Epic Story Research Articles

Preventing the repetition: Or, what Los Angeles' experience in water management can teach Atlanta about urban water disputes

Southern California's water history is an epic story with larger‐than‐life characters and ambitions and abundant hubris. Students of water policy might reasonably ask: Does this story, while unique to greater Los Angeles, hold lessons for other metropolises experiencing water conflict caused by explosive growth? We examine this question by considering similarities between the challenges facing Atlanta, Georgia, one of the nation's fastest growing cities in the 21st century, with those of Los Angeles. We focus on junctures where important decisions regarding water were made and how these decisions continue to challenge both cities' futures. Atlanta's financial, cultural, and environmental imprint on its surrounding region share remarkable similarities with Los Angeles' influence trajectory: it is the largest city in the southeast, a principal transportation and business hub, and it is embroiled in water conflict with nearby communities and adjoining states.

Capitol Men: the Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen

Capitol Men: the Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen

Life in cold blood

Life in Cold Blood offers a rare glimpse into the peculiar world of amphibians and reptiles, the first vertebrate creatures to venture forth from the primeval waters millions of years ago, yet which today include species that are the most at risk of extinction. Join acclaimed naturalist Sir David Attenborough as he travels to the far corners of the Earth to tell the epic story of these animals in this companion to the television series. Discover the secrets of their astounding success--and the profound implications of their uncertain future. Amphibians and reptiles once ruled the planet, and their descendants exhibit some of the most colorful variety and astounding behavior known to the animal kingdom. What are the origins of these creatures? How have they transformed themselves into the beautiful and bizarre forms found today? In this gorgeously illustrated book, Attenborough gets up close and personal with the living descendants of the first vertebrates ever to colonize the land, and through them traces the fascinating history of their pioneering ancestors. He explains the ways amphibians and reptiles have changed little from their prehistoric forebears while also demonstrating how they have adapted and evolved into diverse new forms, some of them beyond our wildest imaginings. And Attenborough raises awareness of the threats global warming and other man-made environmental changes pose to many of these creatures. Life in Cold Blood inspires a genuine sense of wonder about amphibians and reptiles and the marvels of the natural world around us.

The Iliad: A Song of Political Protest**

Since protest poetry is considered a voice on behalf of victims of war and the oppressed, an epic poem such as the Iliad, which appears to celebrate a culture of male violence, is an unlikely example of protest poetry. This epic story of Achilles, however, brings to the forefront several themes of protest poetry: challenge to authority, anger at injustice, and confrontation with the fragility of the human condition. Even the form of epic as a product of oral culture reflects traditional protest song. Specifically, this article argues that revisiting the themes of protest in the Iliad provides insights into why human beings protest, connects political poetry to philosophic questions, and highlights the human being as a perennial protester who must face the inevitable choice of safety or perilous political action.

River Walk: The Epic Story of San Antonio's River (review)

