Social and cultural history Books

Book SynopsisDiscover the extraordinary stories of the Jewish people who designed, made and sold fashion in twentieth-century London, revealing their vital role in making it an iconic fashion city. While Jewish people have long been associated with making clothes, the full extent of the contributions they made to London’s growing reputation as a global fashion capital and the democratisation of fashion through the development of ready-to-wear clothes in the twentieth century have been widely forgotten. Spanning all sectors of the fashion industry – from homeworking to haute couture – the book draws stories from generations of Jewish Londoners and is richly illustrated with images from across the city and the Museum of London’s collections. Fashion City takes you on a journey across London, from the busy clothing factories of the East End to the swinging boutiques of Carnaby Street and the manicured squares of Mayfair. Along the way it introduces you to the intriguing stories of the key figures behind London fashion, such as Frederick Starke, a boy from the East End whose ability to tell a creative story changed the way the world saw British ready-to-wear fashion; Otto Lucas, a gay Jewish German hat maker who became the most financially successful milliner in the world; Mr Fish, the rule-defying tailor who dressed Mick Jagger and Muhammed Ali; and Netty Spiegel, who escaped the Nazis on the Kindertransport and became a London wedding dress designer of choice under her ‘Neymar’ label. Bringing together a wealth of new research and presenting a novel perspective of London fashion, this book gives a voice to the city’s overlooked and often forgotten Jewish fashion makers.Trade ReviewDrawing on new research, this makes for a fascinating read. * This England *Table of ContentsForeword by David Sassoon - Prelude: Neymar | Netty Spiegel 1. Introductions - Key Figures: J. H. Fisher | Malka and Juda Fiszer 2. Making Clothes in the East End - Key Figures: Koupy | Charles Kuperstein 3. High-street Chains and the Wholesale Revolution - Key Figures: Otto Lucas Ltd | The Milliner Millionaire 4. Couture and Bespoke Dressmaking - Key Figures: Mr Fish | Michael Fish and Friends 5. Menswear Boutiques and Carnaby Street - Key Figures: Moss Bros | Generations of Moss Index Picture credits

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Book SynopsisFirst published in four volumes in the early 1980s, Charles Smith’s Historic South Edinburgh has become a much sought-after and extremely rare classic. This completely new edition combines all four volumes into one, and has been completely revised and updated with much new research and information. The opening of North Bridge in 1772 was followed by an exodus, not simply to the spacious elegance of Craig’s New Town, but to the rural seclusion and open spaces of the South Side. Over the next hundred and fifty years the city grew steadily southwards. As much as the more familiar stories of the Old Town and the New Town, the story of the South Side lies at the heart of Edinburgh and to this day it is full of fascinating incident, extraordinary people and great historic resonance. For any native of the city, Historic South Edinburgh is an essential book. With many new illustrations, it is a mine of information and anecdote for all who love Edinburgh. Areas of Edinburgh covered are: The Meadows, Marchmont, Sciennes, The Grange, Bruntsfield, Morningside, Braid, Blackford, Merchiston, Craiglockhart, Swanston.

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Book SynopsisGaelic Scotland is one of the world's great treasure-houses of song. In this anthology, Anne Lorne Gillies has gathered together music and lyrics from all over the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands - an extraordinary tradition that stretches in an unbroken line from the bardic effusions of ancient times to the Celtic fusions of today's vibrant young Gaelic musicians and poets. They paint vivid pictures of life among ordinary Gaelic-speaking people, their hopes, fears and preoccupations, births, deaths and marriages, and personal reactions to the great changes that blew their lives about. Everything about this book is designed to make the songs accessible to musicians and general readers alike. Anne Lorne Gillies provides a unique and informative introduction to Gaelic tradition, simple yet highly sensitive musical transcriptions, and English translations. She portrays the social and historical background of the songs, offers her own commentary on technical aspects of the music and its performance, and adds carefully researched biographical notes and a full discography in order to bring to life not only the people who composed the songs but also some of the singers and musicians who have continued the tradition into the twenty-first century. Songs of Gaelic Scotland was winner of the 2006 Ruth Michaelis-Jena Ratcliff Prize in Folklore and Folklife.Trade Review'a panoramic view of the world of Gaelic song ... a superb achievement' -- John MacInnes'This book is unique in that it crosses the boundaries between music and literature. Nothing quite like it has ever been done for Gaelic. It is a truly wonderful achievement' * Scots Magazine *'a remarkable book ... both scholarly and entertaining. She walks a fine tightrope between encouraging innovation and respecting tradition, never once falling off' * Am Bratach *'beautiful and full of substance ... I believe that this book will be like a beacon that will last forever and be of untold value to generations still to come' * West Highland Free Press *

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Book SynopsisWhat was happening in Burnley Town Hall when the British National Party was winning and holding seats there? What lay behind the far right’s advance, and what effect did it have on local government and wider policy trends? How did mainstream parties respond? This is the inside story of these developments, written by the council worker responsible for promoting good race relations in Burnley during the turbulent years following the ‘northern town disturbances’ of 2001. The book connects the story of one Lancashire town to contemporary social divisions and political trends across the UK: - The rise of right-wing populism, widespread antipathy to immigration, and a deep distrust of established politicians - The success of Boris Johnson's Conservatives in offering nationalism as an answer to some people's sense of abandonment in deindustrialised areas - Labour’s attempts to ‘reconnect’ and win back support in northern constituencies like Burnley, which voted 67 per cent for Brexit and was one of the ‘red wall’ seats that Labour lost at the 2019 general election. On Burnley Road is both a remarkable example of granular social history and an urgent contribution to current debates on issues which affect us all. MakinWaite’s perspectives on political identities, multiculturalism, and the potential of ‘civic mediation’ will interest anyone who is looking for effective ways forward to overcome racism and inequality, and to rebuild our democratic culture.Table of ContentsForeword by Professor Claire Alexander 1. Introduction: riots in retrospect 2. What we learned in the Weavers’ Triangle 3. How political space gets created 4. When tomorrow belonged to them 5. 'How do we get back to normal?' 6. Cohesion in context 7. 'How do we handle the BNP?' 8. From Belfast to Burnley 9. Mapping future options 10. From Burnley to Brexit … and beyond Roundtable discussion: Rushanara Ali MP, Jo Broadwood, Deborah Grayson, Professor Anoop Nayak

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Book SynopsisVienna combines drama and elegance like no other. For centuries the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the stately city on the Danube, has been defined by vast palaces and imperial grandeur—but behind the Baroque opulence, Vienna is also a place of genteel coffee house culture, epicurean tradition, and a heritage of both delicate and daring music, art, and design, from Johann Strauss to Egon Schiele, from Gustav Mahler to Josef Hoffmann. This volume is a treasure trove of photography from the last 175 years, following the evolution of Vienna from imperial capital to modern metropolis. Like a visual walk through time and cityscape, hundreds of carefully curated pictures trace the developments in Vienna’s built environment and the cultural and historical trends they reflect, whether the urban Gesamtkunstwerk of the 19th-century Ringstrasse or the experiments of “Red Vienna” in the 1920s, when the city had a social democrat government for the first time. Through these remarkable photographs, we discover not only the great landmarks and lesser-known corners of Vienna, but also the ubiquity and the tumult of its history. We see the cultural blossoming of the fin de siècle, when radical innovators such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Adolf Loos, and Sigmund Freud turned Vienna into a “laboratory of modernity”; the clashes of 1934; the ascent of Nazi dictatorship; and the horrors writ by the Holocaust in what was once one of the most populous and multi-ethnic cities on earth. More recently, fascinating postwar photographs explore the Vienna of the Third Man, at once a city in ruins and a hub for spies. The book closes with the most recent pictures, celebrating the emergence of today’s Vienna—one of the most attractive cities in Europe, in which rich history once again coexists with international flair and vibrant contemporary culture.Trade Review“This colourful book celebrates the emergence of today’s metropolis – one of the most attractive cities in Europe, in which rich history once again coexists with international flair and vibrant contemporary culture.” * independent.co.uk *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“This is an original, indispensable, and beautifully poetic book that weaves together stories of migration, placemaking, and activism to show how Mexicans and Puerto Ricans made a home in Grand Rapids. With rich oral histories and archival research in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the U.S., Delia Fernández-Jones has written an insightful and inspiring book that makes a vital contribution to fields of Latino and Midwestern history.”--Felipe Hinojosa, author of Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio"Fernández-Jones draws upon both classic texts of Latina/o history and primary sources to develop this passionate, in-depth historical analysis, which contributes significantly to the scholarly literature on Latino communities in the Midwest and is sure to inspire future research in this area. Anyone interested in Chicana/o or ethnic histories of the US will enjoy this book, which should also become a staple in library collections on Chicana/o studies and ethnic studies. Highly recommended." --ChoiceTable of ContentsINTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: “TRAINED AND TRACTABLE LABOR” CHAPTER 2: “FAMILIES HELPED EACH OTHER” CHAPTER 3: “A GATHERING PLACE” CHAPTER 4: “LATINS WANT PARITY” CHAPTER 5: “NEEDS OF THE COMMUNITY” CHAPTER 6: “TANGLED WITH THE POLICE” CHAPTER 7: "JUSTICE FOR OUR KIDS” EPILOGUE BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Book SynopsisNow with a new foreword, this timely reissuefeatures aremarkable collection of oral histories that trace three decades of turbulent race relations and social change in the United States for a new generation of activists. One evening in 1955, Howard Spence, a Mississippi field representative for the NAACP investigating the Emmett Till murder, was confronted by Klansmen who burned an eight-foot cross on his front lawn. I felt my life wasn't worth a penny with a hole in it. Twenty-four years later, Spence had become a respected pillar of that same Mississippi town, serving as its first Black alderman. The story of Howard Spence is just one of the remarkable personal dramas recounted inBlack Lives, White Lives. Beginning in 1968, Bob Blauner and a team of interviewers recorded the words of those caught up in the crucible of rapid racial, social, and political change. Unlike most retrospective oral histories, these interviews capture the intense racial tension of 1968 in real time, as peopTrade Review"A compelling window into American race relations in the second half of the 20th century. But more than that, thanks to Blauner’s vision and the skill of his team of researchers, the book has the feel of a sociological classic." * Society for US Intellectual History *Table of ContentsContents Foreword by Gerald Early Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE 1968 Surviving the Sixties Integration or Black Power? The Great Debate 1. The Politics of Manhood and the Southern Black Experience Florence Grier “My father was from Alabama” Len Davis “Promised Land is just like the old plantation” Howard Spence “I wouldn’t want to treat anybody like I’ve been treated in Mississippi” 2. Whites on the Front Lines of Racial Conflict Joe Rypins “Stokely Carmichael ain’t no better than me” Gladys Hunt “You break your neck to do something, and they give you a hard time” Joan Keres “Sometimes you wish you were black” Virginia Lawrence “I was the wrong color in my black man’s eyes” 3. Four Black Women and the Consciousness of the Sixties Florence Grier “I’m tired of being scared” Millie Harding “This is no dream world, baby” Vera Brooke “Those that came from a different social experience I feared” Elena Albert “Something happened in my childhood I’ve never forgotten” 4. White Backlash: The Fear of a Black Majority and Other Nightmares Maude Wiley “They’re afraid the colored people are gonna move in and take over” George Hendrickson “We’ve got the lowest, poorest type” William Singer “We didn’t have a great sense of racial awareness” Bill Harcliff “It’s just a strong apartheid on the street” Diane Harcliff “The whole racial thing makes me burst with sadness” 5. Black Youth and the Ghetto Streets Richard Simmons “White boys, they’re always innocent” Larry Dillard “I would like to kill a white man, just to put it on the books” Sarah Williams “The marching and demonstrations is stupid” Harold Sampson “Denying you the right to be a man” 6. The Paradox of Working-Class Racism Lawrence Adams “They’ve got the right to have every human dignity that I have” Jim Corey “If I can help a colored man without hurting myself, I haven’t got anything to lose” Dick Cunningham “My oldest daughter married a black man” 7. Black Workers: New Options and Old Problems Richard Holmes “The Negro don’t want to work” Len Davis “The postal system has become a Negro-type job” Mark Anthony Holder “Being a man is being part of the world” Jim Pettit “These people had been treating me bad all my life, and I didn’t know it” Frank Casey “They call me an instigator” Carleta Reeves “I’d come home bitching and yelling” Henry Smith “This was my means of retaliating” PART TWO 1978–1987 Growing Older in the Seventies and Eighties The Ambiguities of Racial Change 8. “Still in the Struggle”: Black Activists Ten Years Later Howard Spence “I’m going to protect this land” Millie Harding “Dealing with the human issues” Florence Grier “I haven’t changed that much” 9. White Lives and the Limits of Integration George Hendrickson “The man is a damn fool who won’t change his mind” Maude Wiley “That was such a strong time of change” Virginia Lawrence “The world changed exactly the way I was going” William Singer “We’ve turned life itself into a quota business” Bill Harcliff “What I really do is live in a white neighborhood” 10. Black Youth: The Worsening Crisis Richard Simmons “The American black man is a dying species” Larry Dillard “Without [the Black Panthers], my generation would be a different generation” Sarah Williams “I had him and everything just changed” Jim Pettit “Two counts against me: I’m black and I’m gay” 11. Blue-Collar Men in a Tight Economy Jim Corey “He’s just a boy, Daddy” Dick Cunningham “Even Walnut Creek, it’s integrating” Lawrence Adams “The federal government and AT&T screwed up” Joe Rypins “Smelling like a rose” Mark Anthony Holder “Peoples of forty, they’re no longer thinking about a race thing” 12. Men, Women, and Opportunity Harold Sampson “I have not been able to achieve selfhood through the civil rights movement” Frank Casey “If they had gave me the green light” Carleta Reeves “To grow and develop with the times” Henry Smith “If I were a white guy . . .” 13. Keeping the Spirit of the Sixties Alive Vera Brooke “The caring factor” Joan Keres “The way that you view humanity and the earth, those are the main things” Len Davis “My whole damn culture’s gone” Elena Albert “I as an individual will continue to resist” Conclusion Appendix: Methodology Notes Bibliographic Essay

