Title: Afghanistan: the Soviet invasion and the Afghan response, 1979-1982 
Author: Kakar, M. Hasan
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Middle Eastern Studies | Politics | History | Middle Eastern History
Publisher's Description: Few people are more respected or better positioned to speak on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan than M. Hassan Kakar. A professor at Kabul University and scholar of Afghanistan affairs at the time of the 1978 coup d'état, Kakar vividly describes the events surrounding the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the encounter between the military superpower and the poorly armed Afghans. The events that followed are carefully detailed, with eyewitness accounts and authoritative documentation that provide an unparalleled view of this historical moment.Because of his prominence Kakar was at first treated with deference by the Marxist government and was not imprisoned, although he openly criticized the regime. When he was put behind bars the outcry from scholars all over the world possibly saved his life. In prison for five years, he continued collecting information, much of it from prominent Afghans of varying political persuasions who were themselves prisoners.Kakar brings firsthand knowledge and a historian's sensibility to his account of the invasion and its aftermath. This is both a personal document and a historical one - Kakar lived through the events he describes, and his concern for human rights rather than party politics infuses his writing. As Afghans and the rest of the world try to make sense of Afghanistan's recent past, Kakar's voice will be one of those most listened to.   [brief]
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Title: Heroes of the age: moral fault lines on the Afghan frontier 
Author: Edwards, David B
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Anthropology | Middle Eastern History | Middle Eastern Studies | Postcolonial Studies
Publisher's Description: Much of the political turmoil that has occurred in Afghanistan since the Marxist revolution of 1978 has been attributed to the dispute between Soviet-aligned Marxists and the religious extremists inspired by Egyptian and Pakistani brands of "fundamentalist" Islam. In a significant departure from this view, David B. Edwards contends that - though Marxism and radical Islam have undoubtedly played a significant role in the conflict - Afghanistan's troubles derive less from foreign forces and the ideological divisions between groups than they do from the moral incoherence of Afghanistan itself. Seeking the historical and cultural roots of the conflict, Edwards examines the lives of three significant figures of the late nineteenth century - a tribal khan, a Muslim saint, and a prince who became king of the newly created state. He explores the ambiguities and contradictions of these lives and the stories that surround them, arguing that conflicting values within an artificially-created state are at the root of Afghanistan's current instability.Building on this foundation, Edwards examines conflicting narratives of a tribal uprising against the British Raj that broke out in the summer of 1897. Through an analysis of both colonial and native accounts, Edwards investigates the saint's role in this conflict, his relationship to the Afghan state and the tribal groups that followed him, and the larger issue of how Islam traditionally functions as an encompassing framework of political association in frontier society.   [brief]
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Title: Henry Edwards Huntington: a biography
Author: Thorpe, James Ernest 1915-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | California and the West | Californian and Western History | United States History | Autobiographies and Biographies
Publisher's Description: A legendary book collector, a connoisseur of fine art, a horticulturist, and a philanthropist, Henry Edwards Huntington is perhaps best known as the founder of the world-renowned Huntington Library, Art Gallery, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. James Thorpe's comprehensive biography of Huntington tells the richly human story of the man who became America's greatest book collector and was a leading figure in the development of southern California.Henry Edwards Huntington was born in New York State in 1850. He began working at the age of 17, eventually moved to California, and in later years was hailed for his vision in developing the street railway system that created the structure of the Los Angeles area. Always a lover of books, Huntington acquired many spectacular volumes - among them the complete Gutenberg Bible on vellum and the library of the Earl of Bridgewater. He also built a splendid art collection and established a grand botanical garden on the grounds of the buildings that would house his art and books. Then, in an act of philanthropy seldom equaled, he gave these great treasures to the public.The intimate side of Huntington's life appears in these pages, too. Thorpe has culled a vast trove of private letters, diaries, and other documents that reveal Huntington's exceptional personal qualities. The author's well-rounded biography of this unassuming yet gifted American is also richly evocative of the times in which Henry Edwards Huntington lived.   [brief]
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Title: Real fantasies: Edward Steichen's advertising photography
