Product Description
This book about poor men and women in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Paris reveals the other side of the "age of cathedrals" in the very place where gothic architecture and scholastic theology were born. In Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, Sharon Farmer extends and deepens the understanding of urban poverty in the High Middle Ages. She explores the ways in which cultural elites thought about the poor, and shows that their conceptions of poor men and women derived from the roles assigned to men and women in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis--men are associated with productive labor, or labor within the public realm, and women with reproductive labor, or labor within the private realm.

Farmer proceeds to complicate this picture, showing that elite society's attitude toward an individual's social role and moral capacity depended not only on gender but also on the person's social status. Such perceptions in turn influenced the kinds of care extended or denied to the poor by charitable organizations and the informal self-help networks that arose among the poor themselves. Of particular interest are Farmer's discussions of society's responses to men and women who were disabled to the point of being incapable of any work at all. ... Read more

Product Description
In this lively and hard-hitting book José Bové and François Dufour recount the dramatic events of their famous demonstration against McDonald's and examine the issues behind the resulting campaign. Their proposal for an alliance of farmers, consumers and ecologists to promote public awareness received enthusiastic support at the WTO protests in Seattle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

We Don't Want to be Assimilated!!!!!
Interesting to read firsthand about the work of these courageous activists from France - Jose Bove is certainly not the leader of a group of country bumpkins or Luddites as I had inferred from the popular media. This book covers personal backgrounds & histories of their involvement in various farmers unions , these guys are effective organizers who know their business and also working farmers with a feeling and respect for the land, quality of life and food are goals of paramount importance.

Divided into 3 parts:
1st - The McDonald's story and other planned protests told from the viewpoints of both Bove & Dufour. The McDonald's incident took place in response to import duties imposed on Roquefort cheese in retaliation for EU's refusal to import American hormone treated beef. Not a random or spontaneous incident but a well planned out protest carried out to attract public attention. Both Dufour & Bove have been involved more than 30 years in various movements for change in France.
2nd - History of intensive farming over the last 50 years in France, farming economics, factory farms. Covers topics here such as genetically modified crops, mad cow disease, environmental destruction caused by intensive pig farming
3rd - Farming as a global issue world trade organization and "free trade", protest in Seattle, growth of a movement, a new vision.

An inspiring read for those interested in food, farming and globalization.

It's not just France
Since August 12, 1999, Bové has been an icon of the movement against "free" trade and the WTO. It was then that he and nine other members of the French Farmers Union (Confédéracion Paysanne) dismantled a MacDonald's restaurant in their hometown of Millau, loaded the pieces on their tractors and carted them to the local police station. MacDonald's was targetted both as a symbol of corporate domination of public life and as a leading vendor of what the French call malbouffe, food that is not worthy of being eaten.
The actual target of this protest was a 100% duty imposed on Roquefort cheese by the United States. The WTO had ruled that the French were violating trade laws by refusing to import U.S. hormone-fed beef, allowing the U.S. to impose punitive tariffs on Roquefort and 78 other French products. Bové and his fellow defendants raise sheep that produce milk for Roquefort cheese.
The MacDonald's action by the Farmers Union lit the imagination of thousands of activists and was one of the major events leading to the protests against the WTO meeting in Seattle a few months later. Bové and Dufour were in Seattle as part of the official French agricultural delegation but their official status did not deter them from further political theater. They distributed 500 pounds of his Roquefort cheese at the Pike Place Market and they marched arm-in-arm with farmers and AFL leaders at the head of the big march of November 30. In their book Dufour says, "It was an important signal: that in the first mass demonstration of trade unionists and ecologists, farmers were at the front. It's a particularly powerful image for Third World countries, where the majority of the population are farmers or live in rural areas."
In stepping forward as spokesmen against corporate domination of trading rules in general and agriculture in particular, Bové and Dufour have exposed themselves to personal attacks by the major media outlets. They are usually portrayed as nationalistic bumpkins, Luddites or egotistical publicity hounds. Their book puts the lie to much of that. Philosophically they are in favor of policies supporting regional food self-sufficiency--as opposed to policies which promote agribusiness. Why, they ask, should WTO regulations be imposed on all food when less than 5% is actually exported? It is clear that they have spent decades working on agricultural policy; much of the book describes how shifting farm policies since World War II have driven the small farmers out while favoring industrial agriculture dependent on long-distance transportation, monoculture, massive inputs of chemicals and over-reliance on the major agricultural and food distribution companies. Bové and Dufour argue that this is destroying the rural ecology, throwing farmers out of work and putting the world's food supplies at risk of catastrophic diseases (e.g., mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease, which are currently threatening European herds) or of callous market manipulation. Even without such disasters, the quality of food is deteriorating and taking traditional culture with it. The WTO had not specifically addressed agriculture before the Seattle round, but its proposals for Seattle clearly favored agribusiness' interests over those of small farmers and of less developed countries. This conflict led to the internal failure of the WTO in Seattle.
Bové points optimistically to "[b]uilding on the international gains won in Seattle." What his critics saw as a hodgepodge of dissimilar interests without a clear agenda, he sees as a new nonideological politics that succeeded in stopping the WTO . He suggests that the different viewpoints within the opposition to the WTO are exactly the point: local interests should not be steamrollered by the one-size-fits-all approach of the free-traders. Further trade agreements will require openness to public scrutiny. Although The World Is Not For Sale emphasizes globalization's impact on farming and rural areas, it also touches on the dangers of genetic modifications of plants and animals and on globalization's erosion of human rights--including trade union rights--and cultural diversity. The Farmers Union is not opposed to foreign trade agreements like the WTO, but insist that they must incorporate protection for workers, culture and the environment. The book offers tentative proposals on achieving these protections. ... Read more

