Looking Back at My First Eighty Years
Looking Back at My First Eighty Years

Author: Robert A. Potash

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 547

ISBN-13: 0595519113

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This volume offers a fascinating, impressively detailed, account of the professional and personal life of a prominent historian of Latin America. It covers his youth, contacts with a young Leonard Bernstein, and his education at Boston Latin School and Harvard. He served in WWII, rising from private to master sergeant, ending up in a three-man military intelligence unit on Okinawa. There he held in his hands the first aerial photos of atomic-bombed Hiroshima, and was an eye witness to the surrender of Japanese holdouts. In rising from college instructor to department chair Potash recounts the conflicts and tensions that make up academic life. His two-year leave with the State Department was a career transforming experience, turning him eventually into a best selling author on the the military's role in Argentine politics. Potash describes his experiences working with Nazi files as part of an investigating commission created by the Argentine government. Known for his expertise, Potash is frequently consulted in times of crisis by the Argentine media and his name has become a household word in that country. Potash also recalls his courtship and marriage and relationships with his two daughters. Readers have dubbed the manuscript "hard to put down."

My Eighty Years in Texas
My Eighty Years in Texas

Author: William Physick Zuber

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 1975-05-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0292750226

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Almost a century and a half went into the making of My Eighty Years in Texas. It began as a diary, kept by fifteen-year-old William Physick Zuber after he joined Sam Houston’s Texas army in 1836, hoping he could emulate the heroism of American Revolutionary patriots. Although his hopes were never realized, Zuber recorded the privations, victories, and defeats of armies on the move during the Texas Revolution, the Indian campaigns, and, as he styled it, the Confederate War. In 1910, at the age of ninety, Zuber began the enormous task of transcribing his diaries and his memories for publication. After his death in 1913, the handwritten manuscript, Eighty Years in Texas: Reminiscences of a Texas Veteran from 1830 to 1910, was placed in the Texas State Archives, where it was used as a reference source by students and scholars of Texas history. Over a half century after Zuber’s death, Janis Boyle Mayfield finally brought his publication plans to fruition. Zuber details his early zest for learning and his laborious methods of self-education. He tells of the trials of organizing and teaching schools in the sparsely populated plains. He recalls the day-by-day happenings of a private soldier in the Texas army of 1836, the Texas Militia, and the Confederate army—including the mishaps of army life and the encounters with enemies from San Jacinto to Cape Girardeau. After the Civil War, his interest turns to the politics of Reconstruction, the veterans’ pension, and the founding of the Texas Veterans Association. This is the story of and by an outspoken Texian, complete with his attitudes, principles, and moralizings, and the nineteenth-century style and flavor of his writing. Included as an appendix is “An Escape from the Alamo,” the account of Moses Rose for which Zuber, who was a prolific writer, was best known. A historiography of the Rose story, a bibliography of Zuber’s published and unpublished writings, annotation, and an introduction are provided by Llerena Friend.

My First 80 Years
My First 80 Years

Author: George Brown

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2017-01-27

Total Pages: 563

ISBN-13: 1524521434

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George Brown wanted to write about his interesting life for his family and friends. He loved writing and kept diaries of some of his adventures during his later life. In 1970 he helped his wife, Nan Brown, to write a book about their adventure living in South Georgia in the Antarctic for two and a half years in the mid-1950s. The book is entitled Antarctic Housewife. George lived in some very diverse placesGlasgow, Edinburgh, was at sea in the British Merchant Navy sailing to Asia, Africa, and India during the war at thirteen years of age, Grytviken, South Georgia, Alice Springs in Central Australia, Queensland Sunshine Coast, and Adelaide. During his time spent in Alice Springs, he worked as the Director for the Royal Flying Doctor service for thirteen years from 1957 when Alice Springs was a very small town and the only communication for people in the outback was a two-way radio. He and his wife then started the first travel agency in Alice Springs and were able to travel to new destinations together for their business. George then began a two-way communication business in Alice Springs, selling radios, phones and equipment for communication in the outback of Australia. This was called XLCom. He operated this for several years before retiring when he and Nan moved to the Sunshine Coast and lived between Alice Springs and Mooloolaba. His daughter Catriona ran the business for them. George was involved in the community in Alice Springs for years; he started the Alice Springs Pipe Band with friend Ron Ross. He also was a lifetime member and past president of Mbantua Rotary Club and was heavily involved in rotary community fund-raising events like the Henley on Todd for numerous years. George was a member of the Show Society and organized the annual Alice Springs show, which was the highlight for families in Central Australia. He became involved as a volunteer in the Alice Springs Pony Club when his daughters started riding at a young age. George was president of the show Jumping Club and became a show jump course builder. They traveled to Edinburgh where he owned a flat to tour around Scotland, but sadly, his wife died in 1995 due to suicide. George was totally devastated that the love of his life could end her life so tragically. George then returned to Australia to build a large place in Alice Springs and live with his two daughters, Fiona and Catriona, and their families in a large shared house on a block out of town on the Todd River. He kept himself busy by gardening, building a cottage, traveling to places like Europe and South Georgia to learn more about places he had visited in his earlier life. He had developed a real interest in World War II and the British Merchant Navy. He caught up with friends from the various stages in his life and reacquainted himself with his family living in Australia and England. He was invited to South Georgia to help restore the church and the community of Grytviken for tourits to visit as South Georgia and the Antarctic were opening up for tourism. He spent several months back in the place he loved the most.