Author: Johnston, Patricia A 1954-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Art | Art History | History | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: During the 1920s and 1930s, Edward Steichen was the most successful photographer in the advertising industry. Although much has been said about Steichen's fine-art photography, his commercial work - which appeared regularly in Vanity Fair, Vogue, Ladies Home Journal , and almost every other popular magazine published in the United States - has not received the attention it deserves. At a time when photography was just beginning to replace drawings as the favored medium for advertising, Steichen helped transform the producers of such products as Welch's grape juice and Jergens lotion from small family businesses to national household names. In this book, Patricia Johnston uses Steichen's work as a case study of the history of advertising and the American economy between the wars. She traces the development of Steichen's work from an early naturalistic style through increasingly calculated attempts to construct consumer fantasies. By the 1930s, alluring images of romance and class, developed in collaboration with agency staff and packaged in overtly manipulative and persuasive photographs, became Steichen's stock-in-trade. He was most frequently chosen by agencies for products targeted toward women: his images depicted vivacious singles, earnest new mothers, and other stereotypically female life stages that reveal a great deal about the industry's perceptions of and pitches to this particular audience.Johnston presents an intriguing inside view of advertising agencies, drawing on an array of internal documents to reconstruct the team process that involved clients, art directors, account executives, copywriters, and photographers. Her book is a telling chronicle of the role of mass media imagery in reflecting, shaping, and challenging social values in American culture.   [brief]
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Title: Dark side of fortune: triumph and scandal in the life of oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny
Author: Davis, Margaret L
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | California and the West | American Studies | Cultural Anthropology | Autobiographies and Biographies
Publisher's Description: Dark Side of Fortune contains all the elements of a Hollywood thriller. Filling in one of the most important gaps in the history of the American West, Margaret Leslie Davis's riveting biography follows Edward L. Doheny's fascinating story from his days as an itinerant prospector in the dangerous jungles of Mexico, where he built the $100-million oil empire that ushered in the new era of petroleum. But it was a tale that ended in tragedy, when - at the peak of his economic power - Doheny was embroiled in the notorious Teapot Dome scandal and charged with bribing the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.Few captains of industry have matched Doheny's drive to succeed and his far-reaching ambition. Drawn to the West in search of fortune, he failed at prospecting before finding oil in a smelly, tar-befouled lot in Los Angeles in 1892. Certain that the substance had commercial value, he envisioned steamships and locomotives no longer powered by coal, but by oil. After developing massive oil wells in Mexico, Doheny built an international oil empire that made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. But in 1924 the scandal of Teapot Dome engulfed him. As accusations mounted, he hired America's top legal talent for his defense. During the ten-year-long litigation, Doheny's only son was mysteriously murdered by a family confidant. The government's case against Doheny ended in an astounding jury decision: The cabinet official accused of taking a bribe from Doheny was found guilty and sent to prison, yet Doheny was fully acquitted. Despite the verdict, the scandal had overshadowed the achievements of a lifetime, and he died in disgrace in 1935.Margaret Leslie Davis recreates the legal drama and adds details of behind-the-scenes strategy gleaned from the personal diaries and archives of Doheny's famed defense attorneys. Previously hidden personal correspondence adds to this first complete portrait of the man and answers questions about Doheny that have eluded historians for almost seventy-five years.   [brief]
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Title: Contested Eden: California before the Gold Rush
Author: Gutiérrez, Ramón A 1951-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | California and the West | Californian and Western History | United States History | Native American Ethnicity | Environmental Studies | Natural History | American Studies
Publisher's Description: Celebrating the 150th birthday of the state of California offers the opportunity to reexamine the founding of modern California, from the earliest days through the Gold Rush and up to 1870. In this four-volume series, published in association with the California Historical Society, leading scholars offer a contemporary perspective on such issues as the evolution of a distinctive California culture, the interaction between people and the natural environment, the ways in which California's development affected the United States and the world, and the legacy of cultural and ethnic diversity in the state. California before the Gold Rush , the first California Sesquicentennial volume, combines topics of interest to scholars and general readers alike. The essays investigate traditional historical subjects and also explore such areas as environmental science, women's history, and Indian history. Authored by distinguished scholars in their respective fields, each essay contains excellent summary bibliographies of leading works on pertinent topics. This volume also features an extraordinary full-color photographic essay on the artistic record of the conquest of California by Europeans, as well as over seventy black-and-white photographs, some never before published.   [brief]
