Extreme North A Cultural History

Author : Bernd Brunner
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393881016
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Extreme North: A Cultural History written by Bernd Brunner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining and informative voyage through cultural fantasies of the North, from sea monsters and a mountain-sized magnet to racist mythmaking. Scholars and laymen alike have long projected their fantasies onto the great expanse of the global North, whether it be as a frozen no-man’s-land, an icy realm of marauding Vikings, or an unspoiled cradle of prehistoric human life. Bernd Brunner reconstructs the encounters of adventurers, colonists, and indigenous communities that led to the creation of a northern “cabinet of wonders” and imbued Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Arctic with a perennial mystique. Like the mythological sagas that inspired everyone from Wagner to Tolkien, Extreme North explores both the dramatic vistas of the Scandinavian fjords and the murky depths of a Western psyche obsessed with Nordic whiteness. In concise but thoroughly researched chapters, Brunner highlights the cultural and political fictions at play from the first “discoveries” of northern landscapes and stories, to the eugenicist elevation of the “Nordic” phenotype (which in turn influenced America’s limits on immigration), to the idealization of Scandinavian social democracy as a post-racial utopia. Brunner traces how crackpot Nazi philosophies that tied the “Aryan race” to the upper latitudes have influenced modern pseudoscientific fantasies of racial and cultural superiority the world over. The North, Brunner argues, was as much invented as discovered. Full of glittering details embedded in vivid storytelling, Extreme North is a fascinating romp through both actual encounters and popular imaginings, and a disturbing reminder of the power of fantasy to shape the world we live in.

Author : Bernd Brunner
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300122993
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bears written by Bernd Brunner and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightfully illustrated history of the complex relations between people and bears around the world

Author : Yuri Slezkine
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501703307
Total Pages : 475 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Arctic Mirrors written by Yuri Slezkine and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over five hundred years the Russians wondered what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic subjects were. "They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests," reported a fifteenth-century tale. "They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people," complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. "Their actions are exceedingly rude. They do not take off their hats and do not bow to each other," huffed an eighteenth-century scholar. They are "children of nature" and "guardians of ecological balance," rhapsodized early nineteenth-century and late twentieth-century romantics. Even the Bolsheviks, who categorized the circumpolar foragers as "authentic proletarians," were repeatedly puzzled by the "peoples from the late Neolithic period who, by virtue of their extreme backwardness, cannot keep up either economically or culturally with the furious speed of the emerging socialist society."Whether described as brutes, aliens, or endangered indigenous populations, the so-called small peoples of the north have consistently remained a point of contrast for speculations on Russian identity and a convenient testing ground for policies and images that grew out of these speculations. In Arctic Mirrors, a vividly rendered history of circumpolar peoples in the Russian empire and the Russian mind, Yuri Slezkine offers the first in-depth interpretation of this relationship. No other book in any language links the history of a colonized non-Russian people to the full sweep of Russian intellectual and cultural history. Enhancing his account with vintage prints and photographs, Slezkine reenacts the procession of Russian fur traders, missionaries, tsarist bureaucrats, radical intellectuals, professional ethnographers, and commissars who struggled to reform and conceptualize this most "alien" of their subject populations.Slezkine reconstructs from a vast range of sources the successive official policies and prevailing attitudes toward the northern peoples, interweaving the resonant narratives of Russian and indigenous contemporaries with the extravagant images of popular Russian fiction. As he examines the many ironies and ambivalences involved in successive Russian attempts to overcome northern—and hence their own—otherness, Slezkine explores the wider issues of ethnic identity, cultural change, nationalist rhetoric, and not-so European colonialism.

Author : Colin Woodard
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143122029
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Nations written by Colin Woodard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.

Author : Bernd Brunner
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300168705
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moon written by Bernd Brunner and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-18 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using werewolves and Wernher von Braun, Stonehenge and the sex lives of sea corals, aboriginal myths, and an Anglican bishop in this new book, the author weaves variegated information into a glimpse of Earth's closest celestial neighbor, whose mere presence inspires us to wonder what might be out there. Going beyond the discoveries of contemporary science, he presents a cultural assessment of our complex relationship with Earth's lifeless, rocky satellite. As well as offering an engaging perspective on such age old questions as "What would Earth be like without the moon?" he surveys the moon's mythical and religious significance and provokes existential soul searching through a lunar lens, inquiring, "Forty years ago, the first man put his footprint on the moon. Will we continue to use it as the screen onto which we cast our hopes and fears?" Drawing on materials from different cultures and epochs, he walks readers down a moonlit path illuminated by more than seventy-five vintage photographs and illustrations. From scientific discussions of the moon's origins and its chronobiological effects on the mating and feeding habits of animals to an illuminating interpretation of Bishop Francis Godwin's 1638 novel The Man in the Moone, his interdisciplinary explorations recast a familiar object in an original light.

Author : Bernd Brunner
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300186525
Total Pages : 109 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inventing the Christmas Tree written by Bernd Brunner and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the roots of the Christmas tree tradition, tracing customs from the Middle Ages to the present day to reveal how it first became part of mainstream American culture and has since become popular worldwide.

Author : Wolfgang Behringer
Publisher : Polity
ISBN 13 : 0745645291
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Cultural History of Climate written by Wolfgang Behringer and published by Polity. This book was released on 2010 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the latest historical research on the development of the earth's climate, showing how even minor changes in the climate could result in major social, political, and religious upheavals.

Author : Thomas M. Wickman
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108426794
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Snowshoe Country written by Thomas M. Wickman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An environmental and cultural history of winter in the colonial Northeast, examining indigenous and settler knowledge of life in the cold.

Author : Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108470971
Total Pages : 575 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture written by Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.

Author : Bernd Brunner
Publisher : Melville House
ISBN 13 : 1612193102
Total Pages : 124 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Art of Lying Down written by Bernd Brunner and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A strange and dreamy voice . . . , like an Italo Calvino short story, curiously translated from some lost, obscure language.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love An utterly charming study of the history of lying down—which is more complicated than you might think We spend a good third of our lives lying down: sleeping, dreaming, making love, thinking, reading, and getting well. Bernd Brunner’s ode to lying down is a rich exploration of cultural history and an entertaining collection of tales, ranging from the history of the mattress to the “slow living movement” to Stone Age repose—when people did not sleep lying down—and beyond. He approaches the horizontal state from a number of directions, but never loses his keen sense for the odd or unusual detail. Far from being a pose of passivity or laziness, lying down can be a protest, a chance to gather thoughts or change your point of view—the other side to our upright, productive lives. Brunner makes an eloquent case for the importance of lying down in a world that values ever-greater levels of activity, arguing that time spent horizontally offers rewards that we’d do well not to ignore.