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Book SynopsisIn 1739 Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest seeking answers to a pressing question: What was the cause of Africans’ black skin? Published here for the first time and translated into English, these early documents of scientific racism lay bare the Enlightenment origins of the phantom of racial hierarchy.Trade ReviewAn invaluable historical example of the creation of a scientific conception of race that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. * Washington Post *Curran and Gates have done admirable work…There is an elegant preface [and] a thorough contextual introduction…As soon as one starts to read the essays collected in this book, one cannot avoid the impression that one has entered an alien intellectual world. It seems more medieval than modern. -- John Samuel Harpham * Chronicle of Higher Education *A book worth reading and contemplating to understand the genesis of our current racial and indeed racist society, with its intersectional forms of minoritization, exclusion, exploitation, and violence…Reading this book does more than reveal ‘the master’s tools.’ Thankfully, it offers us a chance to come together in shared knowledge and, if we so choose, in a shared mission: to break the chains of an abominable history and continue paving the way to a better future. -- Christy Pichichero * Public Books *The sixteen essays submitted for the essay prize remained, untouched, in the Bordeaux archives. They have now been recovered, translated, contextualized and published with a thoughtful and informative introduction by Henry Louis Gates and Andrew Curran, who discuss the city, the academy and ways of reading the range of bizarre explanations offered for black skin and hair…Putting together the Bordeaux texts, Gates and Curran argue, helps us to understand the emergence of the concept of race. -- Catherine Hall * London Review of Books *A fascinating look into the eighteenth-century invention of the concept of race. * Foreword Reviews *The essays, the various editorial materials, and the excellent notes make this collection of great use to any scholar interested in this topic. Clearly presented with both rigor and sensitivity, this collection would also be a welcome addition to undergraduate or graduate classes. -- Mary McAlpin * Early American Literature *Insightful and instructive…The nineteen essays edited by Gates and Curran remind us that eighteenth-century Europeans extracted multiple messages from nature, which has no voice of its own. The legacy of the Enlightenment includes ‘scientific’ arguments about inferiority based on differences in race, sex, and more, as well as unfulfilled aspirations for equality and humanity. -- Jeffrey Merrick * New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century *The roots of the false science behind race and the spread of virulent racism run in parallel. The essays collected in Who’s Black and Why? show that race is a hierarchical form of classification…[The book] has enhanced my appreciation for the tragic absurdity of racial hierarchies. -- Darryl Lorenzo Wellington * Santa Fe Reporter *An important collection of documents on scientific racism. * Kirkus Reviews *Eye-opening…A fascinating, if disturbing, window onto the origins of racism. * Publishers Weekly *In 1741 the Royal Academy of Bordeaux (a city of slave-trading wealth) sought the essence of human Blackness: in the climate, in the blood, in the bile, in the semen, in Divine Providence and the curse of Ham, in the size of the pores, or in ‘tubes’ in the skin. Now, after some 300 years of frustrating searches, definitive answers still elude us. Who’s Black and Why? reveals how prestigious natural scientists once sought physical explanations, in vain, for a social identity that continues to carry enormous significance to this day. -- Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White PeopleThe eighteenth-century essays published for the first time in Who’s Black and Why? contain a world of ideas—theories, inventions, and fantasies—about what blackness is, and what it means. To read them is to witness European intellectuals, in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, struggling, one after another, to justify atrocity. -- Jill Lepore, author of These TruthsAn indispensable book for anyone who is interested in the origins of racism. In this essential volume, Gates and Curran reveal how science itself played a major role in the construction of race during the eighteenth century. -- David Diop, author of the Booker Prize–winning At Night All Blood Is BlackThere is nothing inevitable about modern understandings of race. Gates and Curran have given us unprecedented access to forgotten eighteenth-century conversations that established a moral and intellectual basis for enslaving Black people. This extraordinary book reveals how Europeans learned to think about groups of people as profoundly different from each other simply based on their ancestry. It also provides an important lesson for those who study human variation in our own time. To what extent are we vulnerable to the same intellectual traps? -- David Reich, author of Who We Are and How We Got HereThe essays translated—and brilliantly contextualized—in this book provide a window into how European thinkers in the eighteenth century struggled with the legacy of religious ideas about human difference as they began to shape a new scientific understanding of race. They give us a fascinating insight into the early stages of the Enlightenment, reminding us that, whatever we owe to this period, we live now in a radically different intellectual world. -- Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Lies That BindIn Who’s Black and Why? Henry Louis Gates and Andrew Curran do the work of archival historians, and to a very available end: making us understand—through documents at times appalling, at times appallingly comic—a subject all too often hived off to abstractions, that is, how we construct a racial group, and how we come to treat as truths what we know to be inventions. An invaluable historical study, with all too many applications today. -- Adam Gopnik, author of A Thousand Small SanitiesWho’s Black and Why? is essential reading for all who want to undo and repair the harm caused by the entanglement of notions of racial difference and the injustices such differences have been used to sustain. -- Evelynn Hammonds, author of The Nature of Difference

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Book SynopsisTraversing 2,500 years of global history, Ulbe Bosma shows how sugar, once a luxury reserved for Eastern emperors, stoked a mania in the West, transforming diets and ecosystems, destroying and creating cultures, and shaping the history of bondage and freedom. A major source of calories only since 1900, sugar has suddenly revolutionized our world.Trade ReviewA tour de force of global history…Bosma has turned the humble sugar crystal into a mighty prism for understanding aspects of global history and the world in which we live. -- Dinyar Patel * Los Angeles Review of Books *The World of Sugar shows the globalized tangle of interests that capitalism creates among consumers, producers, investors, labor, national governments, and transnational organizations…Sugar offers a bitter reminder of the enduring tensions between the complexity of national interests and the interests of capital. -- Bronwen Everill * Foreign Policy *One of the most accomplished longue durée case studies in the history of capitalism that we have, concerned not just with trade and consumption but with production also. At every turn it subverts both critiques and celebrations of capitalism, and our understanding of much else besides. It is an extraordinary achievement. -- David Edgerton * Literary Review *Sugar’s societal dominance is a recent development…Its history is both a story of progress and a bittersweet tale of ‘exploitation, racism, obesity, and environmental destruction’…[An] authoritative, highly readable study—the first to be truly global. -- Andrew Robinson * Nature *Bosma lucidly depicts how a commodity that is challenging to cultivate and devoid of nutritional value was central to the development of European imperialism, transatlantic slavery, the Industrial Revolution, economic protectionism, and the postcolonial politics and environmental degradation of the Global South. Bosma’s wide-ranging accounting is full of eye-opening insights…This is a comprehensive and alarming look at how one commodity changed the world. * Publishers Weekly *Bosma revisits the technical innovations, economic arrangements, and pains of a world submitting to the joy and addictiveness of sugar. His insights into the present are all the more resounding. -- Julien Damon * L'Express *Bosma traces how sugar has fundamentally ‘changed how we feed ourselves’…The ubiquity of sugar, writes Bosma, tells us about progress but also reveals a darker story of human exploitation. -- Sudipta Datta * The Hindu *Takes you on a journey of discovery—the journey of sugar itself, which has gone from relative obscurity to becoming an indispensable part of modern diet, causing untold harm in the process. * BooksFirst *Covers the history of the sweet stuff, first produced in granulated form in the 6th century BC, but not a huge commodity until more than two millennia later. This is…a reckoning with sugar. -- Sophie Roell * Five Books *A comprehensive 2,500-year examination of sugar’s history and its profound impact on society and the environment. Ulbe Bosma traces sugar’s journey from a luxury good in ancient India to a ubiquitous ingredient in our diets today, underscoring its role in fostering health issues and environmental crises. Bosma highlights how sugar has altered cultures and shaped political policies, laying bare the significant risks this commonplace commodity poses. * Food Tank *Ulbe Bosma’s history of sugar is also a case study of global capitalism over the centuries, colonial wars, and the deadly slave trade that made the industry possible…An interesting account of how sugar seeped into the global digestive system. -- Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll * Sydney Morning Herald *An important new contribution to the literature on the history of sugar. Many of the shadows of sugar are dark, they spread over the entire world, and they are very, very, long. -- Robert Ackrill * H-Diplo *The world history of sugar and the world history of capitalism are tightly linked to one another. Ulbe Bosma, in this first truly global account of a most crucial commodity, takes us to the fields of Indian peasants, the countinghouses of Chinese merchants, the monopolizing efforts of New York industrialists, and the rebellions of enslaved sugar workers in Cuba to chart how something as mundane as sugar came to play a crucial role in the making of the world we inhabit today. Attentive to local specificities as much as to Earth-spanning connections, to culture and capital, power and poverty, this book is global history at its best. -- Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton: A Global HistorySugar may play a unique role in the slow-motion tragedy that is the worldwide epidemic of obesity and diabetes. The World of Sugar is a remarkably researched, comprehensive, and indispensable book for everyone who wishes to understand how sugar and the sugar industry have shaped the world in which we live. -- Gary Taubes, author of The Case Against SugarHow is it that a chemical that has no nutritional value, that is inherently poisonous, that is responsible for morbidity and mortality, and that is breaking the health care budget of every developed and developing country is the seminal thread running through human history for the last 3,000 years? The World of Sugar narrates the critical events that made sugar the dominant force in world politics from antiquity to our own era. In this magisterial history, Bosma offers a much-needed cautionary tale about how addiction leads to societal downfall. As we watch newer addictions destroy the climate and Earth’s inhabitants, we would all do well to learn the hard lessons of sugar. -- Robert Lustig, author of Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern MedicineThe World of Sugar is compelling, deeply researched, and globe-spanning. Bosma puts sugar at the heart of global capitalism; he shows how the quest for sweetness has driven slavery, violence, and massive ecological destruction. This is a timely and impressive book that illuminates some of our most urgent contemporary debates. -- Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s HistorySugar got the modern world moving in a way few other commodities did. Revealing the bitter downside of sweetness, Bosma gives us a spectacular narrative that deftly weaves in all of sugar’s stories: labor and consumption, power and trade, science and technology. -- Jürgen Osterhammel, author of The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"One of Medium.com’s Books of the Year 2017""One of The Times Literary Supplement’s Books of the Year 2017""One of the Forbes.com “Great Anthropology and History Books of 2017” (chosen by Kristina Killgrove)""One of The Federalist’s Notable Books for 2017""Honorable Mention for the 2018 PROSE Award in Classics, Association of American Publishers""One of Strategy + Business's Best Business Books in Economics for 2018""One of Choice Reviews' Outstanding Academic Titles of 2018"

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, Oregon Book Awards""Shortlisted for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Phi Beta Kappa Society""Shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History""One of Whoopi Goldberg's Favorite Things, ABC The View""New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice""Chicago Tribune writer John Warner's Book That Will Help You Better Understand the Messed-Up Nature of the World""One of The Undefeated's 25 Can't Miss Books of 2019""One of The Progressive's Favorite Books of 2019""One of LitHub's 50 Favorite Books of the Year""One of Inside Higher Ed's Books to Give the Educator in Your Life for the Holidays"