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Title: Khubilai Khan: his life and times
Author: Rossabi, Morris
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Asian Studies | History | Asian History | China | Autobiographies and Biographies
Publisher's Description: Living from 1215 to 1294 Khubilai Khan is one of history's most renowned figures. Here for the first time is an English-language biography of the man. Morris Rossabi draws on sources from a variety of East Asian, Middle Eastern, and European languages as he focuses on the life and times of the great . . . [more]
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Title: The messiah before Jesus: the suffering servant of the Dead Sea scrolls
Author: Knohl, Israel
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Religion | Jewish Studies | Christianity
Publisher's Description: In a work that challenges notions that have dominated New Testament scholarship for more than a hundred years, Israel Knohl gives startling evidence for a messianic precursor to Jesus who is described as the "Suffering Servant" in recently published fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Messiah before Jesus clarifies many formerly incomprehensible aspects of Jesus' life and confirms the story in the New Testament about his messianic awareness. The book shows that, around the time of Jesus' birth, there came into being a conception of "catastrophic" messianism in which the suffering, humiliation, and death of the messiah were regarded as an integral part of the redemptive process. Scholars have long argued that Jesus could not have foreseen his suffering, death, and resurrection because the concept of a slain savior who rises from the dead was alien to the Judaism of his time. But, on the basis of hymns found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Knohl argues that, one generation before Jesus, a messianic leader arose in the Qumran sect who was regarded by his followers as ushering in an era of redemption and forgiveness. This messianic leader was killed by Roman soldiers in the course of a revolt that broke out in Jerusalem in 4 B.C.E. The Romans forbade his body to be buried and after the third day his disciples believed that he was resurrected and rose to heaven. This formed the basis for Jesus' messianic consciousness, Knohl argues; it was because of this model that Jesus anticipated he would suffer, die, and be resurrected after three days. Knohl takes his fascinating inquiry one step further by suggesting that this messiah was a figure known to us from historical sources of the period. This identification may shed new light on the mystery of the "Paraclete" in the Gospel of John. A pathbreaking study, The Messiah before Jesus will reshape our understanding of Christianity and its relationship to Judaism.   [brief]
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Title: Rome before Avignon: a social history of thirteenth-century Rome 
Author: Brentano, Robert 1926-
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | European History | Medieval History | Religion | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: Robert Brentano evokes papal Rome in all its paradox and complicated brilliance. From a detailed re-creation of the physical "town" with its series of brick campanili and green and purple mosaic floors, to the intrigues of the great families, like the Orsini and Colonna, the reader is guided through complex and fascinating culture. Brentano's skill lies in his ability to combine the story of the vaulting ambition of the great families, only mildly tempered by their very real religious piety, with a vivid reconstruction of everyday life in postclassical Rome.   [brief]
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Title: Decades of crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War II
Author: Berend, T. Iván (Tibor Iván) 1930-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | European History | European Studies | Russian and Eastern European Studies | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: Only by understanding Central and Eastern Europe's turbulent history during the first half of the twentieth century can we hope to make sense of the conflicts and crises that have followed World War II and, after that, the collapse of Soviet-controlled state socialism. Ivan Berend looks closely at the fateful decades preceding World War II and at twelve countries whose absence from the roster of major players was enough in itself, he says, to precipitate much of the turmoil.As waves of modernization swept over Europe, the less developed countries on the periphery tried with little or no success to imitate Western capitalism and liberalism. Instead they remained, as Berend shows, rural, agrarian societies notable for the tenacious survival of feudal and aristocratic institutions. In that context of frustration and disappointment, rebellion was inevitable. Berend leads the reader skillfully through the maze of social, cultural, economic, and political changes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Soviet Union, showing how every path ended in dictatorship and despotism by the start of World War II.   [brief]
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Title: Before the nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company 
Author: Musser, Charles
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Cinema and Performance Arts | Film | United States History | Popular Culture
