Social and cultural history Books

Book SynopsisWinner of the Mbokodo Award for Women in the Arts for Literature, the ATKV (Afrikaans Language and Culture Association) Award for non-fiction and the kykNet/Rapport Award for non-fiction. ''Here was Emily . . . in these diaries and scrapbooks. An unprecedented, intimate angle on the real Emily''Elsabé Brits has drawn on a treasure trove of previously private sources, including Emily Hobhouse''s diaries, scrap-books and numerous letters that she discovered in Canada, to write a revealing new biography of this remarkable Englishwoman. Hobhouse has been little celebrated in her own country, but she is still revered in South Africa, where she worked so courageously, selflessly and tirelessly to save lives and ameliorate the suffering of thousands of women and children interned in camps set up by British forces during the Anglo-Boer War, in which it is estimated that over 27,000 Boer women and children died; and where her ashes are enshrinedTrade ReviewThis engaging and thoroughly researched account of her life draws on fresh material, including diaries, letters and photographs . . . This beautifully written biography restores her to her rightful place as one of the 20th century's feminist heroines -- Rebecca Wallersteiner * The Lady *

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Black Trans Feminism Marquis Bey offers a meditation on blackness and gender nonnormativity in ways that recalibrate traditional understandings of each. Theorizing black trans feminism from the vantages of abolition and gender radicality, Bey articulates blackness as a mutiny against racializing categorizations; transness as a nonpredetermined, wayward, and deregulated movement that works toward gender’s destruction; and black feminism as an epistemological method to fracture hegemonic modes of racialized gender. In readings of the essays, interviews, and poems of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, jayy dodd, and Venus Di’Khadijah Selenite, Bey turns black trans feminism away from a politics of gendered embodiment and toward a conception of it as a politics grounded in fugitivity and the subversion of power. Together, blackness and transness actualize themselves as on the run from gender. In this way, Bey presents black trans feminism as a mode of enacting the wholesale dismanTrade Review“In Marquis Bey's deeply creative and fiercely imaginative book, Black trans feminism describes a kind of worldly inhabitation and a radical form of theorizing power and refusal in ways that are not contingent on identity. In Bey's hands, Black trans feminism becomes a powerful call for vulnerability, fugitive hope, abolition, and freedom. Black Trans Feminism allows us to gesture to all that we want from this world but do not yet know how to name.” -- Jennifer C. Nash, author of * Birthing Black Mothers *“In its deep engagements with the three movements of its title, Black Trans Feminism is a very exciting book to read, digest, and think through. Marquis Bey’s focus on fugitivity and the elastic category of the fugitive stealing themself back is a highly salient and timely conceptual offering, and I’m astonished by the clarity, precision, and deep-digging that Bey brings to the material. Those working at the interstices of Black trans feminism need this gift of manifest lucidity to reference, teach, and expound on.” -- Eliza Steinbock, author of * Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment, and the Aesthetics of Change *“Black Trans Feminism constitutes an incisive critique and interrogation of the very grammars of gender normativity. . . . With this project, he attempts to reconfigure how we understand kinship, blackness, transness and Black feminism in order to establish a coalition that can be understood as a broadening of kinship network relationalities, affinities and affiliations.” -- Marietta Kosma * European Journal of American Culture *"Bey’s work is an important contribution to the conversations surrounding race, transgender identity, and feminist praxis, providing a hopeful mode for reimagining our world and ourselves. . . . Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- D. E. Magill * Choice *“Black Trans Feminism is a deep philosophical and literary exploration of Black trans feminism. . . . The book offers critical and imaginative visions of gender radical and abolitionist futures. Bey tell us how we can possibly get there with a sense of hope that is so rare in academic writing.” -- Nishant Upadhyay * American Quarterly *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Abolition, Gender Radicality 1 Part 1 1. Black, Trans, Feminism 37 2. Fugitivity, Un/gendered 66 3. Trans/figurative, Blackness 88 Part 2 4. Feminist, Fugitivity 115 5. Questioned, Gendered 145 6. Trigger, Rebel 175 Conclusion: Hope, Fugitive 199 Notes 229 Bibliography 263 Index 283

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom the Sunday Times bestselling author, Carl ChinnAs Britain emerges into the mid-twentieth century, change is afoot. Cities are beginning to shift from smog-filled industrial hubs to more efficient metropolitan centres of commerce and, despite the country once again being blighted by war, society is beginning to shift towards a more modern, forward-thinking era. But change is not only limited to regular men and women; under the shifting tides of development, the criminal underbelly, too, is evolving, anxious for new avenues of exploitation and expansion . . .And so, in the third instalment of his best-selling series, historian Carl Chinn examines this new era in the landscape of Britain's gangs. After the violent reign of the Peaky Blinders, the intimidation of the Birmingham gang and frequent gang wars up and down the country, from the wreckage new groups are emerging with new ways of making money and causing trouble, and, like those who came before them, they leave havoc and destruction in their wake.Peaky Blinders: The Aftermath will bring this new generation of criminals into focus. And up and down the length of the country, from the dog tracks to the pubs of the East End, it delves into the murky world of the country's most villainous criminals.

Read more less

Book Synopsis*Now a major movie starring Seth Rogen, Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Shailene Woodley, Sebastian Stan and Nick Offerman*The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders that Brought Wall Street to its Knees.Bestselling author Ben Mezrich offers a gripping, beat-by-beat account of how a loosely affiliate group of private investors and internet trolls took down one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street, firing the first shot in a revolution that threatens to upend the financial establishment.It started on a subreddit forum called WallStreetBets a meme-filled, freewheeling place where a disparate group of investors shared their shoot-the-moon investment tips, laughed about big losses and posted diamond hand emojis. Until some members noticed an opportunity in Game Stop a flailing bricks and mortar video-game retailer and somehow rode a rocket ship to tens of millions of dollars in earnings overnight, simultaneously triggering unfathomable losses for one of the most rTrade Review"Mezrich mans the conveyor belt at the factory that turns raw reality into its eventual slick cinematic depiction."―New York Times "Mr. Mezrich, the author of bestsellers on topics ranging from the origins of Facebook to beating the odds at Las Vegas, tells the story of GameStop through the eyes of an array of characters, especially small investors who had little or no previous experience in the stock market."―Wall Street Journal "The David vs. Goliath-esque GameStop short squeeze of Winter 2021 was undoubtedly one of the most entertaining stories of the year, and Mezrich brings new life to the whole thing in this look at the outrageous personalities and corporate drama that fuelled it."―The New York Post

Read more less

Book SynopsisAt dawn on March 18, 1871, Parisian women stepped between cannons and French soldiers, using their bodies to block the army from taking the artillery from their working-class neighborhood. When ordered to fire, the troops refused and instead turned and arrested their leaders. Thus began the Paris Commune, France’s revolutionary civil war that rocked the nineteenth century and shaped the twentieth. Considered a golden moment of hope and potential by the left, and a black hour of terrifying power inversions by the right, the Commune occupies a critical position in understanding modern history and politics. A 72-day conflict that ended with the ferocious slaughter of Parisians, the Commune represents for some the final insurgent burst of the French Revolution’s long wake, for others the first “successful” socialist uprising, and for yet others an archetype for egalitarian socio-economic, feminist, and political change. Militants have referenced and incorporated its ideas into insurrections across the globe, throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, keeping alive the revolution’s now-iconic goals and images. Innumerable scholars in countless languages have examined aspects of the 1871 uprising, taking perspectives ranging from glorifying to damning this world-shaking event. The Commune stands as a critical and pivotal moment in nineteenth-century history, as the linchpin between revolutionary pasts and futures, and as the crucible allowing glimpses of alternate possibilities. Upending hierarchies of class, religion, and gender, the Commune emerged as a touchstone for the subsequent century-and-a-half of revolutionary and radical social movements. Trade Review"This compelling account of the Paris Commune makes a complicated event understandable and vivid. Eichner’s rich portraits bring to life the freedom and empowerment the Communards experienced, juxtaposed with the bloody repression of its final days."— Sarah Fishman, author of From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution: Gender and Family Life in Postwar France Like the Commune itself, Eichner’s history is brief, complex, and full of drama. A fresh and compelling account for scholars and students of 1871 and its legacies.— Roxanne Panchasi, author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars New Books Network: New Books in French Studies: An interview with Carolyn J. Eichner— New Books Network: New Books in French Studies New Books Network: New Books in French Studies: An interview with Carolyn J. Eichner— New Books Network: New Books in French Studies Like the Commune itself, Eichner’s history is brief, complex, and full of drama. A fresh and compelling account for scholars and students of 1871 and its legacies.— Roxanne Panchasi, author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars "This compelling account of the Paris Commune makes a complicated event understandable and vivid. Eichner’s rich portraits bring to life the freedom and empowerment the Communards experienced, juxtaposed with the bloody repression of its final days."— Sarah Fishman, author of From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution: Gender and Family Life in Postwar France "Eichner’s narrative weaves together many aspects–religious secularism, economic policies, cooperative economics and property rights, education, culture, and the arts–precisely because the Commune affected all of it. The Paris Commune is an enjoyable, brilliant, scholarly, and readable adventure."— Capital & Class "[An] informative and moving new history."— David A. Bell, The NationTable of Contents1. Illumination 2. Fluorescence 3. Explosion Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis'A compelling and wry narrative of one of the most intellectually thrilling eras of British history' Guardian. ***************** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020 England, 1651. Oliver Cromwell has defeated his royalist opponents in two civil wars, executed the Stuart king Charles I, laid waste to Ireland, and crushed the late king's son and his Scottish allies. He is master of Britain and Ireland. But Parliament, divided between moderates, republicans and Puritans of uncompromisingly millenarian hue, is faction-ridden and disputatious. By the end of 1653, Cromwell has become 'Lord Protector'. Seeking dragons for an elect Protestant nation to slay, he launches an ambitious 'Western Design' against Spain's empire in the New World. When an amphibious assault on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1655 proves a disaster, a shaken Cromwell is convinced that God is punishing England for its sinfulness. But the imposition of the rule of the Major-Generals – bureaucrats with a penchant for closing alehouses – backfires spectacularly. Sectarianism and fundamentalism run riot. Radicals and royalists join together in conspiracy. The only way out seems to be a return to a Parliament presided over by a king. But will Cromwell accept the crown? Paul Lay narrates in entertaining but always rigorous fashion the story of England's first and only experiment with republican government: he brings the febrile world of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate to life, providing vivid portraits of the extraordinary individuals who inhabited it and capturing its dissonant cacophony of political and religious voices. ***************** Reviews: 'Briskly paced and elegantly written, Providence Lost provides us with a first-class ticket to this Cromwellian world of achievement, paradox and contradiction. Few guides take us so directly, or so sympathetically, into the imaginative worlds of that tumultuous decade' John Adamson, The Times. 'Providence Lost is a learned, lucid, wry and compelling narrative of the 1650s as well as a sensitive portrayal of a man unravelled by providence' Jessie Childs, Guardian. Trade ReviewBriskly paced and elegantly written, Providence Lost provides us with a first-class ticket to this Cromwellian world of achievement, paradox and contradiction. Few guides take us so directly, or so sympathetically, into the imaginative worlds of that tumultuous decade -- John Adamson, Sunday TimesProvidence Lost is a learned, lucid, wry and compelling narrative of the 1650s as well as a sensitive portrayal of a man unravelled by providence -- Jessie Childs, GuardianIn telling us what Cromwell believed, Lay helps us to understand the man, but his witty and incisive book is also a reminder why the English, in particular, hate the bossy pieties of the puritanical elite, and distrust radicalism * The Times *Lay offers a vivid, clear and highly engrossing narrative of these fast moving and complicated events * Financial Times *An enlightening study of the often overlooked rule of Oliver Cromwell * Sunday Telegraph *A book for the general reader, based on a thorough knowledge of the sources, and written with perceptiveness as well as narrative zest – a lively, attention-holding account of what is surely the strangest decade in British history * Sunday Telegraph *A superb summary of the ebbs and flows of the Interregnum, a strangely 'lost' decade * Herald *[An] absorbing and beautifully written book * BBC History Magazine *A readable and witty guide to England's republican interregnum * The Times. *A highly readable book, full of wit, sober thought and scholarly rigour * Observer. *A spirited and vivid survey of the brief period in which Cromwell held the dangerously ill-defined role of "lord protector" * New Statesman *A history of Cromwell's republic that contends this was actually a period of intense creativity * Sunday Times *Fascinating new history of the English interregnum * Sunday Times *A compelling and exciting account of a critical period in early modern British history * New Books Network *A brilliant aid to understanding modern Britain and, indirectly, the United States; the lessons of the Protectorate were not lost on the founding fathers * Catholic Herald *Told in gripping fashion; each chapter is filled with enough intrigue to fuel a TV soap opera. The various warring factions are explained with vigour and clarity, while lesser-known events, such as a failed attempt to assassinate Cromwell, are packed with detail * Discover Britain *Paul Lay is bracing and undeceived in his judgments... Lay shows us what a distinctive period it was, full of frenetic excursions and alarms but for most people not unendurable, shallow-rooted in the good sense... Lay treats each volcanic caprice of the Protector's with the amused scepticism it deserves, not struggling overmuch to discern some consistent purpose behind it' * London Review of Books *What Lay gives us is a warts-and-all picture of a man with the weaknesses of any other, and who struggled heroically to stabilise, and to attempt to unite, a country shattered by a decade of civil wars * The Critic Magazine *Cromwell's republic was more energetic than we thought, reveals this brisk study * Sunday Times *Fascinating * The Times *Interesting material on the rule of Cromwell's major generals and on the debate on the succession to Cromwell and the falling out with John Lambert, who had been seen as Cromwell's deputy * Chartist *