2??8Book Reviews359 no endnotes or bibliography). Salinas was a member of die earliest rodeo cowboy associations (die Cowboys Turtie Association and die Rodeo Cowboys Association). At die height of the Great Depression, he embarked on a career as a professional calfroper on die national rodeo circuit. Salinas's considerable skills (not to mention diose ofhis famous equestrian partners La India and Honey Boy) earned him a place at die Championship Rodeo at Madison Square Garden for ten consecutive years (1936-1946). Exempted from service in World War II because he was a stock raiser, Salinas remained on the rodeo circuit, taking a train to New York City to compete against die best cowboys die nation had to offer. After a successful ten-year career on die circuit (where he earned an average ofabout$30,000 ayear), he quitperforming as a professional but remained active on the local rodeo scene in South Texas. Palacios's primary objective in writing die book is to shine a light on the largerthan -life personality and career ofhis TíoJuan. Broader social issues, consequendy, are broached only in passing. Salinas attributed a good part of his national prominence to his Hispanic heritage, as people from across the country came to witness a Mexican rodeo cowboy competing for top honors. Although he was die subject ofoccasional ridicule by racially insensitive fans, Salinas never experienced racism from his fellow rodeo cowboys. WhileJuan Salinas's rodeo adventures provide die book's primary focus, Palacios also examines the labor-intensive life ofreal South Texas cowboys. Readers unfamiliar widi the workings ofa catde ranch are in for a real eye-opener when diey peruse some ofdie latter chapters on Texas catde ranching at mid-century. A person had to be incredibly tough and resilient to eke out a living mending fences, locating strays, doctoring sick animals, and moving catde from one place to anodier. Nor were all cowboys the romantic and honorable heroes that one is accustomed to seeing in movies and on television. Some ofTíoJuan's own cowpokes were constant headaches who tested his patience and, at times, drifted on the wrong side of die law. As times passed andJuan Salinas'sfame and celebritystatuswaned, Palacios became convinced diathisunclewas deservingofrecognition as die firstMexicanAmerican rodeo champion.Through hardworkanddiligence, he succeeded in November 1991 in having his ninety-year-old uncle inducted into die National Cowboy Hall ofFame. Three years later, LULACnamedhim to dieirLatinAmerican InternationalSports Hall ofFame.While the old cowboy was characteristically modest about such recognition, they were fitting tributes, Palacios argues, "to the greatest Mexican cowboy who ever lived" (p. 1 85). University ofTexas at BrownsvilleThomas A. Britten River Walk: TL· Epic Story ofSan Antonio's River. By Lewis F. Fisher. (San Antonio: Maverick Publishing Company, 2006. Pp. 1 84. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 1893271401. $36.95, cloth.) If careful readers can disagree on a book's topic, diat often signals a botched communicationjob. Not here. Lewis Fisher, longtime chronicler of San Antonio's natural and cultural heritage, offers such a wonderfully comprehensive report on the river that it almost becomes an encyclopedia in narrative form. The way Goodman's 360Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary Stories of Scottsboro (Vintage Books, 1995) and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (Knopf, 1930) change perspective from chapter to chapter, River Walk changes from page to page, as Fisher brings to focus his principal stories of die natural, the political, and the technologicaljust as diese elements blend and then bend the course ofthe river's story. The organizational plan matches the topic perfecdy because, as Fisher makes clear, the river has beguiled and killed, yielded and frustrated, flooded and withered, benefited and annoyed according to no neat calendar or schedule. Fisher recounts die river's natural historywidi descriptions ofthe EdwardsAquifer , the springs, the river's course, and fatal floods, and shows that die fundamental feature of die River Walk and the town beside it is, after all, a gift ofnature ruled by inconsistent and unpredictable forces. The city's need for water, love for the river, and necessity to control river levels lead to the social history ofpolitical batdes that have raged over private investment and public works. Fisher's keen eye for...

The Epic Story of Maximum Likelihood

At a superficial level, the of maximum must be prehistoric: early hunters and gatherers may not have used the words of maximum likelihood to describe their choice of where and how to hunt and gather, but it is hard to believe they would have been surprised if their method had been described in those terms. It seems a simple, even unassail- able idea: Who would rise to argue in favor of a method of minimum likeli- hood, or even mediocre likelihood? And yet the mathematical history of the topic shows this simple idea is really anything but simple. Joseph Louis Lagrange, Daniel Bernoulli, Leonard Euler, Pierre Simon Laplace and Carl Friedrich Gauss are only some of those who explored the topic, not always in ways we would sanction today. In this article, that history is reviewed from back well before Fisher to the time of Lucien Le Cam's dissertation. In the process Fisher's unpublished 1930 characterization of conditions for the con- sistency and efficiency of maximum estimates is presented, and the mathematical basis of his three proofs discussed. In particular, Fisher's derivation of the information inequality is seen to be derived from his work on the analysis of variance, and his later approach via estimating functions was derived from Euler's Relation for homogeneous functions. The reaction to Fisher's work is reviewed, and some lessons drawn.

Alfred D. Chandler Review

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr, Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries. New York: Free Press, 2001. xiv + 321 pp. ISBN: 0-7432-1567-2. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. viii + 366 pp., ISBN: 0-674-01720-X. Alfred Chandler's death marks the end of an era. His work has long set the standard for business and economic history—a field that he revolutionized—and it has been central to the emerging cross-disciplinary study of the firm such as that promoted by Industrial and Corporate Change. Chandler's final two works, originally conceived as a single volume, seek to demonstrate the continuity between the second industrial revolution and the later information and biotechnology revolutions of the twenty-first century. The same principles and strategies, he argues, shaped economic success in both eras. To make his argument, Chandler again focuses on the large corporations that dominate the international business landscape. But there are important differences from his past work. First, while the focus is still very much on the firm, these are essentially industry studies. His argument rests on the analysis of key high tech sectors—chemicals and pharmaceuticals during the second industrial revolution and consumer electronics, computers, and biotechnology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In each case, the focus is on the US, Western Europe, and (sometimes) Japan, though US firms generally get more extensive coverage. Second, more than in previous work Chandler considers both the winners and losers in these industries, examining the trajectories of the top twenty to fifty firms in each. While this broad focus obviously comes at the expense of depth—these are not the detailed, primary histories of Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation, nor even of Strategy and Structure—he largely avoids the problem of sampling on the dependent variable that is prevalent in his earlier work and in business history more broadly.