Publisher's Description: Musser takes us into the long-forgotten world of early cinema - unexpectedly sophisticated and yet radically different from current movie-making. Focusing on Edwin S. Porter, most often remembered as the producer of The Great Train Robbery , Musser situates Porter's achievements within the vibrant c . . . [more]
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Title: Death before dying: the Sufi poems of Sultan Bahu
Author: Sult̤ān Bāhū 1630-1691
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Literature | Religion | Poetry | Middle Eastern Studies | Literature in Translation | Islam | South Asia
Publisher's Description: These 115 poems introduce readers in English to Sultan Bahu (d. 1691), a Sufi mystical poet who continues to be one of the most beloved writers in Punjabi. Bahu, whose name translates as "With God," remains highly popular in Pakistan and India today - even illiterate Punjabis can recite his poetry b . . . [more]
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Title: Nets of awareness: Urdu poetry and its critics 
Author: Pritchett, Frances W 1947-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | South Asia | Asian History
Publisher's Description: Frances Pritchett's lively, compassionate book joins literary criticism with history to explain how Urdu poetry - long the pride of Indo-Muslim culture - became devalued in the second half of the nineteenth century.This abrupt shift, Pritchett argues, was part of the backlash following the violent Indian Mutiny of 1857. She uses the lives and writings of the distinguished poets and critics Azad and Hali to show the disastrous consequences - culturally and politically - of British rule. The British had science, urban planning - and Wordsworth. Azad and Hali had a discredited culture and a metaphysical, sexually ambiguous poetry that differed radically from English lyric forms.Pritchett's beautiful reconstruction of the classical Urdu poetic vision allows us to understand one of the world's richest literary traditions and also highlights the damaging potential of colonialism.   [brief]
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Title: Hesiod's Ascra
Author: Edwards, Anthony T
Published: University of California Press,  2004
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Classical Politics | Classical Literature and Language | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: In Works and Days, one of the two long poems that have come down to us from Hesiod, the poet writes of farming, morality, and what seems to be a very nasty quarrel with his brother Perses over their inheritance. In this book, Anthony T. Edwards extracts from the poem a picture of the social structure of Ascra, the hamlet in northern Greece where Hesiod lived, most likely during the seventh century b.c.e. Drawing on the evidence of trade, food storage, reciprocity, and the agricultural regime as Hesiod describes them in Works and Days, Edwards reveals Ascra as an autonomous village, outside the control of a polis, less stratified and integrated internally than what we observe even in Homer. In light of this reading, theconflict between Hesiod and Perses emerges as a dispute about the inviolability of the community's external boundary and the degree of interobligation among those within the village. Hesiod's Ascra directly counters the accepted view of Works and Days, which has Hesiod describing a peasant society subordinated to the economic and political control of an outside elite. Through his deft analysis, Edwards suggests a new understanding of both Works and Days and the social and economic organization of Hesiod's time and place.   [brief]
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Title: Printing, propaganda, and Martin Luther 
Author: Edwards, Mark U
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | Christianity
Publisher's Description: Martin Luther, the first Protestant, was also the central figure in the West's first media campaign. But to what extent was the Reformation a "print event"? And what, finally, was Luther's role in the movement? With Mark Edwards's study of Protestant and Catholic pamphlets published in the early years of the Reformation (1518-1530), these and other questions surrounding Reformation printing are at last given their full due.Edwards couples his findings with a provocative analysis of the ways in which they challenge the accepted history of the Reformation. His determination of who knew what, and when, as well as how readers interpreted Luther's message makes Edwards's work one that will influence the study of printing and the early Reformation for years to come.   [brief]
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Title: The rhetoric of confession: shishōsetsu in early twentieth-century Japanese fiction 
Author: Fowler, Edward
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Literature | Japan | Literary Theory and Criticism | Asian Literature
Publisher's Description: The shishosetsu is a Japanese form of autobiographical fiction that flourished during the first two decades of this century. Focusing on the works of Chikamatsu Shuko, Shiga Naoya, and Kasai Zenzo, Edward Fowler explores the complex and paradoxical nature of shishosetsu , and discusses its linguisti . . . [more]
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Title: Alexander the Great and the mystery of the elephant medallions
Author: Holt, Frank Lee
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Ancient History | Military History | Art and Architecture
