Reading The Twentieth Century

The focus of Reading the Twentieth Century is on the role of the United States in the world in the twentieth century, after the nation became a major world player. Readings include public documents, memoirs, and media comments, many of which have never been published before. The book is structured in such a way that portions can be assigned to students, and the order of presentation is such that instructors can assign sections chronologically or thematically. Though highly informative, the editor's chapter introductions and the document head notes are brief, designed only to introduce the subjects so that the documents can speak for themselves.

A chronological compilation of twentieth-century world events in one volume—from the acclaimed historian and biographer of Winston S. Churchill. The twentieth century has been one of the most unique in human history. It has seen the rise of some of humanity’s most important advances to date, as well as many of its most violent and terrifying wars. This is a condensed version of renowned historian Martin Gilbert’s masterful examination of the century’s history, offering the highlights of a three-volume work that covers more than three thousand pages. From the invention of aviation to the rise of the Internet, and from events and cataclysmic changes in Europe to those in Asia, Africa, and North America, Martin examines art, literature, war, religion, life and death, and celebration and renewal across the globe, and throughout this turbulent and astonishing century.

For well over one hundred years, libraries open to the public have played a crucial part in fostering in Americans the skills and habits of reading and writing, by routinely providing access to standard forms of print: informational genres such as newspapers, pamphlets, textbooks, and other reference books, and literary genres including poetry, plays, and novels. Public libraries continue to have an extraordinary impact; in the early twenty-first century, the American Library Association reports that there are more public library branches than McDonald's restaurants in the United States. Much has been written about libraries from professional and managerial points of view, but less so from the perspectives of those most intimately involved—patrons and librarians. Drawing on circulation records, patron reviews, and other archived materials, Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America underscores the evolving roles that libraries have played in the lives of American readers. Each essay in this collection examines a historical circumstance related to reading in libraries. The essays are organized in sections on methods of researching the history of reading in libraries; immigrants and localities; censorship issues; and the role of libraries in providing access to alternative, nonmainstream publications. The volume shows public libraries as living spaces where individuals and groups with diverse backgrounds, needs, and desires encountered and used a great variety of texts, images, and other media throughout the twentieth century.

The author describes the culture of mass death in the 20th century, from the battlefields of both World Wars to local disasters and organized famines, during which some 110 million have died.

1900-1914 - 1914-1918 - The Russian revolution 1917-1921 - The Jazz age: 1921-1929 - The thirties - Fascism v. Communism 1933-1939 - World War LL 1939-1945 - The Holocaust 1933-1945 - The atomic bomb - The fifties - Communism 1945-1989 - Decolonization 1947- - Rural life - The cold war: 1945-1989 - The sixties - Civil rights 1930s -1968 - Vietnam 1964-1973 - The Middle East 1948- - Politics - The seventies - Ireland - The environment - Travel - Work - Home - Love & sex - Children and family - The individual - Oppression and exile - Crime, vice and low life - The eighties and nineties - The media - The arts - Sport and leisure - Science and technology - The collapse of communism and its consequences 1989- - Existence - Sci-fi and space - 2000-; Newsreel (C. Day Lewis).

The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader has been the key introductory text to all types of performance for over fifteen years. Extracts from over fifty practitioners, critics and theorists from the fields of dance, drama, music, theatre and live art form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This carefully revised third edition offers focus on contributions from the world of music, and also privileges the voices of practitioners themselves ahead of more theoretical writing. A bestseller since its original publication in 1996, this new edition has been expanded to include contributions from: Bobby Baker; Joseph Beuys; Rustom Bharucha; Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; Hanns Eisler; Karen Finley; Philip Glass; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Matthew Goulish; Martha Graham; Wassily Kandinsky; Jacques Lecoq; Hans-Thies Lehmann; George Maciunas; Ariane Mnouchkine; Meredith Monk; Lloyd Newson; Carolee Schneemann; Gertrude Stein; Bill Viola. Each extract is fully supplemented by a contextual summary, a biography of the writer, and suggestions for further reading. The volume’s alphabetical structure invites the reader to compare and cross-reference major writings on all types of performance outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. All who engage with live, innovative performance, and the interplay of radical ideas, will find this collection invaluable.

