Author: Theodore Vrettos Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451603487 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
Alexandria was the greatest cultural capital of the ancient world. Accomplished classicist and author Theodore Vrettos now tells its story for the first time in a single volume. His enchanting blend of literary and scholarly qualities makes stories that played out among architectural wonders of the ancient world come alive. His fascinating central contention that this amazing metropolis created the western mind can now take its place in cultural history. Vrettos describes how and why the brilliant minds of the ages -- Greek scholars, Roman emperors, Jewish leaders, and fathers of the Christian Church -- all traveled to the shining port city Alexander the Great founded in 332 B.C. at the mouth of the mighty Nile. There they enjoyed learning from an extraordinary population of peaceful citizens whose rich intellectual life would quietly build the science, art, faith, and even politics of western civilization. No one has previously argued that, unlike the renowned military centers of the Mediterranean such as Rome, Carthage, and Sparta, Alexandria was a city of the mind. In a brief section on the great conqueror and founder Alexander, we learn that he himself was a student of Aristotle. In Part Two of his majestic story, Vrettos shows that in the sciences the city witnessed an explosion: Aristarchus virtually invented modern astronomy; Euclid wrote the elements of geometry and founded mathematics; amazingly, Eratosthenes precisely figured the circumference of the earth; and 2,500 years before Freud, the renowned Alexandrian physician Erasistratus identified a mysterious connection between sexual problems and nervous breakdowns. What could so cerebral a community care about geopolitics? As Vrettos explains in the third part of this epic saga, if Rome wanted power and prestige in the Mediterranean, the emperors had to secure the good will of the ruling class in Alexandria. Julius Caesar brought down the Roman Republic, and then almost immediately had to go to Alexandria to secure his power base. So begins a wonderfully told story of political intrigue that doesn't end until the Battle of Actium in 33 B.C. when Augustus Caesar defeated the first power couple, Anthony and Cleopatra. The fourth part of Alexandria focuses on the sphere of religion, and for Vrettos its center is the famous Alexandrian Library. The chief librarian commissioned the Septuagint, the oldest Greek version of the Old Testament, which was completed by Jewish intellectuals. Local church fathers Clement and Origen were key players in the development of Christianity; and the Coptic religion, with its emphasis on personal knowledge of God, flourished. Vrettos has blended compelling stories with astute historical insight. Having read all the ancient sources in Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Latin himself, he has an expert's knowledge of the everyday reality of his characters and setting. No reader will ever forget walking with him down this lost city's beautiful, dazzling streets.
Author: Carl Abbott Publisher: University of New Mexico Press ISBN: 0826333141 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
Cities rather than individual pioneers have been the driving force in the settlement and economic development of the western half of North America. Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, western urban centers served as starting points for conquest and settlement. As these frontier cities matured into metropolitan centers, they grew from imitators of eastern culture and outposts of eastern capital into independent sources of economic, cultural, and intellectual change. From the Gulf of Alaska to the Mississippi River and from the binational metropolis of San Diego-Tijuana to the Prairie Province capitals of Canada, Carl Abbott explores the complex urban history of western Canada and the United States. The evolution of western cities from stations for exploration and military occupation to contemporary entry points for migration and components of a global economy reminds us that it is cities that "won the West." And today, as cultural change increasingly moves from west to east, Abbott argues that the urban West represents a new center from which emerging patterns of behavior and changing customs will help to shape North America in the twenty-first century.
Author: Ronald M. James Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803240082 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 175
Book Description
Spent cartridges. The pieces of an original Tabasco Pepper Sauce bottle. Shards of a ceramic pot, stained red. For archaeologists each of the thousands of artifacts uncovered at a site tells a story. For noted Comstock authority Ronald M. James, it is a story resulting from decades of research and excavation at one of the largest National Historic Landmarks in America, the Nevada town that, with the discovery of the Comstock Lode, became a boomtown microcosm of the American West. Drawing on the work of hundreds of volunteers, students, and professional archaeologists, Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past shows how every detail—from unearthed artifacts to reports of local saloons to plans for the cemetery to surviving nineteenth-century buildings—adds to our view of Virginia City when it was one of the richest places on earth. James recreates this unlikely epitome of frontier industry and cosmopolitan living, the thriving hub of corporate executives, middle-class families, miners, prostitutes, and barkeepers—and more foreign-born residents per capita than anywhere else in the country—in a spot that had begun its life a few years earlier as the mining camp of several lucky guys. An excavation of the history of Virginia City, a window on the heyday of the American frontier, James’s book is also an enlightening look at how archaeology brings the story of the past to life.
Author: Daniel Aaron Publisher: Ohio State University Press ISBN: 0814205704 Category : Cincinnati (Ohio) Languages : en Pages : 390
Book Description
Daniel Aaron, one of todays foremost scholars of American history and American studies, began his career in 1942 with this classic study of Cincinnati in frontier days. Aaron argues that the Queen City quickly became an important urban center that in many ways resembled eastern cities more than its own hinterlands, with a populace united by its desire for economic growth. Aaron traces Cincinnati's development as a mercantile and industrial center during a period of intense national political and social ferment. The city owed much of its success as an urban center to its strategic location on the Ohio River and easy access to fertile backcountry. Despite an early over-reliance on commerce and land speculation and neglect of manufacturing, by 1838 Cincinnati's basic industries had been established and the city had outstripped her Ohio River rivals. Aaron's account of Cincinnati during this tumultuous period details the ways in which Cincinnatians made the most of commerce and manufacturing, how they met their civic responsibilities, and how they survived floods, fires, and cholera. He goes on to discuss the social and cultural history of the city during this period, including the development of social hierarchies, the operations of the press, the rage for founding societies of all kinds, the response of citizens to national and international events, the commercial elite's management of radicals and nonconformists, the nature of popular entertainment and serious culture, the efforts of education, and the messages of religious institutions. For historians, particularly those interested in urban and social history, Daniel Aaron's view of Cincinnati offers a rare opportuniry to viewantebellum American society in a microcosm, along with all of the institutions and attitudes that were prevalent in urban America during this important time.
