The Last Leaf

The Last Leaf

Author: Stuart Lutz

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2010-09-09

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 161614310X

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When we read about famous historical events, we may wonder about the firsthand experiences of the people directly involved. What insights could be gained if we could talk to someone who remembered the Civil War, or the battle to win the vote for women, or Thomas Edison's struggles to create the first electric light bulb? Amazingly, many of these experiences are still preserved in living memory by the final survivors of important, world-changing events.In this unique oral history book, author and historic document specialist Stuart Lutz records the stories told to him personally by people who witnessed many of history's most famous events. Among many others, Lutz interviewed:- the final three Civil War widows (one Union and two Confederate)- the final pitcher to surrender a home run to Babe Ruth- the last suffragette- the last living person to fly with Amelia Earhart- the final American World War I soldier- the last surviving employees of Thomas Edison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Harry Houdini.The wide-ranging stories involve humor (the 1920 Olympic medalist who stole the original Olympic flag), tragedy (the last survivor of the 1915 Lusitania sinking), heroism (the final Medal of Honor recipient for actions on Pearl Harbor Day), and eyewitnesses to great events (one of the last scientists at the first nuclear chain reaction, and the final Iwo Jima flag raiser).In more than three-dozen chapters, Lutz blends background information in a lively narrative with the words of the interviewees, so that readers not familiar with the historical episodes described can understand what occurred and the long-term significance of the events.A book that truly makes the past come alive, The Last Leaf will fascinate not only history buffs but anyone who likes a good story.Stuart Lutz (Short Hills, NJ) is the owner of Stuart Lutz Historic Documents, Inc., a firm that buys, sells, and appraises historic documents, letters, and rare manuscripts. He has written for American Heritage and Civil War Times, and he has appeared on National Public Radio. More on Stuart Lutz and The Last Leaf can be found at www.TheLastLeaf.com.


Lost Voices from the Titanic

Lost Voices from the Titanic

Author: Nick Barratt

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2010-03-30

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0230106269

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On April 15, 1912, the HMS Titanic sank, killing 1,517 people and leaving the rest clinging to debris in the frozen waters of the North Atlantic awaiting rescue. Here, historian Nick Barratt tells the ship's full story, starting from its original conception and design by owners and naval architects at the White Star Line through its construction at the shipyards in Belfast. Lost Voices From the Titanic offers tales of incredible folly and unimaginable courage—the aspirations of the owners, the efforts of the crew, and of course, the eyewitness accounts from those lucky enough to survive. In narrating the definitive history of the famous ship, Barratt draws from never before seen archive material and eyewitness accounts by participants at every stage of the Titanic's life. These long-lost voices bring new life to those heartbreaking moments on the fateful Sunday night when families were torn apart and the legend of the Titanic was cemented in our collective imagination.


Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors

Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors

Author: Chester D. Berry

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-11-24

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9780331813029

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Excerpt from Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors: History of a Disaster Where Over One Thousand Five Hundred Human Beings Were Lost, Most of Them Being Exchanged Prisoners of War on Their Way Home After Privation and Suffering From One to Twenty-Three Months in Cahaba and Andersonville Prisons Among the passengers on board were twelve ladies, most of them belonging to the Christian commission, an association akin to that of the sanitary commission of the Army of the Potomac. One of these ladies, with more than ordinary courage, when the flames at last drove all the men from the boat, seeing them fighting like demons in the water in the mad endeavor to save their lives, actually destroying each other and themselves by their wild actions, talked to them, urg ing them to be men, and finally succeeded in getting them quieted down, clinging to the ropes and chains that hung over the bow of the boat. The flames now began to lap around her with their fiery tongues. The men pleaded and urged her to jump into the water and thus save herself, but she refused, saying I might lose my presence of mind and be the means of the death of some of you. And so, rather than run the risk of becoming the cause of the death of a single person, she folded her arms quietly over her bosom and burned, a voluntary martyr to the men she had so lately quieted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.


Disasters and Tragic Events [2 volumes]

Disasters and Tragic Events [2 volumes]

Author: Mitchell Newton-Matza

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-03-26

Total Pages: 846

ISBN-13: 1610691660

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From the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to the Sandy Hook school massacre of 2012, this two-volume encyclopedia surveys tragic events—natural and man-made, famous and forgotten—that helped shape American history. Tragedies and disasters have always been part of the fabric of American history. Some gave rise to reactions that profoundly influenced the nation. Others dominated public consciousness for a moment, then disappeared from collective memory. Organized chronologically, Disasters and Tragic Events examines these moments, covering both the familiar and the obscure and probing their immediate and long-term effects. Unlike other works that concentrate on a particular type of disaster, for example, weather- or medicine-related tragedies, this two-volume encyclopedia has no such limits. Its entries range from natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, to civic disturbances, environmental disasters, epidemics and medical errors, transportation accidents, and more. The work is a perfect supplement for history classes and will also prove of great interest to the general reader.


