Author: Richard Power Sayeed File Type: pdf span orphans 2 widows 2Spice Girl Geri Halliwell dressed in a Union Jack, Prime Minister Tony Blair posing with Noel Gallagher of Oasis at No. 10, and a nation united in mourning for Princess Diana. These are the images that have come to define Britain in the pivotal year of 1997. In hindsight, the year is now remembered by many as a time of optimism and vibrancy, quickly lost. It symbolized a time when it seemed like Britain was becoming a more tolerant, cosmopolitan, freer, and more equitable country. So what happened?spanspan orphans 2 widows 2spanbr margin padding orphans 2 widows 2span orphans 2 widows 2Richard Power Sayeed has set out to find where the hope of the late 90s was lost. Inspanspan orphans 2 widows 21997 The Future that Never Happenedspanspan orphans 2 widows 2, he offers an evocative portrait of an era too quickly put into the past. Sayeed cuts through the nostalgia to show how many of the crises afflicting Britain today, actually had their roots in that crucial year. For example, the rise of New Labour masked the steady creep of British politics towards the right, while the Stephen Lawrence inquest exposed the tenacity of racism in both British society and the state, foreshadowing the widespread hate crimes of today. Far from being the crowning height of Britains cool, Sayeed instead sees 1997 as a missed opportunity, a turning point when there was a chance to genuinely transform British culture and society that was sadly lost.spanbr margin padding orphans 2 widows 2br margin padding orphans 2 widows 2span orphans 2 widows 2Providing an in-depth account of crucial events, while looking beyond politics to consider the role of music, art and popular culture, Sayeed powerfully traces Britains current malaise back to its origins.span p Segoe UI, serif 13px**h3 Segoe UI, serif 13pxReviewp Segoe UI, serif 13pxA beautifully written, brilliantly insightful account of New Labours Britainand fundamental to our understanding of how this country ended up in this mess.p Segoe UI, serif 13px(Owen Jones, columnist) p Segoe UI, serif 13pxA dazzling, funny, and impressively detailed analysis of one of the most important years in modern British history. Both nostalgic and deeply critical, this book casts 1997 in an entirely new light and is vital for anybody hoping to understand how a once-triumphant and optimistic nation became so polarised, and its politics so volatile.p Segoe UI, serif 13px(Ellie Mae OHagan, openDemocracy) p Segoe UI, serif 13pxRichard Power Sayeed has vividly reprised the year 1997, when radical currents flowed into the mainstream, and the authorities welcomed moderate reforms with satisfied contentment. Such promisebut what did it deliver?p Segoe UI, serif 13px(Andy McSmith, author of No Such Thing as Society A History of Britain in the 1980s) h3 Segoe UI, serif 13pxAbout the Authorp Segoe UI, serif 13px p Segoe UI, serif 13pxRichard Power Sayeed is a writer and filmmaker based in London.

Author: Alice Echols File Type: epub Shortfall opens with a surprise discovery in an atticboxes filled with letters and documents hidden for more than seventy yearsand launches into a fast-paced story that uncovers the dark secrets in Echolss familyan upside-down version of the building and loan story at the center of Frank Capras 1946 movie, Its a Wonderful Life. In a narrative filled with colorful characters and profound insights into the American past, Shortfall is also the essential backstory to more recent financial crises, from the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s and 1990s to the subprime collapse of 2008.Shortfall chronicles the collapse of the building and loan industry during the Great Depressiona story told in microcosm through the firestorm that erupted in one hard-hit American city during the early 1930s. Over a six-month period in 1932, all four of the building and loan associations in Colorado Springs, Colorado, crashed in an awful domino-like fashion, leaving some of the towns citizens destitute. The largest of these associations was owned by author Alice Echolss grandfather, Walter Davis, who absconded with millions of dollars in a case that riveted the national media. This book tells the dramatic story of his rise and shocking fall.**ReviewPraise for Shortfall [An] intimate study of a Depression-era building-and-loan failure. Echolss absorbing portrait makes Main Street the rival of Wall Street for callous corruption. Publishers Weekly (Starred) [Shortfall is] a thoughtful, thoroughly researched look at financial crises, past and present. Booklist A lively and informative treatment in which one mans rise and fall opens a window onto a long-overlooked historical landscape in all its finely drawn detail. Kirkus Reviews *Praise for Hot Stuff In this expertly rendered, wide-ranging history of one of pops most exciting social and musical movements, Alice Echols thoroughly recovers the moment in which disco was born and flowered. *Ann Powers, NPR Echolss love of music, her acumen about popular culture, and her gifts as a leading cultural historian come together in this remarkable book. . . . Fascinating, carried along by prose that is as sleek and slinky as its subject. Christine Stansell, University of Chicago Engrossing . . . scholarly but fun. The New York Times Echols aims forand thoroughly achievesa range of higher cultural insights. . . . Revelatory. Publishers Weekly Praise for *Scars of Sweet Paradise Written with cinematic flair, Scars of Sweet Paradise* takes us on a poetic wild ride where we confront Joplins demons, her dreams, and her pains. In the process we discover a passageway into the social and cultural history of an entire generation. Robin D.G. Kelley, UCLA Stunningly original and evocative. . . . No previous writer has identified Joplins achievements as successfully as Echols does in this book. George Lipsitz, University of California, Santa Barbara Praise for Shaky Ground Alice Echols is that rarest of breeds a great historian and a great writer. She captures, as no one else has, the dizzyingly absurd complexity of American culture and cultural politics in our times. David Nasaw, author of The Chief The Life of William Randolph Hearst Alice Echols makes brilliant, fresh, original sense of the contradictory Sixtiesthe music, the politics, the people. No one has done more to place the era in contextits own and ours. Katha Pollitt, *The Nation* About the Author Alice Echols is a professor of history and the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of several books including Scars of Sweet Paradise The Life and Times of Janis Joplin, Hot Stuff Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, and Shortfall Family Secrets, Financial Collapse, and a Hidden History of American Banking (The New Press). She lives in Los Angeles.