Social and cultural history Books

Book SynopsisDirt. Depravity. Danger. Disease. From the slurry-filled sewers to the most overcrowded of tenement blocks, Victorian Britain thrummed with the heartbeats of those who had lived there. Infants and children, adults and elders had called these twisting labyrinthian warrens home; here they had laboured, they had loved, they had lost. These people had celebrated progress and had fought for reform; they had raised families, fallen in love, worked laborious jobs, and lamented the deaths of their loved ones.In her second book, Bethan Catherine Watts explores every crevice of the dark and dingy slums of Victorian Britain and illuminates the lives of those who lived there. From favourite pastimes, recipes and beauty practices to the treatment of children, animals and the dead, The Dark and Dingy Underworld of the Victorian Slums sheds light on those who were born, who had lived, and who had died in nineteenth-century British slums.

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Book SynopsisThe First Witches: Women of Power in the Classical World takes you on a journey into the world of Classical literature, from the adventurous Homeric epic of the Odyssey to the grim warfare of Lucan's De Bello Civili. In doing so, you will be introduced to a handful of powerful women who will later be labelled as witches. The chapters focus upon two specific groups of women from the Graeco-Roman world: the divine Hecate and the formidable yet beautiful Circe, who first feature in Greek texts, and the nefarious Thessalian witches and Erictho, who become marked antagonists in Roman literature. Both Hecate and Circe are fundamentally divine, yet early in their mythologies, they harbour characteristics that will become distinct tropes of witchcraft from being associated with the underworld, lunar lore and dangerous transformative powers. With the onset of increased social tensions in the late Roman Republican to early imperial periods, these divine women become increasingly more demonised within the literature, culminating in Hecate becoming a consort for witches and Circe a seductress and the epitome of the femme fatale. Simultaneous to these representations, Roman writers adopted a stock character within prose and verse of the hag-witch who was shocking in both appearance and character, displaying many elements of moral turpitude and a disturbing penchant for bestial activities such as cannibalism and the kidnapping and killing of infants. Thus, the hag-witch, most commonly associated with the world of the modern witch hunts and within the pages of modern fairy tale, was born. This book, therefore, provides a readable overview of how the Western witch originated. So profound was the impact of the classical witch upon Western thought and literature that she even lives on today as a prototype of the gruesome woman found in folklore, horror stories and movies. This is why the studying and reading of classical works is so relevant today as it was for our forebears since the literature contains the very ingredients that help to captivate our imaginations and our fears. The authors of the literature and the characters within it will continue to serve as powerful reminders of how the Western world came to be.

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Book SynopsisThere are many books which tackle the political developments in Ireland during the nineteenth century. The aim of this book is to show what life was like during the reign of Queen Victoria for those who lived in the towns and countryside during a period of momentous change

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Book SynopsisTHIS BOOK COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE! If you are planning to travel back to the England of Anglo-Saxon times and begin a new life without technology, how will you manage? If you were a king, a thegn or even a slave, what rights do you have under the law? Are women treated well by their husbands, and if you become sick, what are your chances of recovery? How might you earn your living, and the biggest worry: what to do about those fearsome Vikings?All these questions and more are answered in this self-help guide for time-travellers. It explores the difficulties you may encounter and the problems that might occur, especially as you are a newcomer in this very different world. Fear not: keep this little volume by you; it will help you find your place in society, learn the language and make friends. You will also meet some of the celebrities of the day, from Alfred the Great to the Venerable Bede, and more humble folk such as Tatberht of Lundenwic and Ardith the local baxter. Learn how to make

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Book Synopsis_Don't you know there's a war on?!__Use it up Wear it out Make it do Or do without!__Loose Lips Sink Ships!__Any Bonds Today?__Remember Pearl Harbor!_Those were the slogans Americans called out to each other on the home front during WW II. They forged their days surrounded by fellow patriots sharing in the greatest endeavour of their lives: winning the war. The American Home Front in WW II presents the striking story of those times starting with little-known events well before Pearl Harbor the clashes between isolationists and those favoring intervention and America's first peacetime draft. The shock of Pearl Harbor transformed America from a peacetime country to a full wartime economy. Factories produced an airplane every sixty-one minutes. Women and Blacks entered the workforce as never before bringing about earthshaking changes. Americans describe in their own words the rigors of everyday life: rationing, air raid drills, rigging up black curtains and scrap drives. But Amer

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the darker side of life in Regency Britain, 1811-1820.

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Book SynopsisThe Real Charles Dickens is an insightful look into the world of the life and work of the great 19th-century writer. Dickens led one of the most colourful and interesting lives of any author and this book delves into his difficult early life, his emergence as a major novelist, his troubled marriage and suspected relationship with another woman, his trips abroad to Italy and the United States, his late blossoming as a theatrical performer and his work as a social reformer.The book takes a detailed look at each of his major works, tracing the development of his fiction through one of the most productive periods of world literature. To complement this are original photographs of locations associated with Dickens and the opportunity to follow in his footsteps with some expertly crafted walks around the parts of London most associated with him. There are sections on Dickens' enduring relationship with the theatre and one detailing the ten children that he and his wife Catherine had together

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Book SynopsisThe West feels lost. Brexit, Trump, the coronavirus: we hurtle from one crisis to another, lacking definition, terrified that our best days are behind us. The central argument of this book is that we can only face the future with hope if we have a proper sense of tradition political, social and religious. We ignore our past at our peril. The problem, argues Tim Stanley, is that the Western tradition is anti-tradition, that we have a habit of discarding old ways and old knowledge, leaving us uncertain how to act or, even, of who we really are.In this wide-ranging book, we see how tradition can be both beautiful and useful, from the deserts of Australia to the court of nineteenth-century Japan. Some of the concepts defended here are highly controversial in the modern West: authority, nostalgia, rejection of self and the hunt for spiritual transcendence. We''ll even meet a tribe who dress up their dead relatives and invite them to tea. Stanley illustrateTrade ReviewThis is a rich and reflective book, based on wide reading and personal experience. * Literary Review *Whatever Happened to Tradition? is stuffed with marvellous vignettes… the reader is left feeling grateful for the abundance of knowledge and the ebullient conviction with which it is shared. -- Allison Pearson * Telegraph *The writer he most resembles is Roger Scruton… Since Scruton died last year, there is a vacancy for a political philosopher who will defend the traditions of this nation with all his heart and all his considerable brain. I suspect we may have found his successor. -- Allison Pearson * Telegraph *This book is brilliant. It's really radical in a way that all the other stuff that says it's radical is not. It really gives you an idea that there is something else outside this airless bubble of the self we are stuck in today. I find that kind of inspiring. -- Adam Curtis, filmmakerHe persuasively presents tradition as rooting us in the world and in society, and as subtly adaptable. -- Jane O’Grady * The Daily Telegraph *Roger Scruton’s death deprived public discourse of its most intelligent and cogent defender of tradition, but Tim Stanley’s Whatever Happened to Tradition? steps bravely into the breach. * Church Times *Tim Stanley suggests in his engaging way that fidelity to the past determines future happiness — for our civilisation, not just our souls. -- Christopher Howse * The Spectator *The book is warmly recommended...it is full of fascinating fact and anecdotes...it is such a refreshing challenge to the sad and lazy assumptions of our age. * faith.org.uk *Table of ContentsIntroduction PART ONE 1 Defining Tradition 2 The West’s War on Tradition 3 The Invention of Tradition 4 The Uses of Nostalgia PART TWO 5 Hurrah for the Old 6 Tradition and Identity 7 Tradition and Order 8 Tradition and Freedom 9 Tradition and Equality 10 Tradition and Faith Conclusion Notes Acknowledgements Index

