Study in Black and White - Photography, Race, Humor by Tanya Sheehan

$50.00 NZD

Category: Photography | Reading Level: near fine

In this volume, Tanya Sheehan takes humor seriously in order to trace how photographic comedy was used in America and transnationally to express evolving ideas about race, black emancipation, and civil rights in the mid-1800s and into the twentieth century.Sheehan employs a trove of understudied materia ls to write a new history of photography, one that encompasses the rise of the commercial portrait studio in the 1840s, the popularization of amateur photography around 1900, and the mass circulation of postcards and other photographic ephemera in the twentieth century. She examines the racial politics that shaped some of the most essential elements of the medium, from the negative-positive process to the convention of the photographic smile. The book also places historical discourses in relation to contemporary art that critiques racism through humor, including the work of Genevieve Grieves, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and Fred Wilson. By treating racial humor about and within the photographic medium as complex social commentary, rather than a collectible curiosity, Study in Black and White enriches our understanding of photography in popular culture. Transhistorical and interdisciplinary, this book will be of vital interest to scholars of art history and visual studies, critical race studies, U.S. history, and African American studies. ...Show more

Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America by Seth Abramson

$14.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: good-very good

For the first time, the full, explosive record of the unthinkable: how a US president compromised American foreign policy in exchange for the promise of future business and covert election assistance. Looking back at this moment in history, historians will ask if Americans knew they were living through the first case of criminal conspiracy between an American presidential candidate turned commander in chief and a geopolitical enemy. The answer might be: it was hard to see the whole picture. The stories coming in from around the globe have often seemed fantastical: clandestine meetings in foreign capitals, secret recordings in a Moscow hotel, Kremlin agents infiltrating the Trump inner circle... Seth Abramson has tracked every one of these far-flung reports and now in, Proof of Collusion, he finally gives us a record of the unthinkable--a president compromising American foreign policy in exchange for the promise of future business and covert election assistance. The attorney, professor, and former criminal investigator has used his exacting legal mind and forensic acumen to compile, organize, and analyze every piece of the Trump-Russia story. His conclusion is clear: the case for collusion is staring us in the face. Drawing from American and European news outlets, he takes readers through the Trump-Russia scandal chronologically, putting the developments in context and showing how they connect. His extraordinary march through all the public evidence includes: --How Trump worked for thirty years to expand his real estate empire into Russia even as he was rescued from bankruptcy by Putin's oligarchs and Kremlin agents. --How Russian intelligence gathered compromising material on him over multiple trips. --How Trump recruited Russian allies and business partners while running for president. --How he surrounded himself with advisers who engaged in clandestine negotiations with Russia. --How Trump aides and family members held secret meetings with foreign agents and lied about them. By pulling every last thread of this complicated story together, Abramson argues that--even in the absence of a Congressional investigation or a report from Special Counsel Mueller--the public record already indicates a quid pro quo between Trump and the Kremlin. The most extraordinary part of the case for collusion is that so much of it unfolded in plain sight. ...Show more

The History of Brazil by Robert M. Levine

$12.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: very good

Narrative of a Residence in New Zealand; Journal of a Residence in tristan de Cunha by Augustus Earle

$45.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

edited by E H McCormick

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips

$20.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: very good

Five Families: The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab

$16.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: very good

A World of Trouble : America in the Middle East by Patrick Tyler

$18.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: very good

Presents the history of the national strategies and internal stratagems that governed the American state's involvement in the Middle East, from Nixon's Cold War manoeuvring to George W Bush's Axis of Evil.

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick

$10.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: good

"The Untold History of the United States" is filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick's riveting landmark account of the rise and decline of the American empire - the most powerful and dominant nation the world has ever seen. Probing the dark corners of the administrations of 17 presidents, fr om Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, they dare to ask just how far the US has drifted from its founding democratic ideals. Beginning with the bloody suppression of the Filipino struggle for independence and spanning the two World Wars, it documents how US administrations have repeatedly intervened in conflicts on foreign soil, taking part in covert operations and wars in Latin American, Asia and the Middle East. At various times it has overthrown elected leaders in favour of right-wing dictators, for both economic and political gain. Examining America's atomic history, Stone and Kuznick argue that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and morally indefensible. They show how the United States has repeatedly brandished nuclear threats and come terrifyingly close to war. They expose how US presidents have trampled on the US constitution and international law and lay bare the recent transformation of the United States into a national security state. Using the latest research and recently declassified records, "The Untold History" builds a meticulously documented and shocking picture of the American empire, showing how it has determined the course of world events for the interests of the few across the twentieth century and beyond. ...Show more

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

$8.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Series: Classics Library | Reading Level: good

Raised as a plantation slave, Frederick Douglass went on to become a writer, orator, and major participant in the struggle for African-American freedom and equality. In this engrossing narrative he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaig ns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves. "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. It is also the only of Douglass' autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American Presidents such as Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield. ...Show more

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

$12.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: very good

A New York Times BestsellerBasis for the movie LincolnOn May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited for the results from the Republican National Convention. Lincoln won, Goodwin demonstrates, because of his extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men. It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the union and winning the war. ...Show more

Politics: Observations & Arguments by Hendrik Hertzberg

$12.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: very good

Here at last are Hendrik Hertzbergas most significant, hilarious, and devastating dispatches from the American scene he has chronicled for four decades with an uncanny blend of moral seriousness, high spirits, and perfect rhetorical pitch. Arranged thematically, each section contains the choicest, most illuminating pieces from his body of work and begins with a new piece of writing that frames the subject at hand. A tour of the defining moments of American life from the mid-a60s to the mid- a00s, "Politics" is at once the story of American life from LBJ to GWB and a testament to the power of the written word. ...Show more

Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage by Jeffrey Frank

$20.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: very good

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had a political and private relationship that lasted nearly twenty years, a tie that survived hurtful slights, tense misunderstandings, and the distance between them in age and temperament. Yet the two men brought out the best and worst in each other, and their ass ociation had important consequences for their respective presidencies. In Ike and Dick, Jeffrey Frank rediscovers these two compelling figures with the sensitivity of a novelist and the discipline of a historian. He offers a fresh view of the younger Nixon as a striving tactician, as well as the ever more perplexing person that he became. He portrays Eisenhower, the legendary soldier, as a cold, even vain man with a warm smile whose sound instincts about war and peace far outpaced his understanding of the changes occurring in his own country. Eisenhower and Nixon shared striking characteristics: high intelligence, cunning, and an aversion to confrontation, especially with each other. Ike and Dick, informed by dozens of interviews and deep archival research, traces the path of their relationship in a dangerous world of recurring crises as Nixon's ambitions grew and Eisenhower was struck by a series of debilitating illnesses. And, as the 1968 election cycle approached and the war in Vietnam roiled the country, it shows why Eisenhower, mortally ill and despite his doubts, supported Nixon's final attempt to win the White House, a change influenced by a family matter: his grandson David's courtship of Nixon's daughter Julie--teenagers in love who understood the political stakes of their union. ...Show more