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Daily Telegraph Best History Book of the Year""It is one of the pleasures of Waterloo Sunrise that it leaps from race and urban reorganization to fashion and fun. Mr. Davis is a wizard of the archives. The general reader will delight in his excavation of local newspapers in pursuit of treasures that illuminate whatever topic is under discussion."---James Campbell, Wall Street Journal"John Davis charts the complexities of these important decades in London’s recent history with great brilliance. . . . A sure-footed and unrivalled guide."---Jerry White, Times Literary Supplement"Davis is a magnificent tour guide for the world he has reconstructed. . . . He shows us how London stopped being so boring, what we gained and what we lost."---Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, London Review of Books"Entertaining and affecting."---John Gapper, Financial Times"This is an engrossing, scholarly account of a time when London was in transformation . . . and one that will interest Londoners and non-Londoners alike."---Martin Chilton, The Independent"A beautifully written account of the arrival of trattorias, Carnaby Street, tower blocks and gentrification, as the capital was developed after the destruction of the war."---Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph"Like the Kinks classic to which the title playfully alludes, Waterloo Sunrise is infectious, full of human detail, and generous in its narrative sweep."---Matthew d’Ancona, Tortoise Media"Davis weaves two decades of social, physical, economic, cultural, and political change into a coherent tapestry. . . . A welcome, well-written resource." * Choice Reviews *"There is a wealth of information and cogent analysis in this book. It is well-researched with a very full scholarly apparatus. . . . [A] highly entertaining work."---Alan Clarke, Open History Journal"Within its 434 pages some alchemy turns the drab 1970’s into London’s apotheosis. . . . I love the book—it’s a 400-page plus page turner."---Barry Coidan, The London Society"This is a book I will be using as a research source for many years to come."---Geoff Nicholson, Los Angeles Review of Books"Waterloo Sunrise, an original, superbly written, and immaculately researched book by John Davis, has the merit not only of being a serious work of social history but also of being one that lifts up the stone to reveal aspects of London life between the early 1960s and the advent of Mrs. Thatcher. . . . Davis is as perceptive in describing the decline of the 1970s as he is in detailing the excitement of London in the 1960s."---Simon Heffer, New Criterion

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"National Book Award Finalist""Selected Entry for the National Book Critics Circle Award""Compact, sharp and withering. . . . A book to be read, a book to be reckoned with. . . . Like an oral tale transcribed by a folklorist, it has the ring of the eternal to it. My tale is simple and horrible, it seems to say; listen to it and remember it and pass it along. Hatred like this runs deep in human nature and is ever ready to erupt again. Be warned."---Michael Frank, Los Angeles Times"An important contribution to the literature of human bestiality unleashed by war. . . . [A] fine, careful book about the awful massacre in Jebwabne."---Steven Erlanger, New York Times Book Review"Astonishing. . . . The title, Neighbors, is an ice dagger to the heart."---George F. Will, Newsweek"Compelling and immediate."---Linda Matchan, Boston Globe"Nothing can make up for the horror. But if the screams of those burning alive at Jedwabne are heard at last, they may not have been completely in vain."---George Steiner, The Observer"Powerful. . . . Extraordinary."---Jaroslav Anders, New Republic"Horrifying and thoughtful."---István Deák, New York Review of Books"Neighbors strikes squarely at Poland's accepted historical narrative."---John Reed, Financial Times"[A] scrupulously documented study."---Abraham Brumberg, Times Literary Supplement"Neighbors tells a compelling story admirably. It should be widely read and discussed, for the complex, unsettling issues it raises still need to be fully explored."---Alvin H. Rosenfeld, New Leader"[Gross] is possessed of the key . . . virtues: moral energy, commitment to accuracy, and the maintenance of a continuing open dialogue between historian, sources, and reader."---Inga Clendinnen, London Review of Books"Compelling. . . . Gross’s dispassionate book is the most comprehensive effort to uncover the stark truth about Jedwabne."---Robert S. Wistrich, Commentary

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Book SynopsisWith his dirty, tattered clothes and hollowed-out face, Oliver Twist is the enduring symbol of the young indigent spilling out of orphanages and haunting the streets of late-nineteenth-century London. Although poor children were often portrayed as real-life Oliver Twists—either orphaned or abandoned by unworthy parents—they in fact frequently maintained contact and were eventually reunited with their families.In Imagined Orphans, Lydia Murdoch focuses on this discrepancy between the representation and the reality of children’s experiences within welfare institutions—a discrepancy that she argues stems from conflicts over middle- and working-class notions of citizenship that arose in the 1870s and persisted until the First World War. Reformers’ efforts to depict poor children as either orphaned or endangered by abusive or “no-good” parents fed upon the poor’s increasing exclusion from the Victorian social body. Trade ReviewLydia Murdoch's engaging study complements scholarship on childcare and offers the first book-length scholarly treatment of institutional care provided by agencies such as Barnardo's. -- Susan L. Tananbaum * Department of History, Bowdoin College *Murdoch explores the ways in which melodramatic incitement of pity for allegedly orphaned children worked to demonize the poor in Victorian England. This insight flies in the face of much current scholarship. Written with refreshing clarity, this historical study will illuminate public policy discussions of child welfare and poverty even in the present day. -- Susan Thorne * Associate Professor of History, Duke University *Imagined Oftens makes many useful connections among the developing starnds of Victorian social history. ... Murdoch's work could mark an important milestone in the history of official willingness to remove poor children from parents depicted as incapable of raising them properly, a policy that has been detected as early as the seventeenth century. -- John D. Ramsbottom * Journal of Modern History *Table of Contents"A little waif of London, rescued from the streets": melodrama and popular representations of poor children From barrack schools to family cottages: creating domestic space and civic identity for poor children The parents of "nobody's children": family backgrounds and the causes of poverty "That most delicate of all questions in an Englishman's mind": the rights of parents and their continued contact with institutionalized children Training "Street Arabs" into British citizens: making artisans and members of empire "Their charge and ours": changing notions of child welfare and citizenship

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Wastelanding is simply a brilliant book. It is at once a beautifully written, rigorously researched and hauntingly moving account of U.S. settler colonialism’s violent making of racialized bodies and degraded landscapes in the U.S. Southwest. Traci Brynne Voyles draws together a rich set of critical approaches and weaves them into what will be the new bar for environmental politics."—Jake Kosek, University of California, Berkeley"This groundbreaking book examines how race, gender, and nature coproduce one another through ‘wastelanding.’ Voyles’ masterful account explains how colonization, racialization, and resource extraction work together to produce sacrifice zones. She connects history, geography, Native American Studies, ethnic studies, and women and gender studies in a truly unique contribution to the literature of environmental studies and environmental justice."—Julie Sze, University of California, Davis"Wastelanding is meticulously researched, covers extremely complex events that continue to have dire consequences for Native peoples on the Colorado Plateau in a well-organized discourse, and draws on the work of dozens of other historians and professionals as well as a multitude of source documents."—Indian Country Today"There is a gap in geography in and around meaningfully engagements with Indigenous feminism. There is also a failure amongst radical scholars to place themselves within the landscapes they inhabit. This context of erasure makes Traci Brynne Voyles’ contribution all the more valuable and worthy of a thorough read."—Antipode"Thought-provoking and challenging."—Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education"Wastelanding is an often thought-provoking examination of settler colonialism’s impact on the Navajo people and their lands and should appeal to students of Native American history, geography, mining, gender studies, and the environment."—Western Historical Quarterly"Sophisticated and insightful."—Journal of American History"A timely and innovative work that applies a multitude of theoretical perspectives with remarkable elasticity to illuminate a critical instance of environmental injustice that is far from isolated."—The American Historical ReviewTable of ContentsContentsPreface: In Search of TreasureIntroduction: Sacrificial Land1. Empty Except for Indians: Early Impressions of Navajo Rangeland2. Prospecting for Magic Ore in America’s New Frontier3. Cowboys and Indians in Navajo Country4. Hot Spots: Justice, Power, and Gender in the Radioactive Present5. Monsters and Mountains: Competing Geographies of Uranium6. The Big Hurt: Boom and Bust on Contested GroundConclusion. Zombie Mines: The Future of Uranium and Native SovereigntyAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn The Meaning of Soul, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of this famously elusive concept. In the 1960s, Lordi argues, soul came to signify a cultural belief in black resilience, which was enacted through musical practices—inventive cover versions, falsetto vocals, ad-libs, and false endings. Through these soul techniques, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, and Minnie Riperton performed virtuosic survivorship and thus helped to galvanize black communities in an era of peril and promise. Their soul legacies were later reanimated by such stars as Prince, Solange Knowles, and Flying Lotus. Breaking with prior understandings of soul as a vague masculinist political formation tethered to the Black Power movement, Lordi offers a vision of soul that foregrounds the intricacies of musical craft, the complex personal and social meanings of the music, the dynamic movement of soul across time, and the leading role playedTrade Review“Emily J. Lordi’s The Meaning of Soul will likely be the most important book I'll read this decade. Lordi reminds us that to hear soul, one must actively listen to the winding ways of black folk. Lordi is the greatest listener this nation has created, and this book will remind us that liberation starts with black sound.” -- Kiese Laymon“An exquisite work of sound scholarship, The Meaning of Soul offers a new narrative of soul music that compels us to rethink what we have missed about the genre and the political moment it inhabited. It at last articulates a usable, inclusive definition of soul, filling a critical gap in our understanding of black music and sociopolitical experiences in the United States and across the diaspora." -- Zandria F. Robinson“Emily J. Lordi incisively and insightfully takes up the daunting task of resurrecting, dissecting, and disentangling soul’s wide-ranging legacy, spillage, and overlap in black popular culture, black academia, and radical black politics. Her generation-leaping contrasts of the soul and ‘post-soul’ era’s most spiritualized and radicalized avatars from James Brown to Beyoncé serve up poignant and often piquant musicological reveals about classic, epochal recordings of Civil Rights-era and contemporary vintage. Lordi illuminates the evolutionary artistry that ensures the poetics, production, and ethos of soul kulcha sustain staying power as a haunted (and hainted) arbiter of black resilience, resistance, and embattled maroon futurism. With wit, detail, and ruminative verve Lordi narrates and interrogates how the journey of the soul meme’s movements within musical blackness navigates a crossroads full of split desire for both incendiary grassroots action and an infinity of intimate release.” -- Greg Tate"Lordi’s distinct takes on the genre are refreshing, built on close listening to artists like Riperton and Donny Hathaway and explorations of albums that reside outside the soul canon." * Kirkus Reviews *"The Meaning of Soul is a thoughtful, lively journey through rich musical archives that expands the definition of what it means to be a soul artist." -- Rachel Jagareski * Foreword Reviews *"Lordi vividly illustrates that soul artists offer models of black resistance, joy, and community through their songs. This is a must-read for musicologists, critics, and fans of soul." (Starred Review) * Publishers Weekly *"Lordi’s book is essential reading, for she brilliantly guides us to reconsider the meaning of soul and to redefine it." -- Henry Carrigan * No Depression *"A strong choice for libraries supporting African American studies or popular American music programs." -- Jeffrey Hastings * Library Journal *"Detailing not only the evolution of the genre but of the criticism surrounding it, The Meaning Of Soul is a heartfelt appreciation as well as a welcome addition to the scholarly soul canon." -- Michael A Gonzales * The Wire *"Few cultural theorists listen to music this well or joyfully; few critics place their judgments and pleasures within as persuasive a theoretical framework." -- Keith Harris * CityPages *"With welcoming prose that belies its density, The Meaning of Soul focuses on ostensibly unconventional creative choices: soul singers’ covers of songs written by white artists; ad-libs, improvisations, and mistakes; the uses of falsetto and the 'false endings' that trickle throughout the oeuvres of many Black artists. She is attentive to the significant contributions of the female architects of the genre. . . . Lordi gives a deft, concise accounting of soul music’s political and social milieu." -- Danielle A. Jackson * Bookforum *“Meaning of Soul is a needed corrective, challenging how scholarship and much of popular culture remembers the soul music era. Lordi refuses descriptions of the era that only allow its brightest stars and biggest names full consideration.... Her work serves as an exemplar for inclusive genre analysis that makes room for musical possibility.” -- Fredara Mareva Hadley * Journal of Musicological Research *"Lordi’s love for soul music, vibrant writing, and analytical acumen coalesce in a book that is difficult to put down. Readers are unlikely to hear soul music the same way ever again. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers." -- S. Graham * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Keeping On 1 1. From Soul to Post-soul: A Literary and Musical History 19 2. We Shall Overcome, Shelter, and Veil: Soul Covers 46 3. Rescripted Relations: Soul Ad-libs 74 4. Emergent Interiors: Soul Falsettos 101 5. Never Catch Me: False Endings from Soul to Post-soul 126 Conclusion. "I'm Tired of Marvin Asking Me What's Going On": Soul Legacies and the Work of Afropresentism 150 Notes 165 Index 205

