The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (Canto)

The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (Canto)
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Political intrigue provides the backdrop for entertaining historical narative

Phenomenal History of the Thirteenth Century

A Panorama of Europe through the window of the Vespers

Political narrative at its best

Sicilian History Expertly Done

The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (Canto)
Steven Runciman
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
Reference | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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Medieval | World | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0521437741

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On March 30, 1282, as the church bells of Palermo were sounding vespers, a crowd of Sicilians fell on a party of French soldiers, the enforcers of Angevin rule over the island. Within minutes the French lay dead. The Palermo revolt spread quickly across Sicily, opposed by Frankish lords and the Italian clergy, and supported by Sicilian commoners, Aragonese infiltrators, and Byzantine spies. Against a complicated multinational backdrop, the noted medieval historian Steven Runciman deftly portrays the tangled world of Mediterranean politics in the 13th century, the apex of the Middle Ages.

Book Description

On 30 March 1282, as the bells of Palermo were ringing for Vespers, the Sicilian townsfolk, crying â€~Death to the Frenchâ€™, slaughtered the garrison and administration of their Angevin King. Seen in historical perspective it was not an especially big massacre: the revolt of the long-subjugated Sicilians might seem just another resistance movement. But the events of 1282 came at a crucial moment. Steven Runciman takes the Vespers as the climax of a great narrative sweep covering the whole of the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century. His sustained narrative power is displayed here with concentrated brilliance in the rise and fall of this fascinating episode. This is also an excellent guide to the historical background to Danteâ€™s Divine Comedy, forming almost a Who's Who of the political figures in it, and providing insight into their placement in Hell, Paradise or Purgatory.

Customer Reviews:

Political intrigue provides the backdrop for entertaining historical narative.......2007-08-13

Sir Runciman once again delivers informative historical narrative that is thorough and equally entertaining. The political intrigue of the 13th century, involving virtually all of the Mediterranean powers, provide just the detail needed to grasp the causes and affects of the Vespers revolution. Sir Runciman deftly weaves the varied characters and their roles together into the story that pulls the reader in and keeps their attention. There are a confusing array of political players in the drama but Sir Runciman's story-telling style helps avoid confusion and makes the intricate connections required to better understand the period. Very well done and a wonderful addition to any library.

Phenomenal History of the Thirteenth Century.......2005-07-04

Runciman's writing is absolutely amazing in this volume which treats of Europe in the mid-to-late thirteenth century. I devoured this book in a matter of days, fascinated as I am with Sicilian history and culture. Runciman gives a fantastic view of the Kingdom of Sicily after the fall of "The Kingdom in the Sun", or the Norman Kingdom based in Palermo. From the benevolent king William the Good to the villanous Charles of Anjou, Runciman presents all of those occurances which led up to the Sicilian Vespers, or the systematic destruction of French power over the Sicilians on Easter Monday, 1282. A must-read for all those interested in the history of Europe in this era.

A Panorama of Europe through the window of the Vespers.......2005-04-25

What an excellent history. It's a careful, economical but thorough recounting of events among a huge array of far-flung characters. It's not difficult to read, but rereading helps fix the cast in the mind. (The index is excellent, but a list of characters would have been helpful, although that sort of user-friendliness would definitely have been at odds with the book's Cambridge gestalt.) Sir Steven is very sparing of analysis and conjecture, so that when he does essay a mild synthesizing comment, it is all the more powerful and organic, having grown from the "objective" account and selections of incident. His final thesis -- that the medieval papacy foundered during this period due to its cautious, conscious decision to eschew centralized surrogate command (through the Hohestaufen empire) in favor of decentralized partitioning (the original balkanization) that fed and inculcated a nationalism that was ultimately much more debilitating to papal power -- is both startling and inevitable. Besides the masterful overarching view of European history, the book also is fascinating and illuminating about Sicily in particular, and its polyglot zealotry.

Political narrative at its best.......2005-04-10

This is a political narrative history in the Med during the second half of the 13th century, during Dantes lifetime. If you've read "Comedy" this provides ample background for many of the souls Dante encounters. This book is helpful not only in the historical details, but the pace of life in the Middle Ages: how long things took to unfold with slow communications and transport, and how quickly and often fortunes change. One can see the rise of early nationalism, and the beginning of the end of the Medieval Church. Overall an excellent window in to the medieval world. The majority of the book is background leading up to the Vespers (occuring on page 214 of 290), of which he calls the central element of the book. Yet, Runciman speaks only briefly of the Vespers as a popular social rising, %99 of book is the narrartion of the actions of aristocratic individuals, not a social history, so for that inconsistency I give it a 4 instead of 5 stars. In my opinion this is really a book about Charles of Anjou and the Angevin expansion in the Med., with the Vespers as a theme to give it a more popular appeal, but this does not take away from the value and enjoyability of the work, if this period interests you it is highly readable and real page turner.

