bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Alamo
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
After Mexico finally acquired its independence from Spain in 1821, a rapid succession of governments sat in Mexico City. Unsure for a time just what government the country wanted, the rulers called themselves emperor, president, or dictator. In 1823, Emperor Iturbide agreed to commission an American, Moses Austin, to bring settlers from the United States into the northern Mexican province of Texas. Three hundred years of Spanish rule in Mexico had made barely a dent on the Texas landscape, for the Comanche Indians were masters of the southern Great Plains and any attempt to settle immigrants or establish missions in land under their sway proved futile. Thus, Moses Austin’s Americans were seen as a tool, a population that could serve as a buffer to the 4,000 Mexican citizens of the province of Texas. Little did Iturbide realize that in Moses Austin’s project lay the foundation of events that would deprive Mexico of half its land within a generation. The only two settlements of any size that existed in Texas in 1823 were San Antonio and Nacogdoches. Rather than place the 300 families that he brought to Texas in the path of the Comanches, Moses Austin’s son Stephen F. Austin (who took up his father’s tide of empresario upon the former’s untimely death in 1823) instead chose a point midway between the two Mexican towns to establish his colony between the Colorado and Brazos rivers. The “Old 300” were carefully chosen to be thrifty, hard-working farmers and ranchers whose dedication to property would guarantee their passivity, for Iturbide knew that no man of property willingly risked it by engaging in anti-government activities. He did not have to worry about it in the long run, however, for he was soon removed from office and replaced by a government dedicated to more liberal views. That government adopted a constitution in 1824 closely based on that of the United States, and the new immigrants gladly swore to uphold it as the price of the free 4,400 acres granted them for settling in Mexico. Uphold the constitution and become Catholics: those were the two conditions asked of them, with a tacit understanding that the latter would not be enforced.
Sevastopol
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The Russians’ morale. The war produced a return to power politics in Europe, ending a sustained period of peace. The horrific experience of the British, however, led to some reforms, especially in the realm of medical care, but the lessons were lost by the time of World War I. In that war, British forces in Mesopotamia would find themselves too far from home with too few supplies, resulting in disaster at Kut-al-Amara and a change of government in London, just as similar conditions around Sevastopol provoked in 1855.
Paris
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The dominant state of Germany in the mid-1800s was Prussia, which had risen to prominence mainly through its military. Ever since their defeat at the hands of Napoleon in 1806-1807 the Prussian military had dedicated itself to becoming the best in the world, both to return to the glory days of Frederick the Great and to assure that no such embarrassment as that at the hands of the French was ever repeated. They developed the world’s first General Staff, promoting excellence in all phases of military activiry. The system proved itself in 1866, when Prussia easily defeated Austria in a border dispute; that war seemed almost a tune-up for a return match with France. Under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Prussia gathered the lesser German states around her in a North German Confederation and aimed toward the unification of all Germanic principalities into one state. A war with France would serve as a focus for German nationalism. In France, Napoleon III had reigned as head of state since the Revolution of 1848. The Second Empire was a shadow of the First Empire established by Napoleon Bonaparte, but France hoped to maintain a major role in world affairs, even if she could not reach the heights of grandeur of the start of the nineteenth century. During the war between Prussia and Austria, Napoleon had given Prussia tacit support in return for generalized promises of reward. France had hoped to gain border lands along the western Thine after that war, but Bismarck refused to cede any such territory to non-Germans. He then stood in the way of a proposed French purchase of Luxembourg from Holland. When Napoleon hoped to expand at Belgium’s expense via heavy French investment in that country’s rail system, Bismarck reminded England of possible French control of the Channel coast and English opposition halted French aims. An argument over which country should provide a new monarch for the Spanish throne proved the last straw. Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck manipulated negotiations between the French ambassador and Prussia’s King Wilhelm I in such a way that the king appeared to have insulted France. That provoked French public opinion to the point of war and Napoleon, frustrated by Prussia at every turn, complied.
Plevna
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
When Abdulhamit II acceded to the Ottoman throne in 1876, he was faced immediately with a crisis in the northwestern portion of the empire, the Balkan provinces of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. With a large Christian population, the Slavs of the region had been agitating for independence from the weakening Ottoman Empire for some time, looking to Russia as the champion of a pan-Slavic movement. When Turkish troops put down a Serbian uprising in the town of Alexinatz, Russia began threatening intervention. Such a possibility, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Stanford Shaw and Ezel Kura! Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963).