Read more less

Book Synopsis'Dame Anna Wintour might be one of the best-known and most successful journalists on the planet. But it wasn't always like that. When she started out on Vogue she was often so miserable she had to phone her husband for help. This is just one of countless fascinating titbits in this zippy story of dizzying fortune, out-of this-world fashion, ingenuity, passion, sex and power.And, this being fashion, some intense bitchiness too. Started as a gossip magazine for snobbish New Yorkers in 1892, Vogue is now one of the most recognisable brands in the world. Spanning London, New York and Paris, this is a high-speed, fun read full of fascinating though not always likeable people.' Daily MailGlossy is a story of more than a magazine. It is a story of passion and power, dizzying fortune and out-of-this-world fashion, of ingenuity and opportunism, frivolity and malice. This is the definitive story of Vogue.Vogue magazine started, like so many great things do, in the spare room of someone's house. But unlike other such makeshift projects that flare up then fizzle away, Vogue burnt itself onto our cultural consciousness. Today, 128 years later, Vogue spans 22 countries, has an international print readership upwards of 12 million and nets over 67 million monthly online users. Uncontested market leader for a century, it is one of the most recognisable brands in the world and a multi-million dollar money-making machine. It is not just a fashion magazine, it is the establishment. But what - and more importantly who - made Vogue such an enduring success?Glossy will answer this question and more by tracing the previously untold history of the magazine, from its inception as a New York gossip rag, to the sleek, corporate behemoth we know now. This will be a biography of Vogue in every sense of the word, taking the reader through three centuries, two world wars, plunging failures and blinding successes, as it charts the story of the magazine and those who ran it.Trade ReviewDame Anna Wintour might be one of the best-known and most successful journalists on the planet. But it wasn't always like that.When she started out on Vogue she was often so miserable she had to phone her husband for help. This is just one of countless fascinating titbits in this zippy story of dizzying fortune, out-of this-world fashion, ingenuity, passion, sex and power.And, this being fashion, some intense bitchiness too. Started as a gossip magazine for snobbish New Yorkers in 1892, Vogue is now one of the most recognisable brands in the world. Spanning London, New York and Paris, this is a high-speed, fun read full of fascinating though not always likeable people. * Daily Mail *Riveting * The Arts Desk *Fashion never seemed more relevant than in this engrossing and unputdownable history of the Queen of them all...the story of Vogue's war years in France is extraordinary . . . wonderful * Miranda Seymour *An enthralling history. * Daily Mail *Nina-Sophia Miralles' Glossy takes readers on an in-depth voyage through the history and workings of Vogue, from the brand's establishment to the people who made it such a success. Branded "the definitive story of Vogue", the insightful retrospective details the 129-year-old publication's triumphs and tribulations, from its humble New York beginnings to its international influence today. * Country and Town House *Glossy: The Inside Story of Vogue, a new book by Nina-Sophia Miralles, is at least as much about the women, and occasional man, who have been the faces of the most potent fashion magazine brand as the actual publication. Rightly so * The Times *Full of stories.... Miralles has an eye for the telling detail. * Irish Times *VOGUE THE LAST WORD IN PUBLISHING GLOSSINESS If ever a magazine understood the special relationship between women and shiny paper, it is Vogue. Launched as "a dignified authentic journal of society, fashion and the ceremonial side of life," its pages have drawn the curious to its privileged glow since 1892. Whether they come to gawp at the hilarious prices or are genuinely seeking clues as to handbag silhouettes for autumn/winter, Vogue is fashion. So after 130 years a history is overdue, and Glossy tells a jaunty story of elite relationships, acute business acumen and some alluringly strange individuals. The great magazine entrepreneur Condé Nast saw its potential when he bought the title in 1909 and aimed it squarely at a market no one had spotted: extremely rich women. The creation of a luxuriant home for advertisers by using the finest editorial ingredients became the Condé Nast brand, and Vogue was its flagship. Nast, with his forensic socialising, is deserving of a book on his own, but the real stars are the outré terrors who have plotted their way into the editor's chair. GLOSSY by NINA-SOPHIA MIRALLES ,a vivacious and gossipy history of Vogue sees it less as a magazine, more as a school of philosophy, based on hauteur, social exclusivity, impeccable taste, and editors whose ideas at times verged on the lunatic. * Strong Words Magazine *Dame Anna Wintour might be one of the best-known and most successful journalists on the planet. But it wasn't always like that. When she started out on Vogue she was often so miserable she had to phone her husband for help. This is just one of countless fascinating titbits in this zippy story of dizzying fortune, out-of this-world fashion, ingenuity, passion, sex and power. And, this being fashion, some intense bitchiness too. Started as a gossip magazine for snobbish New Yorkers in 1892, Vogue is now one of the most recognisable brands in the world. Spanning London, New York and Paris, this is a high-speed, fun read full of fascinating though not always likeable people. * Daily Mail *

