How Sex Changed is a fascinating social, cultural, and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep and unshakable desire to transform their bodily sex. In the last century when many challenged the social categories and hierarchies of race, class, and gender, transsexuals questioned biological sex itself, the category that seemed most fundamental and fixed of all.

How Sex Changed is a fascinating social, cultural, and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep and unshakable desire to transform their bodily sex. In the last century when many challenged the social categories and hierarchies of race, class, and gender, transsexuals questioned biological sex itself, the category that seemed most fundamental and fixed of all.

For at least thirty years, high school and college students have been taught to be embarrassed by American history. Required readings have become skewed toward a relentless focus on our countryA’s darkest moments, from slavery to McCarthyism. As a result, many history books devote more space to Harriet Tubman than to Abraham Lincoln; more to My Lai than to the American Revolution; more to the internment of Japanese Americans than to the liberation of Europe in World War II.

 

 

This updated encyclopedia provides ready information on all aspects of capital punishment in America. It details virtually every capital punishment decision rendered by the United States Supreme Court through 2006, including more than 40 cases decided since publication of the first edition. Entries are also provided for each Supreme Court Justice who has ever rendered a capital punishment opinion. Entries on jurisdictions cite present-day death penalty laws and judicial structure state by state, with synopses of common and unique features.

A study of 200 years of carnival history in one particular locality, such as Mitchell's, is an opportunity for close inspection of the dialectics between carnival and context, as well as an exploration of more general significances of carnival which can be apprehended only over the longue duree…Of particular interest are the descriptions of developments and transformations which were introduced into the Mardi Gras celebrations during the post-Civil War period-an era of emancipation, confederate defeat, political empowerment of blacks, and economic distress…The last chapters of the book deal with more recent shifts in the carnival celebrations and significances, especially as shaped through ongoing transformations in the status of women and blacks. A long-time arena for a display of male dominance and men's appropriation of women's youth and sexuality, the New Orleans carnival came to provide, in the 1920s, a stage for women's independent sexuality, and an opportunity to [parody] a man's world…Mitchell's book is rich in details and insights. It creates both an intimate acquaintance with New Orleans, as well as a sense of the intricacies of economic and political processes, and the complexities of their symbolic articulation…The book is thus (happily) played by its subject matter. Rather than just a book about carnival, the author also creates a carnival specimen. However, this blurring of genres, this "live performance" of the text, turns the book into a convincing and artistic demonstration of that which is left unexplained. ...

No city has had as powerful and as enduring an impact on Western civilization as London. Throughout its vast and riveting history, London:
* was the capital of a powerful empire that covered one-fifth of the world's landmass and one-quarter of its population

No city has had as powerful and as enduring an impact on Western civilization as London. Throughout its vast and riveting history, London:
* was the capital of a powerful empire that covered one-fifth of the world's landmass and one-quarter of its population

The region around Cincinnati, Ohio, is known throughout the world for the abundant and beautiful fossils found in limestones and shales that were deposited as sediments on the sea floor during the Ordovician Period, about 450 million years ago--some 250 million years before the dinosaurs lived. In Ordovician time, the shallow sea that covered much of what is now the North American continent teemed with marine life. The Cincinnati area has yielded some of the world's most abundant and best-preserved fossils of invertebrate animals such as trilobites, bryozoans, brachiopods, molluscs, echinoderms, and graptolites. So famous are the Ordovician fossils and rocks of the Cincinnati region that geologists use the term "Cincinnatian" for strata of the same age all over North America. This book synthesizes more than 150 years of research on this fossil treasure-trove, describing and illustrating the fossils, the life habits of the animals represented, their communities, and living relatives, as well as the nature of the rock strata in which they are found and the environmental conditions of the ancient sea. ...

Despite its size, the small island nation of Malta has had a dramatic effect on world history. Historian Dennis Castillo, the American-born son of Maltese immigrants, traces the challenges faced by the Maltese people as witness to the Punic Wars, the Crusades, Napoleonic Wars, and World War II....

Britain's history is a sweeping saga of blood, death, love, sex and betrayal, peopled by a cast of extraordinary characters. Yet, when it ...

This book serves as a comprehensive guide to the history and culture of Russia. It covers the history of Russia, the world's largest nation - from its early beginnings in the ninth century when Rurik, a Varangian king, established the first Russian state near Kiev, to the current presidency of Vladimir Putin - is extensive and fascinating.Detailing the social, economic, and political changes and crises that the people of Russia have had to endure, "A Brief History of Russia" provides a comprehensive and accessible *** of this vast country's history. A chronology, bibliography, suggested reading, and other helpful features enrich this invaluable book.Its coverage includes: The conquest and rule of Russia by the Mongol Golden Horde; The reign of terror by Ivan the Terrible; The start of modernization under Peter the Great; The rise to the center of the European power under Catherine the Great; The Russian Revolution and the emergence of the superpower Soviet Union; The disintegration of the Soviet Union; and, The political, social, and economic problems that the country has faced since then....

A Brief History of Korea covers the history of Korea from the origins of the Korean people in prehistoric times to the economic and political situation in North and South Korea today, and the prospects of unification. Providing a detailed overview of the cultural and historical influences that have shaped Korean society, the author discusses the major periods of Korean history - Three Kingdoms, Koryo Dynasty, and Chosun Dynasty; the foreign invasions Korea has endured; the post-World War II situation that led to the country's division and the Korean War; and developments in North and South Korea from the end of the Korean War up through the present. ...

"Written by two scholars at the forefront of the study of Japanese religions, this book offers much more than a ‘brief history’. It is in fact a very bold and lucid attempt to redraw the parameters that govern our understanding of that elusive body of thought and practice we call Shinto … This book will surprise and on occasion shock; it will surely be required reading for all those interested in Japan and the Japanese."--Richard Bowring, Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Cambridge ...