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Book SynopsisA celebratory and beautiful mixture of memoir, social history and cultural observation, Paul Morley''s The North is a unique portrait of Northern England and almost everything within it''Breathtaking tour de force'' Mail on Sunday''Packed with raw emotions and ambivalent passions Morley writes with care and precision, though, and his rhythm is such that his book is a lively, breezy read'' Sunday TimesPaul Morley grew up in Reddish, less than five miles from Manchester and even closer to Stockport. Ever since the age of seven Morley has always thought of himself as a northerner. What that meant, he wasn''t entirely sure. It was for him, as it is for millions of others in England, an absolute, indisputable truth. Forty years after walking down grey pavements on his way to school, Paul explores what it means to be northern and why those who consider themselves to be believe it so strongly.Like industrial towns dotted across gTrade ReviewBreathtaking tour de force … His youthful insecurities, set against the limestone and industrial certainties of the north, make the memoir strands of this book engaging and truthful. The sheer scope of his interest is a delight … A dizzy and delightful pleasure-beach ride. And I love the little asides; they are more than digressions or tributaries to the abandoned slip road in the sky just off the Mancunian Way. The North is a major achievement that has kept Morley at the coal-face of the keyboard for so many years. But it’s been time well-spent: the result is as bold, broad and sweeping as the north itself, and just as quirky and contradictory ***** * Stuart Maconie, Mail on Sunday *A personal odyssey going north by north-west and a tour de force * Simon Armitage *An impressive, sprawling attempt by the former NME journalist to capture the north of England. In its springing from topic to topic, and its curiously arbitrary apportioning of attention to subjects that interest him, it almost resembles Morley’s offbeat sleeve notes for 1980s agit-popsters Frankie Goes to Hollywood … Packed with raw emotions and ambivalent passions … Morley writes with care and precision, though, and his rhythm is such that his book is a lively, breezy read * Sunday Times *A fascinating attempt to define what it means to be a northerner, to try to capture a sense of difference that cuts deeper than just an accent ... A journey that is part family memoir, part history book, part cultural and social commentary and wholly northern in its outlook ... Like an early spring walk in Wordsworth’s Lake District or a stroll along Blackpool’s breezy Golden Mile, the journey has its moments ... If there is one thing his ambitious work shows it’s that we may not have the weather or the wealth of the south but true northerners will always have soul **** * Daily Express *Morley’s writing skipped and span, whirled out from specifics to ghosts, those hard-to-capture feelings around the north. He examined northern clichés, our “standardised national story”, used the insights of musicians and writers to test theories and prejudices ... The ideas are insightful and the execution inspired * Miranda Sawyer, Observer *He combines memoir with fragments of his region’s own social and cultural background to show that the differences go deeper than just an accent. As a Midlands native, living in the south but with strong Northern roots, it’s just my cup of Tetley * Bookseller *Paul’s book is a delight: as vast, mysterious and romantic as the north itself * Radio Times *A loving portrait of England’s other half * London Review of Books *An idiosyncratic rumination on what it means to be northern … It’s bound to deposit a certain amount of iron in the soul * Guardian *A passionate, irresistible encouragement to listen more, and to listen better * Sunday Times *Compulsive, thought-provoking and intriguing * Glasgow Herald *There is an enjoyably subtle mordancy about much of the book * Financial Times *At his best he's the Brian Eno of the sentence, setting the whole page buzzing with oblique strategies: the missing link, maybe, between Kenneth Tynan and John Lydon * Time Out *Essentially a treasure trove almanac wedded to a wistful coming-of-age memoir. Some passages soar *** * Metro *A typically sprawling, deliberately disjointed book – part memoir, part history * Guardian *Paul Morley’s weighty new work probably deserves a section to itself: the poetic, stream-of-conscious, socio-historical, non-linear memoir-cum-gazetteer ... He soars above the landscape with daring and verve and ambition and brings it to life with his usual heady and mesmerising prose gymnastics. There are delicious, dizzying switches of perspective, Escher-like switchbacks, blind alleys and diversions. He is catholic in his tastes, and thinks nothing of corralling the inscrutable novelist W G Sebald and blowsy Julie Goodyear, Coronation Street’s Bet Lynch, in a single paragraph. This is the sort of stuff that’s had many of us hanging on his every word (and there are generally lots of them) since his NME days. But there are things here that will surprise even devotees. There’s history, geology, geography, all conveyed with clarity and concision. There are delightful, unexpected riffs and obbligatos, such as a paean to “the crystalline elegance” of cricket. This being Morley country, there are also constant but consistently illuminating digressions, meandering from Alan Turing through to Bernard Manning ... I learned something on pretty much every page ... He is superb at conjuring the orbit of a northern child in the Sixties and Seventies ... The illustrations alone give a flavour of the book’s charming and eccentric eclectism ... The book unfolds like a recalcitrant OS map, opens up like an advent calendar, accrues meaning and detail like barnacles, but core themes and threads anchor it in Morley’s experience ... For everyone who is exasperated by Morley’s oblique, mazy, impressionistic style, there will be others who will be seduced by its heft, even if they don’t realise quite how good it is. Yet it is more than just an ox-stunning tome. It is rich and dense, and its sprawling nature encourages one to luxuriate, exploring it at your leisure and finding the odd tracks that link say, Ken Dodd to LS Lowry ... Morley has done well to find the right voice and tone for the huge, kaleidoscopic work and he sustains it, measured but lyrical and with a kind of bottom note of melancholy ... This is a book to lose oneself in, as long as you’re not too worried about where you emerge or when you might get there * Stuart Maconie, New Statesman *With this mournful, gentle memoir of his childhood and family ... Morley, only half-Northern himself, does his adopted region proud *** * The Lady *Paul Morley’s memoir of the north has been 50 years in the making – it’s been worth the wait ... Irresistible, fragmentary new book * Irish Times *This is endless fun for fact fans and it’s hard for any Northerner not to feel stirred by Morley’s pride in the area *** * Yorkshire Post *A fascinating exploration of northern-ness * Grazia *Such a joy ... This great, whirling, baggy compendium of a book is a travelogue, a geographical study, a potted history and a rich encyclopedia ... Where he triumphs is in his evocation of the rich life of the North ... This unfolding chronicle throws up a satisfying number of riveting facts. The oddness of the juxtapositions simply adds to the pleasure ... The North is both a star turn and a labour of love. Its weight meant I could barely pick it up; but once lifted, I could hardly put it down **** * Daily Telegraph *Impressive and sometimes amusing * Catholic Herald *With this mournful, gentle memoir of his childhood and family, particularly his father, mixed in with history, geography and touching on the lives of many Northern innovators from the present day to the distant past, Morley, only half-Northern himself, does his adopted region proud *** * The Lady *Varied and illuminating pop-cultural content ... A wildly multi-stylistic book that sets memoir alongside socio-geographical history alongside postmodern pranksterism ... Let’s reveal in the sheer wilfulness of this mad mash-up and highlight the highlights ... This long and winding road leaves you much more inspired than tired. The closing valedictory sections are memorably poetic **** * Mojo *Impressionistic * Choice Magazine *Fascinating ... This affectionate tribute is more a nostalgic bow to a largely lost working class community than an objective account of a region, but is no less endearing for that * Leyla Sanai, Independent On Sunday *Morley’s account of the ways in which he’s defined by his Manchester roots is both a confessional memoir and a cultural history covering everything from music to poetry to the Blackpool Tower * GQ Magazine *Beneath the grey council estate scene, author Paul Morley paints a romantic picture of everything above Watford Junction. Peppered with random facts (who knew the crossword was dreamt up in Liverpool or the first Corrie swear word was ‘bloody’?) it’s an anthropological look at the author’s home province * Escapism *There’s a certain bravery in calling a book The North (And Almost Everything In It). But then Paul Morley has never been afraid to stick his neck out ... The North (And Almost Everything In It) is a part memoir and part-history, reflecting on his upbringing in Reddish, Stockport, in the 60s and 70s, and sprawling with digressions into the North and its people. Everything from the Romans to Bernard Manning, Jodrell Bank to Julie Goodyear is covered in an engrossing read * Yorkshire Post *Rambling and vast compendium * The Times *Personal memoir meets general history, a book as much about the mythology of what the north has come to mean, to those who live there and others, like me, who opted to move away, as it is an inventory of hard facts and figures * The Wire *My favourite book this year is Paul Morley’s The North … the book pushed me to go to the Lowry exhibition at the Tate and made me listen again to George Formby and the Buzzcocks. The book filled my head * Roddy Doyle, Guardian *

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Book SynopsisA complete history of White Hart Lane, the home of Tottenham Hotspur from 1899 to 2017 and the setting for some of their greatest successes.For a football supporter, a real fan, there is nothing more evocative than the journey to their home ground, a place where they have experienced the highs and lows that the game brings - delight, despair, hope, pain and, occasionally, pure joy. But while those stadiums seem permanent, they are not.In May 2017, White Hart Lane, the backdrop to more than a century of Spurs history, staged its final game. With the active support and endorsement of the club, who have granted him exclusive access to senior figures and historical documents, Martin Lipton pays fitting tribute to the glory days at the Lane. He has talked to, among others, Jimmy Greaves, Martin Chivers, Pat Jennings, Glenn Hoddle, Ossie Ardiles, Chris Waddle, Teddy Sheringham, Jurgen Klinsmann, David Ginola, Gareth Bale and Harry Kane. And he has also interviewed fTrade ReviewFantastic detail from Martin. Some of the things that happened i'm aware of but others not. Terrific read. -- Shane Reid * TOTTENHAM ARMY *

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Book SynopsisThe craziest inventions and funniest machines from the pen of Heath Robinson

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Book SynopsisThe story of Londonâs largest Royal ParkTrade ReviewErudite and informative. * The Good Book Guide *This book, like the author's previous volume on Regent's Park, serves as a reminder of the twists of history that many parks have gone through before achieving their current status - as well as providing an interesting insight into some of the people involved.

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Book SynopsisThe complete illustrated history of the Cotswold homeTrade Review‘Delightful … a welcome book’ * The Good Book Guide *A wide-ranging and informative overview of the social and architectural history of the Cotswold home, from humble cottages to elegant manor houses. -- Mark Whitley * The Countryman Magazine *From mullioned windows to roofs, gables, fireplaces and chimneys, no aspect of the subject, whether inside or out, is neglected. -- Henry Hardcastle * Evergreen Magazine *

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Book SynopsisNew paperback edition - A fascinating insight into the life of Jane in the words of the people who knew her.Trade ReviewA comprehensive anthology of letters, family recollections and early biographies … handsomely produced * Jane Austen's Regency World *

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Book SynopsisBrilliant cartoons on Christmas that will amuse the whole family

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Book SynopsisLocal author and historian Christopher Horlock brings together a fascinating photographic collection of bizarre and off-beat tales from the county of Sussex.

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Book SynopsisThe beautiful county of Yorkshire is one of the most visited of English counties. Here is a collection of strange tales and local legends from the county.

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Book SynopsisA fascinating look at the history and legacy of Roman gardens, focusing on Great Britain. The author is a board member of the Association for Roman Archaeology and a prolific writer of papers on Roman art and architecture and has lectured on the subject of Roman gardens.

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Book SynopsisDiscover some surprising, intriguing and curious stories, myths and legends from Wales ranging from the quirky to the macabre.

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Book SynopsisDavid Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998. He was a staff writer for the magazine from 1992 to 1998 and, previous to that, the Washington Post's correspondent in the Soviet Union. He won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.Trade ReviewSucceeds more than any previous book in bringing Ali into focus . . . as a starburst of energy, ego and ability whose like will never be seen again * Wall Street Journal *Penetrating . . . reveals details that even close followers might not have known. . . . An amazing story * New York Times *Nearly pulse-pounding narrative power . . . an important account of a period in American social history * Chicago Tribune *A pleasure . . . haunting . . . so vivid that one can imagine Ali saying, "How'd you get inside my head, boy?" * Time *By now we all have our notions about what Ali meant - to his time and to the history of his sport. Of course David Remnick sheds light on these subjects, but where King of the World really shines is in the ring itself. With telling detail, Remnick captures the drama, danger, beauty, and ugliness of a generation's worth of big heavyweight fights -- Bob CostaAstute, double-hearted, irresistible. He is so completely in charge of his craft that it becomes an art. -- Toni Morrison, author of Beloved