Khartoum
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the 1870s Egypt was a possession of the Ottoman Empire and under the direction of Ismail, an official known as the khedive. He was a particularly corrupt individual who spent the country into such debt that the French and British sent in financial experts to take over the government and straighten out its tax-collecting and bill-paying. In order to support this action in 1880, the Europeans were obliged to send in troops as well, with the British providing the lion’s share. Foreigners in their government and patrolling their streets did not sit well with the Egyptians, and the British found it necessary to put down a revolt by an Egyptian officer named Arabi. Shortly afterward in the Sudan, the desert countryside south of Egypt, a religious leader rose to power to lead his followers against the infidels. This was Mohammed Ahmed, who called himself the Mahdi, or Messiah. The idea of a Muslim messiah had been fore-told for centuries and occasionally a leader arose to gather the faithful against non-Muslim enemies. Thus, Mohammed Ahmed was one in a series of Mahdis who came to power through either self-promotion or true religious fervor. In the Sudan the Mahdi started with a small group of followers and expanded his power through intimidation or by success against the British. The British called his followers dervishes. Properly, this is a term describing collections of Muslim Sufi mystics who often perform amazing feats while in a trance or the throes of religious ecstasy. The term seemed fitting to the British, for the Mahdi’s followers fought with a fanatical courage and no fear of death.
Singapore
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The Soviets praised the defenders, trying to gain a moral victory from the disaster. A “Defense of Sevastopol” medal was struck for the survivors and thirty-seven defenders were named Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation’s highest honor. It was hollow, for the Germans denied the Soviets their primary Black Sea naval base and placed themselves in a position to render amphibious support to the 1942 Caucasus offensive. In the end possession of the Crimea gained the Nazis little. Hitler’s obsession with it, however, caused him to commit too many important forces to the peninsula for its defense in 1944 when the Soviets returned. Still, holding the Crimea was vital for controlling the Black Sea, and Soviet possession of it would put them in range of Rumanian oil refineries vital to the German war effort. By May 1944, however, American bombers had already began attacking Rumania from Italy and Soviet advances farther north toward Odessa put them just as close to the oil fields as possession of the Crimea would have done. When the Russians returned, their capture of the peninsula proceeded much more quickly than the German operation did two years earlier.
Stalingrad
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
On 22 June 1941, three German army groups stormed across the Polish-Soviet border. Soviet Premier Josef Stalin had ignored warnings from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that the Nazis were about to violate the nonaggression treaty that they had negotiated with the Soviets in August 1939. Using the blitzkrieg tactics so effective in their conquests of Poland and France, the Nazis encircled and destroyed one Soviet army after another, killing thousands and taking tens of thousands prisoner. Like the Russian army facing Napoleon in 1812, they could stand and die or retreat and burn, hoping to slow the onslaught sufficiently to allow them to regroup later and make a stand. German Army Group North drove for Leningrad in order to secure the Baltic coast. Army Group Center directed its attack toward Moscow in order to deny the Soviets a central base of command. Army Group South pointed toward the Caucasus with the intent of seizing the Soviet oil fields. Possessing those fields to feed their own machines while denying supplies to the Soviet armies would be a virtual guarantee of victory.
Beirut
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the late 1960s the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was expelled from its base of operations in Jordan owing to a disagreement with the ruling party. The PLO’s leader, Yasir Arafat, moved his headquarters to Beirut, Lebanon, from which terrorist attacks were launched. As the Lebanese government and army were too weak to stop the PLO’s activities, Egyptian leader Gama! Abdel Nasser hosted a meeting in November 1969, which resulted in the Cairo Agreement. This pact basically gave the PLO free rein to operate from Lebanon while giving the Lebanese little guarantee of protection from Israeli reprisals to terrorism. In 1975-1976, a Christian-Muslim civil war in Lebanon resulted in the imposition of30,000 peacekeeping troops from Syria, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North and South Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates. Two-thirds of the force was Syrian. Over time, the Syrian military and PLO came to exercise primary control in Lebanon. In the southern part of the country, PLO artillery and rocket batteries shelled northern Israeli settlements and raided across the border.
Basra
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Israel did not find itself free from terrorist attacks in the wake of their invasion, so the main goal of the operation was a failure. Although the Israeli government of the early 1980s fought tenaciously against recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a legitimate political entity, by the late 1990s both sides had reached the point that direct negotiations over the right of political existence and nationhood were not only openly discussed, but (as of this writing) showing a glimmer of hope for success.
On Breathing
Authors: Smith W Stephen , Chipman Michael 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Breath is the essence of life. Images of breath as a life force permeate language, religion, poetry, philosophy, and science. The book of Genesis says that when God created man He breathed into him the “breath of life,” and man became a living soul. Many religions use a form of meditation in which a person focuses simply on breathing to find the center or essence of the soul on the path to enlightenment. To scream at birth, a baby must first take a breath. Breath is much more than just bringing air into the lungs and letting it out again—the breath of air is specifically and inextricably connected to our bodies. Breath links us to the source of life itself.