Sicilian History Expertly Done.......2003-10-22

In the early spring of 1282 a great fleet lay at anchor in the harbor of Palermo, Sicily. The commander of the fleet, Charles of Anjou, brother of King (and later Saint) Louis of France, and by the blessing of the Pope and his own political machinations, King of the Two Sicilies, planned to attack the Byzantine capital of Constantinople and re-establish the Latin Empire, with himself as Emperor. For Charles, a man of formidable military and administrative talent, and considerable political ruthlessness, the possibility of being an emperor, of dominating the Mediterranean world, must have seemed so close that he could not fail to grasp the opportunity. And then everything changed.

The Sicilian Vespers, by the late Sir Steven Runciman, is the story of the late 13th century European world that created Charles of Anjou. Runciman describes in considerable, and very interesting detail, the interplay of politics and religion at that time, especially the bare knuckle politicking of the Popes, whose attempts at creating a universal Christendom ruled by the papacy eventually lessened respect not only for the individual popes involved, but for the papacy as an institution as well. The interweaving lines of narrative come together on the evening of March 29th, Easter Monday, of 1282, when a group of drunken Frenchmen arrived outside the Church of the Holy Spirit in Palermo just as the crowd of worshippers was going in for the Vespers service. One of the Frenchmen made advances, or actually tried to rape, a young Sicilian woman. Her husband killed the Frenchman, and when the Frenchmen's friends drew their swords, the crowd jumped them and killed them as well. The oppressed Sicilians then went on a rampage through the streets of Palermo, screaming Moranu il Franchkisi [Death to the French!] and slaughtering every Frenchman they could find, including French priests, nuns, and monks, as well as Sicilian women who had married Frenchmen. The rebellion rapidly spread to other cities across Sicily.

Runciman expertly weaves together the story of what happened and why it happened and what the consequences of the great rebellion were for Charles and the Sicilians and for a papacy more interested in politics than religion. There might be a better book on this subject somewhere, but I tend to doubt it; Runciman writes in clear and understandable English, a talent not usually cultivated by academic historians in the United States, and he knows his subject backwards and forwards. I would recommend this book highly to anyone interested in the Middle Ages, and to anyone interested in how history ought to be written.

Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
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Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
Steven Runciman
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IXSR1S

The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
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The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
Steven Runciman
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000LEHJKO

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The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
Steven Runciman
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NQLNWK

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The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century.
Steven RUNCIMAN
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0000CJXI3

THE SICILIAN VESPERS : A HISTORY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE LATER THIRTEENTH CENTURY (CANTO)
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THE SICILIAN VESPERS : A HISTORY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE LATER THIRTEENTH CENTURY (CANTO)
Steven Runciman
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Sicilian Vespers, The: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
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Sicilian Vespers, The: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
Steven Runciman
Manufacturer: Cambridge Univ Pr
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Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KY699C

The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
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The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
Steven Runciman
Manufacturer: CAMBRIDGE UNIV*@ PRESS
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The Sicilian vespers: A history of the mediterranean world in the later thirteenth century
Stephen Runaman
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ASIN: B0007JS0TW

Book Description

Strange Career offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws and American race relations. This book presented evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1880s. It's publication in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court ordered schools be desegregated, helped counter arguments that the ruling would destoy a centuries-old way of life. The commemorative edition includes a special afterword by William S. McFeely, former Woodward student and winner of both the 1982 Pulitzer Prize and 1992 Lincoln Prize. As William McFeely describes in the new afterword, 'the slim volume's social consequence far outstripped its importance to academia. The book became part of a revolution...The Civil Rights Movement had changed Woodward's South and his slim, quietly insistent book...had contributed to that change.'

Customer Reviews:

A Concise, Sorely Needed Work.......2004-07-14

C. Vann Woodward's "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" remains one of the most important books written about post-Reconstruction Southern America. In the space of very few pages, Woodward brings to us the proposal that the assumptions we have all been making about Jim Crow laws and the development of segregation were all wrong from the very beginning. We are taught the lie from grade school forward that "that's just the way it always has been in the South." Not so, according to Woodward.

We learn very quickly when reading this book that not only were there three or four decades following the Civil War wherein there was virtually no major segregation in the South - but the conditions with regards to segregation and equal rights in the South were actually better than in the North for several decades as well.

