Author: Lawrence H. Larsen & Nancy J. Hulston More than a half-century after the death of Kansas City's notorious political boss, Thomas J. Pendergast, the Pendergast name still evokes great interest and even controversy. Now, in this first full-scale biography of Pendergast, Lawrence H. Larsen and Nancy J. Hulston have successfully providedthrough extensive research, including use of recently released prison records and previously unavailable family recordsa clear look at the life of Thomas J. Pendergast. Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1872, Tom Pendergast moved to Kansas City around 1890 to work for his brother James, founder of the Pendergast Goat faction in Kansas City Democratic politics. In 1911, Pendergast became head of the Goats, and over the next fifteen years he created a powerful political machine that used illegal voting and criminal enforcers to gain power. Following a change in the city charter in 1925, Pendergast took control of Kansas City and ran it as his own personal business. In the 1930s, he received over $30 million annually from gambling, prostitution, and narcotics, putting him in the big leagues of American civic corruption. He also wielded great power in the National Democratic Party and started Harry S. Truman on the road to the presidency. In this well-balanced biography, the authors examine Pendergast's rise to power, his successes as a political leader, his compassion for the destitute, and his reputation for keeping his word. They also examine Pendergast's character development and how his methods became more and more ruthless. Pendergast had no use for ideology in his invisible governmentonly votes counted. In 1937 and 1938 the federal government broke the back of Pendergast's machine, convicting 259 of his campaign aides for vote fraud. In 1939 Pendergast, who was believed to be the largest bettor on horse racing in the United States, was jailed for income tax evasion, and he died in disgrace in 1945. An insightful and comprehensive biography, Pendergast! will surely serve for years to come as the most thorough investigation of the life and infamous career of Tom Pendergast.
Author: Elizabeth H. Boquet
In Noise from the Writing Center, Boquet develops a theory of "noise" and excess as an important element of difference between the pedagogy of writing centers and the academy in general. Addressing administrative issues, Boquet strains against the bean-counting anxiety that seems to drive so much of writing center administration. Pedagogically, she urges a more courageous practice, developed via metaphors of music and improvisation, and argues for "noise," excess, and performance as uniquely appropriate to the education of writers and tutors in the center. Personal, even irreverent in style, Boquet is also theoretically sophisticated, and she draws from an eclectic range of work in academic and popular culture-from Foucault to Attali to Jimi Hendrix. She includes, as well, the voices of writing center tutors with whom she conducted research, and she finds some of her most inspiring moments in the words and work of those tutors.
Author: Edited by Kenichiro Tsukamoto and Takeshi Inomata
Until now, archaeological and historical studies of Mesoamerican plazas have been scarce compared to studies of the surrounding monumental architecture such as pyramidal temples and palaces. Many scholars have assumed that ancient Mesoamericans invested their labor, wealth, and symbolic value in pyramids and other prominent buildings, viewing plazas as by-products of these buildings. Even when researchers have recognized the potential significance of plazas, they have thought that plazas as vacant spaces could offer few clues about their cultural and political roles. Mesoamerican Plazas challenges both of these assumptions.The primary question that has motivated the contributors is how Mesoamerican plazas became arenas for the creation and negotiation of social relations and values in a community. The thirteen contributions stress the significance of interplay between power relations and embodied practices set in specific historical and material settings, as outlined by practice theory and performance theory. This approach allows the contributors to explore broader anthropological issues, such as the negotiation of power relations, community making, and the constitution of political authorities.Overall, the contributions establish that physical interactions among people in communal events were not the outcomes of political machinations held behind the scenes, but were the actual political processes through which people created, negotiated, and subverted social realities. If so, spacious plazas that were arguably designed for interactions among a large number of individuals must have also provided critical arenas for the constitution and transformation of society.
