Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The History and Legacy of Asia...

  Editors Charles River

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  The pages of world history textbooks contain a litany of “lost” empires and civilizations, but usually, upon further review, it is revealed that these so called lost empires are often just lesser known cultures that had a less apparent impact on history than other more well-known civilizations. When one scours the pages of history for a civilization that was inexplicably lost, but had a great impact during its time, very few candidates can be found, but the Hittites are a notable example. In fact, the Hittites are an ancient people who remain somewhat enigmatic, and perhaps little known to most people, but their influence on the ancient Near East is undeniable. From high on their capital of Hattusa in central Anatolia, the Hittites were able to conquer and control a kingdom that roughly comprised the area of the modern nation-states of Turkey, Syria, and parts of Iraq and Lebanon. 
  Among the peoples of the ancient Near East, few are more misunderstood than the Scythians. The Scythians swept into Anatolia in the early first millennium BCE and left a large swath of destruction in their wake. They challenged old, strong, and venerable kingdoms such as the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Medes, until they were defeated by the Medes and then gradually disappeared into historical obscurity once more. According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the Scythians ruled a large part of the Near East for nearly 30 years, but before they disappeared from the historical record, the Scythians greatly impacted the history of the Near East. 
  Of all the empires and kingdoms in the ancient world, few could compare with the Lydians in terms of wealth and opulence. From the early 7th century BCE until the middle of the 6th century BCE, the Lydians played an important role in the history of the eastern Mediterranean region as they took on the role of middleman between the empires of the Near East and the emerging Hellenic civilization in Greece.

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  All God's Children - How...

  Terence Lester

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  The more you understand someone's history, the better you can see their humanity. This is true for individuals as well as for society at large. Race relations have suffered because of the erasure of important Black history and cultural context. As we fill in the gaps of our collective knowledge, communities can grow in understanding, empathy, and solidarity. 
   
   
   
  Terence Lester shares the buried history of the struggles Black people have faced against unjust systems. He tells powerful stories of courage, injustice, pain, and triumph, including ones from his own history. He also unpacks the sociological and cultural dynamics of unconscious bias and inattentional ignorance that keep us apart, and how they can be overcome. This honest account of what it's like to be Black in America paves the way for the church to move beyond showing support from a distance toward loving one another in long-term solidarity, advocacy, and friendship.

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  Goodbye Russia - Rachmaninoff in...

  Fiona Maddocks

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  In 1940, Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland—his iconic "Symphonic Dances." What happened in those final haunted years and how did he come to write his farewell masterpiece? 
   
   
   
  Rachmaninoff left Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) in 1917 during the throes of the Russian Revolution. He was forty-four years old, at the peak of his powers as composer-conductor-performer, moving in elite Tsarist circles, as well as running the family estate, his refuge and solace. Reeling from the trauma of a life in upheaval, he wrote almost no music and quickly had to reinvent himself as a fêted virtuoso pianist, building up untold wealth and meeting the stars. 
   
   
   
  Using a wide range of sources, including important newly translated texts, Fiona Maddocks's book conjures impressions of this enigmatic figure, his friends, and the world he encountered. It explores his life as an emigré artist and how he clung to an Old Russia which no longer existed. That forging of past and present meets in his Symphonic Dances (1940), his last composition, written on Long Island shortly before his death in Beverly Hills, surrounded by a close-knit circle of exiles. Goodbye Russia is a moving and prismatic look at Rachmaninoff and his iconic final work.

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  The Maximum Security Book Club -...

  Anonimo

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  A riveting account of the two years literary scholar Mikita Brottman spent reading literature with criminals in a maximum-security men’s prison outside Baltimore, and what she learned from them—Orange Is the New Black meets Reading Lolita in Tehran. 
  On sabbatical from teaching literature to undergraduates, and wanting to educate a different kind of student, Mikita Brottman starts a book club with a group of convicts from the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland. She assigns them ten dark, challenging classics—including Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” and Nabokov’s Lolita—books that don’t flinch from evoking the isolation of the human struggle, the pain of conflict, and the cost of transgression. Although Brottman is already familiar with these works, the convicts open them up in completely new ways. Their discussions may “only” be about literature, but for the prisoners, everything is at stake. 
  Gradually, the inmates open up about their lives and families, their disastrous choices, their guilt and loss. Brottman also discovers that life in prison, while monotonous, is never without incident. The book club members struggle with their assigned reading through solitary confinement; on lockdown; in between factory shifts; in the hospital; and in the middle of the chaos of blasting televisions, incessant chatter, and the constant banging of metal doors. 
  Though The Maximum Security Book Club never loses sight of the moral issues raised in the selected reading, it refuses to back away from the unexpected insights offered by the company of these complex, difficult men. It is a compelling, thoughtful analysis of literature—and prison life—like nothing you’ve ever read before.

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  The Great School Rethink

  Frederick M. Hess

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  In The Great School Rethink, education policy sentinel Frederick M. Hess offers a pithy and perceptive appraisal of American schooling and finds, in the uncertain period following pandemic disruption, an ideal moment to reimagine US education. Now is the time, he asserts, to ask hard questions about how schools use time and talent, how they work with parents, what they do with digital tools, and how they meet the needs of their communities. 
   
   
   
  As Hess explains, to rethink is to acknowledge the realities of the education system while opening one's mind to possibility. With characteristic verve and wit, Hess guides listeners through his rethink process, a versatile and easily implemented approach to identifying issues and brainstorming possible responses. He encourages listeners to explore what improvements might alleviate current pressures and frustrations, such as teacher shortages and burnout, declining student performance, and compromised learning time. Whether their goal is to achieve better student engagement, increase parent involvement, or implement personalized learning, listeners will develop the mindset to ask the right questions, to fully understand the problem that's being solved, and to evaluate the probable effectiveness of proposed solutions.

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  The Irish in the Resistance -...

  John Morgan, Clodagh Finn

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  'You simply couldn't stand by with your arms folded.'
  These were the words of Samuel Beckett who famously returned to France from a holiday in Ireland when World War II broke out. His clandestine work against the Nazi occupation of Europe is well documented, but there were many other ordinary Irish people who joined the underground network.
  Some took up arms. Others gathered intelligence, sheltered fugitives, committed acts of sabotage or broke codes. This new history tells the stories of those forgotten Irish men and women.
  Discover Captain John Keany from Cork, who parachuted into occupied Italy to help the local Resistance; Margaret Kelly, the Dublin founder of the world-famous Bluebell Girls cabaret troupe in Paris, who hid her Jewish husband; and Catherine Crean, the Irish governess born on Moore Street, Dublin, who was sent to a concentration camp for helping Allied airmen in Belgium.
  These, and many more stories, span the course of World War II and remind us of the power of individuals to make a difference.
  'An eye-opening account of how ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations helped to fight the Nazis' David McCullagh
  'A truly important and groundbreaking book' Mary Kenny

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