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn The Black Shoals Tiffany Lethabo King uses the shoal—an offshore geologic formation that is neither land nor sea—as metaphor, mode of critique, and methodology to theorize the encounter between Black studies and Native studies. King conceptualizes the shoal as a space where Black and Native literary traditions, politics, theory, critique, and art meet in productive, shifting, and contentious ways. These interactions, which often foreground Black and Native discourses of conquest and critiques of humanism, offer alternative insights into understanding how slavery, anti-Blackness, and Indigenous genocide structure white supremacy. Among texts and topics, King examines eighteenth-century British mappings of humanness, Nativeness, and Blackness; Black feminist depictions of Black and Native erotics; Black fungibility as a critique of discourses of labor exploitation; and Black art that rewrites conceptions of the human. In outlining the convergences and disjunctions bTrade Review"Tiffany Lethabo King's concept of the shoal breaks new ground for thinking through the relationships between Indigenous peoples and African Americans and genocide and slavery as well as how they have formed our contemporary politics. Her rigorous engagement with Black and Indigenous studies will create a better dialogue between the two fields." -- Mishauna Goeman, author of * Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations *“In this innovative contribution to both Black and Native studies, Tiffany Lethabo King dares to think the simultaneously distinct yet edgeless relationship between Blackness and Indigeneity. It's the geological formation of the shoal—that zone just offshore, neither land (often reductively linked to the Native) nor sea (often reductively linked to the Black)—that allows King to pull off this ethical project. Indeed, The Black Shoals is Black ethics, where the ethical emerges as that distinct, ever-developing gathering of Black and Native life under shared conditions of settler terror.” -- J. Kameron Carter, Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University“King’s scholarship represents a masterful mix of precision and sensitivity in describing the historical Native anti-blackness, as well as the historical cooperation between Africans and the European settlers King identifies as ‘conquistador humans,’ in dispossessing Natives of their land.” -- Darryl Barthé * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“King’s book is an important participant in a small but growing scholarly movement seeking to understand and unravel the logics of settler colonialism and conquest by breaking down scholarly silos between groups that frequently interacted and interact. Moreover, what King has so well begun can be built on by other scholars.” -- Laura Goldblatt * Lateral *“Tiffany King’s poetic and theoretically compelling text is both an invitation and disturbance, or a provocation to be unmoored, to be thrown into chaos and to place one’s feet at the shoal of something other than traditional (normative) notions of sovereignty, nation, and citizenship.” -- Shanya Cordis * GLQ *“A multivocal, wide-ranging, inter-disciplinary project, . . . Tiffany Lethabo King’s book is both timely and prescient. . . . For those who would like to explore Black and Indigenous thought, especially the conceptual and methodological overlaps between the two fields, this book is an exceptional primer.” -- Michael J. Kennedy * The Black Scholar *“The Black Shoals offers a rich analysis of how scholars, activists, and art­ists have contended with conquest, conquistador-settler epistemologies, and Black-Native relations. . . . King’s ‘shoal’ offers an analytic through which to theorize what ethical and sus­tained exchanges between Black studies and Native studies might look like.” -- Mary McNeil * Native American and Indigenous Studies *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: The Black Shoals 1 1. Errant Grammars: Defacing the Ceremony 36 2. The Map (Settlement) and the Territory (The Incompleteness of Conquest) 74 3. At the Pores of the Plantation 111 4. Our Cherokee Uncles: Black and Native Erotics 141 5. A Ceremony for Sycorax 175 Epilogue: Of Water and Land 207 Notes 211 Bibliography 263 Index 277

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisKathy E. Ferguson explores the importance of anarchist letterpress printers and presses, whose printed materials galvanized anarchist movements across the United States and Great Britain from the late nineteenth century to 1940s.Trade Review“By focusing on letterpress Ferguson presents a novel way of looking at the history of Anarchism. Letterpress as a way of working generates an active hands-on ambition to build and embody new and creative ideas. . . . Ferguson’s history promotes the message that meaningful radical development builds from face-to-face, hand-to-hand, cooperative endeavour.” -- Peter Good * Kate Sharpley Library *"Ferguson's half-century of involvement in radical politics and her painstaking research in anarchist collections (many of them ill organized) qualifies her to write this dense but compelling history. . . . Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- T. S. Martin * Choice *"In fluid prose, Ferguson offers a fresh historical look at the anarchist movement through a focus on lesser-known figures and their lesser-known labours, including printing and letter-writing." -- Layla Saleh * LSE Review of Books *"Letterpress Revolution is essential reading. It is a result of exhaustive and detailed research that clarifies instead of obscures. ... It enriches anarchist history allowing us to appreciate the nuances and bravery of people as well as their complexities." -- Barry Pateman * KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. Anarchist Letters 1 1. Printers and Presses 21 2. Epistolarity 83 3. Radical Study 129 4. Intersectionality and Thing Power 185 Appendix A. Compositors, Pressmen, and Bookbinders 215 Appendix B. Brief Biographies 225 Appendix C. Printers Interviewed 231 Notes 233 Letters Referenced 281 Bibliography 287 Index 317

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn addition to providing excerpts from classic tales of Japan’s warrior past, this volume draws on a wide range of lesser-known but revealing sources—including sword inscriptions, edicts, orders, petitions, and letters—to expand and deepen our understanding of the samurai, from the order’s origins in the fifth century to its abolition in the nineteenth. Taken together with Thomas Donald Conlan’s contextualizing introductions and notes, these sources provide a rare window into the experiences, ideals, and daily lives of these now-sentimentalized warriors. Numerous illustrations, a glossary of terms, and a substantial bibliography further enhance the value of this book to students, scholars, and anyone interested in learning more about the samurai.Trade Review"This sourcebook provides, for the first time in English, translations of the key primary sources for the study of the history of the samurai across all eras of Japanese history. Conlan has framed these sources with compelling historical analysis, making the book required reading not only for students of the warrior class but for everyone interested in the broad sweep of Japanese history. This is an astounding resource."—Morgan Pitelka, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"Conlan is to be commended for putting together this volume. Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan smartly complements earlier, well-used anthologies but also forges in new directions—delving deeply into documentary sources, in particular—immeasurably enriching the resources available to teachers of pre-modern Japanese history and promising to become a mainstay in the classroom."—David Spafford, University of Pennsylvania

Read more less

Book Synopsis'Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had' Financial TimesFrom the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, a stunning history of our present, examining the first two decades of this most fragile and fraught new millennium.How did the great European dream turn sour? And where do we go from here?In this illuminating book, Geert Mak - one of Europe's best-loved commentators - charts the seismic events that have shaped people's lives over the past twenty years. He moves through the rocky expansion of the EU, the aftermath of 9/11 and terrorist attacks across Europe, the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, and on to the rise of right-wing populism and Brexit.Like no other, Mak blends history, politics and culture with the stories and experiences of the many Europeans he meets on his travels. He brings this continent to life, and asks: what role does Europe now play, and how might we face our fresh challenges together?'A powerful, humane and serious mind' Guardian'Mak is a truly cosmopolitan chronicler' IndependentTrade ReviewInstinctively cosmopolitan, Mak sweeps over his home continent in a colourful, convivial sprawl well captured in Liz Waters' pacy translation. * Financial Times *Compelling... Anecdotal nuggets sparkle on every page. * Economist *Absorbing... an illuminating odyssey... Mak is an astute observer. -- Piers Brendon * Literary Review *

Read more less

Book SynopsisSex under the Swastika is a journey through the dark secretive corridors of the Third Reich's powerbase and it's near-pathological sexual obsession with young women, sex, Satanism and the occult. Based on interviews, eye-witness accounts and using newly revealed material from the sons and daughters of former SS officers who were part of Adolf Hitler and Reinhard Heydrich's personal staff, we learn about the sexual conduct, affairs, scandals and fetishes of some of Hitler's most trusted advocates, who used their positions of trust to execute their warped fantasies. It reveals how many leading Nazi's were actively involved in occult rituals and sexual practices, and how the abuse suffered by many young men and women was only permissible through the filtering down from the highest echelons of the regime, which was prepared to turn a blind eye. Learn about the exotic sex and drug-fuelled private cocktail parties of the Nazi political elite that spread far and wide into the society over which it presided. An unapologetically provocative volume, Sex Under the Swastika is an exploration of the Third Reich's darkest secrets, which left blood on the crisp white sheets of a nation and caused many to remain silent for decades after the death of National Socialist Germany. This unique work leaves the reader to make up his or her own mind as to the perverse, warped nature and the guilt and complicity of one of history's most sexually exploitive and evil empires.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn enduring myth of Georgian architecture is that it was purely the pursuit of male architects and their wealthy male patrons. History states that it was men who owned grand estates and houses, who commissioned famous architects, and who embarked upon elaborate architectural schemes. Hidden Patrons dismantles this myth - revealing instead that women were at the heart of the architectural patronage of the day, exerting far more influence and agency than has previously been recognised. Architectural drawing and design, discourse, and patronage were interests shared by many women in the eighteenth century. Far from being the preserve of elite men, architecture was a passion shared by both sexes, intellectually and practically, as long as they possessed sufficient wealth and autonomy.In an accessible, readable account, Hidden Patrons uncovers the role of women as important patrons and designers of architecture and interiors in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. ExplorinTrade ReviewThis excellent book … is a rich and meticulous study on why and how British elite women of the later-Stuart and Georgian eras engaged in architecture-related schemes … A joy to read, as well as an education. -- Jacqueline Riding * Country Life *A sumptuous visual feast combined with deep archival research. With authority and flair, Amy Boyington shows that women have been hiding in plain sight all along in the story of how glamorous Georgian architecture got made. * Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, and author of Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman and Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court *A must read for anyone interested in women’s place in the past. * Janina Ramirez , University of Oxford, and author of Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It *Hidden Patrons is a complete revelation . . . a scholarly, yet engagingly-written study which celebrates the considerable contribution of aristocratic women to the architecture of country houses, villas, town houses and garden buildings in the eighteenth century. Everyone with an interest in Georgian architectures and interiors should read this book. * Jeremy Musson, University of Cambridge, and author of English Country House Interiors *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on Text List of Abbreviations Introduction 1.The Country House 2.The Town House 3.The Villa 4.The Wider Estate, Garden Design & Ornamental Buildings Conclusions Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn 1939, Britain was preparing for war. As well as building aeroplanes and digging Anderson shelters, this meant managing food supplies for the home front.The Ministry of Food rose to the challenge, introducing rationing, encouraging the nation to dig for victory, and issuing cookbooks and health advice.Drawing inspiration from Britain’s ‘finest hour’, when the thrifty British housewife had to grow her own veg, stretch the butter ration and still keep her family fighting fit, this is both a social history of wartime dining and a collection of over sixty delicious and healthy seasonal recipes with a vintage twist.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis rich and beautiful guide from best-selling garden writer Ambra Edwards explores the most magnificent botanic havens from every continent across the world. There has never been a better time to celebrate botanic gardens. From Brooklyn and San Francisco, to Colombia and Brazil; Oxford and Kew, to Cape Town and Mauritius; Norway and Germany, to Sydney and Thailand, discover surprising diversity, superb vistas, and some of the most intriguing plants you can imagine. As centers for research, conservation, and education, these expansive collections are integral to our understanding of the true power of plants. But they also hold some of the most beautiful species on earth – including ferns, trees, cacti, orchids, and more – expertly cared for and presented as a feast for the senses, delighting thousands of visitors each year. Ambra Edwards introduces the gardens, bringing them t