Product Description
MORE ENGAGING THAN A NOVEL - A CAVALRYMAN'S LIFEIN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS AND BATTLES FOR INDIA.Trooper Farmer's military career was packed with adventure andincident.Through his words the reader experiences life in the British Light Cavalry on campaign in Spain against the French.During one sharp action Farmer is taken prisoner and we follow him through captivity until his release at the First Restoration.Napoleon's return puts him back in the saddle once again to go to war on the bloody field of Waterloo.Although he had already experienced enough action for a lifetime Farmer was then dispatched to India to play his part in the early days of the conquest of the sub-continent. A gripping military memoir! ... Read more

Product Description
This warm and humorous memoir of the nineteenth-century Bluegrass recalls a special moment in Kentucky’s past. It was a time of self-sufficient country estates; a time when, as Thomas D. Clark writes in his introduction, "every Bluegrass farm gate was the entryway into a ruggedly independent domain." Wildwood was such a domain, ruled by the titular Uncle Will of this classic book.

Everything at Wildwood revolved around Will Goddard, who was "a cross between a hurricane and an electric fan." The irrepressible Uncle Will, with his mad dashes to Harrodsburg for mowing-machine parts, his habit of leaving his stallion, Black Joe, unhitched, and his uncanny perception of the potential of a horse, became a family and community legend. ... Read more

Product Description
Among German crimes of the Second World War, the Nazi massacre of 642 men, women, and children at Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10, 1944, is one of the most notorious. On that Saturday afternoon, four days after the Allied landings in Normandy, SS troops encircled the town in the rolling farm country of the Limousin. Soldiers marched the men to nearby barns, lined them up, and shot them. They then locked the women and children in the church, shot them, and set the building and the rest of the town on fire. Residents who had been away for the day returned to a blackened scene of horror, carnage, and devastation.In 1946 the French State expropriated and preserved the entire ruins of Oradour. The forty acres of crumbling houses, farms and shops became France's village martyr, set up as a monument to French suffering under the German occupation. Today, the village is a tourist destination, complete with maps and guidebooks.In this first full-scale study of the destruction of Oradour and its remembrance over the half century since the war, Sarah Farmer investigates the prominence of the massacre in French understanding of the national experience under German domination. Through interviews with survivors and village officials, as well as extensive archival research, she pieces together a fascinating history of both a shattering event and its memorial afterlife.

Complemented by haunting photographs of the site, Farmer's eloquent dissection of France's national memory addresses the personal and private ways in which, through remembrance, people try to come to terms with enormous loss. Martyred Village will have implications for the study of the history and sociology of memory, testimonies about remembrances of war and the Holocaust, and postmodern concerns with the presentation of the past.Amazon.com Review
"Four days after the Allied landings in Normandy, SS troopsencircled the town of Oradour in the rolling farm country of theLimousin and rounded up its inhabitants. In the marketplace theydivided the men from the women and children. The men were marched offto barns nearby and shot. The soldiers locked the women and childrenin the church, shot them, and set the building (and the rest of thetown) on fire. Those residents of Oradour who had been away for theday, or had managed to escape the roundup, returned to a blackenedscene of horror, carnage, and devastation."

University of Iowa history professor Sarah Farmer's MartyredVillage is not, however, a book about that massacre, but about howthe French people have chosen to remember it in the years since. Howdid the massacre at Oradour become a symbol for the French experienceat the hands of the occupying German forces? What went into thedecision to create no monument to the dead but to allow the ruinedhusk of a village to remain as permanent testimony to what happened?And what do visitors to those ruins experience when they go theretoday? How have the residents of the "new town," adjacent to thescene, dealt with their position? These are some of the questions thatFarmer addresses in her precise examination of the relationshipbetween individual remembrances and the collective commemorations ofhistory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

HOW TO PRESERVE DESTRUCTION?
This is not a bad book by any means, but it is true that it is mostly not a story of a massacre.The Nazi destruction of the town of Oradour is covered at the start, but is clearly not the author's main interest.I wouldn't describe it as 'filler for historic preservationists' as one Amazon reviewer put it, but the event does take back stage.