Author: Alida Clemente Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000338428 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 251
Book Description
This book examines the overlapping spaces in modern Western cities to explore the small-scale processes that shaped these cities between c.1750 and 1900. It highlights the ways in which time and space matter, framing individual actions and practices and their impact on larger urban processes. It draws on the original and detailed studies of cities in Europe and North America through a micro-geographical approach to unravel urban practices, experiences and representations at three different scales: the dwelling, the street and the neighbourhood. Part I explores the changing spatiality of housing, examining the complex and contingent relationship between public and private, and commercial and domestic, as well as the relationship between representations and lived experiences. Part II delves into the street as a thoroughfare, connecting the city, but also as a site of contestation over the control and character of urban spaces. Part III draws attention to the neighbourhood as a residential grouping and as a series of spaces connecting flows of people integrating the urban space. Drawing on a range of methodologies, from space syntax and axial analysis to detailed descriptions of individual buildings, this book blends spatial theory and ideas of place with micro-history. With its fresh perspectives on the Western city created through the built environment and the everyday actions of city dwellers, the book will interest historical geographers, urban historians and architects involved in planning of cities across Europe and North America.
Author: Alida Clemente Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 9780367350307 Category : City planning Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
This book examines the overlapping spaces in modern Western cities to explore the small-scale processes that shaped these cities between c.1750 and 1900. It highlights the ways in which time and space matter, framing individual actions and practices and their impact on larger urban processes. It draws on the original and detailed studies of cities in Europe and North America through a micro-geographical approach to unravel urban practices, experiences and representations at three different scales: the dwelling, the street and the neighbourhood. Part I explores the changing spatiality of housing, examining the complex and contingent relationship between public and private, and commercial and domestic, as well as the relationship between representations and lived experiences. Part II delves into the street as a thoroughfare, connecting the city, but also as a site of contestation over the control and character of urban spaces. Part III draws attention to the neighbourhood as a residential grouping and as a series of spaces connecting flows of people integrating the urban space. Drawing on a range of methodologies, from space syntax and axial analysis to detailed descriptions of individual buildings, this book blends spatial theory and ideas of place with micro-history. With its fresh perspectives on the Western city created through the built environment and the everyday actions of city dwellers, the book will interest historical geographers, urban historians and architects involved in planning of cities across Europe and North America.
Author: Ray Laurence Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139500783 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 371
Book Description
The city is widely regarded as the most characteristic expression of the social, cultural and economic formations of the Roman Empire. This was especially true in the Latin-speaking West, where urbanism was much less deeply ingrained than in the Greek-speaking East but where networks of cities grew up during the centuries following conquest and occupation. This well-illustrated synthesis provides students and specialists with an overview of the development of the city in Italy, Gaul, Britain, Germany, Spain and North Africa, whether their interests lie in ancient history, Roman archaeology or the wider history of urbanism. It accounts not only for the city's geographical and temporal spread and its associated monuments (such as amphitheatres and baths), but also for its importance to the rulers of the Empire as well as the provincials and locals.
Author: Mayor Mike Winder Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 0738595411 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 130
Book Description
In the fall of 1848, Joseph and Susanna Harker became the first pioneers "Over Jordan" as they crossed to the west side seeking a new home in the valley. Other families soon followed, and by the 1880s, canals brought irrigation water, allowing farming settlements to spread out toward the Oquirrh Mountains. The agrarian communities of Hunter, Granger, Redwood, and Chesterfield began to take shape. The decades after World War II saw enormous growth, new neighborhoods, and the Valley Fair Mall. When the area finally incorporated as West Valley City in 1980, it was immediately one of Utah's largest cities. The city has seen remarkable progress in its first three decades, including being a venue city for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games and emerging as Utah's most ethnically diverse city.
Author: Tom Clavin Publisher: St. Martin's Press ISBN: 146688262X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
The instant New York Times bestseller! Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City’s streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s, Dodge City was known as the most violent and turbulent town in the West. Enter Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Young and largely self-trained men, the lawmen led the effort that established frontier justice and the rule of law in the American West, and did it in the wickedest place in the United States. When they moved on, Wyatt to Tombstone and Bat to Colorado, a tamed Dodge was left in the hands of Jim Masterson. But before long Wyatt and Bat, each having had a lawman brother killed, returned to that threatened western Kansas town to team up to restore order again in what became known as the Dodge City War before riding off into the sunset. #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin's Dodge City tells the true story of their friendship, romances, gunfights, and adventures, along with the remarkable cast of characters they encountered along the way (including Wild Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, and Theodore Roosevelt) that has gone largely untold—lost in the haze of Hollywood films and western fiction, until now.
Author: Theodore Vrettos
Author: Michael Pacione
Author: Carl Abbott
Author: Ronald M. James
Author: Daniel Aaron
Author: Alida Clemente
Author: Alida Clemente
Author: Ray Laurence
Author: Mayor Mike Winder
Author: Tom Clavin