Read more less

Book SynopsisIdeas about the Scottish Highlands which took hold around the turn of the 19th century remain to the present day – for many people across the world Highland dress, bagpipes and Highland landscapes are the images of Scotland that first spring to mind. National Museums Scotland holds a significant collection of Highland dress and tartan clothing. The aims of Dr Rosie Waine's two-year research project include a survey of the collection and an exploration of how such outfits became an integral part of Scottish identity on a global stage.Table of ContentsForeword by Professor Christopher Breward, Director, National Museums Scotland Foreword by David Grant, William Grant Foundation Introduction by Dr Rosie Waine, National Museums Scotland CHAPTERS 1. Highland dress culture and the national collections 2. The rise and influence of the Highland societyies 3. Designing and trading tartan in Georgian Britain 4. Highland style in Georgian Society Afterword List of sources Index Acknowledgements

Read more less

Book SynopsisWe know that there were dogs in Victorian Britain, but who were the ‘Doggy People’ who kept them, bred them, showed them, worked with them and cared for them?Chapter by chapter, this book reveals the varied and often eccentric lives of the Victorians who helped define dogs as we know them today. The cast runs from the very pinnacle of society, Queen Victoria, to near the bottom with Jemmy Shaw, a publican, boxer, promoter of dog-fights and rat-killing. The others include an artist, aristocrats, authors, a clergyman, doctors, a dog-dealer, a feminist, journalists, landowners, millionaires, philanthropists, politicians, scientists, a stockbroker, veterinarians, and a showman – none other their Charles Cruft.Looking at the invention and meaning of new breeds such as poodles, collies, Jack Russells, and borzois amongst others, we see how the Victorians thought about pets, sports, dog shows and animal rights.Trade Review'Doggy People offers an entertaining, indispensable, and insightful guide to the cast of Victorian characters who created the dogs that live amongst us today'Chris Pearson, Author of Dogopolis: How dogs and Humans made modern New York, London, and Paris'Well researched, concise and accessible, Worboys traces the fascinating history of how and why Victorian society realigned the canine / human relationship - an engaging addition to this absorbing area of enquiry.'Hilda Kean, author of Animal Rights; The Great Cat & Dog Massacre; The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History'Worboys succeeds in taking an arch, humorous view of each subject without descending into caricature. Anecdotes are interwoven with a curriculum vitae of canine-related exploits. The breadth and depth of the research are worn lightly, but nonetheless invest the book – which might easily have descended into a treasury of trivia – with an underlying rigour and an eye for social history.'TLS, James Cahill, June 2023 -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction High society, low society1. Queen Victoria | Family pets2. Bill George | King of the Canine Castle3. Jemmy Shaw | The Fancy4. Duchess of Newcastle | Borzois and Fox TerriersCelebrities and millionaires5. Jack Russell | Terriers6. Edwin Landseer | Canine characters7. Harry Panmure Gordon and J. P. Morgan| Collies 8. Alice Stennard Robinson | Ladies Kennel AssociationSportsmen and showmen9. John Henry Walsh (‘Stonehenge’) | Breed and breeds10. Richard Lloyd Price | Sheepdog trials11. John Henry Salter | Field trials12. Charles Cruft | Dog showsDoctors and scientists13. Delabere Blaine and William Youatt | Dog doctors14. Charles Darwin | Evolution and emotions15. Gordon Stables | Canine care and dog tales16. Everett Millais | Basset Hounds and breedingCampaigners and politicians17. Mary Tealby | Dogs’ homes 18. Frances Power Cobbe | Sentient creatures19. John Cumming Macdona | St Bernards20. Sewallis Shirley | The Kennel ClubAfterword – Pedigree chums Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisAmerican history and self-understanding have long depended on the notion of a “colonial America”, an era that—according to prevailing accounts—laid the foundation for the modern United States. In Indigenous Continent, the acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen shatters this Eurocentric narrative by retelling the four centuries between first contacts and the peak of Native power from Indigenous points of view. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth, the American Revolution and other well-worn episodes on the conventional timeline, Hämäläinen depicts a sovereign world of distinctive Native nations whose members, far from simple victims of colonial aggression, controlled the continent well into the nineteenth century, fundamentally shaping the actions of the European imperialists and the development of the United States. Indigenous Continent restores Native Americans to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history.Trade Review"[A] towering achievement. By gathering the experiences of multiple Native peoples—across an astounding expanse of time and space—Indigenous Continent explodes the view that American history unfolded inexorably according to European and American design." -- Andrew Graybill - The American Scholar"[M]agisterial . . . the pace and the scope of the book have a force of their own: Hämäläinen makes it clear that America’s past is crazily, energetically, tumultuously crowded with incident; that Indigenous power has affected everything about America . . . I can only wish that, when I was that lonely college junior and was finishing Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, I’d had Hämäläinen’s book at hand. It would have helped me see that there was indeed a larger story: that my civilization hadn’t been destroyed; that my tribe’s contribution to the past wasn’t merely to fade away in the face of history; that Native peoples—for better or for worse—made this country what it was, and have a role to play in what it now struggles to be." -- David Treuer - The New Yorker"[T]he single best book I have ever read on Native American history, as well as one of the most innovative narratives about the continent." -- Thomas E. Ricks - The New York Times Book Review"Mr. Hämäläinen’s book provides a useful introduction to a vast history..." -- Kathleen DuVall - The Wall Street Journal"The author, an Oxford historian, recasts the history of North America from a Native American perspective, making clear that Native tribes controlled the continent for millenniums (‘On an Indigenous time scale, the United States is a mere speck’). One of the best books ever written on Native American history." -- The New York Times Book Review"Indigenous Continent, by the Oxford-based Finnish historian Pekka Hämäläinen, looks at the US from a distance—and sees something that others have neglected. There are numerous other books about Native American history, but few that have made it so central to the American story as a whole. Here, the indigenous people aren’t just the objects of nonindigenous violence" -- Prospect"What could be more exciting than a book upending everything you thought you knew? Better yet if that book is peppered with interesting facts and written in a pacey, intriguing style by one of the finest minds of his generation: Pekka Hämäläinen" -- Joy Porter - BBC History Magazine

Read more less

Book SynopsisA brilliant polymath and part of the 'first wave' of British Romanticism, Thomas Manning was one of the first Englishmen to study Chinese language and culture. Like famous friends including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb, Manning was inspired by the French Revolution and had ambitious plans for making a better world. While his contemporaries turned to the poetic imagination and the English countryside, Manning looked further afield – to China, one of the world’s most ancient and sophisticated civilizations. His travels included the salons of Napoleonic Paris, a period as a prisoner of war, a dramatic shipwreck and, disguised as a Buddhist pilgrim, a trek through the Himalayas to Tibet, where he met the Dalai Lama. Manning’s extraordinary story sheds a new light on English Romanticism.Trade ReviewChina Books Review's best biography of 2023, as recommended by Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking.'Thomas Manning did many remarkable things and knew many remarkable people. He deserves a biography. Such a book will hold particular interest for those who care about the British Romantics, British culture in the early nineteenth century, or British “orientalism”.' Michael Ferber, author of Romanticism: A very short introduction 'I had heard of Thomas Manning, but by name only and knew little about his life and travels, therefore the work has proved to be extremely interesting and educational. What an exciting ‘boy’s own’ adventure Manning appears to have had.' Sarah Murden, All Things Georgian'Edward Weech has successfully rescued one of Britain’s earliest Sinologues from obscurity and for that he should be thanked. That he has written such a highly readable and engaging biography of the man is really the cream on the coffee that makes Chinese Dreams in Romantic England an important study of early Sinology.'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society China -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction1 Early life2 Romantic, 1798-18013 France, 18024 Delay and departure, 1803-18065 Canton, 1807-18096 On the skirts of creation, 1810-18167 Home againConclusion: Why did Thomas Manning want to learn about China?Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom bra burning and body hair to Beyoncé and body positivity, feminism has come a long way.The illustrated story of the women's movement, Badly Behaved Women is a compelling and entertaining journey through the four waves of feminism and beyond. Featuring rare photographs and paraphernalia, reading lists, playlists and timelines, Anna-Marie Crowhurst's new history of an ongoing battle captures the pop culture and politics that have shaped modern feminism, and where the fight for equal rights will take us next.Personal testimony essays from: Alice Coffin; Juno Dawson; Diana Evans; Nadia Ghulam; Susie Orbach; Helen Pankhurst; Gisela Pérez de Acha; Laura Perlongo; Emeli Sandé; Anne Wafula Strike; Hibo Wardere; Harriet Wistrich; Rosie Wolfenden.Trade Review'Such a joyful book. You'll be needing an extra copy for your daughter too' -- Lucy WorsleyTable of ContentsIntroduction - Early Feminism • 1970s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s • 2010s • Conclusion • Afterword.

