culture.   [brief]
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Title: Merchants and reform in Livorno, 1814-1868 
Author: LoRomer, David G
Published: University of California Press,  1987
Subjects: History | European History
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Title: Emigrants and society: Extremadura and America in the sixteenth century 
Author: Altman, Ida
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: History | European History | United States History
Publisher's Description: The opening of the New World to Spanish settlement had more than the limited impact on individuals and society which scholars have traditionally granted it. Many families and young single people left the neighboring cities of Cáceres and Trujillo in the Extremadura region of southwestern Spain for the Indies. By maintaining ties with home and one another, and sometimes returning, these emigrants developed patterns of involvement that on one level were linked directly to place of origin and on another would come to characterize the emigration movement as a whole. Ida Altman shows that the Indies could and did have a substantial and perceptible effect on local society in Spain, as the New World quickly became an important arena of activity for people seeking new and better opportunities. Her findings suggest interesting conclusions regarding the relationship of sixteenth-century Spanish emigration to the larger movement of people from Europe to the Western Hemisphere in modern times.   [brief]
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Title: Adventures of a mathematician
Author: Ulam, Stanislaw M
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics | United States History
Publisher's Description: The autobiography of mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, one of the great scientific minds of the twentieth century, tells a story rich with amazingly prophetic speculations and peppered with lively anecdotes. As a member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1944 on, Ulam helped to precipitate some of the most dramatic changes of the postwar world. He was among the first to use and advocate computers for scientific research, originated ideas for the nuclear propulsion of space vehicles, and made fundamental contributions to many of today's most challenging mathematical projects.With his wide-ranging interests, Ulam never emphasized the importance of his contributions to the research that resulted in the hydrogen bomb. Now Daniel Hirsch and William Mathews reveal the true story of Ulam's pivotal role in the making of the "Super," in their historical introduction to this behind-the-scenes look at the minds and ideas that ushered in the nuclear age. An epilogue by Françoise Ulam and Jan Mycielski sheds new light on Ulam's character and mathematical originality.   [brief]
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Title: A scientist's voice in American culture: Simon Newcomb and the rhetoric of scientific method
Author: Moyer, Albert E 1945-
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | History and Philosophy of Science | United States History
Publisher's Description: In late nineteenth-century America, Simon Newcomb was the nation's most celebrated scientist and - irascibly, doggedly, tirelessly - he made the most of it. Officially a mathematical astronomer heading a government agency, Newcomb spent as much of his life out of the observatory as in it, acting as a spokesman for the nascent but restive scientific community of his time.Newcomb saw the "scientific method" as a potential guide for all disciplines and a basis for all practical action, and argued passionately that it was of as much use in the halls of Congress as in the laboratory. In so doing, he not only sparked popular support for American science but also confronted a wide spectrum of social, cultural, and intellectual issues. This first full-length study of Newcomb traces the development of his faith in science and ranges over topics of great public debate in the Gilded Age, from the reform of economic theory to the recasting of the debate between science and religion. Moyer's portrait of a restless, eager mind also illuminates the bustle of late nineteenth-century America.   [brief]
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Title: History, religion, and antisemitism
Author: Langmuir, Gavin I
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: History | Medieval History | Judaism | Sociology | Medieval Studies | Middle Eastern History
Publisher's Description: Gavin I. Langmuir's work on the formation and nature of antisemitism has earned him an international reputation. In History, Religion, and Antisemitism he bravely confronts the problems that arise when historians have to describe and explain religious phenomena, as any historian of antisemitism must. How, and to what extent, can the historian be objective? Is it possible to discuss Christian attitudes toward Jews, for example, without adopting the historical explanations of those whose thoughts and actions one is discussing? What, exactly, does the historian mean by "religion" or "religious"? Langmuir's original and stimulating responses to these questions reflect his inquiry into the approaches of anthropology, sociology, and psychology and into recent empirical research on the functioning of the mind and the nature of thought. His distinction between religiosity, a property of individuals, and religion, a social phenomenon, allows him to place unusual emphasis on the role of religious doubts and tensions and the irrationality they can produce. Defining antisemitism as irrational beliefs about Jews, he distinguishes Christian anti-Judaism from Christian antisemitism, demonstrates that antisemitism emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries because of rising Christian doubts, and sketches how the revolutionary changes in religion and mentality in the modern period brought new faiths, new kinds of religious doubt, and a deadlier expression of antisemitism. Although he developed it in dealing with the difficult question of antisemitism, Langmuir's approach to religious history is important for historians in all areas.   [brief]
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Title: A science of impurity: water analysis in nineteenth century Britain 
Author: Hamlin, Christopher 1951-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: History | European History | History and Philosophy of Science
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Title: Framing American divorce: from the revolutionary generation to the Victorians
Author: Basch, Norma
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: History | Law | United States History | Gender Studies | Victorian History
Publisher's Description: Divorce has become one of the most widely discussed issues in America. In this innovative exploration of the phenomenon of divorce in American society, Norma Basch uses a variety of analytic perspectives to enrich our understanding of the meaning of divorce during the formative years of both the nation and its law, roughly 1770 to 1870. She provides a fascinating, thoughtful look at divorce as a legal action, as an individual experience, and as a cultural symbol in its era of institutionalization and traces the powerful legacy of the first American divorce experiences for us today.Using a unique methodology, Basch fragments her story into three discrete but chronologically overlapping perspectives. In Part I, "Rules," she analyzes the changing legal and legislative aspects of divorce and the public response to them. Part II, "Mediations," focuses on individual cases and presents a close-up analysis of the way ordinary women and men tested the law in the courts. And Part III, "Representations," charts the spiraling imagery of divorce through various fiction and non-fiction narratives that made their way into American popular culture during the nineteenth century.The composite picture that emerges in Framing American Divorce is a vividly untidy one that exposes the gulf between legal and moral abstractions and everyday practices. Divorce, Basch argues, was always a focal point of conflict between the autonomy of women and the authority of men. Tracing the legal, social, and cultural experience of divorce allows Basch to provide a searching exploration of the limits of nineteenth-century ideals of domesticity, romantic love, and marriage, and their legacy for us today. She brings her findings up-to-date with a provocative discussion of the current debate over fault or no-fault divorce.   [brief]
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