The bulk of the book looks at what happened to the village after the killings, where it quickly became a symbol both for France and the world.Officials sought to freeze the town as it was in June of '44, with considerable success.But how do you preserve destruction?Decaying buildings and cars are not willing to remain stable for decades for our reflection.The struggle to make it so has lessons for preservationists everywhere.

Martyred Village is a worthy read as long as the reader is willing to ponder these issues.Anyone looking for a lesson on wartime politics or Nazi brutality in France should look elsewhere.

Mostly filler
This book has a sexy title, but little else to catch one's attention. There are a few pages on the Massascre itself and its significance in the War. The rest is all babbling filler for historic preservationists.

interesting and dramatic
sarah farmer has brought about the first difinitive book based on the martyred village. instead on focusing on the rather well known facts of the horrific massmacre, she gives great insight and back ground to the events leading up and following the massacre. as well as giving a personal insight to it, using her own photography, she gives a great narrative and all round factually based book which gives alot of hard to get material. for those who have visited the site or simply an enthusiast, you need not look further than this compelling, easy to read book.

Excellent presentation of history in rural Limousin, France.
Sarah Farmer deserves high praise for the clear narration and helpful explanations throughout "Martyred Village."Other historians ought emulate her writing. She first describes the slaughter of 10 June1944, SS troops killing the civilians of Oradour.She then places it inthe context of 20th century France. Only nine months after the massacre,Charles de Gaulle solemnly visits the ruins.Quickly, Oradour becomes asite of pilgrimage. Disruption comes in 1953, when twenty-one soldiers ofthe SS are brought to trial in Bordeaux.Fourteen are Frenchmen fromAlsace, thirteen conscripted by the Germans.Upon their conviction incourt, the Alsatians were freed by amnesty granted by the NationalAssembly, yielding to protests from Strasbourg. The author's accountcontinues to 1997. I appreciate the author's use of French and Germannames, ranks, and expressions. She clarifies the roles of the politicalparties. She treats well the topics of mourning, respect, memory,pilgrimage, and religion. As someone interested in electric transit, Ihope someday to learn more of the rural tram from Limoges through Oradour,whatever its corporate name. ... Read more

Product Description
The matriarch of one of the most important families in Texas history, Petra Vela Kenedy has remained a shadowy presence in the annals of South Texas. In this biography of Petra Vela Kenedy, the authors not only tell her story but also relate the history of South Texas through a woman's perspective. Utilizing previously unpublished letters, journals, photographs, and other primary materials, the authors reveal the intimate stories of the families who for years dominated governments, land acquisition, commerce, and border politics along the Rio Grande and across the Wild Horse Desert.

From Petra's early life in the landed ranchero society of northern Mexico, through her alliance with Luis Vidal--an officer in the Mexican army to whom she bore eight children--until her move to Brownsville after Vidal's death, Petra lived in Mexico. When she moved to Texas, having taken Vidal's name, she represented a link to the landed families of the region. Mifflin Kenedy, a steamboat captain who had first come to Texas during the Mexican War, married into her world, acquiring local respectability and stature when he took Petra as his wife.

The story of their life together encompasses war, the taming of a frontier, the blending of cultures, the origin of a ranching empire, and the establishment of a foundation and trust that still endure today, giving millions to Texas through charitable gifts. An attractive woman of business acumen, strong religious convictions, and intense family loyalty, Petra Vela Kenedy's influence through her husband and her children left a legacy whose exploration is long overdue. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Interesting Tx history!
This book definitely needs to be made into a mini-series! It has everything, and it's non-fiction!

Read the title--Petra's LEGACY
Sorry the person in their review thought this was a biography. No where is that stated in the book. The title is Petra's Legacy, and that is what it is about, her legacy.

Petra's Legacy
Excellent book! I do a lot of research in this area. It was great to read about the woman who facilitated Mifflin Kennedy's accomplishments.Fascinating character. I'd like to know more about her.

misleading
I bought this book thinking it was a biography of Petra Vela Kenedy.It sometimes mentions her in a chapter, but it is mentioned that she MUST have been happy, or she may have been SAD about some things, but the author is not using letters, diaries, etc. to document Petra's life. It is more of a history book, and should be considered as such. I dislike it very much and am sorry I spent the money to buy it.

History at it's Best
Petra's Legacy: The South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kenedy (Perspectives on South Texas)

Well documented history of the Kenedy family and South Texas.Excellent for research and a well told story of the beginning of the Sate of Texas. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more