Century Book Reviews Samples For Students

Katznelson is one of those leading writers who have proved themselves in providing much knowledge to the readers about social and political history. A professional in political science and history, he is best known for his influential research upon United States and covered topics such as social knowledge, liberal state, inequality, and institutions. His work always brings exceptional aspects that have been most important in the history of America. He has highlighted various features that have been a part of American history and has unfolded the inequalities that were evidenced in the 20th century. A collection of his books ...

While cults have been part of American culture throughout the country’s history, most have emerged during periods of social turmoil. In the early 19th century, America experienced an incredible increase in number of both religious and secular cults although most of them quickly faded away. In The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in the 19th Century America, historians Sean Wilentz and Paul Johnson look at the emergence and activities of a notorious cult that operated in and around New York City. Led by Robert Matthias, the cult briefly flourished during the early 1830s by ...

This paper describes the social movements that Blacks participated in during the period from 1900 to date. It tackles the ways in which the movements can be described as one long civil rights movement, and also how were they distinct movements. The paper further assesses their goals and the manner in which they have effected change in the United States. The paper also points out prominent civil rights activists that played an important role in spearheading the civil rights movements.
Most of the black social movements from 1900 to date have basically been fighting against racism. The 20th Century ...

Introduction

It has become difficult to distinguish once traditional media from the new media, as the former have integrated all the capabilities of the latter. In such a scenario, it would help to compare a traditional medium of communication with a relatively modern/new medium with respect to the circumstances around their origin, and how did they facilitate interpersonal and mass communication. This essay will discuss and analyze two cases: coffee houses as really old media, and podcasts as new media. While the coffee houses gained importance in Europe the mid-1600, and have been around since then, their importance as facilitators ...

Goldstein in his book Winning the War on War brings out a contrary opinion concerning the twentieth-century war. Specifically, he contests the claim that twentieth century was one of the bloodiest in the record. He argues that the wars were smaller in scale and fewer in number contrary to what many had reported (Goldstein p. 5). He analyzes the negative and positive effects of peacebuilding and peacekeeping considering the way United Nations (UN) has made a lot of strides in trying to reduce war proliferation in different member nations. He explains that this has been achieved through giving the ...

Introduction: Historically, female Black slaves endured the worse treatment, but have received the least amount of attention than their male counterparts in North American Slavery (Hine, 2007). There are longstanding myths that surround the experiences of female Black slaves, and struggles they face daily trying to survive. Deborah Gray White provides an intimate look into female slavery that until 1985 was long overdue. In her book she stated “Slave women were the only women in America who were sexually exploited with impunity, stripped and whipped with a lash, and worked like oxen” (White, 1999, p. 162). In the nineteenth ...

Middle East History: Trickster Travels by Natalie Zemon Davis

“Trickster Travels” was written by Natalie Davis, who is a historian of the early modern period. Her main interests are cultural history and social history. She has worked for the period ranging from 15th to 18th centuries, and focused on Europe (Princeton University, history.princeton.edu). She has taught history in many universities including the University of Toronto, Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Princeton University.
Her book “Trickster Travels” was published in 2006, and with the publication of this book, she successfully managed to sustain her name as one of the most interesting historians of the early ...

The epistolary novel by Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu, the “Persian Letters” gives a reflection of the eighteenth century society. It is therefore a critical primary source in regard to eighteenth century history considering the major changes of historical significance that were taking place at the time. One such change was the dawn of the age of enlightenment also referred to as the age of reason. The historical perspective of the novel may be lost because of Montesquieu’s extensive use of satire. However, it is intended to draw the attention of the reader towards the primary themes ...

Introduction

This paper critically analyses the book “Stories that Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century” by Carl Jensen. This will involve trying to put the book into various perspectives so as to improve a better understanding of Jensen’s work. To undertake a critical analysis, the writer will examine the foreground and the background of the author. Examining the author is important because she is the pivotal point of influence in the analysis and understanding of the book. Apart from examining the author, the paper will go ahead and analyze the various themes which were portrayed by the book. ...