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Book SynopsisTRANSLATED BY ALISON McCULLOUGH''One of the best books on the many diverse migrations to London . . . revealing the extent to which the diversity of immigrant origins has had transformative effects - through food, music, diverse types of knowledge and so much more. The book is difficult to put it down''Saskia Sassen, The Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, New York''The ultimate book about Great Britain''s capital''Dagbladet''One of the best books of the year! . . . This is a book about what a city is and can be''AftenpostenIs there a street in London which does not contain a story from the Empire? Immigrants made London; and they keep remaking it in a thousand different ways. Nazneen Khan-Østrem has drawn a wonderful new map of a city that everyone thought they already knew. She travels around the city, meeting the very people who have created a truly unique metropolis, and shows how London''s incredible development is directly attributable to the many different groups of immigrants who arrived after the Second World War, in part due to the Nationality Act of 1948. Her book reveals the historical, cultural and political changes within those communities which have fundamentally transformed the city, and which have rarely been considered alongside each other.Nazneen Khan-Østrem has a cosmopolitan background herself, being a British, Muslim, Asian woman, born in Nairobi and raised in the UK and Norway, which has helped her in unravelling the city''s rich immigrant history and its constant ongoing evolution.Drawing on London''s rich literature and its musical heritage, she has created an intricate portrait of a strikingly multi-faceted metropolis. Based on extensive research, particularly into aspects not generally covered in the wide array of existing books on the city, London manages to capture the city''s enticing complexity and its ruthless vitality.This celebration of London''s diverse immigrant communities is timely in the light of the societal fault lines exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit. It is a sensitive and insightful book that has a great deal to say to Londoners as well as to Britain as a whole.Trade ReviewNazneen Khan-Østrem has written one of the best books on the many diverse migrations to London. We all know by now that London, Paris, New York, and other major cities are destinations for immigrants coming from a vast mix of countries. What is less known is the extent to which the diversity of immigrant origins has actually had transformative effects in these powerful cities - through food, music, diverse types of knowledge and so much more. The book is difficult to put it down - I started reading it at 7.00 p.m. and did not stop until 10 hours later. -- Saskia Sassen, The Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, New York

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Book SynopsisThe essential anti-racist book from one of the world''s leading voices for change''With This Is Why I Resist, Dr Shola is shaking a nation out of its slumber.'' Annie Lennox OBE''Smart and courageous, this book should be on everyone''s must-read list.'' Naomi Campbell''Written with fearless articulacy, this book recalibrates the conversation on race to ignite transformational change.'' David Lammy MP''This book is a passionate call to arms for anyone who wishes to look the other way. It is a must read.'' Professor Kate Williams''Inclusive, exciting and focused, This Is Why I Resist is a fantastic point of reference for intersectional anti-racism work, no matter who you are.'' Munroe BergdorfIn 2020 we have seen clearer than ever that Black people are still fighting for the right to be judged by the content of their character and not the colour of their skin. In tTrade ReviewThis Is Why I Resist is an urgent and timely anti-racist call to action * Diva Magazine *

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Book SynopsisSettlers is a testament to Jimi Famurewa''s love not just for his lineage, but for the culture. An incisive, intimate and profound work.- Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie and People PersonAs thrilling as it is touching and revealing - this book is an indispensable map to London today.- Ben Judah, Journalist and author of This is London: Life and Death in the World CityJimi brings modern black London alive like no other author. This feels like an important book that is also a total pleasure to read. - Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland: How Modern Britain is Shaped by its Imperial PastThe past, present and future of being Black, African and British in the capital.This is a story that begins with post-1960s arrivals from Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe and Somalia. Today their descendants have unleashed a tidal wave of British creativity from Lambeth to Lagos, IslingtTrade ReviewAs thrilling as it is touching and revealing - this book is an indispensable map to London today. * Ben Judah, Journalist and author of This is London: Life and Death in the World City *Illuminating and fascinating, with humour and some surprises, Jimi Famurewa examines Britain's African communities, past and present. * Stephen Bourne, author of Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War *Jimi brings modern black London alive like no other author. This feels like an important book that is also a total pleasure to read. * Sathnam Sanghera, author of EmpireLand: How Modern Britain is Shaped by its Imperial Past *Settlers is the book I didn’t know I was waiting for. Jimi Famurewa approaches an incredibly complicated topic with a steady hand and fine precision that results in a book that is well researched, rich in nuance and handled with care. It was as enjoyable to read as it was enlightening. * Jendella Benson, author of Hope & Glory *This is an extraordinary and beautifully written piece of work that deals with a deeply complex and rich history with a remarkable lightness of touch, sensitivity, warmth and insight. It is depressing to reflect on the reality that all too many people continue to question the benefits of immigration. This fine book shows beyond any doubt that London, and this country, is all the better for its Black African population. * James Ramsden *A spellbinding portrait of culture, talent, food and activism. * Stylist Magazine *Settlers is replete with revealing anecdotes… Famurewa’s writing is thoughtful, cogent and admirably even-handed. * theguardian.com *Dazzling. * Waitrose Food Magazine *[Jimi's] voice and the way he writes I just love. * Jamie Oliver *Settlers is a pleasure to read, by turns lyrical, approachable, funny, sensitive and always well-researched… [Famurewa] sweeps you along so thoroughly that you don’t realise until you close the book quite how much you have enjoyed it, how much you have learnt and how much it will stay with you. * The Spectator *Combined with [Jimi's] own family history, this is a sometimes painful but always postivie story of defiance and reclamation. * theguardian.com *Table of ContentsPrologue: The Second Great Wave 1 Farm 2 Market 3 Boat 4 Cell 5 Worship House 6 Restaurant 7 Classroom 8 Suburb Conclusion: The Next Great Wave Further Reading Acknowledgements Index

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Book SynopsisThe clue to our future lies in our past and Toye has winkled it out with elegant and devastating precision. Chris Bryant, MP for RhonddaWAS THE ATTLEE GOVERNMENT OF 1945 REALLY THE GOLDEN PERIOD OF LABOUR POWER?2024 marks the centenary of the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. What legacy of the past have they left behind? How far has each Labour administration influenced succeeding administrations? Above all, was the Attlee government of 1945 really the golden period of Labour power?Professor Richard Toye explores Labour's exercise of power as a continuum, setting Attlee's administration in long-term historical context between the first Labour Government of 1924 and the current party under Keir Starmer. Within this context he shows why the Attlee administration matters so much and how successive Labour governments have fashioned it in their own image.Into this story are woven the foundation of the Labour Party in 1900, the First World War, the General StrikTrade ReviewThe clue to our future lies in our past and Toye has winkled it out with elegant and devastating precision. Anyone who wants to find the nuggets of hope in today's Britain as we approach a watershed election needs to read this book and see what pragmatic idealism achieved between 1945 and 1951. -- Chris Bryant, MP for RhonddaThis is a stunningly original revision of the Attlee government and its impact on British society. It's the best book I've read this year. -- Frank Field, former MP for BirkenheadA hundred years since the first Labour Government, Richard Toye’s readable and persuasive study argues that while arguments over the party’s past have often shaped its future, Labour does best when it forgets old battles and finds a way to combine hope with pragmatism. The history of the era is highly contested, but the book does a masterly job of picking through the bitterness to understand what has worked in the past and has a reasonable chance of working in the future. -- Anne Perkins, author of 'A Very British Strike' and 'Red Queen: The Authorized Biography of Barbara Castle'This book illustrates how the key players in the Attlee Government combined their radical idealism and pragmatism to seize their moment and create such a sense of purpose and hope that was truly transformative and set the standard for all subsequent Labour administrations to live up to. -- John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington

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Book SynopsisLONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING''Davies''s absorbing study serves up just enough sensationalism - and eccentricity - along with its serious inquiry'' SUNDAY TIMES''[A] revealing account of the jail''s 164-year history'' DAILY TELEGRAPH, 5* review''Insightful and thought-provoking and makes for a ripping good read'' JEREMY CORBYN''A much-needed and balanced history'' OBSERVER''Davies explores how society has dealt with disobedient women - from suffragettes to refugees to women seeking abortions - for decades, and how they''ve failed to silence those who won''t go down without a fight'' STYLISTSociety has never known what to do with its rebellious women. Those who defied expectations about feminine behaviour have long been considered dangerous and unnatural, and ever since the Victorian era they have been removed from puTrade ReviewReadable, compelling and illuminating * The Bookseller *Caitlin Davies writes with warmth, empathy and humour about the women - some brave and rebellious - who spent time in Holloway Prison. Assiduously researched, Bad Girls documents interweaving struggles against prejudice, injustice, ignorance and poverty . . . the real history of Holloway is written in this insightful and thought-provoking book - which makes for a ripping good read * Jeremy Corbyn *Davies's absorbing study serves up just enough sensationalism - and eccentricity - along with its serious inquiry . . . Davies captures the sense of camaraderie that blossomed inside Holloway, occasionally between warder and inmate . . . Davies uses the prison as a prism through which to chart changing attitudes to women over the past 164 years - beginning with the Victorian notion of "double deviance", which suggested that female criminals had broken not only the law of the land, but that of nature by committing "unwomanly" acts -- Helen Davies * SUNDAY TIMES *It's such a great read . . . fascinating * Jo Good, BBC Radio London *A rich, superbly researched, definitive history of Holloway Prison . . . There are so many heartbreaking stories within stories in the book' * The Herald *Meticulously records a much-needed and balanced history of this home to "royalty and socialites, spies and prostitutes . . . Nazis and aliens, terrorists and freedom fighters" and thousands of very ordinary desperate women -- Yvonne Roberts * Observer *Fascinating both for its portrait of larger-than-life women and the ways in which they were regarded by wide society during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries * History Revealed *Offers many great tales of those who called the now-closed Holloway prison their home for either long or short stretches of time . . . comprehensive and much-needed . . . A hefty section of the book examines the place of the prison in the suffragette movement, a welcome addition to this year's centenary celebration of the women's right to vote . . . a must-read * Camden New Journal *An enjoyable and enlightening read, which has much to recommend it * BBC History Magazine *

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Book SynopsisA social history of a fifty year period, spanning the Regency into the Victorian era

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Book SynopsisIndepth look at Merseyside during the Second World War.

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Book SynopsisA Secret History of Brands cuts through the rumours and urban legends and paints a picture of the true dark history of famous brands.