Brutal journey: the epic story of the first crossing of North America

Brutal journey: the epic story of the first crossing of North America

The case of Isaac Brown: fugitive slave

Few topics in Ontario’s rich history rival that of the Underground Railroad in terms of human drama and intrigue. One of those individual stories that graphically illustrate that point is that of Isaac Brown. His epic story unfolded through time and place from a Maryland plantation to a New Orleans auction block to a Philadelphia courthouse in the free state of Pennsylvania. The separation from his family at the end of a slave-traders whip and their later tearful reunion stretched the emotions to its extremities. But the times and the circumstances dictated that Canada West would be the only place where this family could find freedom and where this international thriller could peacefully end.

Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics

The story of the eccentric mathematical genius who founded the revolutionary science of cybernetics and then spent his life warning the world about its dangerous human consequences. }In the middle of the last century, Norbert Wiener-ex-child prodigy and brilliant MIT mathematician -founded the science of cybernetics, igniting the information-age explosion of computers, automation, and global telecommunications. Wiener was the first to articulate the modern notion of feedback, and his ideas informed the work of computer pioneer John von Neumann, information theorist Claude Shannon, and anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. His best-selling book, Cybernetics , catapulted him into the public spotlight, as did his chilling visions of the future and his ardent social activism. So what happened? Why is his work virtually unknown today? And what, in fact, is Wiener's legacy? In this remarkable book, award-winning journalists Conway and Siegelman set out to rescue Wiener's genius from obscurity and to explore the many ways in which his groundbreaking ideas continue to shape our lives. Based on a wealth of primary sources (including some newly declassified WW II and Cold War-era documents) and exclusive interviews with Wiener's family and closest colleagues, the book reveals an extraordinarily complex figure, whose high-pressure childhood, manic depression, and troubled relationships had a profound effect on his scientific work. No one interested in the intersection of technology and culture will want to miss this epic story of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and colorful figures. }

Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries (review)

Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries (review)

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

Robert Fisk's bestselling eyewitness account of the events that have shaped the Middle East is alive with vivid reporting and incisive historical analysis. The history of the Middle East is an epic story of tragedy, betrayal and world-shaking events. It is a story that Robert Fisk has been reporting for over thirty years. His masterful narrative spans the most volatile regions of the Middle East, chronicling with both rage and compassion the death by deceit of tens of thousands of Muslims, Christians and Jews. Robert Fisk's remarkable history is also the tale of a journalist at war - learning of the 9/11 attacks while aboard a passenger jet, reporting from a bombed-out Baghdad, interviewing Osama bin Laden - and of the courage and frustration of a life spent writing the first draft of history.

Book Review: The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

Book Review: The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

Early Mapping of the Pacific: The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers, and Cartographers Who Mapped the Earth's Greatest Ocean

"Early Mapping of the Pacific: The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers, and Cartographers Who Mapped the Earth's Greatest Ocean." Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 40(3), pp. 127–128

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

Story selling: how LEGO told a story and sold a toy

Introduces LEGO’s Bionicle toy: it was aimed at boys aged 7‐12 and was developed as part of a new ongoing epic story, with the emphasis on this “movie” aspect rather than on the constructional aspects of the toy: constructional toys are a shrinking market because boys no longer want to take the time to complete them. Relates the Bionicle concept to LEGO’s previous successful toys Slizer and RoboRiders, and to its existing success in buying into stories like Star Wars. Describes how LEGO worked closely with Advance to develop the story and to market the concept in advance of the product; this was very successful. Moves on to the next step, which was to market the “movie” by a wide range of media, such as posters and cinema advertisements, plus media that could carry the parts of the story itself – a website, a CD‐ROM and comics; this carefully designed mosaic of media was accompanied by compelling graphics, phasing the story to maintain involvement, and getting the children to pass on the story parts to each other (i.e. peer‐to‐peer marketing). Concludes with how the campaign has benefited the overall perception of LEGO and led to a wider product range.

