bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Attacked
Authors: Starks Tricia
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashko's expansive anti-tobacco campaign to fight against the growing usage of tobacco. It notes the spread of the idea that smoking was a result of social conditions that influenced cessation. Propaganda attacked smoking with a socialist, collectivist agenda by spreading the message that tobacco was a great social evil with political, economic, cultural, and generational harms. Thus, the social danger of smoke drifted across divisions of space and time, public and private, and work and leisure. Moreover, anti-tobacco propagandists brought up the negative effects of smoking on productivity. Although Semashko failed in his biggest policy aim of stamping out tobacco production and trade, he did include cessation in his campaign to instill new behavioral norms and create a healthier society.
Treated
Authors: Starks Tricia
Published: May 2023

This chapter tackles the early provision of cessation therapy that set Soviet smoking policy apart from the rest of the globe. The Moscow Regional Health Department expanded its specialized dispensaries devoted to the treatment of abuse of alcohol and other intoxicants to aid smokers. However, the demand and influx of people quitting smoking overwhelmed the session, so authorities had to replace individual therapy with mass sessions. The chapter looks into the mixed legacy of Soviet cessation clinics, citing the collapse of the anti-tobacco propaganda after the changed leadership at Narkomzdrav. It considers social shaming and therapeutic suggestions to help people quit smoking.
Partnered
Authors: Starks Tricia
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the notion of space cigarettes and Soviet Malboros. Even without massive advertising campaigns, Marlboro was a symbol for Soviets of the good life and luxury and had tremendous brand recognition. The production of Marlboro cigarettes was not just a big achievement for the Soviet tobacco industry but also a significant event in the social life of the country. Moreover, tobacco giant Philip Morris' introduction of first Apollo-Soyuz and then Marlboro exposed inadequacies in Soviet agricultural productivity and industrial standards in an easily consumed commodity. The chapter details the transition in tastes from Russian-style papirosy to western-style cigarettes trundled forward.
The City of Brooklyn
Authors: Blumin Stuart M. , Altschuler Glenn C.
Published: May 2023

This chapter begins with a civic procession and church ceremony in celebration of the incorporation of the City of Brooklyn that was held on April 24, 1834. It highlights the symbolism of the procession itself, which left from Brooklyn's oldest church and moved toward the city's powerful new center of Yankee Protestantism. It also talks about Alden Spooner, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, who predicted that the new city charter would distinguish Brooklyn from the many villages that dot New York state. The chapter recounts 1825, when local citizens first assembled to petition for a city charter and Brooklyn was already the third largest locality in the state. The chapter points out how Brooklyn suffered from a weak civic culture, which was born of an excessive preoccupation with individual speculations and many commuters' identification with the big city across the river.
Acceptance, Resistance, Flight
Authors: Blumin Stuart M. , Altschuler Glenn C.
Published: May 2023

This chapter talks about two aging spinsters, Martha and Abby Brewster, and their middle-aged nephew who believed he was Teddy Roosevelt living in Brooklyn, who belonged to a world that no longer exists. Their inability to inhabit any other cities drives the comedy of Joseph Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace. It also mentions New York audiences that delighted in the Manhattan-born Kesselring's send-up of a once-pretentious moral suburb that were made considerably less imposing by the Spenalzos and Einsteins. The chapter discovers responses by Protestants to a Brooklyn that was different from the city their fathers, mothers, and spinster aunts inhabited only a generation earlier. It looks at the acceptance of Brooklyn's ethnic diversity and willingness to help smooth immigrants' transition to life in America with some appreciation for their cultural traditions.
Black France, White Europe
Authors: Marker Emily
Published: May 2023

This book illuminates the deeply entangled history of European integration and African decolonization. The book maps the horizons of belonging in postwar France as leaders contemplated the inclusion of France's old African empire in the new Europe-in-the-making. European integration intensified longstanding structural contradictions of French colonial rule in Africa: Would Black Africans and Black African Muslims be French? If so, would they then also be European? What would that mean for republican France and united Europe more broadly? The book examines these questions through the lens of youth, amid a surprising array of youth and education initiatives to stimulate imperial renewal and European integration from the ground up. It explores how education reforms and programs promoting solidarity between French and African youth collided with transnational efforts to make young people in Western Europe feel more European. The book connects a particular postwar vision for European unity to crucial decisions about what should be taught in African classrooms and how many scholarships to provide young Africans to study and train in France. That vision of Europe also informed French responses to African student activism for racial and religious equality, which ultimately turned many young francophone Africans away from France irrevocably. The book shows that the interconnected history of colonial and European youth initiatives is key to explaining why, despite efforts to strengthen ties with its African colonies in the 1940s and 1950s, France became more European during those years.
Encountering Diversity in France and “Eurafrica”
Authors: Marker Emily
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on African students in European France in the 1950s. It looks at the European institution building that reframed the urgency of educating Africans—whether in France or French Africa—as a crucial building block in the construction of the modernist, technocratic project of “Eurafrica.” The chapter begins by considering the process of brassage, a term that can mean either intermixing or incorporation. French and African leaders championed brassage as a way to overcome the legacies of racism and colonialism. Despite its modest size, the African student population in France in the 1950s has generated considerable scholarly interest. The extant literature focuses on how African students and youth leaders inserted themselves in the process of decolonization by founding their own networks of associations, publications, and syndicalist movements. African students grouped themselves along multiple axes, including territory and religion, but they also transcended those divisions in a federated Black African student union, the Fédération des étudiants d'Afrique noire en France (FEANF). The literature also details French responses to African student mobilizations, particularly the surveillance of African youth and censorship of their journals.
The Second Coming of Prometheus
Authors: Kiernan Vincent
Published: May 2023