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Book SynopsisAnita Mannur examines how cooking, eating, and distributing food can create new forms of kinship, intimacy, and social and political belonging for people of color, queer people, and other marginalized subjects.Trade Review“Anita Mannur’s extraordinary analyses of cooking and eating in photography, film, television, novels, blogs, and performance art creates new forms of the public in unexpected places: inside bedrooms and kitchens, alongside food trucks, and under the white tent of The Great British Bake Off. She generates in her readers a hunger for queer kinships with friends and strangers forged outside of the patriarchal domain of family life. Intimate Eating is powerful reading for Asian American studies, queer and feminist of color studies, and food studies: I want to eat every meal with this book.” -- Bakirathi Mani, author of * Unseeing Empire: Photography, Representation, South Asian America *“In this brilliant, urgent, and necessary book Anita Mannur underscores one of the central tenets of neoliberalism: the increased privatization of everyday life and attacks on the public. She vividly shows how nonnormative subjects navigate this trend, turning private spaces and practices via the culinary into ones that foster sociability, intimacy, community, and belonging. Through the provocative and timely concept of ‘intimate eating publics,’ Mannur has captured the pleasures and possibilities of publics and how they act as sites of forging radical ways of belonging.” -- Mark Padoongpatt, author of * Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America *"[Mannur's] reflections move back and forth between a scholarly tone which at times does not recuse itself from jargon and a personal voice that is able to express raw—at times joyful, at times painful–emotions. Both styles are effective in weaving engaging arguments and developing a critical analysis of the material at hand. Mannur’s memories of family dinners and the progressive dissolution of her marriage are honest, direct, and passionate, without invalidating the rigor of her analysis. . . . In Intimate Eating, Mannur pushes us to embark on our own explorations to reassess pieces of popular culture that we may be familiar with but whose power we may not be fully aware of." -- D. Sutton * Food Anthropology *"Mannur brings an acute tongue and sensory analysis to a wide range of contemporary samplings, which in itself provides a dizzying array of the author’s scope." -- Christine R. Yano * Society for U.S. Intellectual History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. The Tiffin Box and Gendered Mobility 23 2. Cooking for One and the Gustatory Gaze 47 3. Eat, Dwell, Orient: Food Networks and Asian/American Cooking Communities 73 4. Tasting Conflict: Eating, Radical Hospitality, and Enemy Cuisine 99 5. Baking and the Intimate Eating Public 129 Epilogue 143 Notes 147 Works Cited 161 Index 171

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Book SynopsisIn The Emancipation Circuit Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. Drawing on the practices of community they developed while enslaved, freedpeople built new settlements and created a network of circuits through which they imagined, enacted, and defended freedom. This interdisciplinary history shows that these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid. Mapping the emancipation circuits, Davis shows the geography of ideas of freedom---circulating on shipping routes, via army maneuvers, and with itinerant activists---that became the basis for the first mass Black political movement for equal citizenship in the United States. In this work, she reconfigures understandings of the evolution of southern Black political agendas while outlining the origins of the enduring Black freedom struggle from the Jim Crow era to the present.Trade Review“In this spectacular book Thulani Davis presents a framework for not only rewriting the Civil War and Reconstruction, but for understanding the entire history of the Black freedom movement extending into the twentieth century. As groundbreaking as W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction, The Emancipation Circuit is a masterpiece.” -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of * Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression *"The Emancipation Circuit offers a powerful reimagining of the networks that helped to secure Black freedom during the Civil War and Reconstruction: It is a history about enslaved people’s efforts to free themselves and about their local struggles to give substance to their legal emancipation, as well as a mapping of the geography that enabled their achievements and the circuits that spread their political goals like pollen in the wind. . . . The Emancipation Circuit reminds today’s activists that any organizing for Black freedom must be multifaceted and must pursue local aims while traveling along preexisting networks to become a broader collective effort." -- Elias Rodriques * The Nation *"Thulani Davis’s The Emancipation Circuit is an important contribution to Black social and political thought that helps center Black women and Black resistance of United States history and social movements." -- Krystal Batelaan * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"The Emancipation Circuit provides a convincing analysis of the spatial history of emancipation ... a valuable reference for future research." -- Keith D. McCall * Journal of Southern History *Table of ContentsList of Maps xi List of Tables xiii Acknowledgments xv Introduction: Black Political Thought as Shaped in the South 1 1. Flight: Movement Matters 19 2. The Emancipation Circuit: A Road Map 44 3. Virginia: Assembly 80 4. North Carolina: Custody 109 5. South Carolina: Majority 133 6. Georgia: Mobilization 165 7. Florida: Faction 196 8. Alabama: Redemption 217 9. Louisiana: Societies 243 10. Mississippi: Bulldoze 269 11. Arkansas: Minority 294 Conclusion: What Lives On Is Black Political Thought 321 Notes 345 Table Source Notes 393 Bibliography 397 Index 427

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Book SynopsisIn this revised and expanded second edition of Third World Studies, Gary Y. Okihiro considers the methods and theories that might inform the field of Third World studies, further articulating its liberatory promise and power.

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Book SynopsisWinner of the John Boswell Prize from the American Historical Association 2018 Winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association 2018 Winner of an American Library Association Stonewall Honor 2018 Winner of Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction 2018 Winner of the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.Trade Review"Black on Both Sides challenges the historical account of trans studies invention by excavating a black trans presence and persona long before modern articulations of such. C. Riley Snorton offers us a way to read the historical record in a fashion that requires the unthought to be the basis of the foundation for our claims of newness, demonstrating that there is no revision of what it means to be human without coming through blackness, past and present."—Rinaldo Walcott, author of Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora, and Black Studies"C. Riley Snorton's Black on Both Sides is a welcome contribution to black studies with the potential to influence future directions in the burgeoning field of transgender studies. It is rigorous scholarship that manages to be imaginative and timely."—Kara Keeling, author of The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense"In a beautifully written and brilliant intervention and extension—the first full length book ‘to examine the historical and contemporary importance of race to the constitution of “trans gender”’—C. Riley Snorton identifies and performs a black trans reading practice, from Anarcha to Transgender Days of Remembrance."—Christina Sharpe, author of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being"The research done here is stellar."—Washington Blade"This book is an outstanding contribution to conversations about black and trans studies; it will transform scholarly understandings of both fields and the intersections between them."—CHOICE"Black on Both Sides reminds us that when we are careful about how we tell stories, we get new, nuanced stories that expose systems for what they are and that honor historically ignored populations."—Autostraddle"Black on Both Sides offers a new imagining of both black and trans history beginning in the early 19th century through the present."—Into News"Black on Both Sides is both important and timely. In an era where transgender acceptance and violence are both at an all-time high, the book reiterates the need for a historical analysis of all disenfranchised and overlooked people. Snorton offers a unique perspective into the burgeoning field of transgender history."—H-Net Reviews"Explores how such important scientific advances as the development of modern gynaecology, for example, took place through and with repeated experimentation on enslaved Black women."—Wear Your Voice Magazine"C. Riley Snorton’s book Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity is a field-changing, paradigm-shifting, once-in-a-generation book that will be read and reckoned with for years to come."—American Historical Review"Carried by an extensive archive of materials such as fugitive slave narratives, sensationalist journalism, and Afro-modernist literature, Snorton gives insight into the importance of black history in relation to of transgender topics. Snorton illuminates how the foundations for "understanding gender as mutable" derive from the horrifics of slavery. Snorton's research proves to be an outstanding and well-needed addition to the conversation of black and trans communities."—PopSugar"It is unquestionable that Black On Both Sides will quickly become necessary reading for anyone thinking about blackness, transness, gender, or historiography. Implicit in its argument is how integral questions of blackness and transness are to numerous other “unrelated” fields: emblematic of such is the sheer number of citations in each chapter (in multiple chapters citation count is in excess of 125), which is less a citational overload and instead an indication of black/trans’s relevance to scholars in fields from black studies to transgender studies, continental philosophy to history to journalism. Snorton’s articulation of such an original historiographical theorization, and serious advancement of the analytic properties (rather than strictly identificatory) of blackness and transness, makes this book a groundbreaking text with which anyone in the aforementioned fields, among numerous others, would be remiss not to grapple rigorously."—Journal of African American History"Black on Both Sides holds a needed critique of the real, lived dangers of liberal inclusion and an identity politics that stubbornly refuses to address ongoing systemic forces that feed into dangerous and deadly circumstances for Black and trans people, including interpersonal violence as well as systemic forces of policing and incarceration, job discrimination, and social isolation. Beyond this, it offers and prioritizes the beauty of those lives that move through the interstices and oversights of categorization, holding a resonant claim to life and meaning."—Gender and Women’s Studies"Black on Both Sides is a rigorous historical and theoretical project that seeks to complicate how we understand blackness at an onto- logical level. What Snorton does exceptionally well is to offer readers the opportunity to consider the ways in which the narrowness of disciplinary boundaries within the academy have rendered queerness and transness as periphery subjects in black history. In this way the book functions as a call to think more expansively about trans studies and black studies."—Journal of the History of Sexuality"C. Riley Snorton ambitiously develops a capacious trans genealogy, which culminates in transgender but arrives there through the motion across categories contained in such derivatives as transitivity and transversality. Not a conventional history, the book is more a set of associative assemblages, a racial poetics of transness, a densely theoretical challenge to historical method."—Journal of American History"C. Riley Snorton’s Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity is an outstanding theorization and history of the interdependence and co- construction of race and gender in the United States."—Oxford University Press Journals"Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity provides an intricate and well-developed weaving of the past to the present."—QED: A Journal in LGBTQ "An incredible insight to how Black people pioneered being out as transgender... A great source and reference for historical events that took place that could help readers with awareness and understanding of the trans community."—Outvoices Nashville Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction Part I. Blacken1. Anatomically Speaking: Ungendered Flesh and the Science of Sex2. Trans Capable: Fungibility, Fugitivity, and the Matter of Being Part II. Transit3. Reading the Trans- in Transatlantic Literature: On the “Female” Within the Three Negro ClassicsPart III. Blackout4. A Nightmarish Silhouette: Racialization and the Long Exposure of Transition5. DeVine's Cut: Public Memory and the Politics of MartydomAcknowledgementsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisWith the rise of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE), Persian institutions of kingship became the model for legitimacy, authority, and prestige across three continents. Despite enormous upheavals, Iranian visual and political cultures connected an ever-wider swath of Afro-Eurasia over the next two millennia, exerting influence at key historical junctures. This book provides the first critical exploration of the role that Persian cultures played in articulating the myriad ways power was expressed across Afro-Eurasia between the sixth century BCE and the nineteenth century CE. Exploring topics such as royal cosmologies, fashion, banqueting, manuscript cultures, sacred landscapes, and inscriptions, the volume’s essays analyze the intellectual and political exchanges of art, architecture, ritual, and luxury material within and beyond the Persian world. They show how Perso-Iranian cultures offered neighbors and competitors raw material with which to formulate their own imperial aspirations. Unique among studies of Persia and Iran, this volume explores issues of change, renovation, and interconnectivity in these cultures over the longue duréeTable of ContentsToward a New Transmillennial Understanding of Perso-Iranian Visual, Material, and Political Cultures and Their Global Impact - Matthew P. Canepa Trilingual Inscriptions: Translating Language and Culture - Rachel Mairs “Position and Honor”: Iranian Sartorial and Commensal Politics and the Transformation of the Afro-Eurasian Sensorium of Power - Matthew P. Canepa Giganticism and Bamiyan: Türk, Iranian, and Chinese Traditions of Dynasticism - Warwick Ball Buried with a Silver Spoon? Sasanian and East Roman (Byzantine) Objects in Dialogue in Central Asia and the Caucasus - Stefan R. Hauser Between Alexander and Byzantium: Notions and Concepts of the “West” in Central Asia (First Century BCE–Eighth Century CE) - Sören Stark and Lauren Morris Beyond Space and Time: Sino-Iranian Textiles and the Creation of a Eurasian Material and Visual Culture - Mariachiara Gasparini From the Ground Up: Perso-Islamic Kingship in Southern Asia - Alka Patel Shifting Power, Displaced Artists: On the Circulation, Transformation, and Emulation of Persianate Manuscripts (1300–1600) - Lamia Balafrej How Persianate Is It? Imitation and Refraction in a Sixteenth-Century Cosmography from India - Vivek Gupta Early Meetings between Parsi Merchant Princes and Boston Brahmins - Jenny Rose

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Book SynopsisTrolls are everywhere. They lurk on the internet; they fill the pages of popular fantasy literature; they are hunted in Norwegian film. They are the homeless in California; they are comforting or threatening characters in children's books; they are amusing dolls. Although trolls are ubiquitous today, for centuries they were confined to the landscape of Scandinavia. They were beings in nature, and their environment was a pre-industrial world in which people lived by farming and fishing on a small scale. This book is a history of trolls from their first appearances in folk tales - some people reported actual encounters with trolls, and others found such encounters plausible even if they were not sure - and follows a natural transition from folklore to trolls in other domains of popular culture. Indeed, trolls would not be interesting had they not made this jump, first to illustrations in the Nordic book market, then on to Scandinavian literature and drama, and far beyond. Since then they have never gone away, and in their various guises they continue to appeal to the imagination around the world. From the Vikings to the Moomins, the Brothers Grimm and the Three Billy Goats Gruff, this book explores the panoply of trolls and their history and their continuing presence today.Trade Review'in this clever little book, [Lindow] traces the history of trolls from their earliest appearances in Old Norse literature through the more familiar creatures of folk tale and fairy tale and right up to the latest manifestation of the malign Other, the internet pest ... Lindow writes with wit and warmth, but this is also a learned and sometimes unsettling study which brings to light some unexpected facets of the troll phenomenon more generally.' - TLS '[an] excellent overview of the history of trolls ... Trolls: An Unnatural History weighs in at only 144 pages, but never feels too brief. Lindow takes a long view of his subject matter ... To follow a thread throughout 1,000 years of history, in several different countries, is not an easy task. In the hands of someone less knowledgeable and less skilled in presenting their arguments, a book can end up as a mess. Here, Lindow avoids all those traps, instead giving us a coherent, insightful and informed exploration of a fascinating subject that deserves a wider audience.' - Fortean Times 'a fascinating read ... you likely won't find another source for such an in-depth look at trolls, internet comment sections notwithstanding.' - Spectrum CultureTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Earliest Trolls 2. Medieval Trolls 3. Folklore Trolls 4. Fairy-tale Trolls and Trolls Illustrated 5. Trolls in Literature 6. Trolls, Children, Marketing, and Whimsy Epilogue Sources and Further Reading Acknowledgements and Photo Acknowledgements Index

