In pursuit of the people

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Ian Stewart

Roasting Chestnuts: The Mythology of Maritime Political Culture is a book about outdated political stereotypes. The Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia are often regarded as a pre-modern hinterland in which corrupt practices and traditional loyalties continue to predominate. While this depiction of Maritime political life, may at one time, have been largely accurate, this is no longer the case. Employing a variety of indicators, this book argues that a new set of political images is needed to capture Maritime political reality today. What emerges from the analysis is a picture of Maritime politics which no longer differs markedly from that which exists in the rest of Canada. Maritimers no longer exhibit remarkably low levels of political trust and efficacy, nor is there a regional political culture which transcends provincial boundaries. In fact, Maritime political elites have been innovators, providing radical departures from Canadian political norms. A unique and innovative study, Roasting Chestnuts seeks to demystify Maritime politics and expose the flimsy basis for many of the region's lasting political stereotypes.

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Peter McPhee

What did it mean to live through the French Revolution? This is a new narrative account of the Revolution which probes the lived experience of revolutionary upheaval for the people of France's villages and country towns. Peter McPhee draws on a vast range of material to listen to how working people understood, participated in or rejected the Revolution. The freshness of the voices we hear across more than two centuries is startling. He contests the orthodox view of the Revolution as an urban upheaval of which the outcomes were political and ideological. For the working people of country towns, villages and farms, the Revolution had a dramatic impact on daily life: from family relationships and religious practice to the nature of social and economic structures and the environment. Above all, people would never understand themselves or their world in the same way. This is a compelling story which both makes sense of the often bewildering story of these years while taking us closer to a comprehension of what it meant to be an inhabitant of France at that time. The book will be of particular use to undergraduate students and their teachers because of its clear narrative style and illustrations.

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Nicholas Atkin and Frank Tallett

"This revised and updated work shows how the resurgence of the French Far Right has a long pedigree and has entered into all areas of political, social, cultural and religious life, flourishing on concepts of race and nationhood. While the French Right, like most political movements and sets of ideas, may not have a coherent, consistent and dogmatic structure with a single ideology, there are powerful connecting links throughout modern French history. These stretch from Legitimatist support for the Bourbon monarchy, a nostalgia for imperialism, the occasional craving for a 'man of order', to the kind of rabid anti-semitism that produced the Dreyfus affair, and support for Petain's pro Nazi Vichy regime or the right-wing zealotry over Algeria which challenged de Gaulle. Le Pen's Front National is just the latest incarnation of a familiar demon. The Right in France is vital reading for anyone concerned with its re-emergence."--BOOK JACKET.

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Eric G.E. Zuelow

"From the dark shadow of civil war to the pastel-painted tourist towns of today, Making Ireland Irish provides a sweeping account of the evolution of the Irish tourist industry over the twentieth century. Drawing on an extensive array of previously untapped or underused sources, Eric G. E. Zuelow examines how a small group of tourism advocates, inspired by tourist development movements in countries such as France and Spain, worked tirelessly to convince their Irish compatriots that tourism was the secret to Ireland's success. Over time, tourism went from being a national joke to a national interest. Men and women from across Irish society joined in, eager to help shape their country and culture for visitors' eyes. The result was Ireland as it is depicted today, a land of blue skies, smiling faces, pastel towns, natural beauty, ancient history, and timeless traditions. With lucid prose and vivid detail, Zuelow explains how careful planning transformed Irish towns and villages from grey and unattractive to bright and inviting, sanitized Irish history to avoid offending Ireland's largest tourist market, the English, and supplanted traditional rural fairs revolving around muddy animals and featuring sexually suggestive ceremonies with new family-friendly festivals and events filling the tourist calendar today. By challenging existing notions that the Irish tourist product is either timeless or the consequence of colonialism, Zuelow demonstrates that the development of tourist imagery and Irish national identity was not the result of a handful of elites or a postcolonial legacy, but rather the product of an extended discussion that ultimately involved a broad cross-section of society, both inside and outside Ireland. Tourism, he argues, played a vital role in 'making Ireland Irish.'"--Publisher's website.