This chapter chronicles the story of William Laurence as a science writer, doggedly covering scientific conferences and educating crusty editors about the realities of science news. It narrates how the job enabled Laurence to indulge his fascination with atomic science, which long predated his arrival at the Times. The chapter then recounts how Columbia University physicists led by John R. Dunning found that lithium atoms released energy when bombarded by neutrons in 1935, noting that Laurence and other science journalists immediately recognized that the phenomenon might have practical use. A vital step forward came in December 1938, when researchers Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, and Fritz Strassmann discovered the process of nuclear fission—splitting an atom. They fired neutrons at uranium, breaking apart some of the uranium atoms. The chapter also discusses another important development that happened a month later: how using a neutron to split one atom could release an additional neutron that could split an additional atom, with that process occurring again and again, producing a runaway release of energy that they called a “chain reaction.” Laurence realized that if the Nazis developed atomic technology, the chain reaction could hand them a tremendously powerful weapon. As the chapter argues, Laurence had hoped that his story would galvanize the US government into starting a vibrant atom-bomb project to compete effectively with the German A-bomb efforts.
Magnetic Current
Authors: Kiernan Vincent
Published: May 2023

This chapter elaborates on William Laurence's report about Austrian physicist Felix Ehrenhaft who had made a dramatic discovery in physics that promised an exciting new energy source: magnetism flows like a current, just as electricity does. The chapter mentions that Ehrenhaft's finding could be “one of the greatest revolutions in modern science” and could trigger “a new era of technology” such as new types of machines powered by magnetic current, Laurence pronounced. With the story, Laurence kicked off a months-long campaign to draw attention to Ehrenhaft's work even though mainstream physicists already had rejected the research as flawed. The chapter explores how Laurence's stories would trigger waves of media coverage by other journalists in the United States and abroad over the next months and years. The chapter recounts how Ehrenhaft's research had moved away from electrons to magnetism. He took the unconventional view that magnetic poles could exist in isolation from one another, in a form known as a monopole, and that these monopoles could flow in a current somewhat akin to electricity.
The Hell Bomb
Authors: Kiernan Vincent
Published: May 2023

This chapter begins by examining how the Soviet Union's first atomic test breathed new urgency into developing an American fusion bomb, to counter the perceived threat of an atomic-armed Soviet Union. It looks at how the controversy raged among US policy makers, weapons designers, and the military. In a series of columns starting January 1950, the chapter first recounts that columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop intimated that the H-bomb, which has been called the Hell Bomb because of its massive destructiveness, could require an industrial effort even more enormous than the Manhattan Project. It then explores how William Laurence moved to a more sensational approach to covering the hydrogen bomb, emphasizing its destructive power and environmental impact. The chapter stresses that Laurence held that the H-bomb would be incredibly more powerful than the A-bomb, so much so that its very existence might deter any use of such weapons. The chapter also elaborates on Laurence's story for the Times identifying cobalt as the bomb casing that could generate enough radioactive fallout to kill all life on Earth. As the chapter argues, controversies such as the one over the cobalt bomb pushed public fears and curiosity about atomic energy to new heights. Trying to satisfy that hunger, the chapter explores the development of documentary and training films about civil defense, and a radio documentary about nuclear technology.
Fragile Resonance
Authors: Danely Jason
Published: May 2023