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Book Synopsis''The most detailed, amusing and accurate account ever of the post-war world of the English Establishment'' William Shawcross, Daily Telegraph''Extremely entertaining'' Jane Ridley, Literary ReviewKenneth Rose was one of the most astute observers of the establishment for over seventy years. The wry and amusing journals of the royal biographer and historian made objective observation a sculpted craft. His impeccable social placement located him within the beating heart of the national elite for decades. He was capable of writing substantial history, such as his priceless material on the abdication crisis from conversations with both the Duke of Windsor and the Queen Mother. Yet he maintained sufficient distance to achieve impartial documentation while working among political, clerical, military, literary and aristocratic circles. Relentless observation and a self-confessed difficulty ''to let a good story pass me by'' made Rose a legendTrade ReviewIntimate with the highest levels of society, politics, the arts and the Royal Family, Kenneth Rose has left us one of the most vivid, full and revealing records of the post-war era -- Andrew RobertsA huge treat ... [T]he first volume of Rose's journals, covering 1944-79, will also delight anyone who enjoys the great English diarists - Samuel Pepys, Chips Channon, Harold Nicolson, James Lees-Milne, Alan Clark. Who's In, Who's Out offers a feast of the choicest gossip from highest society -- Lewis Jones * Sunday Telegraph *A fascinating insight into postwar society at the highest level and an intimate view of many of the key players ... Dip into the book at random and you often pull out a plum -- Patrick Kidd * The Times *[A]n astonishing and enjoyable collection of anecdotes, observations and judgements ... D.R. Thorpe, himself a gifted biographer and a friend of Rose for 40 years, has edited the raw materials tactfully and with a light touch ... Thorpe, like Rose, has a well-tuned ear for anecdote; and one can open this volume almost at random and be sure to find a jolly story ... [A]nyone who wants to understand the British establishment in the decades after the war should treat these diaries as their primer. The reader moves effortlessly through embassies and drawing rooms, not to mention palaces ... It is a spectator's diary, albeit written from the best possible seats in the ground -- Simon Heffer * Daily Telegraph *An insider's account, this gossipy and acute diary will become the indispensable guide to the Establishment in the years between 1944 and 1979 -- Jane Ridley * The Spectator Books of the Year *The diaries, chronicling the events of previous generations, give a unique glimpse of the personalities and preoccupations of the statesmen of that time. Harold Macmillan, Rab Butler, amongst other figures, are shown in a different and more informal way than their biographers have done and the differences in their approach to politics and each other are amusingly revealed -- Lord Carrington, Foreign Secretary 1979–82The most detailed, amusing and accurate account ever of the post-war world of the English Establishment -- William Shawcross * Daily Telegraph *[S]o full of riveting detail that you can't help wondering how much of the juiciest gossip was left out of the Albany column and saved for the journals -- Andrew M. Brown * Catholic Herald *[G]reat fun to read ... Rose has a good eye for colourful detail ... [The diaries] illuminate history and give it life. If one cannot be there oneself then Rose provides as good an apparatus for eaves-dropping as can well be conceived. He deserves our gratitude -- Philip Ziegler * The Spectator *As a history of the Establishment in the second half of the 20th century, these journals will become indispensable and definitive. They are the equivalent for that period of the journals of Harold Nicolson and Chips Channon for the first half, combining sharp observation and anecdote with political and social insights. They are also extremely entertaining. Rose was right to think that they were his most important and lasting contribution. D. R. Thorpe has done a great job of editing them. He has a light touch. In spite of being an authority on the period, having written great biographies of Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home, he makes no attempt to fill the page with footnotes, but allows Rose to speak directly to the reader -- Jane Ridley * Literary Review *Rose was an impeccably connected biographer and gentleman journalist ('Albany' in the Sunday Telegraph for many years) and the joys of his diaries are choice anecdotes, pithily recounted, and plenty of culinary detail -- Gyles Brandreth * The Oldie *These journals kept by the royal biographer and journalist Kenneth Rose - who liked nothing so much as to dine in a London club with someone in the know about the world of high politics or royalty - make highly amusing and enlightening reading. Rose jotted down the juiciest gossip and the best anecdotes ... The journal entries are never more than a short paragraph long: ideal bedtime reading for anyone who relishes the unguarded utterances of the rich and well-connected -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Daily Mail *What is so good - and is so well brought out in D.R.Thorpe's edition - is that [Kenneth Rose] was master of his material. This was the British establishment ... his diaries compose accurate, fair-minded history ... As Kenneth's editor in the later years of his Albany column, I was irritated by his fault (quite the opposite of most of us journalists) of putting into his articles less than he knew. This is corrected in his Journals. He knew a lot and he put it in; and now we can read it. -- Charles Moore * THE SPECTATOR *

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Book SynopsisIn Surrogate Humanity Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora trace the ways in which robots, artificial intelligence, and other technologies serve as surrogates for human workers within a labor system entrenched in racial capitalism and patriarchy. Analyzing myriad technologies, from sex robots and military drones to sharing-economy platforms, Atanasoski and Vora show how liberal structures of antiblackness, settler colonialism, and patriarchy are fundamental to human---machine interactions, as well as the very definition of the human. While these new technologies and engineering projects promise a revolutionary new future, they replicate and reinforce racialized and gendered ideas about devalued work, exploitation, dispossession, and capitalist accumulation. Yet, even as engineers design robots to be more perfect versions of the human—more rational killers, more efficient workers, and tireless companions—the potential exists to develop alternative modes of engineerinTrade Review“By bringing a much more nuanced reading of race, gender, and difference to science and technology studies, Atanasoski and Vora provoke us to think more deeply about how our imagined technological futures always already serve to reproduce our most problematic pasts—and what forms or processes can disrupt and transcend these. This is a vital project that should speak to us all.” -- Barbara Herr Harthorn * American Ethnologist *“Surrogate Humanity...confirm[s] that the human is a contingent concept.... The authors also spotlight how contemporary discourses concerning automation, in particular, alternately promise liberation and threaten debasement while eliding the roles of racialized and colonial subjects in producing the technologies and materials on which automation relies.” -- Rebecah Pulsifer * Women's Studies Quarterly *“...Surrogate Humanity usefully provides examples from literary, artistic, engineering, and scientific projects that critique or outright refuse technoliberalism’s frame for recognizing full humanity. These rebellious acts of imagination show us that the potential exists to develop alternative designs and trajectories for technological development ... in ways that prioritize equity and justice.” -- Anita Lam * Surveillance & Society *“Surrogate Humanity is a fascinating and important book that provides a much-needed counter narrative to prevailing approaches in science and technology studies.... Complemented by their mode of collaborative writing as a radical feminist act, the book is thus certain to inspire scholars and activists alike....” -- Sibille Merz * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“Atanasoski and Vora’s major intervention in the automation debate is their argument that automation imaginaries are shaped by liberal humanism and the racial hierarchies embedded in it.... One strength of Surrogate Humanity is the range of technological discourses, objects, and processes in which the authors elucidate the logics of technoliberalism.” -- J. Jesse Ramírez * American Quarterly *“Atanasoski andVora write with thoughtful scholarship and careful word selection.... [Surrogate Humanity] also provides a generative grounding in relevant science and technology studies and race theory literatures.... [I]t should be required reading in any sociology course on colonization and empire.” -- Laurel Smith-Doerr * Contemporary Sociology *“Surrogate Humanity questions what it means to be human at all, and is an incredibly useful analysis for anyone interested in shifting from thinking about robots within a tool-using paradigm, to an ethics paradigm.” -- Lindsay Balfour * Cultural Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: The Surrogate Human Effects of Technoliberalism 1 1. Technoliberalism and Automation: Racial Imaginaries of a Postlabor World 27 2. Sharing, Collaboration, and the Commons in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Appropriative Techniques of Technoliberal Capitalism 54 3. Automation and the Invisible Service Function: Toward an "Artificial Artificial Intelligence" 87 4. The Surrogate Human Affect: The Racial Programming of Robot Emotion 108 5. Machine Autonomy and the Unmanned Spacetime of Technoliberal Warfare 134 6. Killer Robots: Feeling Human in the Field of War 163 Epilogue: On Technoliberal Desire, Or Why There Is No Such Thing as a Feminist A1 188 Notes 197 Bibliography 225 Index 233

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Book SynopsisIn Maroon Choreographyfahima ife speculates on the long (im)material, ecological, and aesthetic afterlives of black fugitivity. In three long-form poems and a lyrical essay, they examine black fugitivity as an ongoing phenomenon we know little about beyond what history tells us. As both poet and scholar, ife unsettles the history and idea of black fugitivity, troubling senses of historic knowing while moving inside the continuing afterlives of those people who disappeared themselves into rural spaces beyond the reach of slavery. At the same time, they interrogate how writing itself can be a fugitive practice and a means to find a way out of ongoing containment, indebtedness, surveillance, and ecological ruin. Offering a philosophical performance in black study, ife prompts us to consider how we—in our study, in our mutual refusal, in our belatedness, in our habitual assemblage—linger beside the unknown. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book ATrade Review“Maroon Choreography reads like liner notes for a dance unwitnessed except by sound, or a dramaturgy for a dance recorded by the mud and roots of trees who would have been the only audience. It is obscure but everywhere. More unknowable than little known. It participates in the important recent critical practice that goes beyond applying or extending theory and instead insists there is something else to perceive and another way to perceive it.” -- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of * Dub: Finding Ceremony *“With great erudition and deep musicality, fahima ife has written a funky, rigorous, and lyrical investigation of what it is to have been made to have and not have a body. An incredible tempest of a book.” -- Fred Moten, author of * Black and Blur *“ife invokes recent thinkers for whom the inherited rules and categories of what we have learned to call civilization look like acts of Western oppression. Against those categories, with sublimity and verve, ife’s verse raises up a defiant ‘queeribbeanness,’ celebrating ‘unruly contemporary dancers’ and other ‘black bodies” that ‘struggle to name our lives as sovereign, on our own terms.’ Spectacularly allusive in its canny, concise segments, sometimes programmatic but more often simply learned, Ife’s ‘tremulous / antegrammatical’ work invokes ‘the black morning of baldwin / across the river in another country.’” -- Stephanie Burt * New York Times Book Review *"Reading this text is an exercise in letting go of the familiar to practice otherwise. Through breathing, sitting, humming, and pausing with this text I am consistently reminded (as if one could forget) that our compulsory education systems are colonially choreographed. . . . To engage with this book in the field of comparative and international education is to practice asking more of ourselves and our work while making another world possible." -- Cee Carter * Comparative Education Review *“It is not often that an academic text takes you on a journey. fahima ife’s book of essays and poetry, Maroon Choreography, invites us to theorize not by defining and analyzing but rather by inhabiting an undocumented past of escape from slavery that links to present-day escapes from slavery’s afterlife. In this process of imagining, the text engages with an important conversation within Black studies, critical theory, and performance studies.” -- Omar Ricks * Dance Chronicle *"Maroon Choreography . . . inspires as possibility for what poetry might be, how it might bring forth homage and critical theory about Blackness in new forms and fresh ways of thought. It disassembles. I’m drawn to books of all sorts that unravel dominant discourses that plague our imaginations, and ife does that." -- Dawn Lundy Martin * Brooklyn Poets *"Maroon Choreography . . . . [is] a radical work that emerges from centuries of the informal, from the pneumatic symphony of all of us, but specifically of Blackness, 'in the slickness of joy,' and takes to the snake with great force. ife proposes questions that are rarely asked, perspectives refusing popular thought. They invite us to sit with them, to float, ascend, transcend, practice, to move through something not written by the choreography of coloniality — and to breathe 'in the upper air unseen.'" -- Cameron Lovejoy * Fugue *Table of ContentsA Prefatory Note ix Recrudescence 1 Porous Aftermath 15 Nocturnal Work 51 Maroon Choreography 79 Coda 93 Anindex 117