The Fourth Turning
The Fourth Turning

Author: William Strauss

Publisher: Crown

Published: 1997-12-29

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0767900464

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe. First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next. Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.

On Nineteen Eighty-Four
On Nineteen Eighty-Four

Author: D.J. Taylor

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1683356845

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The essential backstory to the creation and meaning of one of the most important novels of the twentieth century—and now the twenty-first. Since its publication nearly seventy years ago, George Orwell’s 1984 has been regarded as one of the most influential novels of the modern age. Politicians have testified to its influence on their intellectual identities, rock musicians have made records about it, TV viewers watch a reality show named for it, and a White House spokesperson tells of “alternative facts.” The world we live in is often described as an Orwellian one, awash in inescapable surveillance and invasions of privacy. On Nineteen Eighty-Four dives deep into Orwell’s life to chart his earlier writings and key moments in his youth, such as his years at a boarding school, whose strict and charismatic headmaster shaped the idea of Big Brother. Taylor tells the story of the writing of the book, taking readers to the Scottish island of Jura, where Orwell, newly famous thanks to Animal Farm but coping with personal tragedy and rapidly declining health, struggled to finish 1984. Published during the cold war—a term Orwell coined—Taylor elucidates the environmental influences on the book. Then he examines 1984’s post-publication life, including its role as a tool to understand our language, politics, and government. In a climate where truth, surveillance, censorship, and critical thinking are contentious, Orwell’s work is necessary. Written with resonant and reflective analysis, On Nineteen Eighty-Four is both brilliant and remarkably timely. Praise for On Nineteen Eighty-Four “A lively, engaging, concise biography of a novel.” —Kirkus Reviews “The fascinating origins and complex legacy of this enduring masterwork are chronicled in [this] arresting new book.” —BookPage “Brisk [and] focused. . . . Taylor here covers the highlights, giving both an overview of Orwell’s career and a survey of his greatest literary achievement.” —Wall Street Journal “Taylor is an accomplished literary critic and he illuminates Orwell’s work in the context of his life, elegantly and expertly charting his course from Grub Street to bestsellerdom.” —TheGuardian

Eightysomethings
Eightysomethings

Author: Katharine Esty

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-09-10

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1510743197

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**Winner of the American Book Fest Best Book Award in "Health: Aging/50+"** This invaluable guide will help the historical number of eightysomethings live fulfilled, happy lives long into their twilight years. Personal stories illustrate how real people in their eighties are living and how they make sense of their lives. Old age is not what it used to be. For the first time ever, most people in the United States are living into their eighties. The first guide of its kind, Eightysomethings changes our understanding of old age with an upbeat and emotionally savvy view of the uncharted territory of the last stage of life. With insight and humor, Dr. Katharine Esty describes the series of dramatic and difficult transitions that eightysomethings usually experience and how, despite their losses, they so often find themselves unexpectedly happy. Living into one’s eighties doesn’t have to mean declining health and loneliness: Dr. Esty shows readers how to embrace—and thrive during—the later stages of life. Based on her more than 120 interviews around the country, Esty explores the lives of ordinary eightysomethings—their attitudes, activities, secrets, worries, purposes, and joys. Esty adds her wisdom and perspective to this multi-dimensional look at being old as a social psychologist, a practicing psychotherapist, and as an eighty-four-year-old widow living in a retirement community. Eightysomethings is a must-read for people in their eighties, and also for their families. Adult children—often bewildered by their aging parents—need a wise guide like Eightysomethings to help them navigate their parents’ last stage of life with real-world guidelines and conversation starters. Readers, young and old alike, will find this first-of-its-kind book eye-opening, comforting, and filled with practical tips.

Threatening Property
Threatening Property

Author: Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0231548478

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White supremacists determined what African Americans could do and where they could go in the Jim Crow South, but they were less successful in deciding where black people could live because different groups of white supremacists did not agree on the question of residential segregation. In Threatening Property, Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant investigates early-twentieth-century campaigns for residential segregation laws in North Carolina to show how the version of white supremacy supported by middle-class white people differed from that supported by the elites. Class divides prevented Jim Crow from expanding to the extent that it would require separate neighborhoods for black and white southerners as in apartheid South Africa. Herbin-Triant details the backlash against the economic successes of African Americans among middle-class whites, who claimed that they wished to protect property values and so campaigned for residential segregation laws both in the city and the countryside, where their actions were modeled on South Africa’s Natives Land Act. White elites blocked these efforts, primarily because it was against their financial interest to remove the black workers that they employed in their homes, farms, and factories. Herbin-Triant explores what the split over residential segregation laws reveals about competing versions of white supremacy and about the position of middling whites in a region dominated by elite planters and businessmen. An illuminating work of social and political history, Threatening Property puts class front and center in explaining conflict over the expansion of segregation laws into private property.

Between Borders
Between Borders

Author: Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History Tobias Brinkmann

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-17

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0197655653

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Between Borders tells and contextualizes the stories of these Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. It explains how immigration laws in countries such as the United States influenced migration routes around the world. Using memoirs, letters, and accounts by investigative journalists and Jewish aid workers, Tobias Brinkmann sheds light on the experiences of individual migrants, some of whom laid the foundation for migration and refugee studies as a field of scholarship.