Journeys to Empire
Title | Journeys to Empire PDF eBook |
Author | Gordon T. Stewart |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2009-06-04 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0521515025 |
Comparing two British missions to Tibet in 1774 and 1904, Stewart sheds light on the changing nature of British imperialism.
A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire
Title | A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire PDF eBook |
Author | Anton Chekov |
Publisher | Penguin UK |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2007 |
Genre | Russia |
ISBN | 9780141025506 |
Overwhelmed by what he felt was the worthlessness of his great success as a writer, Chekhov (1860-1904) decided to leave everything behind him and go to the far reaches of Siberia - to the terrible Russian penal colony on Sakhalin Island. This book mixes his witty, charming letters back to friends on his long journey with his grim account of the reality of life in one of the worst places on earth. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things- Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.
Walking Away from Empire: A Personal Journey
Title | Walking Away from Empire: A Personal Journey PDF eBook |
Author | Guy R. McPherson |
Publisher | Woodthrush Productions |
Pages | 270 |
Release | 2019-03-09 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 9781732963146 |
Guy McPherson was a successful professor by every imperial measure: well-published in all the right places, he taught and mentored students who acquired the best jobs in the field, and performed abundant, exemplary professional service. He earned enough to live on a third of his income and still traveled as much as he desired throughout the industrialized world. In other words, McPherson was the perfect model of all that is wrong with the United States and, by extension, the nations looking to us for an example. Rather than questioning the system, he was raising minor questions within the system.During the decade of his forties, McPherson transformed his academic life from mainstream ecologist to friend of the earth. He became a conservation biologist and social critic, and his speaking and writing increasingly targeted the public beyond the classroom. McPherson began teaching poetry in facilities of incarceration, trying to give voice to wise people long marginalized or ignored by industrial society. Guest commentaries in local newspapers pointed out the absurdities of American life, as well as limits to growth for the world's industrial economy. Increasingly strident essays drew the attention of university administrators who tried to fire him, and, when that failed, tried to muzzle him. Shortly after administrators gave up trying to force McPherson's departure from a major research university, he left the institution on his own terms when, at the age of 49, McPherson finally awakened to the costs of the non-negotiable American way of life: obedience at home and oppression abroad. And then he walked away from all that privilege to pursue a life of principle and even more service while raising goats, gardens and working with his neighbors. It meant hours of physical labor, months of loneliness, and finally, betrayal from those closest to him.
Outposts
Title | Outposts PDF eBook |
Author | Simon Winchester |
Publisher | Penguin UK |
Pages | 469 |
Release | 2003-06-05 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0141011890 |
in 1985 Simon Winchester, struck by a sudden need to discover exactly what was left of the British Empire, set out across the globe to visit the far-flung islands that are all that remain of what once made Britain great. He travelled 100,000 miles back and forth from Antarctica to the Caribbean, from Mediterranean to the Far East, to capture a last glint of imperial glory. His adventures in these distant and forgotten ends of the earth make compelling and often funny reading and tell a story most of us had thought was over: a tale of the last outposts in Britain's imperial career and of those who keep the flag flying. With a new introduction and additional material in many of the chapters, this revised edition tells us what happened to these extraordinary places while the author's been away.
Empire of the Soul
Title | Empire of the Soul PDF eBook |
Author | Paul William Roberts |
Publisher | Raincoast Books |
Pages | 490 |
Release | 2006 |
Genre | Travel |
ISBN | 9781551929057 |
Expedition into Empire
Title | Expedition into Empire PDF eBook |
Author | Martin Thomas |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 254 |
Release | 2014-09-04 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1317630130 |
Expeditionary journeys have shaped our world, but the expedition as a cultural form is rarely scrutinized. This book is the first major investigation of the conventions and social practices embedded in team-based exploration. In probing the politics of expedition making, this volume is itself a pioneering journey through the cultures of empire. With contributions from established and emerging scholars, Expedition into Empire plots the rise and transformation of expeditionary journeys from the eighteenth century until the present. Conceived as a series of spotlights on imperial travel and colonial expansion, it roves widely: from the metropolitan centers to the ends of the earth. This collection is both rigorous and accessible, containing lively case studies from writers long immersed in exploration, travel literature, and the dynamics of cross-cultural encounter.
Journeys Into Madness
Title | Journeys Into Madness PDF eBook |
Author | Gemma Blackshaw |
Publisher | Berghahn Books |
Pages | 221 |
Release | 2012-06-01 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0857454595 |
At the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud’s investigation of the mind represented a particular journey into mental illness, but it was not the only exploration of this ‘territory’ in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Sanatoriums were the new tourism destinations, psychiatrists were collecting art works produced by patients and writers were developing innovative literary techniques to convey a character’s interior life. This collection of essays uses the framework of journeys in order to highlight the diverse artistic, cultural and medical responses to a peculiarly Viennese anxiety about the madness of modern times. The travellers of these journeys vary from patients to doctors, artists to writers, architects to composers and royalty to tourists; in engaging with their histories, the contributors reveal the different ways in which madness was experienced and represented in ‘Vienna 1900’.