Publisher's Description: To all those who witnessed his extraordinary conquests, from Albania to India, Alexander the Great appeared invincible. How Alexander himself promoted this appearance - how he abetted the belief that he enjoyed divine favor and commanded even the forces of nature against his enemies - is the subject of Frank L. Holt's absorbing book. Solid evidence for the "supernaturalized" Alexander lies in a rare series of medallions that depict the triumphant young king at war against the elephants, archers, and chariots of Rajah Porus of India at the Battle of the Hydaspes River. Recovered from Afghanistan and Iraq in sensational and sometimes perilous circumstances, these ancient artifacts have long animated the modern historical debate about Alexander. Holt's book, the first devoted to the mystery of these ancient medallions, takes us into the history of their discovery and interpretation, into the knowable facts of their manufacture and meaning, and, ultimately, into the king's own psyche and his frightening theology of war. The result is a valuable analysis of Alexander history and myth, a vivid account of numismatics, and a spellbinding look into the age-old mechanics of megalomania.   [brief]
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Title: Telematic embrace: visionary theories of art, technology, and consciousness
Author: Ascott, Roy
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Art | Art Theory | Electronic Media
Publisher's Description: Long before e-mail and the Internet permeated society, Roy Ascott, a pioneering British artist and theorist, coined the term "telematic art" to describe the use of online computer networks as an artistic medium. In Telematic Embrace Edward A. Shanken gathers, for the first time, an impressive compilation of more than three decades of Ascott's philosophies on aesthetics, interactivity, and the sense of self and community in the telematic world of cyberspace. This book explores Ascott's ideas on how networked communication has shaped behavior and consciousness within and beyond the realm of what is conventionally defined as art. Telematics, a powerful marriage of computers and telecommunication, made technologies we now take for granted - such as e-mail and automated teller machines (ATMs) - part of our daily life, and made art a more interactive form of expression. Telematic art challenges traditional relationships between artist, artwork, and audience by allowing nonlocal audiences to influence the emergent qualities of the artwork, which consists of the ebb and flow of electronic information. These essays constitute a unique archaeology of ideas, tracing Ascott's meditations on the formation of consciousness through the intertwined cultural histories of art and technology from the 1960s to the present. Shanken's introduction situates Ascott's work within a history of ideas in art, technology, and philosophy. Given the increasing role of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the creation of commerce and community at the dawn of this new millennium, scholars, students, laypeople, policymakers, and artists will find this collection informative and thought-provoking.   [brief]
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Title: The power of the gun: the emergence of modern Chinese warlordism 
Author: McCord, Edward Allen
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Politics | Asian History | China
Publisher's Description: This detailed study offers a new interpretation of the emergence of warlordism in early twentieth-century China. Focusing on the provinces of Hunan and Hubei, Edward McCord shows how the repeated use of the military to settle disputes over the structure and allocation of political power in the early Republic ultimately thwarted the consolidation of civil authority. Warlordism flourished as military commanders took advantage of the growing militarization of politics to establish their dominance over early Republican government.McCord's study brings into sharp focus the social and political context of warlordism and is an essential bridge completing the narrative of events between two revolutionary eras. With the role of the military in modern Chinese politics receiving renewed attention today, this work is especially timely.   [brief]
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Title: Struggle and survival in the modern Middle East
Author: Burke, Edmund 1940-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Middle Eastern History | Middle Eastern Studies | Autobiographies and Biographies
Publisher's Description: Until now, we have known very little of the lives of ordinary Middle Eastern men and women, despite extensive research on the modern Middle East. With this collection of essays, the life stories of peasants, villagers, pastoralists, and urbanites can finally be heard - no more will our view of the Middle East be seen only over the shoulders of the elite.These twenty-four biographies are drawn from the entire Middle East - from Morocco to Afghanistan - and provide vantage points from which to understand modern Middle Eastern history "from the bottom up." Spanning the past 150 years and reflecting important transformations, the stories challenge elite-centered accounts of what has occurred in the Middle East and illuminate hidden corners of a largely unrecorded world.The essays, divided chronologically, provide a comprehensive framework for those unfamiliar with Middle Eastern social history. "Pre-Colonial Lives" covers the period from 1850 until World War I, "Colonial Lives" chronicles the beginning of European rule, and "Contemporary Lives" relates the massive changes of the postwar era. Through them, we see how specific ecologies, ways of life, ethnic, class and gender situations can shape individual human action.   [brief]
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