This book describes the paths carers take as they make meaning of their experiences and find a sense of moral purpose to sustain them and guide their decisions. When a parent or partner becomes frail or disabled, often a family member assumes responsibility for their care. But family care is a physically and emotionally exhausting undertaking. Carers experience moments of profound connection as well as pain and grief. Carers ask themselves questions about the meaning of family, their entitlement to support, and their capacity to understand and sympathize with another person's pain. Based on research gathering stories of family carers in Japan and England, the author traces how care transforms individual sensibilities and the roles of cultural narratives and imagination in shaping these transformations, which persist even after the care recipient has died. Throughout, the book examines the implications of unpaid carer's experiences for challenging and enhancing social policies and institutions, highlighting innovative alternatives grounded in the practical ethics of care.
Fatigue and Endurance
Authors: Danely Jason
Published: May 2023

This chapter explains how fatigue may be considered part of care instead of being the factor that hinders it. It cites that fatigue was the beginning of embodying the identity of a carer. Moreover, endurance, perseverance, and fatigue enhanced sympathetic responsiveness that open up possibilities for being with the cared-for and for reencountering them with vulnerability and compassion. Moreover, different cultural responses to fatigue unveil the extent to which notions of bodily integrity and vulnerability, fatigue, and endurance guide ethical decisions regarding care. The chapter considers how caring extends through the transformation of the body and its attunements before reshaping practices of attention and an emotional feel for the world.
Dangerous Compassion
Authors: Danely Jason
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on the notion of dangerous compassion, which described the fragility of the resonance of empathetic imagination and attunement between the carer and the cared-for. It references narratives wherein carers inhabit dangerous compassion. Moreover, the resonance exposes people's fragility, which makes the situation more dangerous even if it does simultaneously offer quiet liberation. Japanese carers fell into the familiar reference of cultural models and practices of cultivating and embodying compassion through physical and exertion. On the other hand, English carers were more hesitant about the possibility of resonance, especially since their general orientation towards care emphasized the maintenance of autonomy.
Counter-worlds of Care
Authors: Danely Jason
Published: May 2023

This chapter looks into the ways narrative resonance shapes carers' stories. It explains the dangers of compassion because it decenters the self and the infinite responsibility and uncertainty of care sometimes result in a deep state of hopelessness that violence could be viewed as merciful. In correlation to English carers, the disposition of practicing care as charity meant they made efforts to keep dangerous feelings away from the care encounter and depersonalize care in ways that would make it easier to transition to paid professional care. The chapter also highlights the role of faith in the practice of care in Japan. It explains how counter-worlds tended to reflect a sense of invisible connection that was revealed and sustained by care.
Conclusion
Authors: Danely Jason
Published: May 2023

This concluding chapter reflects on the concept of care. It highlights how family care can simultaneously be both devastating and transformative while referring to the compassion of Japanese carers. The notion of compassion, charity, justice, and love helps people identify and realize ways to care that challenge state- and market-driven divisions in Japan and England. The chapter cites that anthropology of care covered the ordinary, repetitive, ethical work of endurance, while also exploring the transcendent in ritual and heterotopic counter-worlds. It explains how resonance occurs as an openness to cultural and historical patterns in a sense of becoming more human. While frailty and death remain and dependence on vulnerability will leave people hurt, resonance amongst carers' narratives brings hope.
Philosophy of the Name
Authors: Bulgakov Sergii
Published: May 2023

This is the first English translation of this book. Sergii Bulgakov (1871–1944) wrote the book in response to a theological controversy that erupted in Russia just before the outbreak of World War I. Bulgakov developed a philosophy of language that aimed to justify the truthfulness of the statement “the Name of God is God himself,” a claim provoking debate on the meaning of names, and the Name of God in particular. The book investigates the nature of words and human language, considers grammar and parts of speech, and concludes with an exposition on the Name of God. Name-glorifying, a spiritual movement connected with the Orthodox practice of the Jesus Prayer, was initially censured by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the controversy raised profound questions that continue to vex ecclesiastical authorities and theologians today. The controversy exposed a vital question concerning the ability of human language to express experiences of the Divine truthfully and authentically. The book examines the idea that humans do not create words, rather, objects speak their word to human beings, and words are the incarnation of thought in a sonic body conveying meaning. The book offers a philosophy of language for contemporary theologians of all confessions who wrestle with the issue of language and God. It is a persuasive apologia for the mysterious power of words and an appeal to make use of words responsibly not only when speaking about God but equally when communicating with others.
What Is a Word?
Authors: Bulgakov Sergii
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the essence of words, which are the medium for human cognition. A word is the combination of the sounds of the voice and noises drawn out by our organs of speech, and it can be effectively pronounced or only indicated through a letter or by some other means, for example, by a gesture. This sonic mass is the body of a word, soma. Significance, meaning, is the necessary content of a word, and without this it will cease to be a word. Thus, words, as the proto-element of thought and speech, are bearers of thought, they express an idea, as some quality of being, simple and not further reducible. The chapter then considers the idea of the premeditated invention of language.
Speech and Word
Authors: Bulgakov Sergii
Published: May 2023