Islam in Saudi Arabia

Introduction.
In his book Islam in Saudi Arabia David Commins takes us through the journey of Islam as a religion in Saudi from the eighteenth century up to the twentieth century. Chapter three is titled Wahhabism and the modern state. Wahhabism rose when Wahhab and Ibn Saud signed a pact giving rise to the state of Saudi Arabia. Having been promised power and religious legitimacy by Wahhab, Ibn Saud then pledged to ensure that the teachings of Wahhabism were carried out in the entire Kingdom. In this chapter, we see how subsequent rulers handled crisis through initiating changes like ...

1. The Social Miracle
T. R. Reid moved to Tokyo, Japan, with his family – composed of his wife and their two daughters – where he lived for five years, as an expatriate employee for the Washington Post. He posits that some Asian nations (such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore ) have built modern societies within the safest environment, providing the best education for the children, and with probably the most stable families on Earth. In Reid’s opinion, this accomplishment is due to the widespread acceptance by Far East countries of the ethical values of Chinese philosopher Confucius. He pointed ...

Geisst R. Charles’, Beggar Thy Neighbor: A history of Usury and Debt.

Part 2: Description of Expected Plans of Revisions and Expansions.

This paper primarily focuses on examining the three themes that dominated the era of usury and debt. The segregation of Protestants from the main denomination, that is, the Roman Catholic Church, the subsequent wars and Capitalism are some of the major things witnessed during that era. This paper will explore the major themes while having a look whether there exist any form of connection between them. From the Authors point of view, there is a connection between the three themes therefore he discussed them as a single ...

Introduction

In his book “Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq”, Stephen Kinzer examines the various overthrows the government of the United States has undertaken since 1893. According to Kinzer, the invasion of Iraq was not an isolated case. It was just a continuation of the list of very countries America has invaded and aided its overthrow. Kinzer examined 14 overthrows that the U.S government has been involved in the last 110 years (Kinzer 8). According to him, the intension of most of the overthrows are not what the government tells the public, both the American citizens ...

Chapter 5 Outline

The chapter begins by explaining that despite usury being considered as an execrable sin against human, it continued to be famous in the United States and British. It is apparent that in a population of 30,000 people, more than 8000 individuals embraced usury or took part in the practice (Geisst 192). The reason is that the necessity of doing business using borrowed money became frequent due to trade. Besides, the chapter offers a detailed explanation on the sophisticated debt revolution that emerged in the 19th century. This made people support industrialization so as to help people to avoid ...

"Walden or Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau belongs to the vivid and memorable American works of classical literature. The personality of the author and the pages of his famous book highlight anti-capitalist, romantic, and utopian ideas that received considerable spread in the United States in the 30-40-ies of the last century and these ideas were a kind of protest against the brutality of the bourgeois industrial progress and its accompanying social ills.
  The ideological pioneers of the anti-capitalist and romantic-utopian protests were called transcendentalists. It is a circle of prominent representatives of the American democratic intelligentsia, ...

Book Review

Protestants refer to any of the varied denominations of Christianity that differed and subsequently separated from the Roman Catholic Church based. The separation was occasioned by theological or political differences during the Reformation. Reformation was the religious movement of the 16th century that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church, and it collapsed to the creation of Protestant churches. Capitalism, on the other hand, refers to the economic system based on private ownership of capital. War refers to an active struggle between competitive entities. Therefore, this paper will focus on examining these three themes that dominated ...

Analysis of the Book "The Medicalization of Society" By Peter Conrad

The Main Author's Arguments
Peter Conrad, the author of the book "The Medicalization of Society," conducts a study of the most common problems of the modern society, which essence and nature have changed and obtained a medical character over the past 10-20 years. In other words, the author examines the social problems that have become the diagnoses at the beginning of the 21st century, though they were not related to medicine even a decade ago. At the very beginning of the book, Conrad emphasizes the investigated phenomenon, claiming that his analysis is connected only with the social connotations of ...

