Language and Metaphors of the Russian Revolution: Sow the Wind, Reap the Storm is a panoramic history of the Russian intelligentsia and an analysis of the language and ideals of the Russian Revolution, from its inception over the long nineteenth century through fruition in early Soviet society. This volume examines metaphors for revolution in the storm, flood, and harvest imagery ubiquitous in Russian literary works. At the same time, it considers the struggle to own the narrative of modernity, including Bolshevik weaponization of language and cultural policy that supported the use of terror and social purging. This uniquely cross-disciplinary study conducts a close reading of texts that use storm, flood, and agricultural metaphors in diverse ways to represent revolution, whether in anticipation and celebration of its ideals or in resistance to the same. A spotlight is given to the lives and works of authors who responded to Soviet authoritarianism by reclaiming the narrative of revolution in the name of personal freedom and restoration of humanist values. Hinging on the clashes of culture wars and class wars and residing at the intersection of ideas at the very core of the fight for modernity, this book provides a critical reading of authoritarian discourse and investigates rare examples of the counter narratives that thrived in spite of their suppression.

A thousand unique gravestones cluster around old Presbyterian churches in the piedmont of the two Carolinas and in central Pennsylvania. Most are the vulnerable legacy of three generations of the Bigham family, Scotch Irish stonecutters whose workshop near Charlotte created the earliest surviving art of British settlers in the region. In The True Image, Daniel Patterson documents the craftsmanship of this group and the current appearance of the stones. In two hundred of his photographs, he records these stones for future generations and compares their iconography and inscriptions with those of other early monuments in the United States, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Combining his reading of the stones with historical records, previous scholarship, and rich oral lore, Patterson throws new light on the complex culture and experience of the Scotch Irish in America. In so doing, he explores the bright and the dark sides of how they coped with challenges such as backwoods conditions, religious upheavals, war, political conflicts, slavery, and land speculation. He shows that headstones, resting quietly in old graveyards, can reveal fresh insights into the character and history of an influential immigrant group.

For five decades John M. Murrin has been the consummate historian's historian. This volume brings together his seminal essays on the American Revolution, the United States Constitution, and the early American Republic. Collectively, they rethink fundamental questions regarding American identity, the decision to declare independence in 1776, and the impact the American Revolution had on the nation it produced. By digging deeply into questions that have shaped the field for several generations, Rethinking America argues that high politics and the study of constitutional and ideological questions--broadly the history of elites--must be considered in close conjunction with issues of economic inequality, class conflict, and racial division. Bringing together different schools of history and a variety of perspectives on both Britain and the North American colonies, it explains why what began as a constitutional argument, that virtually all expected would remain contained within the British Empire, exploded into a truly subversive and radical revolution that destroyed monarchy and aristocracy and replaced them with a rapidly transforming and chaotic republic. This volume examines the period of the early American Republic and discusses why the Founders' assumptions about what their Revolution would produce were profoundly different than the society that emerged from the American Revolution. In many ways, Rethinking America suggests that the outcome of the American Revolution put the new United States on a path to a violent and bloody civil war. With an introduction by Andrew Shankman, this long-awaited work by one of the most important scholars of the Revolutionary era offers a coherent interpretation of the complex period that saw the breakdown of colonial British North America and the founding of the United States.

A modern, all-encompassing exploration of what happens after death combines spirituality with philosophy, history, and science, all of which guide readers toward the timeless truth that human consciousness lives on after death.