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Book SynopsisMarcus Bell presents a revealing portrait of white teachers in a majority Black schools to outline how white racial identity is constructed based on localized interactions and the ways whiteness takes a different form in predominantly Black spaces.Trade Review“A rich and insightful book, Whiteness Interrupted is an original contribution that will impact numerous disciplines—sociology, black studies, ethnic studies, whiteness studies, and education—while also appealing to a broader readership interested in the formation of racial identity.” -- Victor M. Rios, author of * Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth *“Whiteness Interrupted makes a crucial intervention by showing how whites are racialized when they are the minority. Marcus Bell's examination of white teachers in black schools raises important questions about racial asymmetry in all its forms. Framing the construction of race around spatial negotiation interrupts the theorizing of whiteness in much-needed ways.” -- Freeden Blume Oeur, author of * Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools *“Whiteness Interrupted is an important investigation on the contemporary ways in which White identity forms and reforms. Bell lays out a persuasive call for sociologists of race and ethnicity to pay more attention to locality.” -- Matthew W. Hughey * Social Forces *“Whiteness Interrupted tackles the complex subject of racial identity among white educators and makes it understandable for many Americans. . . . This is definitely a must-read for all, particularly as the US becomes a majority-minority society. Essential.” -- K. H. Jones * Choice *“Individuals who are interested in racial inequality within select institutions (education, government, the economy, etc.) will find this research stimulating, although graduate students, undergraduates, teachers, and professors should be particularly interested in [Whiteness Interrupted].” -- Michael Parrish * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Whiteness in America 1 1. White Racelessness 17 2. The Color Line and the Classroom 38 3. Becoming White Teachers 63 4. The White Race Card 85 5. Colorblind 117 Conclusion: White Identity Politics and the Coming Crisis of Place 153 Appendix: Methodology and Research Design 166 Notes 179 Bibliography 219 Index 241

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Book SynopsisWith this nuanced and interdisciplinary work, political theorist Mihaela Mihai tackles several interrelated questions: How do societies remember histories of systemic violence? Who is excluded from such histories' cast of characters? And what are the political costs of selective remembering in the present? Building on insights from political theory, social epistemology, and feminist and critical race theory, Mihai argues that a double erasure often structures hegemonic narratives of complex violence: of widespread, heterogeneous complicity and of "impure" resistances, not easily subsumed to exceptionalist heroic models. In dialogue with care ethicists and philosophers of art, she then suggests that such narrative reductionism can be disrupted aesthetically through practices of "mnemonic care," that is, through the hermeneutical labor that critical artists deliver—thematically and formally—within communities' space of meaning. Empirically, the book examines both consecrated and marginalized artists who tackled the memory of Vichy France, communist Romania, and apartheid South Africa. Despite their specificities, these contexts present us with an opportunity to analyze similar mnemonic dynamics and to recognize the political impact of dissenting artistic production. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, the book intervenes in debates over collective responsibility, historical injustice, and the aesthetics of violence within political theory, memory studies, social epistemology, and transitional justice.Trade Review"Elegantly written and masterfully argued, Mihai's book contributes to debates about the critical role of art in resisting systemic violence and its political oblivion. With outstanding theoretical sophistication, exceptional interdisciplinary breadth, and remarkable empirical depth,it theorizes critical artistic practices as forms of mnemonic care for healthy hermeneutical climates. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the difficult work of resisting the mystification of the past and working toward social justice."—José Medina, Northwestern University"An eloquent and pathbreaking work of political theory that is deeply engaged with history and culture. Resolutely interdisciplinary and comparative, it provides stunningly illuminating insights into the everyday forms of complicity that prop up unjust regimes and the ordinary forms of resistance through which citizens contest domination."—Michael Rothberg, University of California, Los Angeles"Mihai once again challenges received wisdoms about the right way for nations to deal with histories of systemic violence. She makes a compelling case for messier, less triumphalist narratives of the past in favour of the ethical ambiguity of how resistance and complicity actually unfold."—Danielle Celermajer, University of Sydney"Mihaela Mihai has written a daring book that transcends disciplinary, linguistic, and national boundaries."—Catherine Guisan, Contemporary Political Theory"Mihai's book shows us how to understand action differently. In the present moment, as we struggle against the writing of political memory within enclosed perceptual experiences and hermeneutics, we might draw from Mihai's theorization of mnemonic care."—Sue Shon, Krisis: A Journal for Contemporary Philosophy"With Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care... Mihai not only offers a rich resource for scholars working on questions of complicity and implication across different fields and disciplines – from history, to sociology, to political theory and philosophy, to memory studies, and to comparative literature among others. She also lays the foundation for new and deeper critical inquiries into the ethical demands and political stakes of studying complex involvement in violence."—Sofía Forchieri, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture"In an argumentative tour de force, Mihai manages to dislocate petrified demarcation lines 'between the good and the bad, to reveal the relationality that underpins even the most exemplary practices of resistance'."—Maria Alina Asavei, The Review of PoliticsTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Tracing the Double Erasure 2. The Aesthetics of Care 3. France's "Dark Years" 4. Romania's Horizons of Hope and Despair 5. The Spectrum of Apartheid in South Africa Conclusion: Heretic Visions, Responsible Futures

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Book SynopsisIn a nation lacking a comprehensive social safety net, people often scramble to find private solutions to structural problems. While existing scholarship primarily focuses on how adults, particularly mothers, navigate systematic gaps in social support, Language Brokers shifts our attention to bilingual children securing crucial resources for their families. Drawing upon interviews with working-class Mexican and Korean American language brokers, as well as healthcare providers, and months of participant observation in a Southern California police station, Hyeyoung Kwon reveals how children of immigrants translate more than simple verbal exchanges. Living at the intersection of multiple forms of inequality, these youth creatively use their in-between status to resolve structural problems to ensure their families'' basic citizenship rights are upheld in interactions with teachers, social workers, landlords, doctors, and police officers. In an era of widespread racialized

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Book SynopsisAt the dawn of the twentieth century, a small but determined band of barrel jumpers risked their lives in one of the world’s most wondrous waterfalls. Only a few survived. By turns a family drama and an action-adventure story, The Age of Daredevils chronicles the lives of the men and women who devoted themselves to the extraordinary sport of jumping over Niagara Falls in a barrel—a death-defying gamble that proved a powerful temptation to a hardy few. Internationally known in the 1920s and ‘30s for their barrel-jumping exploits, the Hills were a father-son team of daredevils who also rescued dozens of misguided thrill seekers and accident victims who followed them into the river. The publicity surrounding the Hills’ spectacular feats ushered in tourism, making Niagara Falls the nation’s foremost honeymoon destination, but ultimately set Red Hill Jr. on a perilous path to surpass his father’s extraordinary leaps into the void. Like the works of Jon Krakauer and David McCullough, The Age of Daredevils explores the primal force of fear and the thirst for adventure that drive humans to the brink of death to see if they can somehow escape.

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Book SynopsisWhat is Cultural History? has established itself as an essential guide to what cultural historians do and how they do it. Now fully updated in its third edition, leading historian Peter Burke offers afresh his accessible account of the past, present and future of cultural history, as it has been practised not only in the English-speaking world, but also in Continental Europe, Asia, South America and elsewhere. Burke begins by discussing the ‘classic’ phase of cultural history, associated with Jacob Burckhardt and Johan Huizinga, and the Marxist reaction to it, from Frederick Antal to Edward Thompson. He then charts the rise of cultural history in more recent times, concentrating on the work of the last generation, often described as the ‘New Cultural History’. He places cultural history in its own cultural context, noting links between new approaches to historical thought and writing and the rise of feminism, postcolonial studies and an everyday discourse in which the idea of culture plays an increasingly important part. The new edition also surveys the latest developments in the field and considers the directions that cultural history has been taking in the twenty-first century and may take in the future. This landmark book will continue to be essential reading for students of history, anthropology, cultural studies and literary studies.Trade Review‘Here is a classic, fluently updated to include recent developments in the field. This is a must for all students of cultural history, a feast prepared by a master.’Jay Winter, Yale University ‘Peter Burke has done it again! This lucid book will delight any reader who wants to understand cultural history.'Natalie Zemon Davis, University of TorontoTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Great Tradition Classic Cultural History Culture and Society The Discovery of the People 2. Problems of Cultural History The Classics Revisited Marxist Debates The Paradoxes of Tradition Popular Culture in Question What is Culture? 3. The Moment of Historical Anthropology The Expansion of Culture The Moment of Historical Anthropology Under the Microscope Postcolonialism and Feminism 4. A New Paradigm? Four Theorists Practices Representations Material Culture The History of the Body 5. From Representation to Construction The Rise of Constructivism New Constructions Performances and Occasions Deconstruction 6. Beyond the Cultural Turn? Burckhardt’s Return Politics, Violence and Emotions The Revenge of Social History Frontiers and Encounters Narrative in Cultural History 7. Cultural History in the Twenty-First Century A changing scene Cultural History and its Neighbours Culture in Question The Natural Turn Conclusion Notes Select Publications: A Chronological List Further Reading Index

