A Waterstones Best History Book of 2022 The bestselling history of the North of England as told through the lives of its inhabitants. ‘Entertaining’ The Times ‘Definitive’ The Mirror ‘Highly readable’ Financial Times

The word 'northern' conjures plenty of stereotypical images; men in flat caps, cobbled streets, pies and rain. But beyond the clichés lies a region rich in its diversity, devilish in its humour and fertile in its culture, and it is these characteristics that iconic photographer Sefton Samuels has captured faithfully over four decades, and are compiled here in Northerners. Described by the Guardian as 'the photographic equivalent of Ken Loach', Samuels shot legendary figures of northern life, from Alan Bennett to Morrissey, LS Lowry to George Best and Sir Ben Kingsley, but most famously and vividly he captured the realities of everyday life across the north. With snatched shots of children cheekily mugging to his camera, pictures of the more grandiose members of society at the local hunt, photos of the bleaker side of life with the riots in Moss Side, and snaps of the young and fashionable posing as they hang around with nothing to do, Northerners reveals a photographer at one with his subject; and a region whose open character was meant to be captured through a lens.

The reconciliation of North and South following the Civil War depended as much on cultural imagination as on the politics of Reconstruction. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Nina Silber documents the transformation from hostile sectionalism to sentimental reunion rhetoric. Northern culture created a notion of reconciliation that romanticized and feminized southern society. In tourist accounts, novels, minstrel shows, and popular magazines, northerners contributed to a mythic and nostalgic picture of the South that served to counter their anxieties regarding the breakdown of class and gender roles in Gilded Age America. Indeed, for many Yankees, the ultimate symbol of the reunion process, and one that served to reinforce Victorian values as well as northern hegemony, was the marriage of a northern man and a southern woman. Southern men also were represented as affirming traditional gender roles. As northern men wrestled with their nation's increasingly global and aggressive foreign policy, the military virtues extolled in Confederate legend became more admired than reviled. By the 1890s, concludes Silber, northern whites had accepted not only a newly resplendent image of Dixie but also a sentimentalized view of postwar reunion.

In Fighting for Citizenship, Brian Taylor complicates existing interpretations of why black men fought in the Civil War. Civil War–era African Americans recognized the urgency of a core political concern: how best to use the opportunity presented by this conflict over slavery to win abolition and secure enduring black rights, goals that had eluded earlier generations of black veterans. Some, like Frederick Douglass, urged immediate enlistment to support the cause of emancipation, hoping that a Northern victory would bring about the end of slavery. But others counseled patience and negotiation, drawing on a historical memory of unfulfilled promises for black military service in previous American wars and encouraging black men to leverage their position to demand abolition and equal citizenship. In doing this, they also began redefining what it meant to be a black man who fights for the United States. These debates over African Americans' enlistment expose a formative moment in the development of American citizenship: black Northerners' key demand was that military service earn full American citizenship, a term that had no precise definition prior to the Fourteenth Amendment. In articulating this demand, Taylor argues, black Northerners participated in the remaking of American citizenship itself—unquestionably one of the war's most important results.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,3, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: Stereotypes are human nature and can never be avoided completely. However, stereotypes about Northern England and Northerners seem to be particularly deep-rooted and longlasting. There is general agreement that they date from the 18th and 19th century when Northern England was the starting point of the Industrial Revolution (Jewell 2). “When we speak of stereotyped characters we are dealing, in particular, with [...] traditions deriving from the effects of the Industrial Revolution” (Morris 9). The stereotypical “Northerners” are working-class people, not well educated, and their lives are full of struggle and conflict. According to many preconceptions a male Northerner is unhealthy, badly dressed and frank about sex. Further cliché attributes are pragmatic, direct and even rude, but also downto- earth, passionate and heartily. Northerners feel alienated from the government in the “centre” London and distinguish between “us” and “them” which creates to a strong sense of community. In today’s pop culture these stereotypes are predominantly media-transmitted. By using a certain mode of presenting Northern English reality and its inhabitants stereotypes are rather reinforced than replaced in the media. Hence, there is a specific pattern used to reinforce stereotypes about Northern England and Northerners in films such as in the film “Brassed off”. The most striking features that intensify these clichés in “Brassed off” are setting, language, protagonists and 4 topics. All these characteristics can be found in the scene when the Grimley Colliery Band practices Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”; thus this scene reinforces stereotypes about Northern England to a large extent.

A fictionalized account of Lee Ho-chul's inglorious yet dramatic experiences as a raw recruit in the North Korean army and, soon afterward, as a prisoner of war. Beginning with some fascinating vignettes of North Korean high school life and ending with a narrow escape from death, it offers a unique perspective on the early phases of the war.

When a Civil War substitute broker told business associates that "Men is cheep here to Day," he exposed an unsettling contradiction at the heart of the Union's war effort. Despite Northerners' devotion to the principles of free labor, the war produced rampant speculation and coercive labor arrangements that many Americans labeled fraudulent. Debates about this contradiction focused on employment agencies called "intelligence offices," institutions of dubious character that nevertheless served the military and domestic necessities of the Union army and Northern households. Northerners condemned labor agents for pocketing fees above and beyond contracts for wages between employers and employees. Yet the transactions these middlemen brokered with vulnerable Irish immigrants, Union soldiers and veterans, former slaves, and Confederate deserters defined the limits of independence in the wage labor economy and clarified who could prosper in it. Men Is Cheap shows that in the process of winning the war, Northerners were forced to grapple with the frauds of free labor. Labor brokers, by helping to staff the Union military and Yankee households, did indispensable work that helped the Northern state and Northern employers emerge victorious. They also gave rise to an economic and political system that enriched the managerial class at the expense of laborers--a reality that resonates to this day.