Book Review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest

Introduction
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a breath-taking novel that was written in the twentieth century by Ken Kessey. The plot for this story was set in a psychiatric hospital found in Oregon. This narrative is essential in the world of research because it is a study of the institutional processes as well as the mind. Also, this story serves to critic the theory of behaviorism which is a psychological theory that stipulates that human behavior can be described by conditioning without giving weight to the thought processes and feelings (Ward 4). In other words, psychological ...

Abstract

This book review examines the book Criminals in the Bible by Professor Mark Jones. It examines the bases and features of criminal justice and the criminalizing process across different timelines and eras. The review examines the constitutional elements of different criminal justice systems and generations and how it relates to specific aspects of society.
The book review assesses and evaluates some of the elements of society including chapter analysis and how serious crimes occur. The main discovery of this book review is that crime and criminalizing is done within the context and framework of dominant constitutional processes and generally ...

In A People's History of the United States, Zinn devotes chapter 13 to socialist movements during the early 1900's. Is this justified or is he overstating the impact of the socialist movement?
Socialist movements gained tract in the turn of the century, and many workers were keen getting a fair share of their efforts from the employers. Also, people demanded more from the government, pushing for the protection of the old, sick and poor through programs that would reach out to the people. The formation of the National Civic Federation by Ralph Easley spelled doom and hard times for ...

Book Review – New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Scandal that

New York City in the late 19th-century has been shown through scholarly research and historical investigation to be a den of vice, with police-sanctioned brothels and unchecked political graft taking place on a large, systemic level. This matrix of criminal protections and laissez-faire attitude toward criminality led to the origins of the New York mob, and is a considerably important subject for historical scholars. Daniel Czitrom’s latest account of this early corruption, New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal that Launched the Progressive Era, demonstrates the forces that began to identify the Gilded Age as one of ...

Background of the author

A professor at the University of Sonoma- California, in the United States of America, Dr. Carl Jensen is also an author of prominent publications in the field of sociology that have scaled to global heights. A few books under his name include “Censored: The News That Didn’t Make the News and Why (from1976 to 1996)” and “20 Years of Censored News (1997)”. In addition, Dr. Carl Jensen has also featured in Project Censored- a media research project in 1976 that attained international recognition.

Thesis of the book

The book delves into how the American society was adjusted to become more flexible to ...

The theme of alienation and resistance permeates throughout Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Alienation, disillusionment and fear are dominant elements in dystopian societies. In this paper, I seek to make the argument that alienation makes resistance to oppression difficult since individuals are separated from each other and the products that individuals produce. I argue that The Handmaid’s Tale shows how difficult it is for women to wage a successful resistance movement against a male dominated society. Even though Marx did reduce all human relations to means and modes of production, it is important to note ...

The color line that defines the history of the United States, from the antebellum period to the years of the Civil Rights movement, is evident in Melissa Fay Greene’s work. Dubbed Praying for Sheetrock, the text revolves around the changes in the cultural norms that guided the society of McIntosh County, Georgia, in the last half of the twentieth century. For that reason, the book allows readers to witness an extension of the Civil Rights Movement that historians tend to overlook, one that is away from the streets of Alabama and Atlanta. Thus said, the protagonist and the ...

The Ideological Origin of the American Revolution, published originally in 1967 by Harvard Professor of History Bernard Bailyn, is one of the most respected studies of the ideology and world view of the American Revolutionary period. The book helped to establish Bailyn’s reputation as a leading American historian. The text won both a Pulitzer Prize, and the Bancroft Prize for writing on American History. Bailyn’s text was part of a new movement in the study of history which actually focused on the actual documents produced by real people, including ordinary people, to create the historical narrative. Previously, ...

Part one

Biodiversity is essential in the sustainability of the environment. In fact, lack thereof compromises the nature’s ability to adapt to environmental changes, therefore, enhancing its vulnerability. The development of science and technology paved the way for the incorporation of genetic engineering to living organisms. Precisely, since its introduction in 1996, many nations have embraced the conveniences offered by the genetic modification of crops to enhance their resistance and overall sustainability (Rifkin 15). This method is influential as it enables scientists to combat the development of a crop disease by altering the genetic composition of an organism. However, this ...

