Author: Peter Young File Type: epub Tortoise is the first cultural history of these long-lived and intriguing creatures, which have existed for more than 200 million years. The book covers tortoises worldwide, in evolution, myth and reality, ranging across paleontology, natural history, myth, folklore, art forms, literature, veterinary medicine and trade regulations. The tortoise has been seen as an Atlas-like creature supporting the world, as the origin of music and as a philosophical paradox. Peter Young examines the tortoise in all these guises, as well as a military tactical formation, its exploitation by mariners and others for food, as ornament (in tortoiseshell), as a motif in art, and in space research. He looks at the movement away from exploitation to conservation and even the uses of the tortoise in advertising. As well as examples of species, illustrations from around the world include monuments, sculptures, coins, stamps, objets dart, drawings, cartoons, advertisements and X-rays. The book will appeal not only to tortoise lovers but also to readers of cultural histories around the world. Peter Youngs Tortoise, on the other claw, can be warmly recommended.Jonathan Bate, The Times

Author: Elena A. Schneider File Type: pdf In 1762, British forces mobilized more than 230 ships and 26,000 soldiers, sailors, and enslaved Africans to attack Havana, one of the wealthiest and most populous ports in the Americas. They met fierce resistance. Spanish soldiers and local militias in Cuba, along with enslaved Africans who were promised freedom, held off the enemy for six suspenseful weeks. In the end, the British prevailed, but more lives were lost in the invasion and subsequent eleven-month British occupation of Havana than during the entire Seven Years War in North America. The Occupation of Havana offers a nuanced and poignantly human account of the British capture and Spanish recovery of this coveted Caribbean city. The book explores both the interconnected histories of the British and Spanish empires and the crucial role played by free people of color and the enslaved in the creation and defense of Havana. Tragically, these men and women would watch their promise of freedom and greater rights vanish in the face of massive slave importation and increased sugar production upon Cubas return to Spanish rule. By linking imperial negotiations with events in Cuba and their consequences, Elena Schneider sheds new light on the relationship between slavery and empire at the dawn of the Age of Revolutions. **ReviewDuring the eighteenth century, Havana was the crown jewel of the Spanish Caribbean, a place of dazzling wealth and formidable power. Behind this impressive facade, however, lay a more complicated history of war, trade, and slavery that Havana shared with its British neighbors. Elena Schneider brings this entangled Anglo-Spanish history to life as no historian before her has done. The result is a landmark in the history of the British and Spanish Atlantic worlds.--Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire At every level, from its treatment of geopolitics in the Atlantic world to its fine-grained social history, this is a splendid book. No previous scholar has so clearly recounted the 1762 siege of Havana in all its contexts no reader of this volume will be able to doubt that events significance.--Fred Anderson, Emeritus, University of Colorado Boulder A gripping history of the British siege and occupation of Havana. Part military history, part social history, this book brilliantly reveals the origins, course, and lasting impacts (in Cuba, Britain, Spain, and the United States) of this monumental, yet remarkably understudied, event in Atlantic history. Beautifully written, The Occupation of Havana will last for generations.--Ada Ferrer, New York University The Occupation of Havanaunravels national and imperial narratives about eighteenth-century British and Spanish struggles over the key to the Indies. In their place, Elena Schneider offers a cross-cutting analysis that demonstrates how overlapping imperial connections and frictions shaped Caribbean lives well beyond war and commerce. Meticulously researched, this book is full of surprises.--David Sartorius, University of Maryland About the Author Elena A. Schneider is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley.

Author: James G. Thomas File Type: pdf Science and medicine have been critical to southern history and the formation of southern culture. For three centuries, scientists in the South have documented the lush natural world around them and set a lasting tradition of inquiry. The medical history of the region, however, has been at times tragic. Disease, death, and generations of poor health have been the legacy of slavery, the plantation economy, rural life, and poorly planned cities. The essays in this volume explore this legacy as well as recent developments in technology, research, and medicine in the South.Subjects include natural history, slave health, medicine in the Civil War, public health, eugenics, HIVAIDS, environmental health, and the rise of research institutions and hospitals, to name but a few. With 38 thematic essays, 44 topical entries, and a comprehensive overview essay, this volume offers an authoritative reference to science and medicine in the American South. **

Author: Emily B. Stanback File Type: pdf This book argues for the importance of disability to authors of the Wordsworth-Coleridge circle. By examining texts in a variety of genres ranging from self-experimental medical texts to lyric poetry to metaphysical essays Stanback demonstrates the extent to which non-normative embodiment was central to Romantic-era thought and Romantic-era aesthetics. The book reassesses well-known literary and medical works by such authors as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Humphry Davy, argues for the importance of lesser-studied work by authors including Charles Lamb and Thomas Beddoes, and introduces significant unpublished work by Tom Wedgwood.**ReviewThis is a fascinating interdisciplinary study of the significance of the body especially the non-normative, disabled body in Romantic writing. Stanback reconfigures the poetry and aesthetics but also the scientific writing of the circle of intellectuals around Coleridge. She rehabilitates the researches of Davy and, especially, Tom Wedgwood as key factors in the development of Romanticism. (Tim Fulford, De Montfort University, UK)From the Back Cover This book argues for the importance of disability to authors of the Wordsworth-Coleridge circle. By examining texts in a variety of genres ranging from self-experimental medical texts to lyric poetry to metaphysical essays Stanback demonstrates the extent to which non-normative embodiment was central to Romantic-era thought and Romantic-era aesthetics. The book reassesses well-known literary and medical works by such authors as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Humphry Davy, argues for the importance of lesser-studied work by authors including Charles Lamb and Thomas Beddoes, and introduces significant unpublished work by Tom Wedgwood.