This chapter begins by examining the parts of speech, identifying nouns, verbs, and pronouns. In grammar, parts of speech and parts of a sentence are usually differentiated, where the study of the first concerns etymology, and study of the second, syntax. These divisions of course are conventional and “grammatical,” and they coincide in many points: knowledge of the parts of speech is indispensable for understanding the structure of a sentence, and the reverse, the definition of parts of speech is not even possible outside a sentence. The distinction between a noun and a verb, between subject and predicate qualities, is not some invention that could just as well not have existed in a language. It flows out of the ontology of speech. The chapter then looks at the substantive noun, which determines the content of speech. It also explores the grammatical sentence.
Rupture
Authors: Hinton Alexander Laban
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on defense questioning, analyzing how the defense tried to discredit the author's testimony and anthropological research as it implicated Nuon Chea in genocide. The defense also sought to assert an alternative narrative placing Vietnam at the center of the violence instead of Nuon Chea and the Khmer Rouge leadership. Nuon Chea's defense lawyers used a legal strategy of “rupture,” which had been popularized by the defense lawyer Jacques Vergès. The chapter describes Vergès, who is nicknamed “the Devil's Advocate” for his work defending notorious clients ranging from terrorist Carlos the Jackal to the Nazi Klaus Barbie. The highly politicized Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia was particularly vulnerable due to allegations of corruption, political interference, and a lack of judicial independence on the part of the Cambodian judges and legal personnel.
Transylvania in the World-System
Authors: Parvulescu Anca , Boatcă Manuela
Published: May 2023

This chapter looks into the integration of Transylvania into a structurally unequal capitalist world economy. The notion of inter-imperiality highlights the fact that the agent of capitalist integration is a series of imperial and state formations, alongside a variety of other heterogeneous actors, such as religious institutions. The chapter elaborates on the four modalities of capitalist integration. It also explores antisemitism on the peripheries of European empires. Meanwhile, the commodification of literature coincides with the fact that literature can reflect the land question and its relationship to integration into the capitalist world system. For example, many components of Liviu Rebreanu's novel are straightforwardly historical, and the novel, in turn, had a palpable effect on the real world.
Counting and Discounting Languages
Authors: Parvulescu Anca , Boatcă Manuela
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores a linguistic inter-imperiality case study that involves the conceptualization of Transylvanian interglottism. It references Liviu Rebreanu's novel Ion to see interglottism at work. Interglottism is defined as a mode of connecting the linguistic with both the political, social, and economic imperial order and its contestation. Moreover, the way creolization is deployed accounts for the significant differences between coloniality and inter-imperiality. The polyglottism found in Rebreanu's text reflects inter-imperial conflicts, inequalities, and hierarchies. The chapter compares Rebreanu's notion of interglottism being affected by the linguistic afterlife of Transylvania's inter-imperiality against Hugó Meltzl's advocacy of polyglottism that is intertwined with an unusual mix of both anti-nationalism and anti-cosmopolitanism.
Feminist Whims
Authors: Parvulescu Anca , Boatcă Manuela
Published: May 2023

This chapter elaborates on women's education under the concept of an inter-imperial framework and the engagement of modernism. It notes how education stratifies the world system, creating inequality, especially among women and racialized populations. Transylvanian women's educational aspirations were caught between competing nationalisms responding to Transylvania's inter-imperial condition. The chapter highlights how women's movements are often born with a strong nationalist flavor and how women's struggles are often delayed, redirected, or belittled. Romanian Transylvanian feminism reacted to Austro-Hungarian imperial policies, other Transylvanian nationalisms, and other feminist nationalisms aligned with their interpretations of inter-imperial history. The chapter also looks into women's writing featuring nationalism and cosmopolitanism.
Resource Frictions
Authors: Morris Julia Caroline
Published: May 2023

This chapter highlights global discourses of risk impacted on some Nauruans' perceptions of refugees, and vice versa, on refugees' views of Nauruans. It focuses on the uneasy relations that developed between local residents and migrants from Nauru's latest extractive project. Forcibly combining a range of people from different backgrounds on an island sparked extreme social conflicts, as did discursive representations. The chapter looks at tensions that were embedded in the rhetorical drive of the Australian government's deterrence policy and global media imaginaries of Nauru as an inhospitable environment and of the asylum seeker and refugee as threat. It points out resource frictions that were entangled in the activist representations that looked to contest the offshore operations.
Bitter Money
Authors: Morris Julia Caroline
Published: May 2023