Central Part of Mexican National Identity

Mexican identity was shaped during the 19th century not by the elite in the society but the ordinary people who were limited in both social and economic resources. Even after independence in 1821, there were persistent issues of political instability, military uprising and foreign invasions that led to social problems among the citizens. As Gillingham puts it, the village benefitted from Cuauhtémoc bones through economic progression that led to major development programs and achievement of political prominence. Cuauhtémoc was a symbol for the elites before it decided to embrace the lives of the ordinary people, thereby, leading ...

Chapter 4: The Great Experiment

American Bankruptcy
The first stock market panic in the United States left many wealthy speculators in a terrible financial situation. William Duer, a prominent land speculator lost a lot and ended up bankrupt after overextending his borrowings. Congress was yet to pass a bankruptcy bill. Defaulters like Duer still faced jail time during this period. Under bankruptcy laws, one was set free from their debts and creditors had no claim over them. As time progressed, public opinion went against jailing small debtors and the law began to change.

Repeal of British Usury Laws

In Britain, people began to consider that to capitalize on the ...

A social commentary is a piece of work that expresses opinions and expressions about a historical event, appealing to the audience’s sense of social justice. George MacDonald Fraser wrote a novel known as “Flashman “in 1969, which he identified as a reflection of his childhood memoirs.The novel entails the escapades of Flashman. The character is a fictional character that initially appeared in Tom Brown’s work “School days”. The author used his interest in being a soldier in Asia, and quitting his job as a journalist as the majormotivation for writing this novel, and the other series that ...

The story of Bigger Thomas, by Richard Wright, was an evidence of a social and economic disconnects which was prevailing between the Negro and the white Americans. The setting of the book was in the South, and the closeness between the black and the white brought about hostility and hatred among the two races. Bigger who was living in the Southern part of Chicago is portrayed as a black who had both hatred and fear towards he white. In his every action throughout the book, Bigger portrays an obsessive fear that existed between the black and the white in ...

The novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque explores the psychological and physical conditions of German soldiers fighting in the World War I, instead of focussing on heroism and military accomplishments. That is the primary distinction between the novel and its contemporaries. The novel tracks the life of Paul Baumer, as he joins the army together with his friends (Muller, Kropp and Kemmerick) at the urging of their school teacher Kantorek.
While at the base, they meet Kat, an older soldier and a former shoe cobbler with whom they form a deep friendship and he ...

The materials that are utilized to develop that story of past occasions are called "recorded materials". Authentic archives composed on paper soon ring a bell; however, there are really numerous different types of verifiable materials, including oral transmissions, stone engravings, works of art, recorded sounds, pictures (photos, films), et cetera. Indeed, even old relics and remains, comprehensively talking, are chronicled materials.
In verifiable exploration, each chronicled material varies with regards to the degree of its legitimacy and unwavering quality (realness), and the undertaking of finding out that distinction is called "authentic judgment". Chronicled records that were composed by persons ...

Introduction

Judaism is one of the five main world religions. The other four include Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. Evidence available from archaeological and historical work shows that human beings in virtually all societies have since their humble beginnings held beliefs in supernatural beings they revered and worshiped. Religion is a set of beliefs that involves attributing the origin and cause of the universe as well as all things found in it and nature to a supernatural being (s) commonly known as God(s) who is held to be all knowing and all powerful. Religion can also be understood as an associative ...

Introduction

This book brings about the history of the deaf people in the United States in the nineteenth century and the developments that it underwent in recognition of the importance of language as a mode of communication in a way that is not only understood by the English speakers but one that also cuts across the broader spectrum of communication development and its impact both social and more fundamentally the work environment. Though little according to the book is known about the non white deaf people in the United States, a major irony is drawn from this since this was a time after colonization ...