Read more less

Book SynopsisHeiresses is a glorious book, endlessly entertaining and about much more than its stated subject. Thompson is a fabulous writer' Caroline O'Donoghue 'Witty, insightful, deliciously gossip-laden and slightly scandalous... Heiresses makes for an entertaining, occasionally sad and never less than gripping read' Anne Sebba 'Excellent... [A] wonderfully entertaining book' Sunday Times 'Exquisite and gossipy... Thompson, a gifted storyteller, obviously delighted in the writing of this book' TLS '[A] deeply empathetic study of heiresses through the ages' The Times 'Life is less sad with money', said Emerald Cunard; Barbara Hutton was the 'Poor Little Rich Girl', but which is true? Laura Thompson explores the phenomenon of the heiress from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Take Mary Davies, a child bride at the age of twelve, and her thousand-acre dowry of today's Mayfair and Belgravia, which gave the Grosvenors their stupendous wealth. Or Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, whose American railroad fortune helped sustain Blenheim Palace. Winnaretta Singer showcased the work of Debussy in her Parisian salon; Daisy Fellowes enjoyed parties, fashion – and other people's husbands – without shame or conscience. Alice de Janzé shot one of her lovers and was suspected of murdering a second; Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton, married seven times. Money should mean power and opportunity, but in the hands of these women it was so often absent. Why did so many struggle to live with so much? Did the removal of need render their life meaningless? Were they riven with guilt at all they had, knowing they really should be happy? With her signature intelligence and wit, Laura Thompson tells these women's stories – glittering and fascinating but often sad and scandalous – on a gripping search for the answer.Trade ReviewHeiress is one of those words, like penthouse or superyacht, that invite schadenfreude. As Laura Thompson's excellent book makes clear, there is nothing more satisfying to the popular imagination than a poor little rich girl... [A] wonderfully entertaining book' * Sunday Times *[A] deeply empathetic study of heiresses through the ages * The Times *Exquisite and gossipy... Thompson, a gifted storyteller, obviously delighted in the writing of this book' * TLS *Hugely entertaining... Thompson writes about her subjects' psyches with wit and insight' * Sunday Business Post *Heiresses is a glorious book, endlessly entertaining and about much more than its stated subject. Through the lens of these very rich girls, we are given an opera-box view of money and class, women and men, crime and punishment. Thompson is a fabulous writer -- Caroline O'DonoghueI always enjoy Thompson's books and this sounds fabulous * The Bookseller *[A] fluent, readable study of wealthy women * Daily Telegraph *With plenty of gossip, scandal and witty insights on every page, Heiresses is undoubtedly an entertaining read from start to finish, telling stories that range from sad and heartbreaking to outrageous, frustrating and spectacularly glamorous... This is an intelligent, fascinating and infinitely readable book that's been structured well and offers such a wealth of brilliant material (not to mention an entirely new reading list to explore afterwards) that even the most casual of readers will not fail to be captivated by the lives of the Million Dollar Babies' * CultureFly *Absorbing study of women burdened by prodigious inheritances... Thompson presents a gossip-strewn survey of rich women with time on their hands' * Financial Times *An entertaining introduction to the adventures of independently wealthy women in Britain over the past four centuries * BBC History Magazine *A fascinating account of the lives of women born filthy rich * Best magazine *An entertaining book – who doesn't love a tale of excess, and there are plenty here! * This England *Laura Thompson is no stranger to the beau monde [...] Heiresses announces itself as exploring the phenomenon of the heiress from the 17th to the 21st centuries * The Oldie *Skillfully evoking disparate social milieus and generational divides, Thompson packs the narrative full of juicy gossip without resorting to caricature. Readers will be enthralled * Publishers Weekly *

Read more less

Book SynopsisRodinsky's world was that of the East European Jewry, cabbalistic speculation, an obsession with language as code and terrible loss. He touched the imagination of artist Rachel Lichtenstein, whose grandparents had left Poland in the 1930s. This text weaves together Lichtenstein's quest for Rodinsky - which took her to Poland, to Israel and around Jewish London - with Iain Sinclair's meditations on her journey into her own past and on the Whitechapel he has reinvented in his own writing. Rodinsky's Room is a testament to a world that has all but vanished, a homage to a unique culture and way of life.Trade ReviewThis is a mystery story and a detective story. It is a story of obsession and possession. It is a story about disappearing people, disappearing buildings and a disappearing way of life. Most of all, it is a story of a man who vanished, and the woman who set out to find him and, in the process, found herself * Guardian *Highly original, entertaining and instructive ... Thanks to those two mythographers, the story of David Rodinsky will remain with us * Times Literary Supplement *A wonderful story * Observer *

Read more less

Book SynopsisDame Agatha Christie reigns supreme as the Queen of Crime.' Numerous books have been written about the legendary crime writer, focusing on nearly every aspect of her craft. But until now no one has carried out an in-depth investigation into how she conquered the serial market with her thrilling tales of murder and intrigue. In the UK and US, Agatha Christie's work was serialized in the most prestigious magazines and newspapers of the day, often under an array of different titles, prior to being published by Collins and Dodd, Mead and Company. Second serial rights could result in a single title being syndicated to over 40 newspapers. Over the decades, numerous records have been lost or destroyed and keeping track of her literary legacy has proved a major challenge for her publishers, literary agents and others until now. Jared Cade, author of the ground-breaking biography Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, has unearthed a huge plethora of hitherto unknown facts about the t

Read more less

Book SynopsisOne of the great classics of Scottish history, The Drove Roads of Scotland interweaves folklore, social comment and economic history in a fascinating account of Scotland’s droving trade and the routes by which cattle and sheep were brought from every corner of the land to markets in central Scotland. In pastoral Scotland, the breeding and movement of livestock were fundamental to the lives of the people. The story of the drove roads takes the reader on an engrossing tour of Scottish history, from the lawless cattle driving by reivers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the legitimate movement of stock which developed after the Union of the Crowns, by which time the large-scale movement of stock to established markets had become an important part of Scotland’s economy, and a vital aspect of commercial life in the Empire.Trade Review'a great classic of Scottish history - a masterpiece' * Highland News *'Comprehensive and continuously engrossing' * The Scotsman *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA joy' Philippe SandsGlorious' David SpiegelhalterA fascinating, enchanting and personal look at the meaning of luck, and the way in which it has shaped our shared history and continues to inflect our day to day lives.What does it mean to be lucky? How might we mitigate the effects of bad luck and maximise those of good? Is there really such a thing as luck' at all?To answer these questions, David Flusfeder sets out on a quest that will take him across the world and through history. Travelling from Siberia to Versailles, from his father's life in war-time Poland to Nietzsche on the slopes of Vesuvius, Flusfeder investigates some victors of luck and those who were defeated by it. In following him, we find ourselves confronting who we are and how we might choose to live.Thrilling, intelligent and wilfully unique I loved it' James Runcie, author of The Great PassionRuminative page-turning' TLSFascinating An eminently enjoyable and engrossing page-turner' The Jewish ChronicleTrade Review‘Luck is a wonderful intermingling of the historic, philosophical and literary, with tales of the author and his engaging, complicated, extraordinary father. A joy’ Philippe Sands, author of The Last Colony ‘An extraordinary collection of insights into luck, skilfully combining personal stories and historical studies into a partly random structure. It has a glorious unpredictability, producing a stimulating feeling of uncertainty about what the next gem will turn out to be’ David Spiegelhalter, author of The Art of Statistics ‘Ruminative … page-turning’ TLS ‘In Luck, [Flusfeder] bypasses the scientific harsh truth about randomness and probability and instead has written a book about the human side of luck … Eccentric, insightful meditations’ New Scientist ‘Thrilling, intelligent and wilfully unique, with the bonus ball of being unexpectedly moving, David Flusfeder’s thirteen investigations are the result of a lifetime of original thinking. I loved it’ James Runcie, author of The Great Passion ‘Fascinating … An eminently enjoyable and engrossing page-turner’ The Jewish Chronicle ‘Flusfeder stands up for superstition’ Telegraph ‘This deep, particular and witty examination of the nature of luck and its role in human existence is an absolute joy, from random start to mysterious finish. A most unusual book’ Louisa Young, author of Twelve Months and a Day

Read more less

Book SynopsisA TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARAn absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year' Sunday TelegraphOn nearly every page a random passage takes one's breath away' The TimesHave you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road? For two thousand years, the roads the Romans built have determined the flow of ideas and folktales, where battles were fought and where pilgrims trod. Almost everyone in Britain lives close to a Roman road, if only we knew where to look.In the beginning was Watling Street, the first road scored on the land when the invading Romans arrived on a cold and alien Kentish shore in 43 CE. Campaign roads rolled out to all points of the compass, forcing their way inland and as the Britons fell back, the roads pursued them relentlessly, carrying troops, supplies and military despatches. In the years of fighting that followed, as the legions pushed onwards across what is now England, into Wales and north into Scotland in search ofTrade Review A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘There’s something beguilingly mysterious about these ancient roads . . . When searching for his road, Hadley makes full use of his senses. . . the breadth of his knowledge . . . the beauty of his prose. This book deserves to be read at least twice, first to appreciate what it reveals and then to luxuriate in its effervescent voice. On nearly every page a random passage takes one’s breath away’ The Times, Gerard DeGroot ‘Magnificent . . . exciting . . . This is no dry and prosaic history, but a work of imagination and a deeply literary book… wonderful prose . . . striking images and lapidary sentences… enthralling. It’s an absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year’ Sunday Telegraph, Harry Sidebottom ‘In this magnificent book. . . Hadley takes us down a different way, looking through a gentler window on that road's long lost days. He reveals The Road's own intimate knowledge of the land it knew and the folk it's known, turning the tables on what we think we're reading; because The Road is not really about it, it's about us’ Mythical Britain, Michael Smith author of King Arthur's Death ‘Loving The Road, [it’s] about a Roman road but also a rumination on the past and our relationship with it. [An] excellent companion piece to his previous book about a dragon slayer’s tomb. The pair offer a whole new and very exciting model for how to do local history. Highly recommend’ Dr Kelcey Wilson-Lee author of Daughters of Chivalry ‘Ingeniously constructed…scholarly…wears its learning lightly… is engagingly written…and always a pleasure to read’ Country Life ‘The book offers a wealth of historical knowledge in a fashion which is entertaining and readable… combines scholarly depth with wonderfully lyrical depictions of the English landscape’Literary Review

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn a beautiful literary exploration, Sally Bayley tracks the evolution and the potential twenty first century death of the diary, mourning what it means to lose the art of writing simply for oneself. Diaries hold all manner of things: they allow us a moment to be completely personal, to self-aggrandise, to focus on self-reflection without concern of what someone on the outside might think. Discovered or published diaries of the past have also provided glimpses into history, eras and minds gone by, especially the inner lives otherwise unknown.Tracing the history of the diary from Samuel Pepys, whose record of the Great Plague and Great Fire of London informed history, through the likes of Virginia Woolf's personal confessions in the twentieth century, and up to the age of social media, Sally Bayley explores the beauty and the power of recording one's own life.Taking this thought all the way up to our era of exposure, with confessional journalism and social media barrage, Bayley explorTrade Review‘A masterly study on the 'long historical habit' of diary writing … Bayley's book succeeds brilliantly in merging scholarship with imagination, and emotional depth with writerly flair’Independent ‘An elegant survey of diaries through history and why we keep them … Bayley is splendidly dismissive of blogs – sending boring screeds into "a blank universe" – and when she defined tweeting as "a sort of premature mental ejaculation" I wrote in the margin in Sylvia Plath-size letters with a Magic Marker: Brava, Sally!’Roger Lewis, The Times ‘A delight for fans of Sylvia Plath as well as diary writers everywhere’Woman's Way Ireland