This chapter traces some of the consequential impacts of Nauru's refugee industry “boom” period, questioning the impending post-refugee moment that the island is quickly approaching. The figure of the refugee remains a crucial part of Nauru's local economy, feeding the Australian border-spectacle imaginary in the process. The chapter assesses how budget allocations to Nauru are winding down in a country, and region, that finds itself in a moment of gradual transition. The chapter then considers the ways that residents in Nauru are creating new economic possibilities, some of which hold serious environmental consequences for local islanders. It provides a nuanced portrayal of the ways that people in Nauru deal with the aftereffects of the refugee industry and continue to hold concerns for the sustainability of their community.
The Wolf King
Authors: Balbale Abigail Krasner
Published: May 2023

This book explores how political power was conceptualized, constructed, and wielded in twelfth-century al-Andalus, focusing on the eventful reign of Muhammad ibn Sad ibn Ahmad ibn Mardanīsh (r. 1147–1172). Celebrated in Castilian and Latin sources as El Rey Lobo/Rex Lupus and denigrated by Almohad and later Arabic sources as irreligious and disloyal to fellow Muslims because he fought the Almohads and served as vassal to the Castilians, Ibn Mardanīsh ruled a kingdom that at its peak constituted nearly half of al-Andalus and served as an important buffer between the Almohads and the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Through a close examination of contemporary sources across the region, the book shows that Ibn Mardanīsh's short-lived dynasty was actually an attempt to integrate al-Andalus more closely with the Islamic East—particularly the Abbasid caliphate. At stake in his battles against the Almohads was the very idea of the caliphate in this period, as well as who could define righteous religious authority. The book makes effective use of chronicles, chancery documents, poetry, architecture, coinage, and artifacts to uncover how Ibn Mardanīsh adapted language and cultural forms from around the Islamic world to assert and consolidate power—and then tracks how these strategies, and the memory of Ibn Mardanīsh more generally, influenced expressions of kingship in subsequent periods.
Vassals, Traders, and Kings
Authors: Balbale Abigail Krasner
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines Ibn Mardanīsh's relationships with Christian kings and traders in the context of the western Mediterranean. It surveys Ibn Mardanīsh's treatment in Christian chronicles and treaties and discusses his name in Latin and Castilian sources that often refer to him as Rex Lupus or Rey Lobo, the Wolf King. Archival records indicate that Ibn Mardanīsh traveled regularly to Toledo, home to the child-king Alfonso VIII, wherein he intervened in debates on behalf of the Castro family. The chapter analyzes Ibn Mardanīsh's own treaties, which established permanent trade delegations for Genoese and Pisan traders in Almería and his other ports, that demonstrate his integration in the cultural, political, and economic system of the broader western Mediterranean. It argues that Alfonso's dinars are not just modeled on Ibn Mardanīsh's gold coins but constitute an attempt to present the Castilian king as the inheritor of Ibn Mardanīsh's anti-Almohad legacy.
The Reconquista, a Lost Paradise, and Other Teleologies
Authors: Balbale Abigail Krasner
Published: May 2023

This chapter looks at how Arabic narratives about Ibn Mardanīsh shifted to conform to teleological explanations for the decline of al-Andalus. It cites contemporary twelfth-century sources that presented Ibn Mardanīsh as rebellious, impious, and too close to Christians, but nevertheless courageous and skilled on the battlefield. It also concentrates on two historical moments: the fourteenth century, when Ibn al-Khaṭīb depict Ibn Mardanīsh as Christianized, and the seventeenth century, when al-Maqqarī presented Ibn Mardanīsh as a proximate cause for the fall of al-Andalus. The chapter contends that al-Maqqarī's perception of Ibn Mardanīsh and of al-Andalus was inspired by contemporary Christian narratives of the conquest of al-Andalus as a unified and providential process. The chapter assesses how nineteenth-and twentieth-century historians used the Arabic chronicles about Ibn Mardanīsh to construct visions of al-Andalus that could support diverse ideological goals.
Germany and World War I
Authors: Bartoletti Andrea
Published: May 2023

This chapter shows that the encirclement of Germany by France and Russia led to the outbreak of World War I (1914–1918). After analyzing Otto von Bismarck's and Wilhelm II's attempts to break the “deadly embrace” by splitting the Franco-Russian alliance, the chapter identifies the Russian construction of strategic railroads in Poland as the increase of the invasion ability that led to the escalation of the July crisis. It also explores the logic of intervention of the other great powers after Germany declared war on Russia. The chapter underlines the shortcomings of existing explanations of the outbreak of World War I. It predicts that China will face encirclement by two great powers, Russia and India, and that its attempts to prevent them from acquiring the operational capabilities to launch a simultaneous attack will trigger a double security dilemma and create the conditions for escalation to a major war.
Agents of Subversion
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

