Devil’s Mile tells the rip-roaring story of New York’s oldest and most unique street The Bowery was a synonym for despair throughout most of the 20th century. The very name evoked visuals of drunken bums passed out on the sidewalk, and New Yorkers nicknamed it “Satan’s Highway,” “The Mile of Hell,” and “The Street of Forgotten Men.” For years the little businesses along the Bowery—stationers, dry goods sellers, jewelers, hatters—periodically asked the city to change the street’s name. To have a Bowery address, they claimed, was hurting them; people did not want to venture there. But when New York exploded into real estate frenzy in the 1990s, developers discovered the Bowery. They rushed in and began tearing down. Today, Whole Foods, hipster night spots, and expensive lofts have replaced the old flophouses and dive bars, and the bad old Bowery no longer exists. In Devil’s Mile, Alice Sparberg Alexiou tells the story of the Bowery, starting with its origins, when forests covered the surrounding area, and through the pre–Civil War years, when country estates of wealthy New Yorkers lined this thoroughfare. She then describes the Bowery’s deterioration in stunning detail, starting in the post-bellum years. She ends her historical exploration of this famed street in the present, bearing witness as the old Bowery buildings, and the memories associated with them, are disappearing.
"I started to get comments on the glow, the color and the life my paintings had... I suddenly realized I didn't mix colors—I mingled them. It was an epiphany." Popular workshop instructor Anne Abgott shares all the tips, techniques and color choices behind her remarkable paintings filled with color and light. Make the most of both the "water" and the "color" of this exciting medium by directly mingling color on paper! In sixteen step-by-step painting demonstrations she teaches you the secrets to achieving beautiful glowing color and rich, dynamic shadows. You'll find advice on: Which paints mingle and which ones don't Flooding the paper with pigment to flood it with light Creating great compositions from reference photos How to create dramatic, colorful shadows Secrets to mingling glowing yellows, passionate reds, glorious greens, beautiful blues, dazzling violets and sparkling grays (even silver!) See for yourself. Be more daring. Express your creativity using Anne's fast and fun mingling techniques—fill your paintings with color and light!
Operation MH/CHAOS was the code name for a domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in the late1960s and early 1970s. MH/CHAOS: The CIA’s Campaign Against the Radical New Left and the Black Panthers is an insider’s account of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Staff’s Special Operations Group first charged by Presidents Lyndon Johnson and later by Richard Nixon to find foreign intelligence, terrorist, organizations or government contacts, controlling or influencing Anti-Vietnam War activists or American black extremists protesting, bombing and carrying out other anti-government, unlawful or illegal activities in the United States. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms, by chief of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The program's goal was to unmask possible foreign influences on the student antiwar movement. The "MH" designation signified that the program had a worldwide area of operations. When President Nixon came to office in 1969, all of the existing domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into Operation MH/CHAOS and used CIA stations abroad to report on antiwar activities of United States citizens traveling abroad, employing methods such as physical surveillance and electronic eavesdropping, utilizing "liaison services" in maintaining such surveillance. The operations were later expanded to include 60 officers. In 1969, following the expansion, the operation began developing its own network of informants for the purposes of infiltrating various foreign antiwar groups located in foreign countries that might have ties to domestic groups. Eventually, CIA officers expanded the program to include other leftist or counter-cultural groups with no discernible connection to Vietnam, such as groups operating within the women's liberation movement, including Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther Party and Women Strike for Peace. Also targeted was the Israeli embassy, and domestic Jewish groups such as the B'nai B'ritht. As a result of the Watergate break-in, involving two former CIA officers, Operation MH/CHAOS was discontinued. The secret nature of the program was exposed by Seymour Hersh in the New York Times on December 22, 1974. The following year, further details were revealed during Representative Bella Abzug's House Subcommittee on Government Information and individual Rights. The government, in response to the revelations, launched the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (The Rockefeller Commission), lead by then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, to investigate the depth of the surveillance. In Operation MHCHOAS, the author, who is a former CIA officer, refutes the charges made by the New York Times and the Washington Post at the time that this domestic spying program first made headlines, and takes issue with conclusions of the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee. He relates how the Special Operations Group began, was staffed and how it was transformed into an anti-terrorist unit before it ceased operation. Rafalko details the information that Special Operations Group collected against the New Left and Black extremists and makes the case that the MHCHAOS program was justified, why the CIA was the logical agency to conduct the collection, and the consequences suffered later by American counterintelligence because of these investigations.
"In Canadian historiography, there has been an increasing attention on the 1960s. Studies have focused mainly on the radical politics of the period but tended to downplay the extent to which much of the intellectual and social ferment continued into the 1970s and 1980s. This present collection, Canadian Countercultures and the Environment, makes an important contribution to a number of fields. As most of the papers deal with the 1970s and 1980s, they will add to our knowledge of this understudied period. Furthermore, the phenomenon of the counterculture has been the subject of very little academic focus to date. Most importantly, this collection will contribute a sustained analysis of the beginning of key environment debates in the 1970s and 1980s. Papers examine a range of issues related to broad environmental concerns, topics which emerged as key concerns in the context of Cold War military investments and experiments, the oil crisis of the 1970s, debates over gendered roles, and the increasing attention to urban pollution and pesticide use. No other publication dealing with this time period covers the range of environmental topics (activism, midwifery, organic farming, recycling, urban cycling, and communal living) included in this collection. Geographically, this collection covers a range of case studies from the Yukon to Atlantic Canada--it includes two urban examples, and, not surprisingly, places a good deal of emphasis on activities in British Columbia. From the most cursory glance at the history of those who moved "back-to-the-land, " it is clear that they engaged with environmental issues in ways that have had a long-term impact on Canadian society."--
Winner of the Brewington Book Prize for Maritime History The story of the epic contest between shipping magnates Samuel Cunard and Edward Collins for mid-19th century control of the Atlantic. Between 1815 and the American Civil War, the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution delivered a sea change in oceanic transportation. Steam travel transformed the Atlantic into a pulsating highway, dominated by ports in Liverpool and New York, as steamships ferried people, supplies, money, and information with astounding speed and regularity. American raw materials flowed eastward, while goods, capital, people, and technology crossed westward. The Anglo-American “partnership” fueled development worldwide; it also gave rise to a particularly intense competition. Steam Titans tells the story of a transatlantic fight to wrest control of the globe's most lucrative trade route. Two men--Samuel Cunard and Edward Knight Collins--and two nations wielded the tools of technology, finance, and politics to compete for control of a commercial lifeline that spanned the North Atlantic. The world watched carefully to see which would win. Each competitor sent to sea the fastest, biggest, and most elegant ships in the world, hoping to earn the distinction of being known as “the only way to cross.” Historian William M. Fowler brings to life the spectacle of this generation-long struggle for supremacy, during which New York rose to take her place among the greatest ports and cities of the world, and recounts the tale of a competition that was the opening act in the drama of economic globalization, still unfolding today.