The lies of a racist South and a desperate North (desperate to make a moral issue of something that they too were guilty of in trying to keep blacks from having equal rights) somehow stuck in the Southern psyche, and all along we've been thinking that people were racist because "that's all they knew." Woodward blows this theory out of the water, and exposes the truth about the post-Reconstruction South.

Not only was segregation not popular in the South in much of the late 19th Century, but blacks voted often. There was very good participation - enough to put a lot of blacks and Republicans in public office in the South - for a time. It was not until the 1870s that a gradual change began in the South. That change brought about the Jim Crow laws - changes that were unwelcome to all of humanity. Booker T. Washington believed that the South could not advance and still leave the blacks behind: Woodward came about a few decades later and showed us all just how right Washington really was.

Still influential today.......2003-12-05

C. Vann Woodward's "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" was the first major effort to analyze the segregation system in the American South. Appearing in 1955, the author's treatment of this institution refuted contemporary statements made by several public figures who argued that racial separation was an ancient phenomenon that would last indefinitely. Not so, argued Woodward, as he proceeded to prove that the South experienced a time after the Civil War when the two races often intermingled without widespread hostility on the part of southern whites. Woodward's book expresses the heartfelt belief that since segregation was a recent development, the possibility existed for the South to reject its separatist doctrine and eventually embrace integrationist principles. The first chapters deal with the period during and after Reconstruction, what Woodward refers to as the First Reconstruction, when the South grudgingly accepted conditions forced upon it by the North. The author argues that blacks in southern urban areas often lived side by side with white citizens, as well as rode in the same streetcars and dined in many of the same restaurants. There were exceptions to these incidents, but overall monolithic, legalized segregation measures simply did not exist.

One of the reasons for this lack of overarching segregation policies concerned southern politics in the post-Civil War South. The author outlines three political philosophies during the 1880s and 1890s that worked to capitalize upon black support. Southern liberalism went nowhere with its arguments that all citizens must have equal rights in all social spheres. Conservative southerners took a position between liberals and radical racists, arguing that in every society there existed superior and inferior elements. Obviously, conservatives claimed, blacks occupied an inferior position to whites. This did not mean that blacks should be treated harshly or denied privileges. The conservatives were paternalists and used the goodwill they earned from blacks to capture elective offices from the Redeemers. The conservative political philosophy collapsed when widespread corruption swept its proponents from office. The Populists, the last southern political structure Woodward discusses, also attempted an alliance with blacks. The movement was short lived, and with external pressures of the 1880s and 1890s such as economic depression and northern indifference to blacks, southerners blamed blacks for their social ills. Moreover, southern politicians weary of the years of malicious infighting decided to seek a measure of unification, and they achieved this fusion by blaming black voters for economic and political discord. It is at this time, writes the author, when segregation laws blossomed across the South.

The second section of the book deals with the emergence and consequences of what Woodward calls the Second Reconstruction. Starting during the Second World War and emerging fully during the 1950s and 1960s, this era of race relations saw increasing waves of attacks directed against Jim Crow in the South. The first maneuvers came from the White House, with Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman launching several initiatives aimed at integrating defense jobs and the armed services. The second wave came with a series of Supreme Court actions seeking to integrate the school systems. With action came reaction as the segregationists finally launched an offensive against Brown vs. The Board of Education when lower court judges in the South upheld the higher court's ruling. The resulting attempts to undercut the judgment by southern state governments coupled with periodic outbreaks of violence led to even more civil rights initiatives from the federal government. Kennedy proposed and Johnson pushed through Congress measures aimed at accelerating integration and restoring the black vote in the South. The Second Reconstruction ended after the riots of the 1960s in northern cities caused civil rights organizations to shift from a role of non-violence to militant black nationalism. Woodward's book concludes on a rather pessimistic note when he observes that black-white relations seem to be reverting to a new form of racial separation.

It is difficult to find problems with "The Strange Career of Jim Crow." The book was the first work to sum up the civil rights movement in the United States. Moreover, the author wrote a book broad enough to give historians plenty of material for further research, something scholars always appreciate. Even the form of the book, with its lack of footnotes and energetic style, is more of a plus than a minus. By writing a friendly, accessible treatment of the issue, Woodward managed to reach beyond the walls of academia and find a wide public audience. It is not difficult to imagine that many of the young people registering black voters or going on freedom rides could cite this book as a major influence in their decision to make a stand against segregation. As the afterword shows, even Martin Luther King, Jr read and quoted Woodward on occasion. Finally, the fact that this book has never gone out of print underscores its seminal influence on the country at large.