In the winter of 1952, at the height of the Korean War, the CIA flew a covert mission into China to pick up an agent. Trained on a remote Pacific island, the agent belonged to an obscure anti-communist group known as the Third Force based out of Hong Kong. The exfiltration would fail disastrously, and one of the Americans on the mission, a recent Yale graduate named John T. Downey, ended up a prisoner of Mao Zedong's government for the next twenty years. Unraveling the truth behind decades of Cold War intrigue, this book documents the damage that this hidden foreign policy did to American political life. The US government kept the public in the dark about decades of covert activity directed against China, while Downey languished in a Beijing prison and his mother lobbied desperately for his release. Mining little-known Chinese sources, the book sheds new light on Mao's campaigns to eliminate counterrevolutionaries and how the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party used captive spies in diplomacy with the West. The book demonstrates both how the Chinese Communist regime used the fear of special agents to tighten its grip on society and why intellectuals in Cold War America presciently worried that subversion abroad could lead to repression at home.
Prologue
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter introduces the relationship between the people of the United States and China during an extended period of profound hostility, suspicion, and ignorance captured by the “Cold War.” The chapter highlights how unreasonable hopes and irrational fears of subversion aggravated destructive tendencies toward political repression in both nations. The forces of subversion and repression link US and Chinese political, intelligence, and diplomatic history during the 1950s and 1960s in complex and disturbing ways. The chapter reviews the histories of early Cold War America and high socialist China, which presented unexpected and unnerving parallels, despite their obvious and profound differences. It covers voices speaking out against subversion, repression, and secrecy and are active in the early Cold War.
The Loss of China
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

