Books published by publisher Cornell University Library

"In The Conquest of a Continent, the historian W. Bruce Lincoln details Siberia's role in Russian history, one remarkably similar to that of the frontier in the development of the United States.... It is a big, panoramic book, in keeping with the immensity of its subject."―Chicago Tribune"Lincoln is a compelling writer whose chapters are colorful snapshots of Siberia's past and present.... The Conquest of a Continent is a vivid narrative that will inform and entertain the broader reading public."―American Historical Review"This story includes Genghis Khan, who sent the Mongols warring into Russia; Ivan the Terrible, who conquered Siberia for Russia; Peter the Great, who supported scientific expeditions and mining enterprises; and Mikhail Gorbachev, whose glasnost policy prompted a new sense of 'Siberian' nationalism. It is also the story of millions of souls who themselves were conquered by Siberia.... Vast riches and great misery, often intertwined, mark this region."―The Wall Street JournalStretching from the Urals to the Arctic Ocean to China, Siberia is so vast that the continental United States and Western Europe could be fitted into its borders, with land to spare. Yet, in only six decades, Russian trappers, cossacks, and adventurers crossed this huge territory, beginning in the 1580s a process of conquest that continues to this day. As rich in resources as it was large in size, Siberia brought the Russians a sixth of the world's gold and silver, a fifth of its platinum, a third of its iron, and a quarter of its timber. The conquest of Siberia allowed Russia to build the modern world's largest empire, and Siberia's vast natural wealth continues to play a vital part in determining Russia's place in international affairs.Bleak yet romantic, Siberia's history comes to life in W. Bruce Lincoln's epic telling. The Conquest of a Continent, first published in 1993, stands as the most comprehensive and vivid account of the Russians in Siberia, from their first victories over the Mongol Khans to the environmental degradation of the twentieth century. Dynasties of incomparable wealth, such as the Stroganovs, figure into the story, as do explorers, natives, gold seekers, and the thousands of men and women sentenced to penal servitude or forced labor in Russia's great wilderness prisonhouse.

Defying comprehension, the tragic history of the Holocaust has been alternately repressed and canonized in postmodern Western culture. Recently our interpretation of the Holocaust has been the center of bitter controversies, from debates over Paul de Man's collaborationist journalism and Martin Heidegger’s Nazi past to attempts by some historians to downplay the Holocaust’s significance. A major voice in current historiographical discussions, Dominick LaCapra brings a new clarity to these issues as he examines the intersections between historical events and the theory through which we struggle to understand them.In a series of essays—three published here for the first time—LaCapra explores the problems faced by historians, critics, and thinkers who attempt to grasp the Holocaust. He considers the role of canon formation and the dynamic of revisionist historiography, as well as critically analyzing responses to the discovery of de Man’s wartime writings. He also discusses Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism, and he sheds light on postmodernist obsessions with such concepts as loss, agora, dispossession, deferred meaning, and the sublime. Throughout, LaCapra demonstrates that psychoanalysis is not merely a psychology of the individual but that its concepts have sociocultural dimensions and can help us perceive the relationship between the present and the past. Many of our efforts to comprehend the Holocaust, he shows, continue to suffer from the traumatizing effects of its events and require a "working through" of that trauma if we are to gain a more profound understanding of the meaning of the Holocaust.

This dazzling book is at once an indispensable guide to Stevens's poetic canon and a significant addition to the literature on the American Romantic movement. It gives authoritative readings of the major long poems and sequences of Stevens and deals at length with the important shorter works as well, showing their complex relations both to one another and to the work of Stevens's precursors, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, and Whitman. No other book on Stevens is as ambitious or comprehensive as this one: everyone who writes on Stevens will have to take it into account. The product of twenty years of meditating, thinking, and writing about Stevens, this truly remarkable book is a brilliant extension of Bloom's theories of literary interpretation.