The Rhetorics of Feminism

The Rhetorics of Feminism

Author: Walter J. Ong

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0415281822

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This work explores the vast differences between oral and literate cultures, offering an account of the intellectual, literary and social effects of writing, print and electronic technology.


Disaster Citizenship

Disaster Citizenship

Author: Jacob A.C. Remes

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2015-12-30

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0252097947

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A century ago, governments buoyed by Progressive Era–beliefs began to assume greater responsibility for protecting and rescuing citizens. Yet the aftermath of two disasters in the United States–Canada borderlands--the Salem Fire of 1914 and the Halifax Explosion of 1917--saw working class survivors instead turn to friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members for succor and aid. Both official and unofficial responses, meanwhile, showed how the United States and Canada were linked by experts, workers, and money. In Disaster Citizenship, Jacob A. C. Remes draws on histories of the Salem and Halifax events to explore the institutions--both formal and informal--that ordinary people relied upon in times of crisis. He explores patterns and traditions of self-help, informal order, and solidarity and details how people adapted these traditions when necessary. Yet, as he shows, these methods--though often quick and effective--remained illegible to reformers. Indeed, soldiers, social workers, and reformers wielding extraordinary emergency powers challenged these grassroots practices to impose progressive "solutions" on what they wrongly imagined to be a fractured social landscape.


After the End

After the End

Author: James Berger

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780816629329

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In this study of the cultural pursuit of the end and what follows, Berger contends that every apocalyptic depiction leaves something behind, some mixture of paradise and wasteland. Combining literary, psychoanalytic, and historical methods, Berger mines these depictions for their weight and influence on current culture. He applies wide-ranging evidence--from science fiction to Holocaust literature, from Thomas Pynchon to talk shows, from American politics to the fiction of Toni Morrison--to reveal how representations of apocalyptic endings are indelibly marked by catastrophic histories.


Titanic Survivor

Titanic Survivor

Author: Violet Jessop

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2012-04-04

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1461740320

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Violet Jessop's life is an inspiring story of survival. Born in 1887 in Argentina, the eldest child of Irish immigrants, at the age of 21 she became the breadwinner for her widowed mother and five siblings when she commenced a career as a stewardess and nurse on some of the most famous ocean going vessels of the day. Throughout her 40 year time at sea she survived an unbelievable series of events including the sinking of the TITANIC. “One awful moment of empty, misty blackness enveloped us in its loneliness, then an unforgettable, agonizing cry went up from 1500 despairing throats, a long wail and then silence and our tiny craft tossing about at the mercy of the ice field.” For most people one sinking would be enough. But four years later Violet, now a nurse with the British Red Cross, was on board the World War I hospital ship BRITANNIC when it struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Aegean. To her, this disaster was even more horrifying-- “Just as life seeming nothing but a whirling, choking ache, I rose to the light of day, my nose barely above the little lapping waves. I opened my eyes on an indescribable scene of slaughter, which made me shut them again to keep it out." By the end of her story we have a met a woman who could handle whatever life threw at her with determination and good humor. She knew that only by her own strength of character would she survive. But Titanic Survivor is much more. A unique autobiography for those who want to know how it really felt, a story that could be told only by a Titanic Survivor.


The Spectralities Reader

The Spectralities Reader

Author: Maria del Pilar Blanco

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-08-29

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13: 1441124780

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Ghosts, spirits, and specters have played important roles in narratives throughout history and across nations and cultures. A watershed moment for this area of study was the publication of Derrida's Specters of Marx in 1993, marking the inauguration of a "spectral turn" in cultural criticism. Gathering together the most compelling texts of the past twenty years, the editors transform the field of spectral studies with this first ever reader, employing the ghost as an analytical and methodological tool. The Spectralities Reader takes ghosts and haunting on their own terms, as wide-ranging phenomena that are not conscripted to a single aesthetic genre or style. Divided into six thematically discreet sections, the reader covers issues of philosophy, politics, media, spatiality, subject formation (gender, race and sexuality), and historiography. It anthologizes the previously published work of theoretical heavyweights from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, such as Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, and Giorgio Agamben, alongside work by literary and cultural historians such as Jeffrey Sconce and Roger Luckhurst.