Read more less

Book SynopsisIreland's Instagram sensation Meditations for the Anxious Mind takes us on a trip around Ireland of the likes you've never seen before, from the trolley-filled Liffey to the glamour of Navan.Ever been curious about Limerick's ancient mysteries or wondered what secrets Drogheda might hold? Well now you can visit the trolleys in the Liffey from the comfort of your armchair and learn the lesser-known facts about Ireland's greatest dumps.Did you know that there's no crime in Stoneybatter, because every time a fixie gets stolen they just say it happened in Cabra?Did you know people from Galway have a genetic defect that makes them think they built Supermacs themselves?Did you know that no one in Cork City can remember anyone's name, which is why Corkonians are either called bai', kid' or girl'?Why not go off the beaten track with Meditations for the Anxious Mind's Toxic Travel Guide and laugh your way around Ireland. We did the research so you don't have to smell the bin juice.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe definitive history of coronations and the Royal Family, from acclaimed writer Roy Strong.'What is the finest sight in the world? A Coronation.What do people talk most about? A Coronation.What is delightful to have passed? A Coronation.'Horace Walpole, 1761As a boy of sixteen, Roy Strong watched the grand procession carrying Queen Elizabeth II to her coronation. The spectacle was considered the greatest public event of the century. But now, so many years later, many people have little notion of what a coronation is and are unaware of the rich resonances of the ritual, or its deep significance in terms of the committal of monarch to people.This book is the first of its kind a comprehensive history that sets each coronation into its political, social, religious and cultural context. The story is one of constant re-invention as the service has had to respond to all the changes in fortune of the monarchy or the country: everything from legitimising usurpers to reconciling a Catholic riTrade Review‘Lavishly illustrated throughout, this is, however, much more than a coffee-table book…a beautiful and informative book.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Strong points out in his survey of the 1,000 year history of the event…the changing significance of monarchy.’ Financial Times ‘A well organised, sympathetic and fascinating account of the central ritual of the English people. This is a serious book with a full scholarly apparatus of notes, bibliography, charts, chronologies and index…this new book fulfils a need…a model of the illustrated history genre…the design and layout are exceptionally clear and elegant…Sir Roy has been admirably served by his publishers.’ Spectator 'A fascinating and compellingly readable study… all the themes are dealt with eloquently and with wit' TLS ‘A magnificent book, meticulously researched, never dull, and beautifully illustrated.’ Country Life

Read more less

Book SynopsisA SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERStunning, photographic King Charles III memorabilia gift for royal fansAs the nation celebrates the coronation of a new monarch, The Sun looks back on 100 moments in the life of the man who would be king.The longest heir apparent in British history, King Charles has lived a remarkable life during his 70-year wait to be king. From his childhood to his later years, each day of Charles's life has led up to the moment he ascended to the throne. With exclusive articles from The Sun's archives, rarely seen photographs and a foreword written by celebrated royal photographer Arthur Edwards MBE, this book paints a unique portrait of the man behind the monarch.Featuring the ups and downs, highs and lows, and the key moments that have shaped the life of a son, father, grandfather and king, including:The birth of a prince, 1948From Balmoral to boarding school, 1958Investiture of the Prince of Wales, 1969Blazing a trail for the environment, 1970Charles meets Camilla, 1972We

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review“Wandering in Strange Lands is in many ways a quintessentially American story. . . Jerkins makes plain that denying space for Black identities in history is itself a legacy as American as its original sins of racism and enslavement. By exploring the truth of that past with such integrity, this memoir enriches our future." — New York Times Book Review "Jerkins weaves a vivid and painful backstory of Black people forced into enslavement in the American South. . .The book is filled with poignant examples from across multiple centuries, including those retold in classrooms and those relegated to forgotten parts of our country's consciousness. . .It's when Jerkins sews her familial threads with those poignant historical facts from deep in the archives of America that the book is most impactful. Equally heartbreaking and reaffirming are the trials and tribulations too many Black people in the United States have faced and somehow conquered, coming out more resilient on the other side." — USA Today "Wandering in Strange Lands intertwines segments of past and present travel, as a reminder that the past is present in the U.S." — O, the Oprah Magazine "The mass migration of 6 million Black Americans from the rural South to the North, West, and Midwest is given a deeply personal framing by writer Morgan Jerkins as she attempts to better understand her ancestors’ treacherous journey across America." — Vogue "Traveling throughout the country, [Jerkins] explores the path her family took as well as her cultural identity as a black woman. Her desire to understand both her personal and cultural origins will inspire you to do the same." — Elle "Morgan Jerkins has always been curious about her family tree and the roots of Black Americans. In 'Wandering in Strange Lands,' she traces her ancestry back 300 years and shares what she learned about the Great Migration, displacement, and disenfranchisement. The result is an eye-opening, well-researched portrait of Black life in America after slavery." — Hello Giggles "Wandering in Strange Lands is a timely and riveting story about the Black American experience as told by a writer seeking to reclaim her roots by retracing her family's journey." — PopSugar "Morgan Jerkins, author of the best-selling and acclaimed This Will Be My Undoing, sets out to discover her family’s roots in Wandering in Strange Lands. In doing so she paints a larger portrait of African American displacement and disenfranchisement during the Great Migration and its impact on her own life. . . Jerkins is a wonderfully articulate memoirist and critic as she shares her own quest to understand the hard truths and actions of her ancestors. . .Wandering in Strange Lands is revelatory, shocking, and affirming." — Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review "In Wandering in Strange Lands, Jerkins mixes reportage with personal reflection, taking readers through Southern spaces not often given visibility by those inhabiting or those who built the towns because they’ve since seen another type of colonization. Connecting her present with her past and investigating the ways DNA for Black people is not secular but spans many regions in the United States, Jerkins delves into a family history she didn’t understand but brings herself, and us, closer to." — Electric Literature "Jerkins evades [the sophomore] slump with the release of her second book, [Wandering in Strange Lands] penning beautiful prose that is engaging, thought-provoking, and authentic. Following the release of her 2018 New York Times bestseller, This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins hits another home run and leaves her readers asking new questions about the world in which we live." — Ms. Magazine "For fans of “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times Magazine’s series that recently reexamined the legacy of slavery in the United States, this book is an interesting companion piece. For a long time, Jerkins’ family chose to look forward, not back. But what she found when she finally did retrace their steps was her true self. It had not been forgotten; it was just waiting to be discovered." — Bust Magazine “[A] forthright and informative account. . . . Jerkins’s careful research and revelatory conversations with historians, activists, and genealogists result in a disturbing yet ultimately empowering chronicle of the African-American experience. Readers will be moved by this brave and inquisitive book.” — Publishers Weekly “A thrilling, emotional, and engaging ride that almost commands the reader to turn the page, Wandering in Strange Lands is required reading, accurately widening the lens of American history.” — Booklist (starred review) "A blend of reportage and memoir, this is just one story of many of this time—and one not to miss when it comes out." — Book Riot “Driven by a need to understand her own identity, cultural critic Jerkins mounted an investigation into her family's tangled history, recounting in this candid memoir the surprising discoveries that emerged from her emotional journey. . . A revelatory exploration of the meaning of blackness.” — Kirkus Reviews

Read more less

Book SynopsisRanging from chattel slavery, through the New Deal to the Covid pandemic, a groundbreaking work that investigates how pivotal decisions have established and perpetuated discriminatory practices, even as the rise of disinformation and other modern advertising techniques have plunged democracy into an ever-deepening crisis. Throughout our nation’s history, numerous racialized decisions have solidified the fates of generations of citizens of color. Some of the earliest involved race-based slavery, the removal of Indigenous peoples from their lands, and the exclusion of most Asians. More have proliferated over time. While America grew into a superpower in the twentieth century, it continued to discriminate against people of color—both soldiers who served overseas and civilians on the home front, herding Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II and denying Black citizens their right to vote. American Politicians have waxed eloquently and endlessly about bettering the nation. But bettering it for whom? journalist and cultural commentator Ellis Cose asks. From Reconstruction to the New Deal to the unceasing fight for civil rights, Cose reveals how the hopes of many Americans for a true multicultural democracy have been repeatedly frustrated by white nationalists skilled at weaponizing racial anxieties of other whites. In Race and Reckoning Cose dissects chapter-by-chapter how America’s overall narrative breeds racial resentment rooted in conjecture over fact. Through rigorous research and with astute detail, Cose uncovers how, at countless points in history, America’s leaders have upheld a narrative of American greatness rooted in racism, as he offers a hopeful yet clear-eyed vision of American possibility.It is a story grounded in history, and it demolishes the myths that ultimately allowed one of the most ill-prepared, unethical, vindictive, and truth-challenged politicians in history to position himself as America’s savior by tapping into the nation’s darkest tendencies. A pointed rebuke of American exceptionalism,” was Publishers Weekly''s description of Race and Reckoning. Whereas many politicians argue for ignoring or rewriting unflattering history, this is a passionate and incisive argument for accepting—and learning from—historical truth and rejecting ignorance disguised as patriotism. An important work “that merits a place on ethnic studies—and American history—curricula,” observed Kirkus. Trade Review“A book that merits a place on ethnic studies—and American history—curricula.” — Kirkus Reviews “Blistering. . . . Cose draws incisive parallels between past and present. This is a pointed rebuke of American exceptionalism.” — Publishers Weekly

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review“Firmly planted in both the past and the present, this is an excellent introduction to an oft-misunderstood chapter in American history.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “The Reconstruction era is perceived within the racist imagination to be a failure. In fact, popular memory has been a failure. Make Good the Promises is a powerful and illuminating exploration that shows the Black struggle during the Reconstruction era for a multiracial democracy. We are fighting the same struggle today.” — Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-Winning Author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist “The truly impressive essays and gorgeous illustrations collected here offer a powerful and unflinching look at a critical period of our history. Engaging directly with a history of what W.E.B. Du Bois called 'propaganda' about this period, Make Good the Promises helps us see that we cannot understand the present without grappling with this violent, transformative time. This beautiful collection reveals why Reconstruction belongs at the center of Black history and, indeed, all of American history.” — Kate Masur, Author of Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Read more less