The chapter tells the backstory of US–China relations coming out of World War II and through the Chinese Civil War. It combines diplomatic, intelligence, and intellectual history to reconstruct the early Cold War conditions of possibility for the covert initiative that ultimately put Jack Downey on a plane into Manchuria. It begins with a jarring experience that Americans came to describe as “The Loss of China.” The chapter recounts the high point of signing an alliance days after Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the relationship to a nadir of mutual disillusionment as Chiang Kai-shek's demoralized National Army was challenged by Mao Zedong's disciplined People's Liberation Army. After the failure of a year-long mediation by George Marshall, Mao took the mainland, Chiang fled to Taiwan, and the Third Force regrouped in Hong Kong.
The Third Force
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter details how the Korean War strengthened American resolve to resist Mao Zedong. It highlights the reservations about Chiang Kai-shek that were not easily shed in the space created by contradictions as renewed attention fell on the Third Force. Variations on the idea of a Third Force were in the air during the early years of the Cold War, found in the speeches of the French socialist Léon Blum, the novels of the British espionage writer Graham Greene, and the books of the American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The chapter considers the Third Force as an idea with a long history in twentieth-century Chinese politics that was best exemplified by the trials and tribulations of Carsun Chang, a philosopher-politician. Carsun Chang made a big pitch for US support in his book Third Force in China.
Exfiltration
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter narrates the action-adventure story of John Downey and Richard Fecteau's mission into Manchuria in November 1952. It looks at sources of the People's Republic of China that reveal Mao Zedong's personal comment on the capture of Downey and Fecteau and the need to enhance antisubversion efforts. It also mentions president-elect Dwight Eisenhower's campaign promise to go to Korea, which wAs considered the first presidential trip to Asia since the final leg of Ulysses Grant's postpresidency world tour in 1879. The chapter details that President Eisenhower's voyage to Korea would be carried out in strict secrecy and would be known as a prelude to the countless covert operations of the Eisenhower era. In a curious case of synchronicity, as the presidential plane left in stealth for Korea, another airplane of Americans left Korea bound for Communist China.
Epilogue
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter reviews the journey that extends from the Chinese Civil War until the US–China rapprochement from, which was denoted as the Cold War between the United States and China. It explores the standard meaning of “Cold War,” which refers to the geopolitical and ideological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. It also talks about how the Cold War took the form of a secondary competition between Washington and Beijing, who positioned themselves precariously amid the explosive nationalist leaders, movements, and peoples of postcolonial Asia. The chapter considers the Sino-American Cold War as hotter than the Soviet–American one, as Washington and Moscow were by the logic of mutually assured destruction based on massive nuclear arsenals pointed at each other's heartland. The fears of subversion and tendencies toward repression in late Maoist China and in Nixonian America would not be extinguished, despite the breakthrough in bilateral relations.
Introduction
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter provides a background on how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) narrowly escaped the fate of being severely strained, split, and even destroyed. It tells a story that revolves around the rise and fall of three kinds of missiles: SS-20 ballistic missiles, Pershing II ballistic missiles, and Gryphon ground-launched cruise missiles. The three missiles, which came to be known as Euromissiles, targeted the great cities of Europe on both sides of the divided continent. The chapter puts policymakers in conversation with protestors to show how and why the Euromissiles mattered. It charts how protestors, policymakers, and pundits tried to make sense of what security looked like in an age defined by nuclear weapons and Cold War competition.
Moons and Green Cheese
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the connections between arms control and public diplomacy as the United States and the Soviet Union both tried to win hearts and minds in Western Europe. The zero option offered to cancel the Gryphon and Pershing II deployments and allowed the Soviet Union to remove its own medium-range systems. It points out how arms control negotiations were virtually guaranteed to be seen as a cynical ploy for public support and a fig leaf to cover the deployments. The chapter discusses the bargaining table between the United States and the Soviet Union that remained even after formal negotiations to limit the intermediate-range nuclear forces opened in November 1981. For both the United States and the Soviet Union, the conduct of private arms control negotiations could not be separated from the broader contours of their public diplomacy.
One Night
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the night of the author's child's death and the funeral services held thereafter. It provides a quick snapshot of a harrowing night in 2012 when a gunshot was heard inside the house, the seventeen-year-old Jack O'Bannon Gallagher having committed suicide then. Afterward, the chapter narrates the highlights of the memorial services and discusses what Jack had been like when he was alive. It notes the large amount of people who came to pay their respects for the departed—there were so many people, in fact, that many had to wait in line to get inside the building. All this contributed to an incredibly heightened emotional experience for the author, who now had to endure grief without knowing where to begin. A eulogy delivered by Jack's sister Railey as well as a remembrance concert held afterward are also included.
Thoughts You Have While at Your Son’s Funeral
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter takes a look at Jack's childhood from the moment of his birth, providing snapshots of various memories throughout the years of his brief life. Jack was, contrary to the nihilistic teenager later in life, a happy boy. He was also quite the colorful character, with a multitude of interests and friends gathered over the years. The chapter reminisces on his changing relationship with his mother as well, as he went from the perpetually smiling “Happy Jack” as a toddler to what the author calls “that embarrassed-but-still-happy-to-be-with-me stage.” The writer also laments that they had never truly taken the time to get to know Jack's friends, which meant that a significant part of her son will always be out of her reach.
Running Away
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter recounts the author's experiences of running away from her grief by traveling to the Falkland Islands. It describes the need to be away from home and the constant reminders it brings of the night of the suicide and of the ensuing loss. The Falklands, then, represents an escape, where no one knows of the events of that fateful night and the author can immerse herself in a different setting, even as she also remarks on the fact that her family does not understand this need to escape. Despite this, however, the Falklands proved to contain its own memories of grief. As it turns out, the Falkland Islands had been embroiled in a conflict between the British and the Argentines in 1982, resulting in a lingering sense of grief, loss, and regret among the Falkland Islanders.
Seeking Permission from Donald Hall
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter considers the act of seeking permission. It describes a book by Donald Hall, Life Work, written in 1994. In the book, he looked at what his family did for work at their farmhouse since the 1840s, from farming to running a dairy to delivering milk to doing office work to writing poetry. He looked at the men and the women who dwelled in that farmhouse and considered what work meant to them and to him. The chapter also explores the way Hall handled his grief in a foreword to the 2005 edition of his book. Here, the author concludes that she was seeking Hall's permission to be grief-stricken, leading to a revelation that she was seeking permission to grieve from the people around her, if not from within herself.
