The American Dream in Nineteenth-century Quebec

The American Dream in Nineteenth-century Quebec

Author: Robert Major

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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"Antoine Gerin-Lajoie's Jean Rivard (1862-4) is recognized as a landmark novel in Quebec literature. It has come to be regarded as a typical mid-nineteenth-century example of the conservative and the reactionary nationalism and patriotism into which French Canadians withdrew after the crushing of the Patriotes in 1837 and 1838. In this brilliant and iconoclastic study, which is an adaptation and translation into English of his 'Jean Rivard' ou l'Art de reussir: Ideologies et utopie dans l'oeuvre d'Antoine Gerin-Lajoie, published in 1991, Robert Major challenges this view of the novel and of the political and intellectual milieu in which it was produced. He suggests that Quebec culture in the nineteenth century was far richer and more diverse than the prevailing view allows." "While Jean Rivard is a novel about settlement, the need to develop the virgin territories of Canada, Major contends that it is also a success story based on the American model of Horatio Alger - a novel which advocates economic liberalism and urbanization as well as rugged individualism. Through his analysis of Jean Rivard Major re-examines the attitudes to the United States common in the period and points to the ways in which the United States functioned in Quebec political imagery as an icon of democracy."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved


Champlain's Dream

Champlain's Dream

Author: David Hackett Fischer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 848

ISBN-13: 1416593330

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In this sweeping, enthralling biography, an acclaimed historian brings to life the remarkable story of Samuel de Champlain--soldier, spy, artist, and Father of New France.


Ru

Ru

Author: Kim Thúy

Publisher: Random House Canada

Published: 2012-01-17

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 0307359727

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A runaway bestseller in Quebec, with foreign rights sold to 15 countries around the world, Kim Thúy's Governor General's Literary Award-winning Ru is a lullaby for Vietnam and a love letter to a new homeland. Ru. In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, money. Kim Thúy's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the flow of a life on the tides of unrest and on to more peaceful waters. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation and sly wit, we are carried along on an unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the young girl feels the embrace of a new community, and revels in the chance to be part of the American Dream. As an adult, the waters become rough again: now a mother of two sons, she must learn to shape her love around the younger boy's autism. Moving seamlessly from past to present, from history to memory and back again, Ru is a book that celebrates life in all its wonder: its moments of beauty and sensuality, brutality and sorrow, comfort and comedy.


Napoleon and the American Dream

Napoleon and the American Dream

Author: Inès Murat

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 1999-03-01

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780807124635

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Inès Murat’s readable and entertaining narrative introduces us to little-known facts about the adventures and misadventures of numerous French veterans of Waterloo who migrated to the United States. More often than not, their visions of life in this country conflicted with the original New World dream of the peaceful pioneer. For two centuries, the lure of what we now call the American Dream had beckoned rich and poor from the Old World. “In all respects,” said Napoleon, “America was our true refuge.” Reported by Las Cases in the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, this statement signifies only one phase of the connections between the Emperor and the United States. Anecdotes and incisive portraits of numerous Bonapartists who came to America vividly portray the complex intermeshing between the Emperor and the United States. Anecdotes and incisive portraits of numerous Bonapartists who came to America vividly portray the complex intermeshing between the ideals of the French Revolution and the new forms of freedom that had been born in America. These dramatic accounts bring to the foreground of history the impact of two world views—that of the Old World, sheltered in the shadow of Napoleon’s belief in historical destiny, and that of the New World, more experimental and industrious. The clash produced a resounding din in the Napoleonic epoch, for which Napoleon and the American Dream traces new routes and relationships between two cultures.


Divergent Paths : How Culture and Institutions Have Shaped North American Growth

Divergent Paths : How Culture and Institutions Have Shaped North American Growth

Author: Marc Egnal Professor of History York University

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1996-06-11

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 019535687X

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Why are some countries without an apparent abundance of natural resources, such as Japan, economic success stories, while other languish in the doldrums of slow growth. In this comprehensive look at North American economic history, Marc Egnal argues that culture and institutions play an integral role in determining economic outcome. He focuses his examination on the eight colonies of the North, five colonies of the South (which together made up the original thirteen states), and French Canada. Using census data, diaries, travelers' accounts, and current scholarship, Egnal systematically explores how institutions (such as slavery in the South and the seigneurial system in French Canada) and cultural arenas (such as religion, literacy, entrepreneurial spirit, and intellectual activity) influenced development. He seeks to answer why three societies with similar standards of living in 1750 became so dissimilar in development. By the mid-nineteenth century, the northern states had surged ahead in growth, and this gap continued to widen into the twentieth century. Egnal argues that culture and institutions allowed this growth in the North, not resources or government policies. Both the South and French Canada stressed hierarchy and social order more than the drive for wealth. Rarely have such parallels been drawn between these two societies. Complete numerous helpful appendices, figures, tables, and maps, Divergent Paths is a rich source of unique perspectives on economic development with strong implications for emerging societies.


The Making of the American Dream, Vol. I

The Making of the American Dream, Vol. I

Author: Lewis E. Kaplan

Publisher: Algora Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0875866948

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Any history that touts itself as unconventional is bound to raise some hackles when it challenges traditional interpretations of our nation?s past. Yet history is continually under revision. This 2-volume work, covering America's first 300 years, differs from others in seeking to debunk numerous flattering and conventionally accepted myths.℗¡Reading between the lines of what we've all been taught as US history, the author probes a little deeper into what perhaps was never denied ? but was never spelled out, either. Some inconvenient questions emerge. Was lust for land the driving force behind e.


The Making of the American Dream, Vol. II

The Making of the American Dream, Vol. II

Author: Lewis E. Kaplan

Publisher: Algora Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0875866956

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Any history that touts itself as unconventional is bound to raise some hackles when it challenges traditional interpretations of our nation's past. Yet history is continually under revision. This 2-volume work, covering America''s first 300 years, differs from others in seeking to debunk numerous flattering and conventionally accepted myths.aReading between the lines of what we''ve all been taught as US history, the author probes a little deeper into what perhaps was never denied ? but was never spelled out, either. Some inconvenient questions emerge. Was lust for land the driving force behind every war in US history?In a lively narrative, Kaplan demonstrates that in many ways Lincoln was our worst wartime president (save Madison), and that Reconstruction was doomed from the start.The author describes how an agricultural hinterland evolved into an industrial colossus and a society of small towns grew into a nation of large cities. When it did, what had once been the world's leading republican government gradually edged towards becoming a democracy ? a form of government abjured by the Founding Fathers.The War Between the States and the rapid industrialization of the North was made possible by tapping the vast resources which lay underneath the land. Oil, coal, iron ore, copper, zinc, and other minerals made the US the richest and most powerful nation in the world by the end of the nineteenth century, when this book concludes.The book also chronicles the fledgling Labor movement in the 19th century, handily discredited through equation with ?anarchists, ? and explores the cynicism with which McKinley embarked on the Spanish?American War.The basic thrust of this 2-volume work is neither to expose America's blemishes nor to eulogize its virtues.a Rather, the author focuses on US history from a different perspective than is usually accepted. Readers may disagree with his interpretations but will find his arguments intriguing."


The Epic of America

The Epic of America

Author: James Truslow Adams

Publisher: Simon Publications

Published: 2001-10-01

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 9781931541336

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A beautifully written story of America's historical heritage, by one of the country's greatest historians.