The Townshend Moment

Download or read book The Townshend Moment written by Patrick Griffin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The captivating story of two British brothers whose attempts to reform an empire helped to incite rebellion and revolution in America and insurgency and reform in Ireland Patrick Griffin chronicles the attempts of brothers Charles and George Townshend to control the forces of history in the heady days after Britain's mythic victory over France in the mid-eighteenth century, and the historic and unintended consequences of their efforts. As British chancellor of the exchequer in 1767, Charles Townshend instituted fiscal policy that served as a catalyst for American rebellion against the Crown, while his brother George's actions at the same moment as lord lieutenant of Ireland politicized the kingdom, leading to Irish legislative independence. This fascinating study is the first to consider as a linked history the influence of two all-but-forgotten brothers, both of whom rose to national prominence in the same year. Griffin vividly reconstructs the many worlds the Townshends moved through and explores how their shared conception of an empire that could harness the wealth of America to the manpower of Ireland initiated an age of revolution.

Download or read book The Townshend Moment written by Patrick Griffin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The captivating story of two British brothers whose attempts to reform an empire helped to incite rebellion and revolution in America and insurgency and reform in Ireland Patrick Griffin chronicles the attempts of brothers Charles and George Townshend to control the forces of history in the heady days after Britain’s mythic victory over France in the mid-eighteenth century, and the historic and unintended consequences of their efforts. As British chancellor of the exchequer in 1767, Charles Townshend instituted fiscal policy that served as a catalyst for American rebellion against the Crown, while his brother George’s actions at the same moment as lord lieutenant of Ireland politicized the kingdom, leading to Irish legislative independence. This fascinating study is the first to consider as a linked history the influence of two all-but-forgotten brothers, both of whom rose to national prominence in the same year. Griffin vividly reconstructs the many worlds the Townshends moved through and explores how their shared conception of an empire that could harness the wealth of America to the manpower of Ireland initiated an age of revolution.

Download or read book Who I Am written by Pete Townshend and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long acknowledged as one of rock music’s most intelligent and literary performers, Pete Townshend—guitarist, songwriter, singer and founding member of The Who—at last tells his wild story in this candid and immersive autobiography. Raised in west London by an eccentric grandmother, while his parents were off living the early post-war, rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, Townshend describes a frenetic childhood of displacement and abuse. Then, in high school, everything changed when he met Roger Daltrey and formed a band that would travel the world, earning fame, fortune and critical acclaim. In Who I Am, Townshend brings us from the inner sanctum of Eric Clapton’s drug-ridden hotel rooms to the feet of Jimi Hendrix and his electric kool-aid guitar; from the first trial performance of Townshend’s rock opera, Tommy, in a London bar to his infamous arrest (and acquittal) on child pornography charges. With his trademark eloquence, fierce intelligence and brutal honesty, Pete Townshend has created a work of literature that stands as a primary source for popular music’s greatest epoch. Readers will be confronted by a man laying bare who he is, an artist who has asked for nearly sixty years: who are you?

Download or read book Desert Hell written by Charles Townshend and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Iraq was created deliberately by the British over the seven years following their first invasion in 1914. Charles Townshend provides an informative and compelling explanation of that conquest and examines how an initially cautious strategic invasion by British forces led to imperial expansion on a vast scale.

Download or read book American Sanctuary written by A. Roger Ekirch and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1797 the bloodiest mutiny ever suffered by the Royal Navy took place on the British frigate HMS Hermione off the coast of Puerto Rico. Jonathan Robbins, a reputed American sailor who had been impressed into service, made his way to American shores. President John Adams bowed to Britain’s request for his extradition. Convicted of murder and piracy by a court-martial in Jamaica, Robbins was hanged. Adams’s catastrophic miscalculation ignited a political firestorm, only to be fanned by Robbins’s failure to receive his constitutional rights of due process and trial by jury by an American court. American Sanctuary brilliantly lays out in riveting detail the story of how the Robbins affair, amid the turbulent presidential campaign of 1800, inflamed the new nation and set in motion a constitutional crisis, resulting in Adams’s defeat and Thomas Jefferson’s election as the third president of the United States. Robbins’s martyrdom led directly to the country’s historic decision to grant political asylum to foreign refugees—a major achievement in fulfilling the promise of American independence.

Download or read book The Age of Anxiety written by Pete Townshend and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Age of Anxiety is a great rock novel, but that is one of the less important things about it. The narrator is a brilliant creation - cultured, witty and unreliable. The novel captures the craziness of the music business and displays Pete Townshend's sly sense of humour and sharp ear for dialogue. First conceived as an opera, The Age of Anxiety deals with mythic and operatic themes including a maze, divine madness and long-lost children. Hallucinations and soundscapes haunt this novel, which on one level is an extended meditation on manic genius and the dark art of creativity.

Download or read book American Leviathan written by Patrick Griffin and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-04 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dark and bloody ground of the frontier during the years of the American Revolution created much that we associate with the idea of America. Between 1763 and 1795, westerners not only participated in a war of independence but also engaged in a revolution that ushered in fundamental changes in the relationship between individuals and society. In the West, the process was stripped down to its essence: uncertainty, competition, disorder, and frenzied and contradictory attempts to reestablish order. The violent nature of the contest to reconstitute sovereignty produced a revolutionary settlement, riddled with what we would regard as paradox, in which new notions of race went hand in hand with new definitions of citizenship. In the almost Hobbesian state of nature that the West had become, westerners created a liberating yet frightening vision of what society was to be. In vivid detail, Patrick Griffin recaptures a chaotic world of settlers, Indians, speculators, British regulars, and American and state officials vying with one another to remake the American West during its most formative period.