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Book SynopsisWhat would a greengrocer say if you were to ask for half a dozen Grenadiers and a couple of Catsheads? In the course of the past century we have lost much of our rich heritage of orchard fruits, but with taste once again triumphing over shelf-life and a renewed interest in local varieties, we are rediscovering the delights of that most delicious and adaptable fruit: the apple. This book features apples from the Herefordshire Pomona that are still cultivated today. The Pomona – an exquisitely illustrated book of apples and pears – was published at the height of the Victorian era by a small rural naturalists’ club. Its beautiful illustrations and authoritative text are treasured by book collectors and apple experts alike. From the familiar Blenheim Orange and Worcester Pearmain to the less fêted yet scrumptious Ribston Pippin, Margil and Pitmaston Pine Apple, Heritage Apples is illustrated with the Pomona’s stunning paintings and tells the intriguing stories behind each variety, how they acquired their names, and their merits for eating, cooking or making cider. Also including practical advice on how to choose and grow your own trees, this is the perfect book for apple-lovers and growers.Trade Review'A hundred historic and heritage culinary and dessert apples are showcased in this beautifully presented book, illustrated with Victorian apple paintings.''Savour the core of British history - from the crisp, aromatic Parker's Pippin to the exotic D'Arcy Spice - with a new illustrated tome featuring colourful paintings first seen in a Victorian botanical volume.''Whether your preference is for a Queen or Schoolmaster, a Stirling Castle or Beauty of Kent, this book is both record and guide to a heritage that I would recommend planting.''Heritage Apples is a book to relish, fascinating browsing for the solitary diner who completes his repast with morsels of a preferred cheese and - but don't expect to find it in your local supermarket - a scarce, much-loved fruit.''The sheer beauty of the paintings from The Herefordshire Pomona, reproduced in this new book, are simply delightful and serve for easy identification of the apples, making it easier to identify a Yorkshire Greening from a Tom Putt or Striped Beefing. ... The book is a rich source of information both for someone who wants to grow or grows heritage apples and for those who are interested in them both for their taste and in this instance their botanical beauty.''Now is a good time of year to plant a young apple tree and if you'd like to plant a variety that originates from your area, Heritage Apples by Caroline Ball is a good place to start. It features 100 apples dating back to the 1800s with notes about where each originated, and they're all still possible to find today.' * Waitrose Weekend *'From the heart-shaped Adams Pearmain and buxom Beauty of Kent, to the rich-tasting Wyken Pippin, here are 100 traditional apples of all shapes and sizes, with beautiful illustrations from a 19th-century catalogue, "The Herefordshire Pomona". Forget supermarket staples such as Gala and Pink Lady, here are native varieties, still with us, and advice on how to grow them.' * Saga Magazine *'Depicting original 19th-century illustrations, Caroline Ball tells the stories behind more than 100 types of apple from the Victorian era that are still available today.' * Period Living *

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Book SynopsisComprising a collection of interview essays with nineteen public intellectuals and scholars from around the world, this book reflects on some of the most pressing questions of our age: what is global inequality; what causes it; and how should we deal with it? Leading figures within the fields of History, Sociology, Economics, Anthropology and Postcolonial Studies, shed light on how their personal backgrounds, places of work, and hometowns have shaped their views on global inequality. We learn about the causes of global inequality, the historical factors that have shaped the world into an unequal place, and the challenges that humanity is confronted with in the face of the widening gap between the poor and the rich. Bringing together voices from the Global North and South, this book helps us to think more broadly about inequality and deepens our understanding of how this long-lasting phenomenon is, and has been, experienced across the globe.Table of Contents1. Introduction; Christian Olaf Christiansen, Oliver Bugge Hunt, Melanie Lindbjerg Machado-Guichon, Sofía Mercader Priyanka JhaPart I. Deep Roots: Legacies of Imperialism and Colonialism2. Global Equality and Inequality: Notes for a New History; Siep Sturrman3. Poverty and Ideology: Historic Pathways to Global Inequality; Julia McClure4. Anti-Imperalism and Global Inequality; Göran Therborn5. The Colonial Matrix of Power as a Wakeup Call; Walter Mignolo6. From Third World to First, and Back Again: Colonial Logics and Global Inequality; Kho Tung-YiPart II. Unequal Entanglements: A Capitalist World System7. Global Finance and Global Inequality: An Analysis Built on Global Measurement; James K. Galbraith8. How the Global Movement of Money and People Turns the World Upside Down; Alastair Greig9. The Need to Centre Imperialism in Our Study of Global Inequality; Ingrid Kvangraven10. Global Inequality and the Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism; Gilbert Achcar11. The Unequal Effects of Climate Change; Patrick BondPart III. The Inertia of Hierarchies: Class, Caste, Race and Gender12. Reflecting on Global Inequality through my Experience of Inequality in India; Krishnas Swamy13. Writing about Poverty and Caste as a Novelist and Cultural Critic; Subramanian Shankar14. From the Personal to the Global; Arabo Ewinyu15. Global Solidarities against Global Inequality; Manushi Yami BhattaraiPart IV. Thinking Beyond Economics: The Politics of Inequalities16. From Chile to New York: Inequality, Corruption and Ogliarchic Domination; Camila Vergara17. Thinking about Global Inequality: From Buenos Aires to Belgrade; Agustín Cosovschi18. Making the Familiar Strange: Anthropological Reflections on Global Inequality; Tania Li19. Mauritius in an Unequal World; Sheila Bunwaree.

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Book SynopsisIn the 1930s many Western intellectuals looked with hope and admiration at the great `Soviet experiment'', the planned transformation of the economy that was supposed to lay the foundation for the world''s first socialist society. Later, with the onset of the Cold War, the image of the `Evil Empire'' predominated in the mind of Westerners. Yet what was it really like to be a citizen of Soviet Russia during this period? Everyday Stalinism is a pioneering history of everyday life in Soviet Russia. Rather than consider the history of the period from the perspective of the Soviet Party and its leaders, Sheila Fitzpatrick considers what life was like for ordinary people. A highly accessible study, Everyday Stalinism shows the ways of life, behaviours, and skills developed by citizens in order to cope with the extraordinary social and political change that Stalinism brought, ranging from scarcity of consumer goods, to the condemnation of religion, to bureaucratic red tape and state regulation of education, jobs, and career advancement.Trade ReviewOf the two, Fitzpatrick is incomparably the finer historian . . . . There is no doubt abou the quality of Fitzpatrick's research . . . * THES, 12/04/2002 *"A fine work--engrossing, well written, superbly documented, and much needed to boot....[The book's sources] make absolutely fascinating reading....An assiduous scholar, Professor Fitzpatrick seems to have scrutinized every relevant scrap of paper. Her explication is a model of balance and judiciousness....Individual memoirs apart, most histories of this period were written from the top--that is, showing how the policies were shaped and implemented, rather than how they were perceived and experienced by their subjects. It is the latter...that constitutes the major distinction of Fitzpatrick's book."--Abraham Brumberg, The Nation"The author's rich materials challenge readers to build their own model of Stalin's people, their complicity and resistance."--Wilson Quarterly"A most welcome addition to the literature on Stalin's Russia....Fitzpatrick has used the entire range of sources available, from familiar memoirs and postwar interview material to contemporary research and an array of archival information....The book is a major contribution to understanding this extraordinary period. Its lucid prose and the inherent interest of its subject matter should make it accessible to undergraduates, as well as to more specialized readers."--Choice"One of the most influential historians of the Soviet period describes what it was like to live under Stalin in the 1930s--the frantic, heroic, tragic decade of collectivization, forced-draft industrialization, and purges, when ordinary Russians struggled to a find a wearable pair of shoes and lined up in subzero weather at two o'clock in the morning in the hope of getting 16 grams of bread....They were years of unimaginable hardship and brutality but also of idealism, a surreal melange that [Fitzpatrick] captures with admirable matter-of-factness."--Foreign Affairs"A fine crossover book for both upperlevel and introductory courses....Well written."--Roger W. Haughey, Georgetown University"Everyday Stalinism should prove invaluable for any course on Soviet history. Knowing how a nation's people actually lived, thought, and felt is essential to any real understanding of the past. On this, Fitzpatrick--who has done more than any other scholar to make the complexities of the social history of the Stalin years come alive--delivers as no one else can."--John McCannon, Norwich UniversityReview from previous edition "Fitzpatrick makes subtle use of the press and of police reports that assist in giving us one of the most comprhensive accounts of what it meant to live in Stalin's Russia in the 1930's" * Kirkus Reviews *Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS; INTRODUCTION; CONCLUSION; NOTES; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX

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Book Synopsis‘Of all the variously talented women SOE sent to France, Nancy Wake was perhaps the most formidable’ —Sebastian Faulks This is the incredible true story of the greatest spy you’ve never heard of—as told to the author by the woman herself. At the outbreak of World War Two, Nancy Wake’s glamorous life in the South of France seemed far removed from the fighting. But when her husband was called up for military service, Nancy felt she had just as much of a duty to fight for freedom. By 1943, her fearless undercover work even in the face of personal tragedy had earned her a place on the Gestapo’s ‘most wanted’ list. Mixing armed combat with a taste for high living, Nancy frustrated the Nazis at every turn’whether she was smuggling food and messages as part of the underground Resistance or being parachuted into the heart of the war to lead a 7,000-strong band of Resistance fighters. The extraordinary courage of this unequalled woman changed the course of the war, and Russell Braddon’s vividly realised biography brings her incredible story to life. Revised edition: This edition of Nancy Wake includes editorial revisions.

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Book SynopsisModern translation of La Varenne''s The French cook, The French pastry chef, and The French confectioner, published in Paris between 1651 and 1660, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand French cookery of the seventeenth century. Includes a detailed commentary covering the life of La Varenne, the nature of his three works, and period French cooking. La Varenne (1618-1678) was chef to the Marquis d''Uxelles and the first to produce a French cookery book of any substance since Le Viandier almost 300 years earlier, and therefore the first to record the advances in French cooking since the fifteenth century.