Book SynopsisThese are the songs that we have listened to, laughed to, loved to and laboured to, as well as downed tools and danced to. Covering the last seven decades, Stuart Maconie looks at the songs that have sound tracked our changing times, and just sometimes changed the way we feel. Beginning with Vera Lynn's We'll Meet Again', a song that reassured a nation parted from their loved ones by the turmoil of war, and culminating with the manic energy of Bonkers', Dizzee Rascal's anthem for the push and rush of the 21st century inner city, The People's Songs takes a tour of our island's pop music, and asks what it means to us. This is not a rock critique about the 50 greatest tracks ever recorded. Rather, it is a celebration of songs that tell us something about a changing Britain during the dramatic and kaleidoscopic period from the Second World War to the present day. Here are songs about work, war, class, leisure, race, family, drugs, sex, patriotism and moreTrade ReviewOne of the most insightful and purely readable books on pop music I think I have ever encountered -- Marcus Berkmann * Daily Mail *An unequivocal pleasure and highly recommended -- Marcus Berkmann * Daily Mail *The blend of research and conjecture is impressive -- Will Hodgkinson * The Times *Maconie succeeds in being at once elegant and approachable, definititive but also self-deprecating * Guardian *A fine writer: sharp, funny, tender and thoughtful * Spectator *

Read more less

Book SynopsisOh my goodness another girl Mrs Swain!' Clara's normal iron composure broke and she screamed, No! That's not the bloody deal!'And that is how my nanna, Bertha Swain, entered the world.When Helen Batten's marriage breaks down, she starts on a journey of discovery into her family's past and the mysteries surrounding her enigmatic nanna's early life. What she unearths is a tale of five feisty red heads struggling to climb out of poverty and find love through two world wars. It's a story full of surprises and scandal a death in a workhouse, a son kept in a box, a shameful war record, a clandestine marriage and children taken far too soon. It's as if there is a family curse. But Helen also finds love, resilience and hope crazy wagers, late night Charlestons and stolen kisses. As she unravels the story of Nanna and her scarlet sisters, Helen starts to break the spell of the past, and sees a way she might herself find love again.Trade ReviewFascinating ... a moving account of survival * Yours *Fascinating ... a moving account of survival * Yours *This fascinating delve into family history reveals the ways in which women’s lives have – and haven’t – changed * Readers Digest *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAmbitious and groundbreaking, Electric Shock tells the story of popular music, from the birth of recording in the 1890s to the digital age, from the first pop superstars of the twentieth century to the omnipresence of music in our lives, in hit singles, ringtones and on Spotify. Over that time, popular music has transformed the world in which we live. Its rhythms have influenced how we walk down the street, how we face ourselves in the mirror, and how we handle the outside world in our daily conversations and encounters. It has influenced our morals and social mores; it has transformed our attitudes towards race and gender, religion and politics. From the beginning of recording, when a musical performance could be preserved for the first time, to the digital age, when all of recorded music is only a mouse-click away; from the straitlaced ballads of the Victorian era and the coon songs' that shocked America in the early twentieth century to gangsta rap, deathTrade ReviewWitty and compelling * Esquire *Dauntlessly comprehensive, elegantly parlayed survey of pop’s recorded history * MOJO *a great history book, read it and stream -- Max Bell * Record Collector *What Electric Shock imparts… is delight and curiosity in the music it chronicles with such pithy vivacity. -- Neil Spenser * Guardian *this magnificent book is highly recommended for anyone with more than a passing interest in popular music over the last century or so -- Alwyn Turner * Literary Review *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA portrait of 18th century England, from its princes to its paupers, from its metropolis to its smallest hamlet. The topics covered include - diet, housing, prisons, rural festivals, bordellos, plays, paintings, and work and wages.Table of ContentsContrasts; the social order; power, politics and the law; keeping life going; getting and spending; having and enjoying; changing experiences; towards industrial society; conclusion.

Read more less

Book SynopsisGitta Sereny is one of the world''s most respected journalists and historians. This book gathers together the best of her writing on Germany from over sixty years. It amounts to an extraordinary portrait of the country and its people, how they have come to terms with their Nazi past, both collectively and in specific instances - and how the burden of their guilt has altered the national identity. She writes about key individuals - Stangl, Speer - and the questions which their lives raise. Thepenetration and conviction of her writing throughout is startling and she constantly reminds us why it is important to consider the questions she addresses - war guilt, holocaust denial and the temptations of obedience.Table of ContentsBeginnings; my friend, a heroine of France; stolen children; generation without a past; colloquy with a conscience; men who whitewash Hitler; the Hitler wave; fakes and hoaxes - the Hitler diaries; the great Globocnik hunt; private lives; the three sins of Syberberg; "the truth is, I loved Hitler"; Leni; Kurt Waldheim's mental block; the man who said "no"; Albert Speer; children of the Reich; the case of John Demjanjuk; a last witness to Hitler; final reflections.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn On Royalty Jeremy Paxman delves deep into Britain''s royal past. What is the point of Kings and Queens? What do they do all day? And what does it mean to be one of them?Jeremy Paxman is used to making politicians explain themselves - but royalty has always been off limits. Until now. He takes a long hard look at our present incumbents to find out just what makes them tick. Along the way he discovers some fascinating and little-known details. Such as:how Albania came to advertise in England for a kingwhich English queen gave birth in front of 67 peoplehow easy it is to beat up future kings of England and how meeting the Queen is a bit scary - whoever you are ...No other book will tell you quite as much about our kings, queens, princes and princesses: who they are and what they''re for.''Paxman''s book is everyhing that royalty is not allowed to be - witty, stylish, intelligent, pugnacious and political. The TimesTrade ReviewPaxman's book is everyhing that royalty is not allowed to be - witty, stylish, intelligent, pugnacious and political. * The Times *On Royalty is an absorbing, well-researched book, part serious enquiry, part rollicking anecdote. * Evening Standard *Action-packed and entertaining. -- The * Sunday Telegraph *On Royalty is an absorbing, well-researched book, part serious enquiry, part rollicking anecdote. * Evening Standard *

Read more less

Book SynopsisNoel Malcolm, a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy, has previously written histories of Bosnia (1994) and Kosovo (1998). He is a general editor of the Clarendon edition of Thomas Hobbes, for which he himself has produced acclaimed editions of Hobbes's correspondence (1994) and Leviathan (2012). He is also a former Foreign Editor of the Spectator. He was knighted in 2014. Agents of Empire is his newest book.Trade ReviewThe book is a masterpiece, which will open the eyes of readers to the intrinsic interest and importance of a historically neglected region of Europe within the framework of a relationship between civilizations which is as complex today as it was in the sixteenth century. -- Sir John Elliott, Regius Professor of History Emeritus, University of OxfordThe word "magisterial" is overused, but for once it is properly applied to this latest offering from a scholar who is as prolific as he is polymathic. -- Daniel Johnson * Standpoint *There are very few scholars with Malcolm's linguistic skills and historical vision, which is one of the many reasons Agents of Empire is such an important book. It opens up new vistas of research into the hinterland of Renaissance Europe -- Jerry Brotton * Telegraph *The best introduction to the 16th-century Mediterranean since Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II (1949) -- David Wootton * Wall Street Journal *