After the Ball (Gerry Mulligan / Maria Schneider)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Big bands were so closely associated with dancing during the Swing Era that their revival in the 1950s—by which time bop had produced a more meditative jazz listener and rock and roll had parted dancers from swing rhythms and each other—required something new in the way of justification, e.g., music qua music. Motivation no longer came from dancefloor customers or smiling baton-wielding bandleaders who couldn’t read music, but from the needs of orchestrators and musicians bred in modern jazz yet ardent in their belief that big is better. The transitional period was perhaps symbolized by the firing of Count Basie from the Camel Rock and Roll Party because, in Alan Freed’s immortal words, “musically [Count] has the greatest band in the country, but it isn’t a dance band.” Basie, Ellington, and Woody Herman achieved new musical plateaus as the ‘60s dawned, but dancers who stubbornly clung to each other in the face of twists and frugs still found safe haven in their plush ensembles. Although Herman openly disdained dancers, all three courted them, and generally offered the same “book,” or repertory, whether or not the audience was seated. Ellington had been composing listenerintensive music all along, and by 1940 many people were disinclined to dance even to his dance music for fear of missing something. Two decades later, the difference between Ellington’s dance and concert music was often illusory. I attended a 4-H Club show at which he played almost the same set for the concert half as for the dance half; the only difference was they removed the rows of folding chairs for the latter.
Redefining Dizzy (The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band / Lalo Schifrin)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Jazz repertory without messianic passion will be nothing more than the recycling of hits for monied subscribers—cf. the New York Philharmonic. But the movement is so new, the repertory so ambiguous, and the audience so impressionable that we’re unlikely to step into that bear trap any time soon. Almost everyone in the movement has a case to make, however much at odds it may be with commerce. When the ensemble that evolved into the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra performed Ellington’s long neglected Anatomy of a Murder, it proved a point: the audience came, heard, and was conquered, and the piece’s place in jazz discourse was redefined. Other examples abound. The Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra has been circumspect about the past, making its primary contribution in the commission of new works, including revisions of classic arrangements that needed no such help. Its “Trumpet Tribute” on February 23, however, made a compelling case for reconsideration of Gillespiana Suite, the five-movement concerto grosso Lalo Schifrin wrote for Dizzy Gillespie in 1960, and, by extension, of their entire collaboration. Schifrin conducted; music director Jon Faddis played the Gillespie role; and Frank Wess (flute) and Dick Oatts (alto) shared the responsibilities of Leo Wright, the only woodwind in the original performances. The orchestra’s reading of a difficult score was crisp and aggressive, at times sensationally evocative.
The Swinging Cowboy (Herb Jeffries)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
As the imposing six-foot-plus frame of Herb Jeffries emerged from the stairwell of the Village Vanguard shortly before his first set on Sunday night, the audience began to applaud, murmuring, “Eighty-three? Is that what 83 looks like?” With luck, yes: His wife Regina confirmed his birth date as September 24, 1911. Resplendent in a white dinner jacket and embroidered shirt, Jeffries acknowledged the reception, embraced numerous friends, parried remarks on the order of, “Remember when we met in the Sherman Hotel in 1939?” and took a seat to listen to his pickup quartet open the set with “In a Mellow Tone.” Reluctant to leave the audience for the stage, he finally sauntered to the mike, by which time the Vanguard was no longer a nightclub. It was proprietress Lorraine Gordon’s jazz salon. Even the paying customers—if there were any— must have felt they had lucked into a private party.
Beyond the Rudiments (The Best Jazz Records of 1995)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Now that the holiday cheer has dissipated, we may return to glum reality—a juncture I reach via a belated compulsion to conjure a 10-best list. This year I was surprised to discover that when I casually ticked off my favorite records, 10 or 12 seemed about right. Still, as I jostled my memory, the number of contenders doubled. Poring through the still segregated CDs of ‘95, I doubled the lot again—musing foggily, for example, over Peter Kowald’s solo bass album (Was Da Ist, FMP). Let’s give it a second spin. Just fine, though 70 minutes is a lot of bass. Try something new. Ahh, Dave Holland. Solo bass (Ones All, Intuition). Maybe a beer would help. No, it’s 10 A.M. All right then, just how lusty is Hamiet Bluiett’s Young Warrior, Old Warrior? Yet when it was over and the pile was down to about 25 discs, the pleasures of rediscovery were stifled by despair. The state of jazz, to coin a phrase, reminded me once again of those ‘70s ruminations that proclaimed a renaissance in short fiction on the grounds that so many could do it well. Jazz today boasts too many adequate players—a general level of musicianship good enough to impress academicians—and only a handful who promise a worthy future. Mid-decade has always been a peculiarly telling moment in jazz history: Armstrong landed in ‘25, swing in ‘35, bop in ‘45, hard bop in ‘55, new thing in ‘65, loft jazz in ‘75, and the neocons in ‘85. I’m not sure what ‘95 delivered beyond a none too subtle rebuke to those who would fetter this improvisational music with formal conventions.