Author: Richard C. Trexler
Matthew's Gospel reveals little about the three wealthy visitors said to have presented gifts to the infant Jesus. Yet hundreds of generations of Christians have embellished that image of the Three Kings or Magi for a myriad of social and political as well as spiritual purposes. Here Richard Trexler closely examines how this story has been interpreted and used throughout the centuries. Biblically, the Journey of the Magi presents a positive image of worldly power, depicting the faithful in progress toward their God and conveying the importance of the gift-giving laity as legitimators of their deity. With this in mind, Trexler explains in particular how Western societies have molded the story to describe and augment their own power--before the infant God and among themselves.The author demonstrates how the magi as a group functioned in Christian society. For example, magi plays, processions, and images taught people how to pray and behave in reverential contexts; they featured monarchs and heads of republics who enacted the roles of the magi to legitimate their rule; and they constrained native Americans to fall in line behind the magi to instill in them loyalty toward the European world order. However, Trexler also shows these philosopher-kings as competitive among each other, as were groups of different ages, races, and genders in society at large. Originally modeled on representations of the Roman triumphs, the magi have reached the present day as street children wearing crowns of cardboard, proving again the universality of the image for constructing, reinforcing, and even challenging a social hierarchy.Originally published in 1997.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Text by Patricia Preciado Martin; Photographs by Louis Carlos Bernal
Some Hispanic Americans living today can recall a time when barrio or ranch life was marked by a simplicity and neighborliness that has vanished with progress. These thirteen first-person accounts of southern Arizona residents capture a spirit evocative of the Hispanic presence in the Southwestwhether in San Antonio, Santa Fe, Pueblo, or Los Angeleswhile striking photographs reflect the grace and dignity of these indomitable individuals.
Author: Alice Feiring
In 2011 when Alice Feiring first arrived in Georgia, she felt as if shed emerged from the magic wardrobe into a world filled with mythical characters making exotic and delicious wine with the low-tech methods of centuries past. She was smitten, and she wasnt alone. This country on the Black Sea has an unusual effect on people; the most passionate rip off their clothes and drink wines out of horns while the cold-hearted well up with tears and make emotional toasts. Visiting winemakers fall under Georgias spell and bring home qvevris (clay fermentation vessels) while rethinking their own techniques. But, as in any good fairy tale, Feiring sensed that danger rode shotgun with the magic. With acclaim and growing international interest come threats in the guise of new wine consultants aimed at making wines more commercial. So Feiring fought back in the only way she knew how: by celebrating Georgia and the men and women who make the wines she loves most, those made naturally with organic viticulture, minimal intervention, and no additives. From Tbilisi to Batumi, Feiring meets winemakers, bishops, farmers, artists, and silk spinners. She feasts, toasts, and collects recipes. She encounters the thriving qvevri craftspeople of the countryside, wild grape hunters, and even Stalins last winemaker while plumbing the depths of this tiny countrys love for its wines.For the Love of Wine is Feirings emotional tale of a remarkable country and people who have survived religious wars and Soviet occupation yet managed always to keep hold of their precious wine traditions. Embedded in the narrative is the hope that Georgia has the temerity to confront its latest threatmodernization.
Author: Jennifer Greenwood
A novel, wide-ranging, and comprehensive account of how human emotionality develops, proposing a process in which nature and nurture are integrated.
Author: Paul Kennedy
This book considers the most electorally successful political party in Spain, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), which was in government for two of the three decades since it won office under Felipe Gonzalez in 1982. Providing rich historical background, the books main focus is on the period since General Francos death in 1975. It charts Spains modernisation under the PSOE, with a particular focus on the role played by European integration in this process. Covering events including the 2011 general election, the book is one of the most up-to-date works available in English and will be of great interest to academics and undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of Spanish and European studies.
Author: Renée Van Buren, Janet G. Cooper, Leila M. Shultz, and Kimball T. Harper
A comprehensive guide that includes a vast range of species and plant communities and employs thorough, original keys. Based primarily on vegetative characteristics, the keys don't require that flowers or other reproductive features be present, like many plant guides. And this guide's attention to woody plants as a whole allows one to identify a much greater variety of plants. That especially suits an arid region such as Utah with less diverse native trees. Woody plants are those that have stems that persist above ground even through seasons that don't favor growth, due to low precipitation or temperatures. Woody Plants of Utah employs dichotomous identification keys that are comparable to a game of twenty questions. They work through a process of elimination by choosing sequential alternatives. Detailed, illustrated plant descriptions complement the keys and provide additional botanical and environmental information in relation to a useful introductory categorization of Utah plant communities. Supplementary tools include photos, distribution maps, and an illustrated glossary.
Author: Kristina Musholt
A novel theory of self-consciousness and its development that integrates philosophical considerations with recent findings in the empirical sciences.