Through a series of arresting vignettes and a collection of nameless characters, Alice Birch examines the language, behaviour and forces that shape women in the 21st century. The play asks what's stopping us from doing something truly radical to change them? Written in response to the provocation that well-behaved women seldom make history, the play is an assault on the language that has fueled violence against women throughout history. Problematic language frequently attached to women is interrogated, from lazy sexist clichés to the conventions around a marriage proposal. Through doing so, the play rails against the conventions of work, sex, motherhood, aging and love. Revolt. She said. Revolt again was first performed at the 2014 Midsummer Mischief Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon. It transferred to the Royal Court Upstairs and was more recently produced at New York's Soho Rep. It is published here in a Student Edition alongside commentary and notes by Marissia Fragkou, who locates the play in our contemporary political and cultural context (including second- and third-wave feminism, and the #MeToo movement).
How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.
What lights the spark that ignites a revolution? What was it that, in 1775, provoked a group of merchants, farmers, artisans and mariners in the American colonies to unite and take up arms against the British government in pursuit of liberty? Nathaniel Philbrick, the acclaimed historian and bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea and The Last Stand, shines new and brilliant light on the momentous beginnings of the American Revolution, and those individuals – familiar and unknown, and from both sides – who played such a vital part in the early days of the conflict that would culminate in the defining Battle of Bunker Hill. Written with passion and insight, even-handedness and the eloquence of a born storyteller, Bunker Hill brings to life the robust, chaotic and blisteringly real origins of America.
Vibrantly and perceptively told, this is the story of one remarkable year—a vivid history of exhilarating triumphs and shattering defeats around the world. 1956 was one of the most remarkable years of the twentieth century. All across the globe, ordinary people spoke out, filled the streets and city squares, and took up arms in an attempt to win their freedom. In this dramatic, page-turning history, Simon Hall takes the long view of the year's events—putting them in their post-war context and looking toward their influence on the counterculture movements of the 1960s—to tell the story of the year's epic, global struggles from the point of view of the freedom fighters, dissidents, and countless ordinary people who worked to overturn oppressive and authoritarian systems in order to build a brave new world. It was an epic contest. 1956 is the first narrative history of the year as a whole—and the first to frame its tumultuous events as part of an interconnected, global story of revolution.
From journalism and lectures to drama, visual art, and the Spielberg film, this study ranges across the varied cultural reactions--in America and Sierra Leone--engendered by the 1839 Amistad slave ship revolt. Iyunolu Folayan Osagie is a native of Sierra Leone, from where the Amistad's cargo of slaves originated. She digs deeply into the Amistad story to show the historical and contemporary relevance of the incident and its subsequent trials. At the same time, she shows how the incident has contributed to the construction of national and cultural identity both in Africa and the African diasporo in America--though in intriguingly different ways. This pioneering work of comparative African and American cultural criticism shows how creative arts have both confirmed and fostered the significance of the Amistad revolt in contemporary racial discourse and in the collective memories of both countries.
Throughout the 20th century, American corporations were governed by autocratic, almost unaccountable chief executives. Their word was law, and the only check on their power was a board of directors composed of their friends and allies. Then, in a stunning reversal, a momentous series of firings deposed the heads of some of the world's best-known companies. In Revolt in the Boardroom, Alan Murray examines the new world of corporate power. Using the access afforded to him by his influential Wall Street Journal column, Murray tells the story of three seminal board revolts: the now-famous Hewlett-Packard drama, the ousting of Boeing's Harry Stonecipher, and the deposing of one of the world's most autocratic executives, Hank Greenberg, from AIG.
"On a dark night in 1775, Lizzie Boylston is awakened by the sound of cannons. From a hill south of Boston, she watches as fires burn in Charlestown, in a battle that she soon discovers has claimed her husband's life. Alone in a new town. Soon, word spreads of Lizzie's extraordinary midwifery and healing skills, and she begins to channel her grief into caring for those who need her." -- back cover.
What Is the Third Estate? was the most influential pamphlet of 1789. It did much to set the French Revolution on a radically democratic course. It also launched its author, the Abbé Sieyes, on a remarkable political career that spanned the entire revolutionary decade. Sieyes both opened the revolution by authoring the National Assembly's declaration of sovereignty in June of 1789 and closed it in 1799 by engineering Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état. This book studies the powerful rhetoric of the great pamphlet and the brilliant but enigmatic thought of its author. William H. Sewell's insightful analysis reveals the fundamental role played by the new discourse of political economy in Sieyes's thought and uncovers the strategies by which this gifted rhetorician gained the assent of his intended readers--educated and prosperous bourgeois who felt excluded by the nobility in the hierarchical social order of the old regime. He also probes the contradictions and incoherencies of the pamphlet's highly polished text to reveal fissures that reach to the core of Sieyes's thought--and to the core of the revolutionary project itself. Combining techniques of intellectual history and literary analysis with a deep understanding of French social and political history, Sewell not only fashions an illuminating portrait of a crucial political document, but outlines a fresh perspective on the history of revolutionary political culture.