Guns in the Attic
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter tries to make sense of the presence of guns in the house even four years after Jack's death. It explores how the suicide had been premeditated, walking through the steps of Jack's final moments. There is also an extended passage about deer hunting and the deer hunting culture in rural central New York, in the neighborhood where the author lives. The author's husband, the chapter notes, is a hunter as well—one who used to hunt with a peregrine falcon named Macduff. Guns, of course, featured prominently in such activities, which the chapter surmises is how, in a moment of weakness, Jack had seized upon the opportunity to get back at his parents permanently. Overall, the chapter is an exploration of guilt and the presence of guns in one's life as it is a way for the author to make sense of the latter and the tragedy it had led to.
The People Who Stayed
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter describes the juxtaposition between the past and the present as seen through Sunday drives through Skaneateles, a village about thirty-five miles away that sits on the northern end of one of the smaller Finger Lakes. It discusses the history of the area, as well as its propensity for containing haunts by famous people from U.S. history, including John D. Rockefeller, Millard Filmore, Brigham Young, and John Smith. Aside from the area's history, the chapter also dives into the more intimate family and personal history of the author and the Sunday drives taken through this part of the state. In doing so, the chapter discusses “the people who stayed.” That is, those who experience the landscape of past and present, constantly traveling through one into the other.
Why I Stay
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter takes a look at how the author's attempts to build a case against everyone who has ever interacted with Jack and who could have spotted his problems before they led to suicide. It begins with a deep dive into medical malpractice suits and the settlement amounts. Then the chapter focuses on particular individuals in Jack's life, beginning with an elementary school teacher who had made Jack sit in the hall rather than deal with him half the time. It then turns to Jack's friends, who were aware that he had been abusing drugs but were unable to do anything about it. Next to be judged were Jack's therapist and other mental health professionals who failed to stop him from committing that fatal act. But last of all, the author reserves the harshest judgments for herself and Jack's father, both of whom had failed to realize the extent of Jack's problems.
The Ways in Which I Fall
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the sensation of falling. Here, the chapter recounts the persistent fear/desire to fall which had been exacerbated since the vertigo, and how despite this the author insisted on traveling anyway. It details a brief vacation at an Airbnb in Maine during the Coronavirus pandemic as well as childhoods spent playing in a creek and on top of thirty-foot waterfalls. The chapter explores more recent trips to Iceland, the Grand Canyon, and even taking the family dog out for a walk which trigger this sensation of falling time and again, before examining the emotions all this leads to. It concludes that falling had become synonymous with failing, particularly the failure to prevent Jack's death.
Let Me Be Frank
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses a rather unorthodox support group, which is here described as being “made up of people who were dead or fictional.” During the first year of Jack's death the author had found companions and comfort in television shows and how she was sucked into their worlds for a time. The first of these shows was Battlestar Galactica, though the author eventually moved on to British detective shows such as Spooks, Inspector Lynely, and so on. Detective shows from other countries were also discussed. In some ways, such police procedurals offered the author a way of making sense of the death of her son, with the detective shows serving as a sort of template. Additionally, other members of this “virtual support group” include writing which focused on grief and sorrow, mostly nonfiction or poetry.
The Gentle Arts
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores “rage-crafting,” the author's term for plunging into projects such as knitting and needlepoint. It examines why the author embarks on such projects despite their less-than-successful results. It discusses “Walton Family Christmases,” when her children receive humble, handmade, and often ill-fitting gifts—results of rage-crafting throughout the years. The chapter concludes that rage-crafting occurs as a result of “technical and psychological problems,” which might take years to untangle. Indeed, many of the results appear to stem from the author's emotional state at various points of her life, brought forth in mismatched scarves and mittens all made to clothe a family but only succeed in communicating something “important and unnamable.”
Merry Effing Christmas
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses feelings of abandonment over Christmas. It begins with the author recounting the life of her estranged father, whom she and her sister were visiting prior to the holidays at his nursing home. The chapter looks at how her father had abandoned her family when she was a teenager, how he had since abandoned a few other wives, and how the author had tried to look after him when none of her siblings would. It depicts the feelings of abandonment the author feels when her elderly father can no longer recognize her. It also explores the feelings of abandonment she felt toward her husband, who planned a trip to search for the ivory-billed woodpecker during Jack's death anniversary the following year and who furthermore refused to be at home during that time.
Dreamworld
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter describes two dreams about Jack. The first one involves encountering a happier, friendlier version of Jack wherever the author turns. She longs to be with him, and interprets this dream as a premonition of her own death. The other dream takes place in a polo arena with Jack's friends as well as those of his sister Clara. Of note is Jack's girlfriend Isabel, whose appearance has changed from how the author had once recognized her. In the midst of the crowd the author sees Jack, also changed, as he mysteriously informs his mother that he has “ways” of being present and that she should tell no one that he is there.
Going to the Spiritualist Camp
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores the author's encounters with spiritualism. It starts by describing the spiritualist camp located on the outskirts of the author's hometown. While the camp did not hold much interest to the author when she was young, she became drawn to it as an adult long before Jack's death. The chapter next turns to the author's visits to Lily Dale in Western New York—one of the largest spiritualist camps in the world. Here, the author had signed up for a workshop on mediumship, but proved a failure at contacting the spirit world. She even describes herself as a class failure. She discusses further encounters with Lily Dale as well as some messages from a few of the more talented mediums, later on realizing that she had been given a message from Jack but had failed to recognize it at the time.
Called Back
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter is about the author's stay in a large one-room cottage in Maine as artist-in-residence at Hog Island Audubon Camp. The cottage was known as Bingham Cottage, and was built by Mabel Loomis Todd. Mabel was the lover of Austin Dickinson—the brother of poet Emily Dickinson—for the last thirteen years of his life. The author considers this knowledge in light of old family legends that she was distantly related to the famous poet on her father's side. Whether or not that is really the case, the author does feel a strong affinity for the poet and her rich inner life. From here, the chapter considers family legacies as she ruminates on what her parents had been like, in both life and death.