No book is immune to criticism, however. Woodward often fails to incorporate into his narrative what actions blacks took in response to segregation. This critique is not always valid: the author does cite a black newspaperman who toured the South in the late 1800s, along with several members of the Black Panther Party. But in several places the book needs some description of black agency, especially the chapter concerning southern politics. Woodward presents the black population in the 1880s and 1890s as a passive force palmed off from one white political faction to another. Are we to assume that black voters simply bowed their heads and acted the role of dupes to savvy white politicians? Perhaps many did due to a lack of education and a lingering submissiveness from the days of slavery, but there were people who attempted to participate in the system in order to earn their rights.

Fascinating book on a sad aspect of US history and politics.......2003-09-29

I have the 1957 edition of the book, and so can't comment on the new chapter.
This is a fascinating book which should be read by anyone interested in racial issues, US history, or US politics.
The major surprise to me is Woodward's description, complete with many contemporary quotes, of a time in the late 1800's post-Reconstruction South where African Americans were treated largely equally with regard to public accomodations and voting. Segregation, then, was considered to be a "lower-class white attitude."
It wasn't until approximately 1900 that a very segregationist attitude came about in the South, largely as the result of the interplay of Republican, Democratic, and Progressive politics.
This is course gives the lie to assertion through much of the 1900's that de jure racial segregation was a time-honored part of Southern life, and there was no possible alternative.
Woodward then goes on to describe the depths to which Jim Crow legislation sank, describing the effect of African American migration within the country, World War II, how our segregationist policies hurt the US image abroad, and on to the beginnings of the civil rights movement, ending shortly after _Brown v. Board of Education_, well before the major civil rights events and legislation.
Fairly quick read, and a great book!

Race in America.......2002-02-07

The most fascinating thing about this book is not just the particular events in history, or the misconceptions and myths that Woodward discusses, but rather how truly complex the issue of race is in America. Since emancipation, there has always been a struggle between and among whites and blacks to figure out how to understand each other and themselves, and how to occupy the same place. This history is indeed strange, and to have an idea of why race is still such an issue today, it helps to know how racism, segregation, and civil rights changed over time.

Woodward's book cautions us against taking simplified views that the South was always racist, and the North was not, and he begins by describing various accounts of life in the South right after the Civil War. According to Woodward, the venomous prejudice that sustained the Jim Crow laws decades later wasn't foreseeable at that time. Much of his explanation of the racist sentiment that so desired segregation is framed in the context of politics, and he tries to analyze many of the events he discusses in terms of political and economic pressures, as well as in terms of reactions to preceding actions.

If the Civil War is to be seen as a war for racial equality (and there are many other ways of seeing it), then it can easily be argued that it continues to this day. It is often most comforting to think of the wiping out of Native Americans, and then the enslavement of Africans as hideous scars that America carries in the past, while believing that America today is a different, tolerant place. But Jim Crow laws were a product of the twentieth century, and the racial tensions still exist in a very real way. Woodward's book, first published in 1955, and last revised in 1974, is still immensely relevant today, and reading it can only enhance your sense of American history.

Segregation: What It Was and What It Wasn't.......2001-12-20

C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow is not only a fine introduction to its topic -- the segregationist period in the South -- but one of the most significant and influential books of its time.

Originally published in 1955 (by Oxford University Press), Professor Woodward's tome kicked off the Civil Rights era with a bang, debunking the ludicrous myth (and mantra among segregationists) that separation of the races had always existed in Southern life, and generally dissecting an ugly monstrosity which had come to be accepted simply as "the way things are." Ten years later, in a second revision which came just as the legal battle against segregation was almost won, Woodward added a wealth of information which helped finish the job of winning the people's hearts and minds: in the words of Robert Penn Warren, Woodward's work was "a witty, learned, and unsettling book. The depth of the unsettling becomes more obvious day by day; which is a way of saying that it is a book of permanent significance." And ten years later still, in this -- the third and final revision -- Woodward capped off the era with an examination of the more violent, less integrationist movements which arose after Watts, with leaders like Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale.

Woodward is an equal-opportunity myth-exploder. On the one hand, he demonstrates at great length that segregation was not a mere expression of racism, but in fact a complex and corrupt outworking of many political and economic interests in the impoverished, post-Reconstruction South. On the other hand, he also shows conclusively that segregation took time to develop: it was not, as its supporters claimed, the way things had always been, or even the way things had come to be immediately following the war, but had actually arisen thirty and even forty years later, with the removal of Northern troops, the disintegration of Republican influence, a national "taking up of the white man's burden" with regard to "colored" peoples abroad, and increasing economic distress which allowed successive Populists and Democrats to consolidate power by limiting white exposure to the threat of competing (and competitive) blacks. These things, combined with a series of Supreme Court rulings sanctioning segregation, produced a wicked stew which more modern readers found extremely unpalatable upon Woodward's closer examination.

