Tag Archives: years

Google: No Longer Archiving the World’s Newspapers – Project Shut Down

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Google is one of my favorite brands. Sure, it cops plenty of flak and probably some of it is deserved, but I have to say they are a company that has largely got it altogether. I’m a fan anyway – for what that’s worth.

I am a big fan of Google’s ongoing project to digitize the world’s books and literature. Sure, they need to conform to copyright laws like the rest of us while doing so and they have had some questionable episodes in this project to date. But what an amazing opportunity to read books that have been out of print for years and even centuries. It is a great service and project.

Google was also digitizing the world’s newspapers and this also could have been a major gift to the world, but sadly the project has been shut down. They have managed to place a huge amount of archival material onto the net and it is fully searchable – which is just brilliant. How amazing it would have been if all of the world’s newspapers had been digitized and made available on the web?

Have a look at what is available at:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch/about.html
http://news.google.com/archivesearch
http://news.google.com/newspapers

For more visit:
http://searchengineland.com/google-shuts-down-ambitious-newspaper-scanning-project-77970

 

A Cartoon History of the George Dubya Bush Years, By Elena Steier

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 I have just had a quick look at ‘A Cartoon History of the George Dubya Bush Years,’ by Elena Steier. This book is a collection of cartoons from the George W. Bush years as president of the United States. They are a comical look at those years and I’m sure will produce a laugh or two for some people. I however found little in it that amused me – perhaps because I live in Australia and don’t get all the political jokes based on the US political scene of the George W. Bush years.

I have to say that I found some of the cartoons quite offensive and a good number without anything that made them funny to my way of thinking at all. I quite openly state that I am a Christian and therefore some of the material in these cartoons is particularly shocking and offensive to me.

I have had a good laugh at a good number of the cartoons I have seen of George W. Bush in Australian papers, so I do not base my opinion of this book on my appreciation of George W. Bush as a president or for not being able to have a laugh at politics. I simply did not find this book particularly funny or appealing in any way. In fact, I have rid myself of it completely.

Available at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Fringe-Cartoon-History-George-Dubya/dp/1439211744

There is a copy here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23408494/A-Cartoon-History-of-The-George-Dubya-Bush-Administration

 

‘Shameful Flight – The Last Years of the British Empire in India,’ by Stanley Wolpert

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Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

‘Shameful Flight’ relates the history of the final years of the British Raj in India, including the partition of India into both Pakistan (West and East) and India, and the early hostility of the two new nations destined for perpetual warfare in such regions as the Kashmir.The history of this era of political instability on the subcontinent includes all the main players from Great Britain, India and Pakistan.These main players include Winston Churchill, Viceroy Louis Mountbatten, Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah. There is not a single figure in this history of India’s partition who comes out of it in a good light, though several seem to have had very well-intentioned aims and motivations. It is the true story of lost opportunity and the devastating consequences of human pride and selfishness that have reverberated down through the decades to the present day and remain visible in the continuing clashes between India and Pakistan, as well as in the extremism expressed in both the Islamic and Hindu communities throughout the sub-continent. It is a story of perpetual tragedy and human suffering with no end in sight.

This book is extremely easy to read, passes on a wealth of historical information and whets the appetite for further research on the India/Pakistan situation. It provides enlightenment, by bringing understanding to the current political instability in both India and Pakistan, by clearly revealing the root of the problem – the manner of the birth of both nations out of British imperialism and that nation’s final haphazard departure aptly described as a ‘Shameful Flight.’ This is a great book for understanding the sub-continent and the wounds it still carries to this day.

This book was provided to me for review by Oxford University Press – www.oup.com