Read more less

Book SynopsisDespite--or because of--its huge popular culture status, Peanuts enabled cartoonist Charles Schulz to offer political commentary on the most controversial topics of postwar American culture through the voices of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts gang.In postwar America, there was no newspaper comic strip more recognizable than Charles Schulz''s Peanuts. It was everywhere, not just in thousands of daily newspapers. For nearly fifty years, Peanuts was a mainstay of American popular culture in television, movies, and merchandising, from the Macy''s Thanksgiving Day Parade to the White House to the breakfast table.Most people have come to associate Peanuts with the innocence of childhood, not the social and political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s. Some have even argued that Peanuts was so beloved because it was apolitical. The truth, as Blake Scott Ball shows, is that Peanuts was very political. Whether it was the battles over the Vietnam War, racial integration, feminism, or the future of a nuclear world, Peanuts was a daily conversation about very real hopes and fears and the political realities of the Cold War world. As thousands of fan letters, interviews, and behind-the-scenes documents reveal, Charles Schulz used his comic strip to project his ideas to a mass audience and comment on the rapidly changing politics of America.Charlie Brown''s America covers all of these debates and much more in a historical journey through the tumultuous decades of the Cold War as seen through the eyes of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Peppermint Patty, Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang.Trade ReviewBall has offered a wonderful lens through which to understand not only how Schulz's Christian faith and mildly liberal bent generated a beloved comic strip but also how the life and times of an angst-ridden boy named Charlie Brown and his motley group of friends mirrored the contours of postwar American political culture....Historians of twentieth-century political culture will find much to like about Ball's analysis...of Schulz's comic strip, one that invited readers such as Reagan to project their own political anxieties and concerns onto the lives of minimally sketched cartoon kids. * Robert Genter, Journal of American History *Ball makes a strong case that the world's foremost comic strip was very political, despite common belief to the contrary, its messages deftly shrouded in allegory, ambiguousness, and intentional vagueness by Charles Schulz ... this excellent book provides abundant new material and many fascinating insights. * J. A. Lent, CHOICE *This is a comics studies book that your parents and non-comics friends would also enjoy. Charlie Brown's America is mostly jargon-free and is a fun, fast read. It reprints a substantial number of Peanuts comics and Peanuts-related images, and these entertain readers and help illustrate Ball's ideas. This is an excellent example of how to write good history that a general audience will enjoy reading!.... One of the most impressive elements of Charlie Brown's America is how it presents Charles Schulz as a deeply thoughtful person and then shows how that translates into his work. Ball really does complicate the legacy of Schulz and Peanuts, but he does so in a way that enriches the strip and helps to firmly ground the seemingly timeless Peanuts gang in cold war America....Charlie Brown's America serves up nostalgia, makes you smile, and still manages to make you rethink and reconsider Peanuts and its legacy. * Dan Newland, The Comic Book Yeti *It's enlightening to read Ball's breakdown of where the strip captured the moment and where it strayed. * Heather Seggel, Progressive Populist *Peanuts reflects America, or America reflects Peanuts. Both were true in the case of America's favorite comic strip. For half a century Charles Schulz sent his missive out to the world in a love letter, and his readers loved him back with unparalleled affection. In this thoroughly researched and carefully considered study, Blake Scott Ball explores the reasons why Schulz may have been our best cartoonist. Like Mickey Mouse, Superman, and Chaplin's tramp, Charlie Brown has joined our list of icons who help us understand the human condition. He's a good man, Charlie Brown. * M. Thomas Inge, Randolph-Macon College *Blake Scott Ball's Charlie Brown's America uses the history of Charles Schulz's Peanuts as a medium for his fascinating tour of cold war American culture. * Grace Hale, University of Virginia *This valuable study provides essential context for our understanding of a pop-cultural masterpiece. Charles Schulz generally avoided making overt political statements in his comics. But as Blake Ball demonstrates, that doesn't mean that Peanuts was never a political text. In fact, Schulz cultivated a deliberately ambiguous, even polysemic approach when addressing the most hot-button issues of his day—from Women's Liberation to Civil Rights and Environmentalism. * Ben Saunders, University of Oregon *A cultural history with the narrative drive of a well-crafted biography, Blake Scott Ball's Charlie Brown's America unlocks the mysteries behind Schulz's comic masterpiece. Drawing on interviews, speeches, and correspondence between the cartoonist and his fans, Ball offers deftly historicized close readings of Schulz's strip, showing how Peanuts' ideological flexibility made it a 'Rorschach test' for American readers during the Cold War. A tour de force of comics scholarship and an engrossing read! * Philip Nel, author of Was the Cat in the Hat Black? *The book succeeds nicely as both a fresh treatment of Schulz's work and career and as a survey of popular political currents in the mid-twentieth century United States... [It] will interest scholars of mid-twentieth-century cultural history as well as fans and students of comics, comedy, and popular culture. * Kerry Soper, American Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Ch 1 Bless You for Charlie Brown: Evangelicalism, Civil Religion, and Peanuts in Postwar America Ch 2 Crosshatch Is Beautiful: Franklin, Color-Blindness, and the Limits of Racial Integration in Peanuts Ch 3 Snoopy Is the Hero in Vietnam: Ambivalence, Empathy, and Peanuts' Vietnam War Ch 4 I Believe in Conserving Energy: Personal Responsibility, Consumer Politics, and Peanuts' Pro-Capitalist Environmental Ethos Ch 5 I Have a Vision, Charlie Brown: Gender Roles, Abortion Rights, Sex Education, and Peanuts in the Age of the Women's Movement Conclusion Notes Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe historical trajectory of decadent culture runs from ancient Rome, to nineteenth-century Paris, Victorian London, fin de siècle Vienna, Weimar Berlin, and beyond. The first of these, the decline of Rome, provides the pattern for both aesthetic and social decadence, a pattern that artists and writers in the nineteenth century imitated, emulated, parodied, and otherwise manipulated for aesthetic gain. What begins as the moral condemnation of modernity in mid-nineteenth century France on the part of decadent authors such as Charles Baudelaire ends up as the perverse celebration of the pessimism that imperial decline, whether real or imagined, involves. This delight in decline informs the so-called breviary, or even bible, of decadence from Joris-Karl Huysmans''s À Rebours, Oscar Wilde''s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Aubrey Beardsley''s drawings, Gustav Klimt''s paintings, and numerous other works. In this Very Short Introduction, David Weir explores these conflicting attitudes towards modernity present in decadent culture by examining the difference between aesthetic decadence -- the excess of artifice -- and social decadence, which involves excess in a variety of forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. Such contrariness between aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a maneuver with far-reaching consequences, especially as decadence enters the realm of popular culture today.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade Reviewincisive survey * Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education *entertaining * ANZLitLovers *Weir does us a service by bringing into one accessible book the decadences of different ages for comparison. * Jad Adams, The Wildean *In Decadence: A Very Short Introduction, David Weir helps students, scholars, and the general public to think more critically about decadence by introducing a lens that could serve as a starting point for understanding the concept: modernity and conflict.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction 1 Rome: Classical Decadence 2 Paris: Cultural Decadence 3 London: Social Decadence 4 Vienna and Berlin: Socio-cultural Decadence Conclusion: Legacies of Decadence References Further reading Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisRevised and updated throughout, the fourth edition of A Brief History of Ancient Greece presents the political, social, cultural, and economic history and civilization of ancient Greece in all its complexity and variety. Written by six leading ancient Greek historians, this captivating study covers Greek history from the Bronze Age into the Roman period.Trade ReviewPomeroy's A Brief History of Ancient Greece continues to be the best and most comprehensive textbook for those interested in ancient Greek history and culture. The new edition stretches from the Bronze Age down through Roman Greece, and makes an effort to include many primary source documents and new archaeological finds. This text is an ideal choice for students and enthusiasts of Greek history (political, social, military, and cultural) and civilization. * Jessica Lamont, Yale University *A Brief History of Ancient Greece is the standard text that I have relied on since I was an undergraduate, providing the best combination of content coverage, lucid explanation, supplemental materials (including pictures), and price. * Joshua Nuddell, University of Missouri *This is the best text on the market at acknowledging recent scholarly trends without cutting out the traditional material. The writing is clear and accessible. The maps and color illustrations add a lot of verve. * Andrew Alwine, College of Charleston *A Brief History of Ancient Greece covers all the major topics in Ancient Greek history via a page-turning chronological narrative. Essentially, this is a finely balanced text, avoiding belabouring topics as well as giving coverage to all the major themes. Its major strengths are its readability, formatting (which fits my course's time frame), cost, and currency. * Montgomery Walker, Yakima Valley College *

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDavid Mwambari offers a powerful revisionary account of the memory of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. His book works simultaneously on two levels: it illuminates and challenges what he calls the hegemonic master narrative of the genocide memory while offering an account of the plurality of memories of multiple violence in Rwanda's history; and it models how the study of collective remembrance can take inspiration from decolonial methodologies and move beyond its Eurocentric origins. This is an important contribution to a variety of fields, including genocide studies, African studies, and memory studies. Highly recommended!"-Michael Rothberg, author of The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators.David Mwambari's nuanced study explores the lived experiences of the 1994 genocide and its commemoration, over twenty years, recentring a wide range of Rwandan voices, and examining the powerful dominant narrative of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide Against the Tutsi. Mwambari has a unique positionality as one of the few Rwandan international scholars to carry out such complex scholarly work. This is a scholarly journey which is both restorative and productive, and one in which the humanity of the author is fully engaged."-Molly Andrews, Honorary Professor of Political Psychology, University College LondonThis innovative study explores how Rwanda's master narrative about the 1994 genocide became hegemonic through a process spanning several years and involving multiple actors. Particularly noteworthy are profiles of how three Rwandan artists contributed to commemoration events-yet the celebrated musician Kizito Mihigo was punished when he dared diverge from the dominant narrative; several years later he died in police custody. Despite its extensive research, the cautious tone of Mwambari's book will likely stimulate spirited debates on a central political issue today-that of creating a hegemonic ideology in the wake of massive social violence."-Catharine Newbury, Professor of Government, Smith CollegeThis book has evolved both as a biographical excavation and intellectual inquiry into what memory and memorialization can do for societies disrupted by genocide. In focusing on memory and how remembering is the subject of ever-changing dynamics, this study advances our understanding of knowledge, of how we know and what we know. This is the reason the intellectual contribution of this book is urgent and valuable. The book reminds us that lived experiences, coded in memory, give intellectual work authenticity. In daring to write this book, and in doing it so well, David Mwambari has taken memory studies a notch higher and invited us to accept the fluidity of memory without denying its very value in society. The book is an indispensable contribution to a growing interdisciplinary field of memory studies."-Godwin R. Murunga, CODESRIA Executive SecretaryTable of ContentsForeword Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Commemorating the Past and the Evolution of Concepts in Memory Studies Chapter 2: Rwandan Narratives and Rwandan Pasts Chapter 3: Shaping the Emergence and Evolution of the Genocide Master Narrative Chapter 4: Imprinting the Land with the Materials of Memory Chapter 5: Localizing Commemoration and Individual Responses to the Master Narrative Chapter 6: Expressing Memory after Genocide: The Art of Commemoration Chapter 7: The Media, Commemoration, and the Enforcement of the Master Narrative Conclusion: The Malleability of Memory and Reflections on the Future of Knowledge Production on Rwanda and in Memory Studies References

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe image of Poland has once again been impressed on European consciousness. Norman Davies provides a key to understanding the modern Polish crisis in this lucid and authoritative description of the nation''s history. Beginning with the period since 1945, he travels back in time to highlight the long-term themes and traditions which have influenced present attitudes.His evocative account reveals Poland as the heart of Europe in more than the geographical sense. It is a country where Europe''s ideological conflicts are played out in their most acute form: as recent events have emphasized, Poland''s fate is of vital concern to European civilization as a whole.This revised and updated edition tackles and analyses the issues arising from the fall of the Eastern Block, and looks at Poland''s future within a political climate of democracy and free market.Trade Reviewanother masterpiece. Heart of Europe has sweep, a rare analytical depth and a courageous display of the author's personal convictions. The book begins and ends with Solidarity; the unique labour movement thus serves as a frame for the nation's history. * New York Times Book Review *Table of Contents(TO BE CONFIRMED)

Read more less

Book Synopsis''A trained scout will see little signs and tracks, he puts them together in his mind and quickly reads a meaning from them such as an untrained man would never arrive at.'' A startling amalgam of Zulu war-cry and imperial and urban myth, of borrowed tips on health and hygiene, and object lessons in woodcraft, Robert Baden-Powell''s Scouting for Boys (1908) is the original blueprint and ''self-instructor'' of the Boy Scout Movement. An all-time bestseller in the English-speaking world, second only to the Bible, this primer of ''yarns and pictures'' constitutes probably the most influential manual for youth ever published. Yet the book is at the same time a roughly composed hodge-podge of jingoist lore and tracker legend, padded with lengthy quotations from adventure fiction and B-P''s own autobiography, and seamed through with the multiple anxieties of its time: fears of degeneration, concerns about masculinity and self-restraint, invasion paranoia. Elleke Boehmer''s edition of ScoutinTrade ReviewBaden-Powell's work is well worth reading and re-reading, and that researchers with various interests and theoretical persuasions may find in its pages a great deal of interesting and rewarding material. * Thomas Kullman, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen *

Read more less