Beyond these things, Woodward's treatment of the Jim Crow era itself, as well its demise, were and are excellent, and were especially provocative at the time of their writing. Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in 1954, the book is not annotated, and even in a third edition remains quite brief; yet it is thorough and engaging, and suffers only a bit for these points. In all, it remains not only an excellent history -- produced by one of America's finest scholars -- but also a key source document of its era, and is a very good read as well. It continues to be vital to a proper understanding of the South, as well as the whole misbegotten concept of "separate but equal."

The Strange Career of Jim Crow
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The Strange Career of Jim Crow
C. Vann Woodward
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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The Strange Career of Jim Crow
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Book Description

One summer in the 1980s, theoretical physicist F. David Peat went to the Blackfoot Sun Dance ceremony in Alberta, Canada. Having spent all his life steeped in and influenced by linear Western science, he was entranced by the Native American worldview and, through dialogue circles between scientists and Native Elders, he began to explore it in greater depth.

"Blackfoot Physics" is the account of his discoveries. In an edifying synthesis of anthropology, history, metaphysics, cosmology and quantum theory, Peat compares the medicines, the myths, the languages, indeed the entire perceptions of reality of the Western and indigenous peoples. What becomes apparent is the amazing resemblance between indigenous teachings and some of the insights that are emerging from modern science, a congruence that is as enlightening about the physical universe as it is about the circular evolution of humanity's understanding. Through Peat's insightful observations, he extends our understanding of ourselves, our understanding of the universe, and how the two intersect in a meaningful vision of human life in relation to a greater reality.

"Blackfoot Physics" is a book that will captivate anyone with an interest in the relationship between science, spirituality, and the different ways of knowing.

Customer Reviews:

Blackfoot Physics.......2007-07-17

When I found this book, as an archaeologist who works primarily with Plains First Nations, I was thrilled that someone had written an in-depth book about the worldview of the Blackfoot. Through my own experiences, I have gained some outsider insight into the wealth of Blackfoot culture and was eager to learn more.

Unfortunately, the title Blackfoot Physics is a misnomer. Though the author describes his experiences while waiting for the Sun Dance to begin in the first few chapters, most of the book discusses various traditional belief systems and world views ranging from various North America First Nations to various cultures, past and present, around the world. Much of this material is either very general in nature or is intended for those without any prior knowledge of these traditions, basically illustrating the point that all world views have value.

Although I thought that the author did a very good job of illustrating that other cultures have different (and just as valid) ways of viewing the world, I am concerned that people will believe that all aboriginal world views are the same. This erroneous perception could further strengthen the common "primitive societies" stereotypes that the author was trying to break down.

Fascinating Stuff.......2003-08-05

It takes a while to get into this book because the first chapter is a bit boring (needs some serious editing, in fact). But once past that hurdle, there's not a dull moment. While one might take issue with the author's apparent attitude that the Native American version of science is superior to that of the Western world's, there's no doubt that the Western world has missed a lot of vital information about the nature of reality. The Native Americans were shoved aside by the Western invaders, who seldom had the sense to acknowledge the wisdom (not to mention the mathematics and the astronomy and the way to make a decent canoe) that the natives had to offer; now we're learning that much of what the natives believed is echoed in the new physics that is still being examined.

A unique and original work of insight.......2003-02-13

Blackfoot Physics: A Journey Into The Native American Universe is a melding of anthropology, history, metaphysics, cosmology, and quantum theory. Written by F. David Peat (a theoretical physicist who has also studied Native American ceremonies and traditions such as the Blackfoot Sun Dance), Blackfoot Physics strives to bridge the gap between diverse understandings of the universe, while crafting parallels between science and spirituality. A unique and original work of insight, Blackfoot Physics in a unique and strongly recommended contribution to Metaphysical Philosophy and Native American Studies.

Book Description

This 160-page handbook with practical lesson plans on global environmental issues is designed for use in high school social studies, geography, science, and global studies curricula. It can be used to facilitate the use of World Resources 1994-95 in the classroom or by itself. Featured topics in this new edition include: global consumption and the environment; the role of women in the management of natural resources in the developing world; the environmental effects of fossil fuel powered transportation; and the global impacts of two population giants--India and China. For each topic, the Teacher's Guide provides an introduction to the issue, practical lesson plans, teaching objectives, student handouts and enrichment activities, overhead transparency masters, and more.

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