The King (Benny Carter)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the early ‘90s, a woman from the Kennedy Center Honors called to pick my brain. The committee, she said, had decided that a jazz artist should be among the next group of honorees. At that time, Washington’s awards for lifetime achievement in the performing arts had only recently become the dull joke they remain today. Good intentions had been subverted by TV, so that genius itself was insufficient to warrant recognition. Additional criteria included popularity and/or tokenism: The winners’ circle required a woman, a black, a Jew or other ethnic, an unthreatening high-brow, a pop or film star. Everyone knew that. Yet I could hardly believe this woman’s candor. Peggy Lee had been suggested, she said. Was that a good idea? I told her Peggy Lee deserved all kinds of awards, but pointed out that she was a tangential figure in jazz and that genuinely great jazz figures ought to have priority. Such as? The obvious choice, I told her, was Benny Carter—a patriarchal but still vigorously active figure in his 80s whose achievement was beyond dispute.
On Their Own (Gerry Gibbs / Ravi Coltrane)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the early ‘60s, a young pianist named Alice McLeod worked with Terry Gibbs—she made her recorded debut on his 1963 album, Jewish Melodies in Jazztime (Verve). Gibbs introduced her to John Coltrane, whom she married. The Gibbses later produced a son, Gerry, who was followed a year later by the Coltranes’ second son, Ravi. The boys became fast friends, and when Gerry relocated from the West Coast to Queens in 1988, he found a nearby place for Ravi. Since that time, they have scratched at the New York scene, alone and together. Initially, each exploited familial ties: Gerry, a drummer, played with the Terry Gibbs– Buddy DeFranco Quintet; Ravi, a saxophonist, toured with Elvin Jones; both worked with Alice Coltrane. But they have long since made their own connections—Gibbs with John Campbell, Joe Henderson, and Joe Lovano; Coltrane with David Murray, Joanne Brackeen, Pete LaRoca, and Ryan Kisor. Now Coltrane is the featured guest on The Thrasher (Qwest), an impressive, at times almost giddily entertaining debut by the Gerry Gibbs Sextet.
The Original Dixieland One-Step (New Orleans Jazz)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The train hurtled from Texas to New Orleans through the steamiest night I’d ever experienced. The windows were sealed for some reason and nothing would alleviate the heat, not even stepping out on the platform and getting whipped by muggy breezes. The view, a few cabins and cows and horses on a flat expanse, was bleak and dull and fearsome. It was July 1963, and all that I and the other kids—a dozen 15-year-old New Yorkers touring the perimeters of the United States—knew of the deep South was fire hoses, attack dogs, and politicians who spoke, as Louis Armstrong said of Orval Faubus, like uneducated ploughboys. Sometime before morning I finally slept and was groggy when we pulled into New Orleans and were transferred to the bus that took us to our motel. Half-dozing as we pulled into the motel court, I peered out the window and saw a wall with three doors designated Men, Women, and Colored Men. On the train, I had read John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, which described Southern racism, and in New York I had watched news reports, but still—seeing this manifestation in person was chilling. I poked a friend, waking him to see the three doors, and we stared in disbelief.
Carterology (James Carter)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Atlantic’s simultaneous release of James Carter’s Chasin’ the Gypsy, a tribute to Django Reinhardt, and Layin’ in the Cut, an exercise in jazz funk, reminds me of a moment from my childhood when the same label released two LPs by Bobby Darin, At the Copa and For Teenagers Only. Darin was trying to cross over to a grown-up, moneyed audience while keeping the allowanced one in line. Carter, as he notes in a press release, wants, “in light of the millennium thing, to have one foot in the past, in a musical sense, and another moving forward in time.” So which is which? The way I hear it, the noisily diverting Layin’ in the Cut takes the limited idea of virtuoso noodling over an electric backbeat as far as it can go, while the creamy homage opens new vistas in the realm of reinterpretation. Admittedly, this realm is no longer a princely one. The jazz landscape is littered with pointless tributes and reinterpretations. What a relief to hack through all the Monk and Ellington salutes to get back to Monk and Ellington. Still, I don’t think Chasin’ the Gypsy will fade so quickly. It will make you want to hear the great Django—the better you know the originals, the more you can savor Carter’s heady adaptations. But loving the Romany legend, many of whose best sides have now been issued by Mosaic as The Complete Django Reinhardt and Quintet of the Hot Club of France Swing/HMV Sessions 1936–1948, will not satisfy the anticipation Carter creates for his own faithfully intense, high-calorie vision. Carter’s approach to the past, demonstrated less pointedly on earlier records, is not to turn backward on bended knee, but to go after it like a benevolent Ahab. He makes Django a 21st-century man.