Books by "James A. Secord"
5 books found
Showing that the past is often written into present concerns, and that many groups in Ontario, both powerful and disempowered, have invoked the experience of the Loyalists, Knowles significantly revises earlier interpretations of the Loyalist tradition.
The Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania is an area rich in history, none of which is more fascinating than in its origin. Settled not by the people of Pennsylvania, but rather of Connecticut due to conflicting land grants, it produced a titanic struggle between the Yankee settlers and Indians, British, Tories, and Pennamites, which stretched from the French and Indian War to well past the Revolutionary War. In these years many battles were fought, much blood was spilled; some say no area in America suffered more in proportion to population. Brother did turn against brother, and father did turn against son. Still, the settler stood fast, possessed by a spirit which in turn would conquer the American west. The Wyoming Valley did not sit on the fringes of the frontier but some sixty miles beyond it. These early pioneers carved out a settlement in the heart of a wilderness staunchly contested by people on all sides. Not only did they have to contend with the Indian threat, but with Pennsylvanians wishing to rid their northern borders of the Yankee intruders, and latter on when their firm support of the revolution became known, with the British Empire. Burned out, attacked from all sides, racked with betrayal from within their own numbers they stood fast in the face of impossible odds. Their spirit is a testament to the indomitable spirit of America. Their story is one of America. Read and discover within their struggle against the scalping knife and British Empire a great story, one that should never be forgotten, one that defines the American spirit.
A leading scholar of Iran relates the reasons that helped to destroy the American-Iranian relationship and outlines measures to improve future foreign policy-making
Samuel Butler (1835-1902), Victorian satirist, critic, and visual artist, possessed one of the most original and inquiring imaginations of his age. The author of two satires, Erewhon (1872) and The Way of All Flesh (1903), Butler's intellectually adventurous explorations along the cultural frontiers of his time appeared in volume after eccentric volume. Author of four works on evolution, he was one of the most prolific evolutionary speculators of his time. He was an innovative travel writer and art historian who used the creative insights of his own painting, photography, and local knowledge to invent, in works like Alps and Sanctuaries (1881), a vibrant Italian culture that contrasted with the spiritually frigid experience of his High Church upbringing. Despite his range and achievement, there remains surprisingly little contemporary analytical commentary on Butler's work. Samuel Butler, Victorian against the Grain is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that provides a critical overview of Butler's career, one which places his multifaceted body of work within the cultural framework of the Victorian age. The essays, taken together, discuss the formation of Victorian England's ultimate polymath, an artistic and intellectual ventriloquist who assumed an extraordinary range of roles - as satirist, novelist, evolutionist, natural theologian, travel writer, art historian, biographer, classicist, painter, and photographer.