This collection of the best essays written in the English language during the past one hundred years includes many that have become landmarks defining their time: Norman Mailer's The White Negro, Tom Wolfe's These Radical Chic Evenings, James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, and Gore Vidal's The Holy Family. Others are in a lighter vein, like James Thurber's lampoon of Salvador Dali's Secret Life or Max Beerbohm's reflections on Laughter. There are Philip Roth on baseball and A. P. Herbert on bathrooms; Mary McCarthy's My Confession, on her Communist sympathies; and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crack-up. Each reader will have his or her own favorites: Eudora Welty capturing the precise moment at which she grew up, or Arthur Koestler debunking the effects of magic mushrooms. And each essay has stood the test of time, like Hannah Arendt's The Concentration Camps, Edmund Wilson's now classic The Wound and the Bow, and Paul Fussell on World War II.

The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caufield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.

"HIS Story of the 20th Century" is a comprehensive look at the twentieth century decade by decade for high school students, adults, and advanced middle school students. Come explore the 20th Century with me! We will learn about: Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Queens, & Other Leaders who Changed the World: Revolutions, Movements, Revivals, Rulings, & Laws whose Impact we Feel Today; Boxer Rebellion, Boer War, Balkan Wars, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cold War, Persian Gulf War; Reese Howells, Derek Prince, Corrie ten Boom, Jim & Elisabeth Eliot, Billy Graham, and others who fulfilled the Great Commission; Explorations from the North Pole to Outer Space; Inventors, Scientists, Architects, Doctors, Explorers, & Engineers who fulfilled the Creation Mandate; Medical Breakthroughs: How the Chaos in the Middle East got Started; What Happened in the Balkans that Led to World War I; Why the Vietnam War was so Hard to Win; Where Communist Leaders were Trained; Inventions that Made Life Better & others that brought Destruction; Styles/Changes in Fashion, Music, Dances, Art, Sports, Games, Toys, & Technology; World Series, World Cup, Super Bowls, NASCAR, Grand Prix; And so much more! Explore the 20th Century with "HIS Story of the 20th Century." At the beginning of the twentieth century, men were still getting around on horses, excited about new inventions like the telegraph, telephone, sewing machine, and light bulb. The Panama Canal was built. The North and South Poles were explored, and it was easier to travel than ever before. And can you believe it? The Wright brothers invented the airplane. By the end of the twentieth century, men would walk on the moon, travel at the speed of sound, use compact home computers, and enjoy the benefits of satellite communication. Times sure changed in the twentieth century. "HIS Story of the 20th Century High School Workbook" can be used along with this textbook to create a one-credit world history course.

The first comprehensive history of the Vatican’s agenda to defeat the forces of secular liberalism and communism through international law, cultural diplomacy, and a marriage of convenience with authoritarian and right-wing rulers. After the United States entered World War I and the Russian Revolution exploded, the Vatican felt threatened by forces eager to reorganize the European international order and cast the Church out of the public sphere. In response, the papacy partnered with fascist and right-wing states as part of a broader crusade that made use of international law and cultural diplomacy to protect European countries from both liberal and socialist taint. A Twentieth-Century Crusade reveals that papal officials opposed Woodrow Wilson’s international liberal agenda by pressing governments to sign concordats assuring state protection of the Church in exchange for support from the masses of Catholic citizens. These agreements were implemented in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, as well as in countries like Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. In tandem, the papacy forged a Catholic International—a political and diplomatic foil to the Communist International—which spread a militant anticommunist message through grassroots organizations and new media outlets. It also suppressed Catholic antifascist tendencies, even within the Holy See itself. Following World War II, the Church attempted to mute its role in strengthening fascist states, as it worked to advance its agenda in partnership with Christian Democratic parties and a generation of Cold War warriors. The papal mission came under fire after Vatican II, as Church-state ties weakened and antiliberalism and anticommunism lost their appeal. But—as Giuliana Chamedes shows in her groundbreaking exploration—by this point, the Vatican had already made a lasting mark on Eastern and Western European law, culture, and society.