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Book SynopsisThe University of Oxford is the third oldest university in Europe and remains one of the greatest universities in the world. How did such an ancient institution flourish through the ages? This book offers a succinct illustrated account of its colourful and controversial 800-year history, from medieval times through the Reformation and on to the nineteenth century, in which the foundations of the modern tutorial system were laid. It describes the extraordinary and influential people who shaped the development of the institution and helped to create today’s world-class research university. Institutions have waxed and waned over the centuries but Oxford has always succeeded in reinventing itself to meet the demands of a new age. Richly illustrated with archival material, prints and portraits, this book explores how a university in a small provincial town rose to become one of the top universities in the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

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Book SynopsisShowing how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist, Sara Ahmed highlights the ties between feminist theory and living a life that sustains it by building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship and discussing the figure of the feminist killjoy.Trade Review"Fans of bell hooks and Audre Lorde will find Ahmed's frequent homages and references familiar and assuring in a work that goes far beyond Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, capturing the intersection so critical in modern feminism." -- Abby Hargreaves * Library Journal *"Living a Feminist Life is perhaps the most accessible and important of Ahmed’s works to date. . . . [A] quite dazzlingly lively, angry and urgent call to arms. . . In short, everybody should read Ahmed’s book precisely because not everybody will." -- Emma Rees * Times Higher Education *"Living a Feminist Life is a work of embodied political theory that defies the conventions of feminist memoir and self-help alike. . . . Living a Feminist Life makes visible the continuous work of feminism, whether it takes place on the streets, in the home, or in the office. Playful yet methodical, the book tries to construct a living feminism that is neither essentialist nor universalist." -- Melissa Gira Grant * Bookforum *"Undeniably, Ahmed’s book is a highly crafted work, both scholarly and lyrically, that builds upon itself and delivers concrete, adaptable conclusions; it is a gorgeous argument, crackling with kind wit and an invitation to the community of feminist killjoys." -- Theodosia Henney * Lambda Literary Review *"Beautifully written and persuasively argued, Living a Feminist Life is not just an instant classic, but an essential read for inter­sectional feminists." -- Ann A. Hamilton * Bitch *"This book is about a wriggling out, a speaking out. And it teaches me to write, to think, like this — word twists word, and body to thought. Because for Ahmed, words make worlds and her book — the first after she left academia in feminist revolt — is full of bluesy world-play." -- Caren Beilin * Full Stop *"Living a Feminist Life is the perfect introduction to Ahmed’s academic work, if a general reader is unfamiliar with her. . . . For me, her lack of despair is the book’s strongest point. Ahmed’s work is as cutting and critical as it is joyful. There is a distinct hope and optimism for the future of diversity work – but still a demand for better." -- Evelyn Deshane * The F-Word *"Ahmed gifts us words that we may have difficulty finding for ourselves.... [R]eading her book provides a tentative vision for a feminist ethics for radical politics that is applicable far beyond what is traditionally considered the domain of feminism." -- Mahvish Ahmad * The New Inquiry *"Anyone at odds with this world—and we all ought to be—owes it to themselves, and to the goal of a better tomorrow, to read this book." -- Mariam Rahmani * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Living a Feminist Life offers something halfway between the immediacy and punch of the blog and the multi-layered considerations of a scholarly essay; the result is one of the most politically engaged, complex and personal books on gender politics we have seen in a while." -- Bidisha * TLS *"Especially compelling is Ahmed’s insistence that living as a feminist is not a sudden, euphoric escape from patriarchy and other structures of domination. Instead, it’s a lifelong project of chipping away at regimes that continue to exert considerable force. To practice feminism is therefore to encounter both frustration and widespread disapproval. It means, Ahmed warns, being seen as selfish, mean, and chronically dissatisfied—the bringer of discord to family dinners and professional meetings alike. For those of us willing to pay the price, Living a Feminist Life assures us we’re in good company." -- Susan Fraiman * Critical Inquiry *"Ahmed ... writes theory like nobody else.... Ahmed’s book is a feminist gift for its readers. You are invited to enjoy it, the rhythm and all." -- Leena-Maija Rossi * European Journal of Women's Studies *"It’s not easy being a feminist and Sara Ahmed has written a powerful, thought provoking and moving account of just what that means. But more than that, she provides us with a survival guide, some coping strategies combined with wisdom and inspiration. To read this book is to feel the warmth and strength of a sister(hood) wrapped around you." -- Heather Savigny * European Journal of Women's Studies *"Ahmed does for her readers what Audre Lorde did for her – document a way to live differently." -- Katherine Parker-Hay * Textual Practice *"[Ahmed's] prose style . . . is incantatory and quizzical, probing and playful. . . . Ahmed holds particular words up to the light and lets their unsuspected facets gleam, polishing their queer potential." -- Catherine Keyser * Public Books *"Living a Feminist Life hopes we can survive doing feminist theory, and energises us to do so." -- Clare Croft * Feminist Theory *“I live in south London, not far from where Sara used to lecture, so her work has always felt close, with an ability to touch and grasp—a quality academic feminist discourse often lacks. This book allows everyone to grasp, wrestle, and digest it, proving yet again that making theory accessible does not have to compromise quality. If anything, it’s quite the opposite.” -- Travis Alabanza * Out *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Bringing Feminist Theory Home 1 Part I. Becoming Feminist 19 1. Feminism Is Sensational 21 2. On Being Directed 43 3. Willfulness and Feminist Subjectivity 65 Part II. Diversity Work 4. Trying to Transform 93 5. Being in Question 115 6. Brick Walls 135 Part III. Living the Consequences 7. Fragile Connections 163 8. Feminist Snap 187 9. Lesbian Feminism 213 Conclusion 1. A Killjoy Survival Kit 235 Conclusion 2. A Killjoy Manifesto 251 Notes 269 References 281 Index 291

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Book SynopsisIn Pollution Is Colonialism Max Liboiron presents a framework for understanding scientific research methods as practices that can align with or against colonialism. They point out that even when researchers are working toward benevolent goals, environmental science and activism are often premised on a colonial worldview and access to land. Focusing on plastic pollution, the book models an anticolonial scientific practice aligned with Indigenous, particularly Métis, concepts of land, ethics, and relations. Liboiron draws on their work in the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)—an anticolonial science laboratory in Newfoundland, Canada—to illuminate how pollution is not a symptom of capitalism but a violent enactment of colonial land relations that claim access to Indigenous land. Liboiron''s creative, lively, and passionate text refuses theories of pollution that make Indigenous land available for settler and colonial goals. In this way, Trade Review“There are exceedingly few texts like this that ask from an Indigenous perspective: how might we consider relations between science and land and water and still practice ‘good’ science? Pollution Is Colonialism is at the leading edge of a significant turn in science and technology studies toward thinking with settler colonialism as a structure and terrain, and by bringing Indigenous studies into conversations with pollution, plastics, and lab sciences, this book makes a major contribution.” -- Candis Callison, author of * How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts *“One of the most original and compelling books I’ve read in a long time, Pollution Is Colonialism is a truly exciting intellectual achievement. It argues for, and most importantly models, a decolonial scientific practice. A must-read book for anyone concerned about land relations.” -- Joseph Masco, author of * The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making *“This important book challenges the very sense of what pollution is, demonstrating its deep entanglements with settler colonialism, and then generously offers us anticolonial feminist methods that might better take up pollution's colonial form. This book is a model of what engaged feminist anticolonial STS research looks like.” -- Michelle Murphy, author of * The Economization of Life *"To read Liboiron is to constantly be surprised, reeducated, alarmed, and moved to practice anticolonial methodologies and interrogate everything we know.... Liboiron has written a text for the ages." -- Kerri Arsenault * Orion *“If you seek a methodologically creative, provocative and politically engaged book that confronts you with your own scholarly practice, you should certainly pick up this volume.... Liboiron offers a model that exemplifies what engaged anticolonial feminist research practice should look like.” -- Cæcilie Kramer * Ethnos *“Pollution Is Colonialism provides desperately needed analytic clarity on this settler colonial present.... This book invites readers first and foremost to look at knowledge practices and forms of knowledge creation, to think about their land relations, and to recognize colonial land relations in their familiar, seemingly benign practices and techniques.” -- Anna Stanley * Antipode *“[Pollution Is Colonialism] should be required reading for researchers who are working in any type of laboratory setting.... I also believe that a more general audience will find this work interesting and thought provoking.” -- Jacqueline Stagner * International Journal of Environmental Studies *"Max Liboiron demonstrates how science can and should be informed by Indigenous ethics and ways of understanding relations. The result is a beautifully written text that is both a handbook on method and a call to rethink how we live our lives on occupied land." -- Joshua Bell * Smithsonian Magazine *"Although the book focuses on plastic pollution, it is relevant to all areas of science, because it illustrates the ways that colonialism can show up in the sciences. . . . I predict that it will inspire pragmatic yet profoundly ethical action during a time of dire news and institutional soul-searching. Untangling and resisting the Gordian knot of justifications, manipulations, and traditions that enable colonialism takes hard work and humility. I am grateful that Liboiron has written a primer to get us all started. It is rare that I read a book that so fundamentally shakes up my thinking." -- Katie L. Burke * American Scientist *"An emotive, immersed commentary of the state of knowledge, research, and ethics that concern us all as social scientists, whether or not we study plastics, or indeed, pollution." -- Vasudha Chhotray * Contributions to Indian Sociology *"Liboiron’s creative, lively, and passionate text refuses theories of pollution that make Indigenous land available for settler and colonial goals. Liboiron demonstrates that anticolonial science is not only possible but is being practiced in ways that enact more ethical modes of being in the world." -- Michael Svoboda * Yale Climate Connections *“Pollution is Colonialism is a generative, life-giving, critical text. . . . Students inside and outside of the academy, from diverse backgrounds across university, community, and government circles, must all pick up this book and learn from it.” -- Sarah Marie Wiebe * Environmental Politics *“I cannot remember the last time I read a scholarly book more compelling, persuasive, enjoyable, helpful, or important than Pollution Is Colonialism by Max Liboiron. . . . When you read it, you will have a honed sense of how you fit into the urgent collective work of unmaking colonial worlds, and an invigorated sense of how to get started.” -- Eugenia Zuroski * ISLE *“Provocative and highly readable, Pollution Is Colonialism challenges readers, specifically whites and settlers and particularly those who like to think of themselves as supportive of Indigenous people’s struggles, to consider how seemingly innocent or well-intentioned research methods, techniques, and modes of dissemination can reproduce dominant science. . . . Liboiron’s contribution is of great value for STS and adjacent fields.” -- Miriam Tola * Tecnoscienza *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Land, Nature, Resource, Property 39 2. Scale, Harm, Violence, Land 81 3. An Anticolonial Pollution Science 113 Bibliography 157 Index 187

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The subtitle says it all: 'Sultans, Spices, and Tsunamis: The Incredible Story of Southeast Asia's Largest Nation.' Indonesia expert Hannigan offers a highly readable and entertaining narrative that highlights the many personalities who have shaped the nation -- and our perception of it. English pirates, Indian mystics, Chinese pilgrims, American surfers, Dutch spice barons join a cavalcade of Javanese royals, Balinese dancers and more." --Lonely Planet"…[Tim Hannigan's] books are charmingly free of pre-conceived notions of specialization. They entertain readers while offering sharp insights into Asian history." --PopMatters Magazine"Tim Hannigan presents Indonesia as a place of high drama, with a past marked by European trade battles, explorers like Magellan and Christopher Columbus, and waves of immigrants. He guides the reader through the reign of Sukarno (1945-1967) and others of lesser, but no less corruptible, reputation, to settle with guarded optimism with the current president, Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi." --Foreword Magazine

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Book SynopsisIn Mezcal, two-time James Beard Award–winning author Emma Janzen explores what sets this cousin of tequila apart from the rest of the pack.*Nominated for the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award in the Beverage category* Produced in Mexico for centuries but little known elsewhere until recent years, mezcal has captured the imagination of spirits enthusiasts with its astonishing complexities. And while big liquor is beginning to jump aboard the bandwagon, most mezcal is still artisanal in nature, produced using small-batch techniques handed down for generations, often with agave plants harvested in the wild. Join author Emma Janzen as she presents an engaging primer on all things mezcal that includes:   Mezcal’s long and captivating history in Mexican culture The craft of distilling mezcal, from growing and harvesting the agave to roasting and grinding it, all the wa

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[On] Being Human as Praxis is a major contribution to growing efforts to bring Sylvia Wynter’s critical thought to the fore of contemporary critical social theory. The collection secures Wynter’s status as a heretical intellectual insisting on the relevance of the radical Black/Caribbean decolonial tradition to the systemic crises of the early 21st century planet." -- Anthony Bayani Rodriguez * Antipode *"In their combination, and in their resonance with Wynter’s intricate and expansive opening meditation on race, science, and human being, these essays present a complex and coherent intellectual project, at once deeply rooted and generously rhizomic." -- Kaiama L. Glover * Contemporary Women's Writing *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix 1. Yours in the Intellectual Struggle: Sylvia Wynter and the Realization of the Living / Katherine McKittrick 1 2. Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations / Sylvia Wynter and Katherine McKittrick 9 3. Before Man: Sylvia Wynter's Rewriting of the Modern Episteme / Denise Ferreira da Silva 90 4. Sylvia Wynter: What Does It Mean to Be Human? / Walter D. Mignolo 106 5. Still Submerged: The Uninhabitability of Urban Redevelopment / Bench Ansfield 124 6. Axis, Bold as Love: On Sylvia Wynter, Jimi Hendrix, and the Promise of Science / Katherine McKittrick 142 7. Strategic Anti-Essentialism: Decolonizing Decolinization / Nandita Sharma 164 8. Genres of Human: Multiculturalism, Cosmo-politics, and the Caribbean Basin / Rinaldo Walcott 183 9. From Masquerade to Maskarade: Caribbean Cultural Resistance and the Rehumanizing Project / Carole Boyce Davies 203 10. "Come on Kid, Let's Go Get the Thing": The Sociogenic Principle and the Being of Being Black / Demetrius L. Eudell 226 Bibliography 249 Contributors 275 Index 277

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Book SynopsisAn examination of the rise of Islam, the life of Muhammad, and the Islamic principles of faith. Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair describe the golden age of the Abbasids, the Mongol invasions, and the great Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires that emerged in their wake.Trade Review“A timely study and important background to understanding the faith of more than one-fifth of the world’s population today.”—John L. Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University and author of Islam: The Straight Path and editor of The Oxford History of Islam

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Book SynopsisThe battle to keep the nation fed during the Second World War was waged by an army of workers on the land and the resourcefulness of the housewives on the Kitchen Front. The rationing of food, clothing and other substances played a big part in making sure that everyone had a fair share of whatever was available.In this fascinating book, Katherine Knight looks at how experiences of rationing varied between rich and poor, town and country, and how ingenuous cooks often made a meal from poor ingredients. Charting the developments of the rationing programme throughout the war and afterwards, Spuds, Spam and Eating for Victory documents the use of substitutions for luxury ingredients not available, resulting in delicacies such as carrot jam and oatmeal sausages. The introduction of Spam in America in the forties led to this canned spiced pork and ham becoming an iconic symbol of the worse period of shortage in the twentieth century.Seventy years after the outbreak of the Second World War, this book listens to some of the people who were young during the conflict share their memories, both sad and funny, of what it was like to eat for Victory.