Book Review: Ship: The Epic Story of Maritime Adventure

Book Review: Ship: The Epic Story of Maritime Adventure

A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration

This is the epic story of how African-Americans, in the six decades following slavery, transformed themselves into a political people - an embryonic black nation. As Steven Hahn demonstrates, rural African-Americans were central political actors in the great events of disunion, emancipation and nation-building. At the same time, Hahn asks us to think in more expansive ways about the nature and boundaries of politics and political practice. Emphasizing the importance of kinship, labour and networks of communication, this book explores the political relations and sensibilities that developed under slavery and shows how they set the stage for grassroots mobilization. Hahn introduces us to local leaders, and shows how politcal communities were built, defended and rebuilt. He also identifies the quest for self-governance as an esential goal of black politics across the rural South, from contests for local power during reconstruction, to emigrationism, biracial electoral alliances, social separatism and, eventually, migration. Hahn suggests that Garveyism and other popular forms of black nationalism absorbed and elaborated these earlier struggles, thus linking the first generation of migrants to the urban North with those who remained in the South. He offers a new framework - looking out from slavery - to understand twentieth-century forms of black political consciousness as well as emerging battles for civil rights. It is a powerful story and one that presents an inspiring and troubling perspective on American democracy.

The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II's Most Decorated Platoon (review)

Reviewed by: The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II’s Most Decorated Platoon Mannie Liscum The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II’s Most Decorated Platoon. By Alex Kershaw. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2004. ISBN 0-306-81304-1. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 326. $25.00. Alex Kershaw scored a popular hit with The Bedford Boys (2003), and appears to be doing it again with his latest book, The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II's Most Decorated Platoon. The historical centerpiece of The Longest Winter is the Battle of Lanzerath (16 December 1944), in which eighteen soldiers of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance (I&R) Platoon, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division staged a miraculous defense against the numerically superior 1st Battalion, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 9 (temporarily assigned to the 1st SS-Panzer Division). Although two men of I&R/394th were killed and the remainder captured, their actions at Lanzerath delayed the main effort of the Sixth Panzer Army for the better part of 16 December. As Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) John R. Finch and Major George J. Mordica II wrote in 1992: "The I&R Platoon's action exemplifies the determination of the American soldier and what he can do when properly prepared, motivated, and led" ("Miracles: A Platoon's Heroic Stand at Lanzerath" in Combined Arms in [End Page 596] Battle Since 1939 [Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1992], 171). While the actions of I&R/394th merit telling, The Longest Winter is not its first recounting. That honor belongs to John S. D. Eisenhower's The Bitter Woods (1969). Unfortunately the retelling of the Battle of Lanzerath in The Longest Winter (pp. 77-111) is simply that, a retelling providing little new information or insight. In an apparent attempt to create a lilting broad-perspective story, Kershaw has devoted considerable text to the discussion of well-known events and people not directly connected to I&R/394th. Yet, more often than not this merely serves to distract the reader from the central story. As an example, the book is peppered with references to and quotations from author Kurt Vonnegut, a veteran of the 106th Infantry Division. While such allusions to Vonnegut add a recognizable personality to the story, they are historically unnecessary. Equally disappointing are the numerous errors of fact. For instance, despite citing George Stein's authoritative Waffen-SS (1984) in his bibliography, Kershaw misstates two SS-related items on p. 54 alone: (1) the Leibstandarte-SS "Adolf Hitler" is referred to as a component of the 1st SS-Panzer Division when in fact they were one and the same; and (2) the 1st SS-Panzer Division is referred to as the original "Death('s) Head" unit responsible for running the concentration camps, which it simply was not. Fortunately, two portions of the book present fresh material. The first describes the formation and training of I&R/394th, and their time spent on the European continent prior to the battle (pp. 1-57). The second discusses the platoon's captivity, liberation, and postwar recognition (pp. 174-285). Actions of the parent 99th Infantry Division are also discussed in these sections. However, these have been chronicled before, in Major General Walter E. Lauer's Battle Babies: The Story of the 99th Infantry Division in World War II (1951). On balance, Kershaw has crafted an engaging book that will thrill neophytes and leave more seasoned students of World War II history feeling somewhat frustrated. Mannie Liscum University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, Missouri Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

America's game: the epic story of how pro football captured a nation

America's game: the epic story of how pro football captured a nation