Memoirs Of Jeremiah Curtin

Born to an Irish Catholic family, Jeremiah Curtin (1835-1906), a linguist, translator, and folklorist, spent his early years on a farm in Greenfield, Wisconsin, and the first portion of this memoir, compiled by his wife, Alma Cardell Curtin, concerns his rural Wisconsin boyhood and subsequent struggles to obtain a scholarly education. After graduating from Harvard (1863), where he studied under Francis James Child, he moved to New York, read law, and worked for the U.S. Sanitary Commission while translating and teaching languages. He then traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia (1864), where he served as Secretary to the American legation headed by Cassius Clay. The memoir describes their difficult relationship, as well as Curtin's first travels through Russia and the Caucasus. Upon his return to the United States, Curtin lectured throughout the country about Russia, marrying Alma Cardell of Warren, Vermont in 1872.

From the mountains of California to a forgotten steel vat at the Smithsonian, this "eloquent and soul-searching book" (Lit) is "a compelling account of one of American anthropology's strangest, saddest chapters" (Archaeology). After the Yahi were massacred in the mid-nineteenth century, Ishi survived alone for decades in the mountains of northern California, wearing skins and hunting with bow and arrow. His capture in 1911 made him a national sensation; anthropologist Alfred Kroeber declared him the world's most "uncivilized" man and made Ishi a living exhibit in his museum. Thousands came to see the displaced Indian before his death, of tuberculosis. Ishi's Brain follows Orin Starn's gripping quest for the remains of the last of the Yahi.

Sergei Witte served as finance minister and later prime minister of Russia during the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II, and was in large part responsible for the development policies which saw Russia transformed from a peasant economy into an industrial nation. This is the first biography of Witte in English.

An account of the later years of Tsarism. Witte presents portraits of the statesmen around him, explains the problem of bringing the economy to a level commensurate with Russia's putative position as the greatest land power in the world and the effort to create a constitutional monarchy.

Polish contemporary literature is not a closed book to European and world readers. Those not involved professionally in the production or study of literature may well have heard of Stanisaw Lem, Witold Gombrowicz, Czesaw Miosz, Wisawa Szymborska or the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018, Olga Tokarczuk. The situation is different with Polish literature of earlier periods, including the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel. The works of Ignacy Krasicki, Micha Czajkowski, J'ozef Ignacy Kraszewski, Eliza Orzeszkowa, Maria Komornicka, Stefan Zeromski and Bolesaw Prus - the exception perhaps is Henryk Sienkiewicz, whose novels were translated into many languages - did not enter European circulation on any large scale and have rarely been included in comparative studies. Our book attempts to change this perspective and poses the question as to whether another - expanded and more inclusive - literary canon is possible.

Drawing upon more than two decades of research in secondary and documentary publications as well as archival materials from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain, Saul reveals a wealth of new detail about contacts between the two countries between the American Revolutionary War and the purchase of Alaska in 1867.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ONSIDE NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 The islands off the coast of Ireland have long been a source of fascination. Seen as repositories of an ancient Irish culture and the epitome of Irish romanticism, they have attracted generations of scholars, artists and filmmakers, from James Joyce to Robert O'Flaherty, looking for a way of life uncontaminated by modernity or materialism. But the reality for islanders has been a lot more complex. They faced poverty, hardship and official hostility, even while being expected to preserve an ancient culture and way of life. Writing in her 1936 autobiography, Peig Sayers, resident of Blaskets island, described it as 'this dreadful rock'. In 1841, there were 211 inhabited islands with a combined population of 38,000; by 2011, only 64 islands were inhabited, with a total population of 8,500. And younger generations continue to leave. By documenting the island experiences and the social, cultural and political reaction to them over the last 100 years, On the Edge examines why this exodus has happened, and the gulf between the rhetoric that elevated island life and the reality of the political hostility towards them.It uncovers, through state and private archives, personal memoirs, newspaper coverage, and the author's personal travels, the realities behind the "dreadful rocks", and the significance of the experiences of, and reactions to, those who were and remain, literally, on the very edge of European civilisation.

Between 1867 - the year of the Alaskan purchase - and the beginning of World War I, Russian and American dignitaries, diplomats, businessmen, writers, tourists, and entertainers crossed between the two countries in surprisingly great numbers. Concord and Conflict provides the first comprehensive investigation of this highly transformational and fateful era in Russian-American relations. Excavating previously unmined Russian and American archives, Norman Saul illuminates these fifty significant - and open - years of association between the two countries. He explores the flow and fluctuation of economic, diplomatic, social, and cultural affairs; the personal and professional conflicts and scandals; and the evolution of each nation's perception of the other.