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Book SynopsisIn a mist-shrouded valley on China''s invisible border with Tibet is a place known as the Kingdom of Women, where a small tribe called the Mosuo lives in a cluster of villages that have changed little in centuries. In a mist-shrouded valley on China''s invisible border with Tibet is a place known as the Kingdom of Women, where a small tribe called the Mosuo lives in a cluster of villages that have changed little in centuries. This is one of the last matrilineal societies on earth, where power lies in the hands of women. All decisions and rights related to money, property, land and the children born to them rest with the Mosuo women, who live completely independently of husbands, fathers and brothers, with the grandmother as the head of each family. A unique practice is also enshrined in Mosuo tradition--that of walking marriage, where women choose their own lovers from men within the tribe but are beholden to none.Trade ReviewA fascinating portrait of one of the world’s last matriarchal societies, a land without fathers or husbands, without marriage or divorce, written by an international corporate lawyer who ditched her hectic life to embrace this Shangri-La inside deepest China. -- Jan Wong, author of 'Beijing Confidential'A crisp account by a high-powered Singaporean lawyer of how she renounced her former life of fifteen-hour working days in a male-dominated corporate world to find her feminist soul in the last matriarchal ethnic group remaining in China. Full of insights and touching descriptions, this is one of the most accessible and concrete descriptions of the Mosuo, a group more analysed than understood, putting the humanity of this tribe at the forefront of their identity. -- Kerry Brown, author of 'CEO China and The New Emperors'A most engaging account of life among the matrilineal and matriarchal Mosuo tribe in China’s Yunnan province, but also a lament to a way of life now threatened by modernity and tourism. Full of detail and telling insights into gender roles, it will appeal to armchair travellers as well as to anthropologists and sociologists. -- Jonathan Fryer, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonA refreshing and authentic portrait of a hidden society in patriarchal China. A must read for anyone studying women and alternative societies. -- HsiaoHung Pai, author of 'Scattered Sand'Table of ContentsList of Plates Acknowledgements Preface Prelude Map: Kingdom of Women 1. Arriving in the Kingdom of Women 2. Building a Mosuo Home 3. Going Native 4. Getting to Know the Mosuos 5. Becoming the Godmother 6. Hunting and Eating in Bygone Times 7. How the Mosuo Women Rock 8. The Men Rock Too 9. A Marriage That Is Not a Marriage 10. The Matrilineal Ties That Bind 11. The Birth-Death Room 12. On the Knife-Edge of Extinction Glossary

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Book SynopsisWild and strange stories have circulated about the female body since antiquity. While legends of poisoned hymens and fanged vaginas circulated, the first female figure Mother Earth was recreated as a crooked rib. Ranging from the absurd to the empowering, these myths not only survive but continue to wield power today. The Shrinking Goddess brings together myths about the female form and traces the subsequent male efforts to tame' it. Mineke Schipper examines how women's bodies have been represented since records began the first Venus and vulva figures date to 40,000 BCE and around the world. Drawing together the vast reservoir of myths, proverbs, art, science and scripture that shape how women are seen in the present day, Schipper reclaims the female body as a source of power. Readers of Angela Davis, Mary Beard, Audre Lorde, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer will want to read this book.

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Book SynopsisA history of the last 50 years of curating told through Hans Ulrich Obrist''s interviews with legendary curators Anne D''Harnoncourt, Werner Hoffman, Jean Leering, Franz Meyer, Seth Siegelaub, Walter Zanini, Johannes Cladders, Lucy Lippard, Walter Hopps, Pontus Hulten, and Harald SzeemannPart of JRPRinger''s innovative Documents series, published with Les Presses du R?el and dedicated to critical writings, this publication comprises a unique collection of interviews by Hans Ulrich Obrist mapping the development of the curatorial field--from early independent curators in the 1960s and 70s and the experimental institutional programs developed in Europe and the U.S. through the inception of Documenta and the various biennales and fairs--with pioneering curators Anne D''Harnoncourt, Werner Hoffman, Jean Leering, Franz Meyer, Seth Siegelaub, Walter Zanini, Johannes Cladders, Lucy Lippard, Walter Hopps, Pontus Hulten and Harald Szeemann. Speaking of Szeemann on the occasion of this legendary curator''s death in 2005, critic Aaron Schuster summed up, the image we have of the curator today: the curator-as-artist, a roaming, freelance designer of exhibitions, or in his own witty formulation, a ''spiritual guest worker''... If artists since Marcel Duchamp have affirmed selection and arrangement as legitimate artistic strategies, was it not simply a matter of time before curatorial practice--itself defined by selection and arrangement--would come to be seen as an art that operates on the field of art itself?

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Book SynopsisA Splendid Exchange tells the epic story of global commerce, from its prehistoric origins to the myriad crises confronting it today. It travels from the sugar rush that brought the British to Jamaica in the seventeenth century to our current debates over globalization, from the silk route between China and Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the sixteenth. Throughout, William Bernstein examines how our age-old dependency on trade has contributed to our planet's agricultural bounty, stimulated intellectual and industrial progress and made us both prosperous and vulnerable.Trade Review"'A highly entertaining read. Bernstein's enthusiasm for his subject and impressive organisation of a wealth of material enable him to plot with pace and verve... man's trading history.' Hugh Carnegy, Financial Times 'Timely and readable... The strength of Mr Bernstein's book is the analytical rigour that overlays the rollicking history.' Economist 'Superb... The chronological range of Bernstein's book is staggering... Graceful and insightful history with a delicate display of scholarship that conceals a vast erudition.' Paul Kennedy, Foreign Affairs"

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Book SynopsisThe great World's Fairs and Expositions staged around the world since the mid-nineteenth century were among the largest and most dramatic cultural events ever staged. In both beneficial and detrimental ways, they affected the lives of tens of millions of people. Fair World tells the story of these extraordinary exhibitions from the Victorian period to the present day.Trade Review"an outstanding survey highly recommended for a range of collections, from general-interest to history and arts holdings. It packs in photos and in-depth details of the great world fairs and expositions, offering a coverage that provides details about each fair and its unique characteristics. The outstanding focus provides lively discussion of elements unique to each world fair, covering its features, promotion, attractions and impact on its audience. The drama and excitement of the fairs is captured in a fine oversized presentation packed with images and history!" - Midwest Book Review

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Book SynopsisThe 1980s was the revolutionary decade of the twentieth century. To look back in 1990 at the Britain of ten years earlier was to look into another country. The changes were not superficial, like the revolution in fashion and music that enlivened the 1960s; nor were they quite as unsettling and joyless as the troubles of the 1970s. And yet they were irreversible. By the end of the decade, society as a whole was wealthier, money was easier to borrow, there was less social upheaval, less uncertainty about the future. Perhaps the greatest transformation of the decade was that by 1990, the British lived in a new ideological universe where the defining conflict of the twentieth century, between capitalism and socialism, was over. Thatcherism took the politics out of politics and created vast differences between rich and poor, but no expectation that the existence of such gross inequalities was a problem that society or government could solve - because as Mrs Thatcher said, 'There is no such thing as society ... people must look to themselves first.'From the Falklands war and the miners' strike to Bobby Sands and the Guildford Four, from Diana and the New Romantics to Live Aid and the 'big bang', from the Rubik's cube to the ZX Spectrum, McSmith's brilliant narrative account uncovers the truth behind the decade that changed Britain forever.Trade ReviewIt was a wild, wild decade: strong politics, riots, revival, bad hair, great comedy, some dreadful music, lurid newspapers and a war or two. The Margaret Thatcher rollercoaster carried so many of us into today's Britain, with so many bumps and shrieks, that it needs a writer of cool judgement and a reporter who misses nothing to tell its story. Andy McSmith has managed it, ranging from barcodes to TVam, feminism to Torvill and Dean, and Sloane Rangers to flying pickets. It's hard to see how this account could be bettered. * Andrew Marr *McSmith has a sharp eye for a revealing story. * The Sunday Times *A fine account of the decade. * Independent on Sunday *....an enjoyable romp through the decade. * The Spectator *A rollicking read. * Metro *(McSmith) presents his views and his recollections clearly, accurately and accessibly in a very readable, social document. * The Scotsman *

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Book SynopsisHow did a venerable Indian spiritual discipline turn into a £20 billion-a-year mainstay of the wellness industry? What happened along yoga’s winding path from the caves and forests of the sages to the gyms, hospitals and village halls of the modern West? This comprehensive history sets yoga in its global cultural context for the first time, leading us on a journey from arcane religious rituals and medieval body-magic, through Christianity and the British Empire, to Indian nationalists and the twentieth-century West. Yoga has now become embedded in powerful social currents including feminism, digital media, celebrity culture, the stress pandemic and the quest for authentic identity. Shearer’s revealing history boasts a colourful cast of characters past and present, in an engaging tale of scholars and scandal, science and spirit, wisdom and waywardness. This is the untold story of yoga, warts and all.Trade Review‘This is a tale of what happens when East and West meet, and about a shift from the sacred to the secular. [Yoga’s] journey west gives Shearer a compelling cast of characters.’ -- The Sunday Times'Erudite, scholarly and engrossing.' -- The Sunday Telegraph'A clear-eyed, elegantly written and wonderfully informative history of yoga … Shearer’s remarkable book is a wide-ranging and rather sobering discussion on the nature of authenticity.’ -- Spectator‘Amid a sea of guidebooks, historian Alistair Shearer has provided a worthwhile counterpoint, [offering] advice as important as any guru’s techniques.’ -- Financial Times‘A quick-witted and erudite chronicle of the Hindu practice that is now a lucrative staple of “wellness” in the West.’ -- The Wall Street Journal‘This is a compelling history of how an amazing ancient art became an integral part of western life.’ -- The Irish Times‘Shearer … writes with exquisite sensitivity about the teacher-student relationship.’ -- Hindustan Times‘An ambitious book indeed … [with] a scholarly side, and a catchy journalistic verve.’'This is a fascinating survey not only for practitioners of the world’s burgeoning Wellness industry [but also] for general readers anxious about the fate of civilisation itself.' -- Asian Affairs Journal‘Erudite, informative and witty … I cannot over-emphasize the grace and humour of the text as well as its seriousness of purpose.’ -- Journal of the Scientific and Medical Network'The history of East meeting West through Yoga is as complex and enigmatic as it is important. Alistair Shearer unfolds the narrative with just the right combination of scholarly rigour and compelling prose.' -- Philip Goldberg, author of 'American Veda' and 'The Life of Yogananda'' "The Story of Yoga" offers an absorbing chronicle of the rise of yoga, tracing its evolution through history to its rapid global proliferation today, with insights into the challenges on the way ahead. Exceedingly accessible and engaging, this is the definitive account of the remarkable growth of one of the world's most popular and beneficial human activities.' -- Shashi Tharoor, author of 'Inglorious Empire''Frequently amusing, but always scholarly and engaging, Shearer's study deftly works it way through the history of yoga, from the purity of Patanjali's Sutras to the mix'n'match brands endorsed by modern celebrities.' -- John Zubrzycki, author of 'Empire of Enchantment: The Story of Indian Magic'

