Southern Road

This document is a social history of South Africa from the mid-fifties to the middle seventies, written from the viewpoint of a young English-speaking male living in the predominantly Afrikaans-speaking society. In particular, it’s a nostalgic meander down the streets of conservative Pretoria and the much more hip Johannesburg, from the perspective of someone who lived in both of these cities during this revolutionary period, while also touching on events that helped shape the history of the world, such as the Vietnam war and the liberalization of the African continent from its former colonial powers.

The Long Island Railroad is the third oldest in the USA and has been in operation since 1836. When it opened in 1867 the South Side Railroad was its first direct competitor. In his detailed book, Vincent F. Seyfried has given a comprehensive account of its development.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

An exciting and richly detailed new history of the Silk Road that tells how it became more important as a route for diplomacy than for trade The King’s Road offers a new interpretation of the history of the Silk Road, emphasizing its importance as a diplomatic route, rather than a commercial one. Tracing the arduous journeys of diplomatic envoys, Xin Wen presents a rich social history of long-distance travel that played out in deserts, post stations, palaces, and polo fields. The book tells the story of the everyday lives of diplomatic travelers on the Silk Road—what they ate and drank, the gifts they carried, and the animals that accompanied them—and how they navigated a complex web of geographic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. It also describes the risks and dangers envoys faced along the way—from financial catastrophe to robbery and murder. Using documents unearthed from the famous Dunhuang “library cave” in Western China, The King’s Road paints a detailed picture of the intricate network of trans-Eurasian transportation and communication routes that was established between 850 and 1000 CE. By exploring the motivations of the kings who dispatched envoys along the Silk Road and describing the transformative social and economic effects of their journeys, the book reveals the inner workings of an interstate network distinct from the Sino-centric “tributary” system. In shifting the narrative of the Silk Road from the transport of commodities to the exchange of diplomatic gifts and personnel, The King’s Road puts the history of Eastern Eurasia in a new light.

In Keywords for Southern Studies, editors Scott Romine and Jennifer Rae Greeson have compiled an eclectic collection of new essays that address the fluidity of southern studies by adopting a transnational, interdisciplinary focus. The essays are structured around critical terms pertinent both to the field and to modern life in general. The nonbinary, nontraditional approach of Keywords unmasks and refutes standard binary thinking—First World/Third World, self/other, for instance—that postcolonial studies revealed as a flawed rhetorical structure for analyzing empire. Instead, Keywords promotes a holistic way of thinking that begins with southern studies but extends beyond.