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Book SynopsisFifty years ago Enoch Powell made national headlines with his 'Rivers of Blood' speech, warning of an immigrant invasion in the once respectable streets of Wolverhampton. This local fixation brought the Black Country town into the national spotlight, yet Powell's unstable relationship with Wolverhampton has since been overlooked. Drawing from interviews and archival material, this book offers a rich local history through which to investigate the speech, bringing to life the racialised dynamics of space during a critical moment in British history. What was going on beneath the surface in Wolverhampton and how did Powell's constituents respond to this dramatic moment? The research traces the ways in which Powell's words reinvented the town and uncovers highly contested local responses. While Powell left Wolverhampton in 1974, the book returns to the city to explore the collective memories of the speech which continue to reverberate. In a contemporary period of new crisis and national divisions, revisiting the shadow of Powell allows us to reflect on racism and resistance from 1968 to today.Trade Review‘Enoch Powell made his notorious Rivers of Blood speech in the Midland Hotel in Birmingham on 20 April, 1968. At the time he was the Conservative MP for the constituency of Wolverhampton South West. In her book In the Shadow of Enoch Powell Shirin Hirsch examines the impact of Powell’s speech in the Wolverhampton of 1968 and analyses its significance 50 years later. Hirsch draws on archival material as well as her own contemporary interviews.’Vivek Lehal, Socialist Review, Vol. 444 (March 2019)As the extensive list of secondary sources in the book’s bibliography suggests, Enoch Powellhas been the subject of considerable research. Shirin Hirsch’s short but powerful bookstands out by offering insight into the experience of those both facing and fighting theramifications of Powell’s speech and the attitudes it represented. Hirsch’s masterful commandof contemporary newspapers and oral accounts presents the reader with an excellentperception of the prevailing societal ideas.Midland History -- .Table of ContentsForeword by Patrick VernonIntroduction1 ‘The Commonwealth is much too common for me’: another 19682 The world in Wolverhampton3 Reverberations from ‘Rivers of Blood’4 Resistance in the schools and on the buses5 ‘A monstrous reputation’: remembering Enoch PowellConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book is a record of the Black music culture that emerged in post-colonial London at the end of the twentieth century; the people who made it, the racial and spatial politics of its development and change, and the part it played in founding London’s precious, embattled multiculture. It tells the story of the linked Black musical scenes of the city, from ska, reggae and soul in the 1970s, to rare groove and rave in the 1980s and jungle and its offshoots in the 1990s, to dubstep and grime of the 2000s. Melville argues that these demonstrate enough common features to be thought of as one musical culture, an Afro-diasporic continuum. Core to this idea is that this dance culture has been ignored in history and cultural theory and that it should be thought of as a powerful and internationally significant form of popular art.Trade Review‘This book is rare and special. It combines loving appreciation of London’s overlooked black music scenes with a richly detailed social history of their place in the evolving life of our city. There really is no other book like it. Caspar Melville knows because he was there.’ Paul Gilroy is a recovering vinyl junkie who teaches at UCL ‘I've waited decades for a book like this to be written. Turning each page is like digging through the crates. Important connections, intersections and black sonic samples are weaved throughout the text like a seamless mix. Black British music deserves this kind of attention. It's an important piece of the puzzle of DJ and Club culture that has yet to be assembled in its entirety.’ Lynnée Denise is a renowned DJ and lecturer in African American studies at UCLA ‘Caspar goes in deep! I am so proud to be part of the London clubland story he tells.’ Gilles Peterson is a club and BBC radio DJ and founder of Brownswood Recordings and Worldwide FM'It’s a London Thing is a compelling exploration of dance music history, inviting us to keep our eyes and ears glued to where the music comes from and what it can teach us.'Ivan Mouraviev, Popular Music -- .Table of ContentsList of figuresList of platesPrefaceAcknowledgements Introduction: London’s sonic space 1 Hostile environment: London’s racial geography, 1960-80 2 Warehouse parties, rare groove and the diversion of space 3 From Ibiza to London: Brixton acid and rave 4 ‘A London Sum’ting Dis’: diaspora remixed in the urban jungle Epilogue: music and the multicultural city Appendix: interviews for the book Bibliography

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Book SynopsisGender and punishment in Ireland explores women’s lethal violence in Ireland. Drawing on comprehensive archival research, including government documents, press reporting, the remnants of public opinion and the voices of the women themselves, the book contributes to the burgeoning literature on gender and punishment and women who kill. Engaging with concepts such as ‘double deviance’, chivalry, paternalism and ‘coercive confinement’, the work explores the penal landscape for offending women in postcolonial Ireland, examining in particular the role of the Catholic Church in responses to female deviance. The book is an extensive interdisciplinary treatment of women who kill in Ireland and will be useful to scholars of gender, criminology and history.Trade Review‘Beautifully written and comprehensively researched, this book is a vital addition to historical and criminological work on women, murder and punishment. Extending the literature on women who kill, Black goes beyond a focus on gender representation alone to examine the complex dynamics that influenced conviction, sentencing and punishment of women accused of murder in Ireland in the decades after independence. Distinct from existing research on women accused of murder, she traces their experiences of punishment, including what happened to women reprieved from the death penalty. A particularly fascinating aspect of Gender and punishment in Ireland is Black's analysis of the use of religious detention in Ireland's “shadow system of penalty” as a disposal, which further develops feminist penology on gender and mixed economies of punishment. As such, this book is highly recommended for its combination of rigorous empirical research and fresh conceptual insight.’Professor Lizzie Seal, University of SussexBlack has provided an extensive and close reading of court records, including trial recordbooks, case files, the state books for the Central Criminal Court, relevant files from theDepartment of the Taoiseach and newspaper accounts of trials. The book is a major interventioninto studies of crime and criminality in post-Independence Ireland and forms the basisfor comparative work with other countries. It is informative, well structured, well written andconceptually sophisticated.Maria Luddy, University of Warwick, Women's History ReviewThis book contributes to an international literature on histories and practicesof capital punishment. It also adds to a growing literature presenting the historyof Irish criminal justice as a distinct object of study. And Black’s book makes asignificant contribution here. One of the questions Black sets out in the introductionis whether the theoretical literature on state responses to women who killcan be universalized. While this book’s argument fundamentally requires Irishwomen’s experiences to be taken on their own terms, in setting out exactlyhow these experiences were unique, it also makes major contributions to the relevantliterature well beyond Ireland.Kay Crosby, Newcastle University, The Journal of Legal History -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction1 Women prosecuted for murder2 Clemency for the condemned3 Insanity4 Sentencing and punishment5 Post-reprieve punishment of death-sentenced women6 Motherhood and child-killing7 Marriage and sexuality8 Rural lives and classConclusion Women’s lethal violence in Ireland