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, given by the National Women''s Studies AssociationWinner, 2021 Harry Levin Prize, given by the American Comparative Literature AssociationWinner, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ StudiesArgues that Blackness disrupts our essential ideas of race, gender, and, ultimately, the humanRewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the EnlighteTrade ReviewThis is a demanding, complex, and highly significant contribution to the literature on the nature of the moral and philosophical distinctions between human and nonhuman creatures...The implications for theological anthropology are, undoubtedly, shattering. * Literature and Theology *Within Western philosophy, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson shows, Black people historically have been 'animalized.' In examining these limitations of Western philosophy, Becoming Human shows that the fundamental idea of 'humanity' that has gained widespread credence in the West is flawed … Jackson makes an intervention by firmly placing Black literary and visual culture into philosophy. * Public Books *Jackson’s scholarship has been critical to my recent curatorial work. This groundbreaking book considers how Blackness can coincide with notions of the nonhuman and animality through imaginative and emancipatory modes of being, invoking a future that breaches contemporary ideas of humanism through thoughtful research and cultural references that center Black women as a site of origin. * Artforum, "Best of 2021" *Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism [...] What emerges is a radically unruly sense of a being, knowing, feeling existence: one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of 'the human. * Black Perspectives *Jackson states that real change will require “revolutionizing” the human body, and her prescription for freeing oneself from the limitations of gender and species requires the same “plasticity" by which Blackness and anti-Blackness continue to be defined. * CHOICE *The book presents a compelling argument and offers worthwhile suggestions. I will certainly have my undergraduates wrestle with some of this material in upcoming semesters. * Religions Journal *The sheer beauty, force, and ingenuity of Zakiyyah Iman Jackson's aesthetic strategies and gestures are on display as she performs the very risks and rewards she conjures. Offering a brilliant intervention into questions of the human, each of Jackson’s readings profoundly unsettle our presumed relations and prevailing ontologies. She reads western philosophy and science through African diasporic literatures, theories, and visual art to open us up to what is made—what might be made—in excess of the matrix of antiblackness and its constitutive forms of the human, animal, gender, and matter. In the book’s range of knowledges, reach, and scope, no field nor discipline would not benefit from a real and sustained engagement with the work that Jackson undertakes here. -- Christina Sharpe, author of In the WakeBrilliantly reframes the relation between blackened life and the category of the human, by shifting the terms of the debate. She maintains that neither dehumanization nor exclusion are sufficient to explain antiblackness and its descending scale of life. In so doing, Jackson's ‘ontological plasticity’ reveals the controlled depletion that produces the liquidity of life and fleshly existence, and enables blackened life to be anything, which is also to say nothing at all. Jackson’s rigorous and sustained meditation is relentless in exploring the possibilities for a generative disordering of being, inhabiting other senses of the world, and imagining the field of relation in ceaseless flux and directionless becoming. -- Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

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Book SynopsisIt would be easy for the modern reader to conclude that women had no place in the world of early modern espionage, with a few seventeenth-century women spies identified and then relegated to the footnotes of history. If even the espionage carried out by Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, during the turbulent decades of civil strife in Britain can escape the historiographer''s gaze, then how many more like her lurk in the archives? Nadine Akkerman''s search for an answer to this question has led to the writing of Invisible Agents, the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies, demonstrating that the allegedly-male world of the spy was more than merely infiltrated by women. This compelling and ground-breaking contribution to the history of espionage details a series of case studies in which women -- from playwright to postmistress, from lady-in-waiting to laundry woman -- acted as spies, sourcing and passing on confidential information on account of political and religious convictions or to obtain money or power. The struggle of the She-Intelligencers to construct credibility in their own time is mirrored in their invisibility in modern historiography. Akkerman has immersed herself in archives, libraries, and private collections, transcribing hundreds of letters, breaking cipher codes and their keys, studying invisible inks, and interpreting riddles, acting as a modern-day Spymistress to unearth plots and conspiracies that have long remained hidden by history.Trade ReviewAkkerman has a knack for telling a good story, and her vignettes of strong, independent, and clever women paint a lively picture of seventeenth-century female spies. What distinguishes her book from most other academic monographs, however, is her very personal approach, which more traditional scholars might frown upon...Most of all, however, the book is proof that there is no excuse any more for excluding women from the narratives of mid-seventeenth-century political activism either on the royalist or parliamentarian side. * Gaby Mahlberg, Journal of Modern History *Revelatory. * Simon Heffer, Books of the Year 2018: History, The Daily Telegraph *A history book that will surely inspire future fiction. A work of deep scholarship and clever detective work. * Leanda de Lisle, Books of the Year 2018, BBC History Magazine *A dense, hugely researched and admirably learned history of women spies during the Civil War. * Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times *A brilliant book. * Noel Malcolm, The Sunday Telegraph *A triumph of scholarly rigour, original thinking and crisp prose. It is, in every sense, a cracking book. * Jessie Childs, The Daily Telegraph *Invisible Agents is a work of deep scholarship that suggests Akkerman would have made an excellent spy catcher. * Leanda de Lisle, The Times *Brimming with fascinating detail ... Akkerman's archival dissections admirably emulate the painstaking vigilance of early modern spy masters. * Clare Jackson, The Times Literary Supplement *Pioneering ... a most valuable book, highlighting women's contribution to the conspiratorial world of mid-17th-century Britain, while also offering a thought provoking exercise in gender and historical methods. * Ann Hughes, BBC History Magazine *An intriguing book ... [Akkerman's] own remarkable ability to ferret out secrets is often as great as that of the spies she writes about. Time after time, women whose lives, careers and even names have been forgotten or misread spring into stealthy, double-dealing life on the page. * Adrian Tinniswood, Literary Review *Invisible Agents breaks significant new ground in its focus on the special roles of Royalist and Parliamentarian 'she-intelligencers' and their hidden world. This is a model monograph, meticulously researched and relentlessly questioning, which succeeds admirably in uncovering closely guarded secrets. * R. C. Richardson, Times Higher Education *immensely readable...Akkerman has a knack for telling a good story, and her vignettes of strong, independent, and clever women paint a lively picture of seventeenth-century female spies. * Gaby Mahlberg, Journal of Modern History *Richly illustrated, scrupulously researched. * Frances E. Dolan, Renaissance Quarterly *This is a book full of rich and engaging details...this is a testament to the thoroughness of her academic practice. Ultimately, Invisible Agents is a text that serves as an invaluable starting point for the re-situation of women into narratives of early modern spying, and political history, offering readers across disciplines a varied and voluminous history of women's roles in seventeenth-century espionage. * Rose Hilton, AC Review of Books *A ground-breaking book looking at a previously unexplored aspect of the world of espionage ... Founded on work in a wide variety of archives, many of them previously undiscovered, Akkerman shines a light on one of the dark corners of the world of spies. * Military History Monthly *For a serious examination of the role of women in intelligence, turn to Nadine Akkerman's Invisible Agents. Doubly invisible, both as agents and in historical records, these women were at the heart of the intelligence network, yet they have never hitherto received the 'glory of Martyrs'. * Teresa Levonian Cole, Country Life *Fascinating and insightful ... Akkerman lifts the veil not only on a number of individual she-intelligencers, but also on the complex and varied business of female espionage in mid-seventeenth-century Britain. * Lena Steveker, English Studies *Akkerman deftly handles the challenges of writing about [female spies], assembling fragments of evidence where she can, acknowledging gaps where she must. Her book has much to teach us not only about espionage but about the creation of historical narratives. * Rachel Weil, American Historical Review *A dazzling study of a truly neglected subject, which ably demonstrates the gendered dimension of early modern spy-craft, and the unique ways in which women were able to operate. It is written by one of the foremost early modern textual-historical scholars of her generation and marshals an almost unmatched expertise in working with an impressive range of European and international archives of the period. The book delivers a series of fascinating case studies - including Charles I's prison correspondence, Secretary Thurloe, as well as female practitioners Susan Hyde, Elizabeth Murray, Elizabeth Carey, Anne Halkett, and Aphra Behn - all of which rest on a remarkable and overwhelming weight of archival research. This is an important book that will be widely read and cited, and which will have significant impact on many fields not least those of early modern gender and women's writing, but also political and diplomatic history. * Professor James Daybell, University of Plymouth *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Invisible Agents, She-Intelligencers, or Spies Invisible by Birth 1. Ciphered Pillow Talk with Charles I in Prison, 1646-1649: 'intrigues, which at that time could be best managed and carried on by ladies' 2. The Credibility and Archival Silence of She-Intelligencers: Women on the Council of State's Payroll 3. Susan Hyde. a Spy's Gendered Fate Punishment: Hide and Seek the Sealed Knot 4.I Elizabeth Murray, Loyal Subject, Lover or Double Agent?: Rumour, Hearsay and the Sins of the Father 4.II Elizabeth Murray's Continental Foray: Incompetence, Invisible Inks, and Internal Wrangling 5. Elizabeth Carey, Lady Mordaunt: The 'Enigma' of the Great Trust 6. Anne, Lady Halkett's 'True Accountt': A Married Woman Is Never to Blame 7. Aphra Behn's Letters from Antwerp, July 1666-April 1667: Intelligence Reports or Epistolary Fiction? Epilogue: Invisibility and Blanck Marshall, the Nameless and Genderless Agent Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisChristmas has been all things to all people: a religious festival, a family celebration, a time of eating and drinking. Yet the origins of the customs which characterize the festive season are wreathed in myth.When did turkeys become the plat du jour? Is the commercialization of Christmas a recent phenomenon, or has the emphasis always been on spending? Just who is, or was, Santa Claus? And for how long have we been exchanging presents of underwear and socks?Food, drink and nostalgia for Christmases past seem to be almost as old as the holiday itself, far more central to the story of Christmas than religious worship. Thirty years after the first recorded Christmas, in the fourth century, the Archbishop of Constantinople was already warning that too many people were spending the day not in worship, but dancing and eating to excess. By 1616, the playwright Ben Jonson was nostalgically recalling the Christmases of yesteryear, confident that they had been better then. In Christmas: A History, acclaimed social historian and bestselling author Judith Flanders casts a sharp and revealing eye on the myths, legends and history of the season, from the origins of the holiday in the Roman empire to the emergence of Christmas trees in central Europe, to what might just possibly be the first appearance of Santa Claus – in Switzerland! – to draw a picture of the season as it has never been seen before.Trade ReviewFlanders covers every aspect of Christmas . . . [Christmas] is . . . a catalogue of colourful information, and as surprising an assortment of items as any you might find heaped up under a tree. -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * Observer *A well-researched account. There are more footnotes here than there are presents under a Rockefeller Christmas tree. Indeed, the book is stuffed with facts – enough to satiate even the most ravenous postprandial taste for quizzing. * Sunday Times *[An] entertaining biography . . . Following the fine tradition of light entertainment Christmas books, Judith Flanders provides lots of trivia . . . However, there is much more to it than that. Flanders is a respected social historian, best known for studies on Victorian life, and the strength of this warm book lies in its quiet erudition. * The Times *If you do want to think about the actual meaning of Christmas, why it still matters to us so much, the book you need is Christmas by the cultural historian Judith Flanders . . . which traces its “strange hybrid growth” all the way back to its origins. -- David Sexton * Evening Standard *A definitive, myth-busting new book . . . [Christmas] tells the full history of the festival that owes it beginning to Roman celebrations of the winter solstice with some fascinating revelations along the way. * The Lady *Who could say bah-humbug to this sprawling-yet-accessible history, which examines traditions with all the trimmings. * Sunday Independent *A superabundance of information about holiday practices, drawn not just from Britain, North American, the Commonwealth and Continental Europe (especially Germany), but from wherever Christmas is celebrated – even, at its most secular and idiosyncratic, in Japan. * TLS *Little escapes Flanders’s notice, as she reflects on the film It’s a Wonderful Life, the nation-binding importance of Britain’s annual carol concert from King’s College, Cambridge, or the financial dependence of local ballet companies on performances of The Nutcracker. Throughout, too, her writing remains brisk and witty: She alludes to the seasonal tradition of reading ghost stories, “while the children break their new toys around you.” * Washington Post *Judith Flanders . . . likes Christmas (I think), but she loves reality and its awkward, amusing facts. (A previous book of hers, Inside the Victorian Home, is deep, bright and encompassing.) * New York Times *This informative and entertaining history is an absolute delight. * Woman & Home *

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Book SynopsisINCLUDES HUNDREDS OF NEW AND EXPANDED ENTRIES From ‘Aald Rock’ to ‘Zeenty-teenty’, A Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable is an unputdownable gallimaufry of curious items embracing sayings, put-downs, insults, mottos, traditions, legends, folklore, customs, festivals, games, songs, dances, nicknames – and much, much more. This new edition features many expanded entries, as well as completely new ones – including Big Tam, the Third Forth Bridge, the Loony Dook and the War of the One-eyed Woman. The result is a kaleidoscopic snapshot of the Scottish nation, both past and present, from the mythical origins of the Scots in ancient Scythia to the foibles of modern Follyrood, from Sawney Bean to Oor Wullie, from ‘The end of an old song’ to ‘Aw fur coat and nae knickers’, from The Heart of Midlothian to ‘Ye cannae shove yer granny aff a bus’. In more than 4,500 such entries, A Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable weaves an endlessly entertaining tapestry incorporating the texture and fabric of a nation’s ever-shifting sense of itself.Trade Review'Wilfully idiosyncratic yet curiously useful . . . A lightly erudite and well-informed work of eclectic scholarship' * Times Literary Supplement *'Compelling and quirky . . . under Ian Crofton’s eye, the rollicking spirit of Scotland, old and modern, comes proudly alive . . . A lifesaver for those in need of diversion and enlightenment' * Sunday Herald *'This is such a linguistic and etymological treasure trove that once picked up it is virtually impossible to put down' * Scottish Field *'A book that will provide many happy hours of dipping into . . . A sheer joy' * Scottish Life *'It is nigh impossible to reach the item you first set out to read without being sidetracked by other beguiling morsels' * The Herald *'A fascinating collection of words, phrases and stories' * Dundee Courier *

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