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Book SynopsisExamining the popular discourse of nerves and stress, this book provides a historical account of how ordinary Britons understood, explained and coped with the pressures and strains of daily life during the twentieth century. It traces the popular, vernacular discourse of stress, illuminating not just how stress was known, but the ways in which that knowledge was produced. Taking a cultural approach, the book focuses on contemporary popular understandings, revealing continuity of ideas about work, mental health, status, gender and individual weakness, as well as the changing socio-economic contexts that enabled stress to become a ubiquitous condition of everyday life by the end of the century. With accounts from sufferers, families and colleagues it also offers insight into self-help literature, the meanings of work and changing dynamics of domestic life, delivering a complementary perspective to medical histories of stress.Trade Review'[… ] this timely text makes a valuable and enjoyable intervention into the literature on twentieth century Britain. Feeling the Strain will be a valuable resource for gender historians and historians interested in mental health. It marshals a range of revealing source material to inform our historical understanding of a problem that seems, at the present moment, to be ubiquitous and inexorable.'Twentieth Century British History -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction1 Nerves and the nervous: self-help books in the early decades of the twentieth century2 Neurotic tendencies: workplace and suburban neurosis in the interwar period3 ‘Just Nerves!’: civilian nerves in the Second World War4 Th e great strain: domestic troubles in post-war Britain5 The democratisation of stress: popular and personal discourse in the 1960s and 1970s6 The ‘ruthless years’: burn-out and the paradigm of stressConclusionBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book constitutes the first comprehensive history of the network of women who worked at the heart of the English Arts and Crafts movement from the 1870s to the 1930s. Challenging the long-standing assumption that the Arts and Crafts simply revolved around celebrated male designers like William Morris, it instead offers a new social and cultural account of the movement, which simultaneously reveals the breadth of the imprint of women art workers upon the making of modern society. Thomas provides unprecedented insight into how women navigated authoritative roles as 'art workers' by asserting expertise across a range of interconnected cultures: from the artistic to the professional, intellectual, entrepreneurial and domestic. Through examination of newly discovered institutional archives and private papers, Thomas elucidates the critical importance of the spaces around which women conceptualised alternative creative and professional lifestyles.Trade Review'This absorbing study skilfully illuminates the rich cultures of the women of the arts and crafts movement, authoritatively excavating their significance. It is a major contribution to British feminist and cultural history.'Kathryn Gleadle, Mansfield College, University of Oxford‘Zoë Thomas provides a thoughtful new take on the role and place of women within the English Arts and Crafts movement, offering an alternative narrative encompassing consumer pleasures and feminist concerns that leads to refreshingly unique perspectives.’Juliette MacDonald, Edinburgh College of Art'Thomas’s important book offers a revisionist, politicised, and staunchly female-centred history of the Arts & Crafts movement, firmly re-establishing women’s aesthetic, professional and intellectual contributions through suffrage and the political economies of Victorian England.' Jenni Sorkin, University of California, Santa Barbara'As art history increasingly finds a place for methods that account for embodiment and duration, social histories like Thomas’s Women Art Workers are invaluable. Beyond histories of the Arts and Crafts, Thomas’s book is also a model text for other researchers trying to understand ideologies of identity through printed texts and publicpronouncements.'Woman's Art Journal'This is a wonderful contribution to women’s studies generally as well as to scholarship about the Arts and Crafts movement.'The Victorian Web'Meticulously researched and referenced, it draws upon a previously unknown archive related to the WGA, and Thomas also factors in members of London’s Lyceum Club, founded in 1903 for professional women by Constance Smedley, artist, writer, suffragist, and stage designer. [...] This thought-provoking woman-centred study has wider implications for how we think about these cultural producers'.DAS Newsletter'This important book offers the first detailed study of the women who worked in the English Arts and Crafts movement from the 1870s to the 1930s. [...] We find in this fascinating account the names of long-forgotten painters, book-binders, sculptors and jewellery makers'.Times Higher Education' [...] will be a vital addition to the literature for anyone teaching modern history, whether focused on art and design, social and economic history, or gender studies. In addition to extensive research in public and private archives in Britain, South Africa, and the United States, it is clearly based on a thorough knowledge of the relevant theory and literature and includes excellent notes and bibliography. [...] it will be essential reading and a stimulating resource for anyone working on the period and should be in the library of every institution studying and promoting history.'Annette Carruthers, Journal of British Studies 'Encompassing intellectual, entrepreneurial, cultural and political history, it shifts the focus from the finished artworks to the network structures, the business strategies, and the spaces of women art workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, making a tremendous contribution to both women’s history and to scholarship on the Arts and Crafts period.'Dublin Review of Books'Though confined largely to Great Britain, this examination of the women art workers of the Arts and Crafts Movement is a welcome corrective to the astonishing absence of women from the literature of the movement generally (including how it is represented in the extensive Wikipedia entry). Thomas (Univ. of Birmingham, UK) moves away from the male-run Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society established in 1887 to focus, for the first time, on “the extensive network of women working at the highest echelons of the English Arts and Crafts Movement" (p. 5). Following an introductory overview of the politics of gender in the movement, Thomas’s study unfolds in five chapters and an epilogue organized around the entwined themes of gender and space: clubhouses and guild halls, homes, business spaces, and “into the city”—the last signifying women’s progress in the suffragette movement and in their roles in industry during WW I. Thomas’s recovery of the history of the women art workers is sustained by a wealth of archival materials, which include letters, newspaper accounts, and vintage photographs.'--J. Quinan, emeritus, independent scholarSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.'I am grateful to Zoë Thomas for writing a rich and thoughtful book that suggests such intriguing connections and points of comparison. It marks an important contribution to the scholarship on middle-class women’s work as well as providing a convincing account of how women, as well as men, taught the English middle classes good taste.'Twentieth Century British History'Zoë Thomas's authoritative account of how women artist-makers pioneered diverse and vigorously active roles in late 19th-and early 20th-century Britain is an invaulable contribution to the scholarly literature on the Arts & Crafts Movement. Meticulously researched, cogently argued and elegantly written, it presents a revelatory body of material that documents in fascinating detail women's organisations - guilds, clubs, committees and exhibitions - that challenged the male-dominated art world of the time.'The Journal of Stained Glass, Peter Cormack'Through outstanding archival research of personal and professional accounts, and meticulous engagement with previous critical studies of the subject, Thomas examines the Arts and Crafts movement from the perspective of the collective of female artists who helped to bring the movement into the public eye. [...] Thomas’s mode of rethinking the movement has set a new trend that will inspire students, teachers, and researchers alike.'Romance, Revolution & Reform'An excellent contribution to scholarship on women and art in the nineteenth century, this book should interest anyone wanting a fuller picture of the Arts and Crafts Movement as a whole and women’s distinct role in it.'The Pre-Raphaelite Society'Women Art Workers and the Arts and Crafts Movement is a thought-provoking, scholarly and detailed account that brings new insights and knowledge to the study of the Arts and Crafts Movement and women’s participation in it. Its strength is undoubtedly its focus on the private and public spaces: exhibitions, workshops, homes, and clubs in addition to the businesses and workshops, and organizations and societies that facilitated and enhanced women art workers. It makes a considerable contribution to the field.'Cheryl Buckley, Journal of Design History -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Arts and Crafts movement, work cultures, and the politics of gender1 Clubhouses and guild halls 2 Exhibiting the Arts and Crafts 3 ‘At Home’ in artistic houses and studios4 ‘Artistic’ businesses and ‘medieval’ workshops5 Out of the guild hall and into the city EpilogueSelect bibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisWhy has the ‘people’s war’ been such a durable and attractive myth? Creating the people’s war examines how civil defence personnel engaged with this narrative during the war and in the following decades to answer this question. Civil defence was the most significant voluntary organisation of the Second World War, involving millions of men and women of every class, generation and locality in Britain. This book shows how local communities of civil defence personnel co-developed narratives about the value of their work which challenged hierarchies of war service. In their social groups volunteers wrote themselves into the ‘people’s war’ and invested it with meaning, creating national identity from the bottom up. Community was both central to these representations and vital for their production.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Community 2 The people’s war 3 Veterans 4 Housewives 5 Adolescents 6 Lovers 7 Conscientious objectors ConclusionBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe National Health Service has provided Britain’s healthcare since 1948. This institution has been the subject of tense political debate since its inception and has undergone a number of complex reforms and restructures. But the meanings of the NHS are not only – or even primarily – lived out in politics. Nearly every Briton comes into contact with the NHS – from cradle to grave – and this system of healthcare shapes society, culture and everyday life. This book charts these multiple meanings, looking at the NHS as a site of work, activism and consumerism, as a space and in cultural representations. Looking in these ways, the book shows how and why the NHS has become a symbol of Britishness and an object of fierce protectiveness, even love, today.Trade Review'This is the first book to address the NHS using a cultural studies framework. It produces rich and complex evidence of change over time across popular attachments and social meanings and attitudes, while demonstrating the value of new approaches to visual and material sources.'Stephanie Snow, Professor of Health, History and Policy, University of Manchester -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction – Jennifer Crane and Jane HandPart I: Work1 The making of ‘NHS staff’ as a worker identity, 1948–85 – Jack Saunders2 Sick notes are a waste of time: doctors’ labour and medical certification at the birth of the NHS – Gareth MillwardPart II: Activism3 ‘Loving’ the NHS: social surveys and activist feelings – Jennifer Crane4 The everyday work of hospital campaigns: public knowledge and activism in the UK’s National Health Services – Ellen Stewart, Kathy Dodworth and Angelo ErciaPart III: Consumerism5 Consuming health? Health education and the British public in the 1980s – Alex Mold6 Customers who don’t buy anything!: the introduction of free dispensing at Boots the Chemists – Katey LoganPart IV: Space7 The cultural significance of space and place in the NHS – Angela Whitecross8 ‘Bright-while-you-wait’? Waiting rooms and the National Health Service, c. 1948–58 – Martin D. MoorePart V: Representation9 Representation of the NHS in the arts and popular culture – Mathew Thomson10 ‘If it hadn’t been for the doctor, I think I would have killed myself’: ensuring adolescent knowledge and access to healthcare in the age of Gillick – Hannah ElizabethPart VI: International11 ‘A spawning of the nether pit’? Welfare, warfare and American visions of Britain’s National Health Service, 1948–58 – Roberta BivinsEpilogue: ‘I’m afraid [,] there’s no NHS’ – Sally SheardIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book examines the powerful influence of civil law on understandings and responses to madness in England and in New Jersey. The influence of civil law on the history of madness has not hitherto been of major academic investigation. This body of law, established and developed over a five hundred year period, greatly influenced how those from England’s propertied classes understood and responded to madness. Moreover, the civil law governing the response to madness in England was successfully exported into several of its colonies, including New Jersey. Drawing on a well-preserved and rare collection of trials in lunacy in New Jersey, this book reveals the important ties of civil law, local custom and perceptions of madness in transatlantic perspectives. This book will be highly relevant to scholars interested in law, medicine, psychiatry and madness studies, as well as contemporary issues in mental capacity and guardianship.Trade Review'James Moran has provided an important addition to the historiography of psychiatry and mental health provision in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His new book contributes significantly to shifting the historical emphasis away from asylums and towards extra-institutional approaches to the card of the insane.'Social History of Medicine'Madness on Trial, introduces a ‘treasure trove’ of an alternative archive, in the form of documents relating to civil proceedings in lunacy from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New Jersey. [it] is a welcome addition to the history of mental illness, and is a very useful and accessible work for anyone interested in mental health law and community or family practices of care.'Journal of The Historical Association'This is an excellent book: it offers a rich and deep inquiry into the legal and transatlantic histories of lunacy across place and space, also illuminating imperial legal practices around insanity. Moran’s original history provides a new set of insights into the interpretation of insanity through laws, the way law was used by different people, and the translation of imperial law into colonial contexts. This has not been achieved for the transatlantic historical site in such a deliberate and detailed way before now [...] Moran’s historical work is innovative. He makes a variety of new statements of method, purpose, evidence, and interpretation in and across legal and asylum histories. This field of madness, insanity, families, and institutions has a deep and sustained readership and continues to garner interest among students and researchers. Moran’s book also traverses multiple fields and readers, and will bring legal-historical methods and ideas to a wider audience.'Canadian Bulletin of Medical History'Madness on Trial thus offers a rich history of lunacy investigation law as well as points to new resources for scholars studying madness, mental health, and civil law in the pre-asylum era.'William J. Ryan, Journal of Early American History -- .Table of ContentsList of tablesAcknowledgments1 Introduction: civil law and madness in transatlantic context2 Suing for a lunatic: lunacy investigation law, 1320-18903 Indefinite mental states: negotiating the legal definition of madness4 Trials of madness: family struggles over property in England5 Care and protection: managing madness in England 6 Atlantic crossing: lunacy law as colonial inheritance7 Family, friends and neighbours: localizing madness in New Jersey8 Asylum in the community: managing madness in New Jersey 9 Orders in lunacy: lunacy investigation law and the asylum reconsidered10 ConclusionBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe 1840s witnessed widespread hunger and malnutrition at home and mass starvation in Ireland. And yet the aptly named ‘Hungry 40s’ came amidst claims that, notwithstanding Malthusian prophecies, absolute biological want had been eliminated in England. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were supposedly the period in which the threat of famine lifted for the peoples of England. But hunger remained, in the words of Marx, an ‘unremitted pressure’. The politics of hunger offers the first systematic analysis of the ways in which hunger continued to be experienced and feared, both as a lived and constant spectral presence. It also examines how hunger was increasingly used as a disciplining device in new modes of governing the population. Drawing upon a rich archive, this innovative and conceptually-sophisticated study throws new light on how hunger persisted as a political and biological force.This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero hunger.Trade Review'The Politics of Hunger is a deeply learned and humane book, rich in archival detail and judiciously deployed anecdotes about the real lives of those who faced food scarcity as their primary, quotidian reality. […] Malthus argued ‘a satisfactory history of this kind, of one people, and of one period, would require the constant and minute attention of an observing mind during a long life.’ Griffin's is such a mind and The Politics of Hunger is such a book.'Journal of Historical Geography'Francis Bacon once observed that “rebellions of the belly are the worst.” This highly original monograph explores how “hunger politics” operated in the 18th and 19th centuries as a weapon of protest wielded by the undernourished urban and rural populations of England. The fierce suppression of the food rioters of the 1790s led to new forms of protest: incendiarism, cattle maiming, and threatening letters. By 1800 wages had replaced the price of food as the “critical component in working families’ living standards.” Griffin (Univ. of Sussex, UK) challenges the conventional idea that the "Hungry Forties" witnessed the rediscovery of hunger. Instead, he shows how the “twin discourses” of hunger and starvation survived from 1801 into the 1840s. A close-grained study of broadsides, ballads, letters, and speeches provides the evidence. Griffin also explores the effects of dubious local and national policies, such as the Speenhamland system for supplementing the wages of workers, which led to their impoverishment as farmers underpaid their workers, knowing that public assistance would make up the difference. English theorists reduced the poor to a “distinct and decidedly animalistic race.” As Griffin concludes, “hunger defined popular protest and popular politics.'--D. R. Bisson, Belmont UniversitySumming Up: Highly recommended.Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.'The politics of hunger is a timely and welcome contribution to ongoing debates surrounding food security,protest, and governmental policy in Britain. [...] This is a pertinent, well-researched, and compassionatebook that should become required reading for students of hunger, protest, politics, and public policy in modern Britain. In every chapter, Griffin combines studious archival research with acute theoretical insights to reveal how the discourses of hunger and starvation became engrained into the fabric of everyday life, governance and resistance. [...] The politics of hunger will stand as a foundational text for a promising vein of future research.'Leonard Baker, Agricultural History Review'The politics of hunger is a pioneering study that examines the concept of hunger including the ways in which policy makers and the poor constructed meaning about hunger. […] It provides an excellent foundation for those who want to rethink the history of families and communities through the lens of hunger.'Family & Community History -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction: ‘the unremitted pressure’: on hunger politicsPart I: Protesting hunger 1 Food riots and the languages of hunger2The persistence of the discourse of starvation in the protests of the poorPart II: Hunger policies 3 Measuring need: Speenhamland, hunger and universal pauperism4 Dietaries and the less eligibility workhouse: or, the making of the poor as biological subjectsPart III: Theorising hunger 5 The biopolitics of hunger: Malthus, Hodge and the racialisation of the poor6 Telling the hunger of ‘distant’ othersConclusions

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Book SynopsisIn 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities. Rustam Alexander recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were directly affected by those laws, including a naïve Scottish journalist based in Moscow who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution, and a homosexual theatre student who came to Moscow in pursuit of a career amid Stalin’s harsh repressions and mass arrests. We also meet a fearless doctor in Siberia who provided medical treatment for gay men at his own peril, and a much-loved Soviet singer who hid his homosexuality from the secret police. Each vignette helps paint the hitherto unknown picture of how Soviet oppression of gay people originated and was perpetuated from Stalin’s rule until the demise of the USSR. This book comes at a time when homophobia is again rearing its ugly head under Putin’s rule.Trade ReviewSHORTLISTED FOR THE PEOPLE'S BOOK PRIZE 2023As President Putin ramps up his anti-queer attacks, this book is particularly timely and important. Alexander has done a superb job of telling the history of homosexuality in Russia since the Revolution, and his book deserves to be widely read.Dennis Altman, author of Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation and Global SexAt a time when President Putin’s regime is viciously repressing Russia’s LGBTQ community and criminalizing anyone who speaks up about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans lives, the appearance of this book is an important act of resistance. Red Closet brings to life stories of gay oppression in the Soviet Union and traces some of the roots of contemporary Russia’s homophobia.Dan Healey, author of Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi Rustam Alexander has undertaken rigorous archival research with great passion to produce a superb book. His narrative is refreshingly free of academic jargon and theory but Red Closet can be appreciated by a wide readership. Stephen Bourne, author of Fighting Proud: The Untold Story of the Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars'In the world of academic writing in Slavic Studies, Alexander’s book is a fresh take on storytelling for all.(This) new book is a queer socialist historical thriller and a page-turner. It serves the drama (of which Soviet queer history has more than plenty) and does it in a way that makes the readers keep wanting more. And I cannot help but want to see more from this author.'The Russian Review -- .Table of ContentsPart I: Under Stalin 1 Stalin decides to make male homosexuality a crime 2 A Scottish man stands up for the rights of Soviet homosexuals 3 A young man from Siberia comes to Moscow in pursuit of his dreams 4 A Soviet celebrity leads a double life and lives in quiet suffering 5 A visit to a bathhouse ends in a nightmare 6 Soviet homosexuals travel to Siberia for "medical" treatment Part II: Under Khrushchev 7 Stalin’s heirs deal with homosexuality in the GULAG 8 In which a murder occurs 9 Soviet jurists push for the decriminalization of sodomy 10 Soviet psychiatrists try to cure lesbianism 11 A KGB lieutenant goes rogue 12 Soviet doctors invent a new medical science and try to cure male homosexualityPart III: Under Brezhnev 13 Soviet jurists try to decriminalize consensual homosexuality 14 A married couple try to save their marriage 15 Yan Goland tries to cure a youth of his homosexuality 16 A jurist proposes to criminalize lesbianism 17 A former soldier is crippled with internalized homophobia 18 In which we learn about emerging gay activism in the USSRPart IV: Under Gorbachev19 A strange patient from Africa baffles Soviet doctors 20 Soviet officials try to protect the USSR from AIDS 21 The Soviet KGB becomes inspired by the American gay press 22 Soviet doctors find Soviet "Patient Zero" 23 Soviet homophobia hits its peak 24 Soviet homosexuals finally speak about themselves in public Epilogue: In which Boris Yeltsin decriminalizes consensual homosexuality – but homophobia remains Index

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Book SynopsisTaking us from the beginning of our story to the present day, A Cold Spell examines how ice has shaped our thoughts, actions and societies – and what it means for us that it is rapidly disappearing from our planet 'A warm-hearted tale of the bizarre, something to cuddle up with in the bleak midwinter . . . Astonishing' THE TIMES 'Bracingly original . . . As the earth warms threateningly, there could hardly be a more pertinent time for a story like this’ MICHAEL PALIN 'A book of limitless fascinations' OLIVIA LAING 'Brightly written, nimbly researched and really quite delightful' LITERARY REVIEW Ice has confounded, delighted and fascinated us since the first sparks of art and culture in Europe and it now underpins the modern world. Without ice, we would not feed ourselves or heal our sick as we do, and our towns and cities, countryside and oceans would look very different. Science would not have progressed along the avenues it did and our galleries and libraries would be missing many masterpieces. A Cold Spell uses this vital link to understanding our past to tell a surprising story of obsession, invention and adventure – how we have lived and dreamed, celebrated and traded, innovated, loved and fought over thousands of years. It brings together a sacrificial Incan mummy, Winston Churchill’s secret plans for unusual aircraft carriers, strange bones that shook Victorian beliefs about the world and a macabre journey into the depths of the human body. It is an original and unique way of looking at something that is literally all around us, whose loss confronts us daily in the news, but whose impact on our lives has never been fully explored. [An] extraordinary, complete and utter history of the human experience of the cold stuff' JOHN LEWIS-STEMPEL, COUNTRY LIFE ‘A thought-provoking chronicle of humanity . . . Leonard consistently frames ice in surprising and insightful ways, and in doing so lends it a magical quality’ GEOGRAPHICALTrade ReviewCharming and quirky . . . This is a warm-hearted tale of the bizarre, something to cuddle up with in the bleak midwinter . . . It’s astonishing how Leonard has managed to cram so much into such a relatively short volume -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *A fascinating exploration of how ice has shaped human existence . . . Ranging from the last ice age to the Anthropocene, Max Leonard’s beguiling history considers the nature of ice as well as its place in “the popular imagination” -- William Atkins * Guardian *[An] extraordinary, complete and utter history of the human experience of the cold stuff . . . Max Leonard is the most assiduous researcher and has scratched down to the very base of the ice-berg -- John Lewis-Stempel * Country Life *‘A Cold Spell appears when even the most boneheaded climate sceptics are conceding that something is up. Max Leonard, naturally, engages with this. Climate change provides a political dimension, but the book is about far more than that . . . Brightly written, nimbly researched and really quite delightful . . . A Cold Spell brims with such colourful stories -- Peter Moore * Literary Review *A thought-provoking chronicle of humanity through an icy lens. From its hand in shaping the birth and birthplace of the human race to its modern status as a metaphor for civilisation, Leonard charts the role ice has played, and continues to play, in our lives with great curiosity. The book’s success is rooted in Leonard’s ability to weave something so ubiquitous into a journey of twists and turns. Traversing history, culture, language, science and human nature via evocative tangents, he consistently frames ice in surprising and insightful ways, and in doing so lends it a magical quality. Nowhere is this truer than in stories of icy obsession – adventurers sacrificing their lives to navigate its polar domains, scientists dedicating theirs to unravelling the secrets it holds * Geographical *Leonard’s charting of the history of humanity’s interactions with ice is a brisk and fascinating piece of work, encompassing the last hours of Ötzi the Iceman, polar tourism, George Mallory’s Everest camera, and the man who almost two centuries ago came up with the wheeze of exporting ice from America to India. Climate change obviously thrums through the narrative but this is not a didactic read, rather a thoroughly entertaining and absorbing one * New European *Despite its single subject, this is a book that thinks big – or at least, widely and in unexpected places . . . An unusually wide-ranging cultural and intellectual journey . . . Max Leonard’s writing is engaging and well-paced, and he breezily summarises the fruits of voluminous research with a deft touch . . . [A book] of striking revelations, intriguing connections and thought-provoking questions about how the human relationship with ice might yet develop -- Jonathan Dore * TLS *As this entertaining tale reveals, ice has the power to grind mountains to dust, destroy ships – and even swallow up a secret American nuclear bunker . . . This is a book about the marvel of nature and our intrepid, frequently crazy efforts to understand and harness that marvel -- Simeon House * Mail on Sunday *In a bracingly original book, Max Leonard makes something we all take for granted into an absorbing pathway into history, geography and science . . . A highly readable feast of insights and surprises . . . As the earth warms threateningly, there could hardly be a more pertinent time for a story like this -- Michael PalinA book of limitless fascinations, an elegant and subtle accounting of how ice has shaped and changed human life, and how in turn humans have imperilled the existence of icy places -- Olivia LaingA brilliant and surprising book on unexpected ways ice has influenced not just Western thought but the way we live now. Come for the research, stay for the unexpected cameos -- Jennifer Lucy AllanA pleasure on every page. It's packed with fascinating stories and unexpected connections. What you’ve done so successfully is to give the reader the chance to care for ice and to understand the role it’s had in our lives, real and imaginary. Everybody who reads your book will be captivated each time ice chinks and bobs in a glass. Ice is now our destiny. By melting en masse, it is bringing chaos to Earth systems -- Nicholas CraneBeautiful, thoughtful and utterly fascinating on everything from cave paintings to Captain Birdseye – the kind of book you feel compelled to share bits from as you’re reading -- Felicity CloakePut everything on ice and read this book - a wonderful history of ingenuity, wanderlust, preservation and exploitation. Max Leonard has written an original chronicle of human nature, and you’ll skate through it with enduring insight and pleasure -- Simon GarfieldFrom Otzi the Iceman to Alpine adventurers, the invention of the cold chain to cloud seeding, A Cold Spell fills the cryosphere with stories to reconnect us to this all-too-fragile, frozen world. Europeans may have sought mastery over ice for hundreds of years, but Leonard shows how ice has shaped us too: in his deft hands it becomes a mirror revealing "the extraordinary in the ordinary", bringing home both the awe and the unease of the Anthropocene -- Jay Owen

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