Social and cultural history Books

Book SynopsisRacial progress in the United States has hit a wall, and the rise of white nationalism is but one manifestation of this. Most Americans continue to hope that the younger generation, which many believe manifests less racism and more acceptance of a multiracial society, will lead to more moderate racial politicsbut this may not be happening. Overtly racist attitudes have declined, but anti-black stereotypes and racial resentment remain prevalent among white Americans. To add, the shape of racial attitudes has continued to evolve, but our existing measures have not evolved in step and cannot fully illuminate the challenge at hand. With Racial Stasis, Christopher D. DeSante and Candis Watts Smith argue persuasively that this is because millennials, a generational cohort far removed from Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era, lack sufficient understanding of the structural nature of racial inequalities in the United States and therefore also the contextual and historical knowledge to be actively anti-racist. While these younger whites may be open to the idea of interracial marriage or living next to a family of a different race, they often do not understand why policies like affirmative action still need to exist and are weary about supporting these kinds of policies. In short, although millennials' language and rationale around race, racism, and racial inequalities are different from previous generations', the end result is the same.

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Book SynopsisExplores what it means to be a subject in the historical and poetic imagination of a southern Moroccan society. Incorporating poetic texts, legends, social spaces, folktales and conversations, this book is a synthesis of dissonant, often idiosyncratic voices from the Maghribi post-colonial present.

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Book SynopsisAlmost fifty years after Brown v Board of Education, research shows that minority students continue to receive an unequal education. At the heart of this inequality is a complex and often conflicted relationship between teachers and civil rights activists. This title traces the tensions between the two groups in New York City over the years.Trade Review"Uncivil Rights makes a major contribution to our understanding of the often fraught relationship between (mostly white) teachers and (mostly non-white) students in the nation's largest school system. Skillfully framed around changing conceptions of teachers' and students' 'rights' in public schools, this book explains - better than any other - how teachers in New York City first won and then lost recognition of their status as 'professionals' in the classrooms and communities where they work." (Adam Nelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison)"

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Book SynopsisExploring such topics as maternal caregiving, childbirth, and women's political roles, this title deals with the groups that challenged older ideals of motherhood, including male critics who railed against female moral authority, psychological experts who hoped to expand their influence, and women who wished to be more than wives and mothers.Trade Review"Ranging from Gold Star Mothers through natural childbirth, Mom makes the case for treating the decades from the 1920s through the early '60s as one period of sweeping change. This is essential reading for all historians who are interested in the gender politics of modern America." - Sonya Michel, coeditor of Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States.

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Book SynopsisBy the 1940s, the idealization of motherhood had waned, and the American mothers found themselves blamed for a host of societal and psychological ills. This title traces this important shift by exploring the evolution of maternalist politics, changing perceptions of the mother-child bond, and the rise of new approaches to childbirth and suffering.Trade Review"Well written and thoroughly researched, the book provides an engaging examination of the cultural reconstruction of motherhood in the modern US." (Choice)"

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Book SynopsisThe late twentieth century has seen a fantastic expansion of personal, sexual, and domestic liberties in the United States. In this title, the author explores the rise of cohabitation, and the changing social norms that have allowed cohabitation to become the chosen lifestyle of more than fifteen million Americans.Trade Review"At a time when forty percent of children are born to unmarried couples, this book gives desperately needed historical perspective to the most profound, consequential development in private life of the past half century: the explosive growth of cohabitation outside of wedlock. Elizabeth Pleck not only explains how a phenomenon that sixty years ago was derided as 'living in sin' became the norm, she comments forcefully and utterly convincingly about how law and public policy have failed to take account of a fundamental shift in American life." (Steven Mintz, Columbia University)"

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Book SynopsisThe late twentieth century has seen a fantastic expansion of personal, sexual, and domestic liberties in the United States. In this title, the author explores the rise of cohabitation, and the changing social norms that have allowed cohabitation to become the chosen lifestyle of more than fifteen million Americans.Trade Review"At a time when forty percent of children are born to unmarried couples, this book gives desperately needed historical perspective to the most profound, consequential development in private life of the past half century: the explosive growth of cohabitation outside of wedlock. Elizabeth Pleck not only explains how a phenomenon that sixty years ago was derided as 'living in sin' became the norm, she comments forcefully and utterly convincingly about how law and public policy have failed to take account of a fundamental shift in American life." (Steven Mintz, Columbia University)"

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Book SynopsisFor the past five years, American public schools have enrolled more students identified as Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Asian than white. At the same time, more than half of US school children now qualify for federally subsidized meals, a marker of poverty. The makeup of schools is rapidly changing, and many districts and school boards are at a loss as to how they can effectively and equitably handle these shifts. Suddenly Diverse is an ethnographic account of two school districts in the Midwest responding to rapidly changing demographics at their schools. It is based on observations and in-depth interviews with school board members and superintendents, as well as staff, community members, and other stakeholders in each district: one serving Lakeside, a predominately working class, conservative community and the other serving Fairview, a more affluent, liberal community. Erica O. Turner looks at district leaders' adoption of business-inspired policy tools and the ultimate successes and failures of such responses. Turner's findings demonstrate that, despite their intentions to promote diversity or eliminate achievement gaps, district leaders adopted policies and practices that ultimately perpetuated existing inequalities and advanced new forms of racism. While suggesting some ways forward, Suddenly Diverse shows that, without changes to these managerial policies and practices and larger transformations to the whole system, even district leaders' best efforts will continue to undermine the promise of educational equity and the realization of more robust public schools.

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Book SynopsisWe need to talk about racism before it destroys our democracy. And that conversation needs to start with an acknowledgement that racism is coded into even the most ordinary interactions. Every time we interact with another human being, we unconsciously draw on a set of expectations to guide us through the encounter. What many of us in the United Statesespecially white peopledo not recognize is that centuries of institutional racism have inescapably molded those expectations. This leads us to act with implicit biases that can shape everything from how we greet our neighbors to whether we take a second look at a resume. This is tacit racism, and it is one of the most pernicious threats to our nation. In Tacit Racism, Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck illustrate the many ways in which racism is coded into the everyday social expectations of Americans, in what they call Interaction Orders of Race. They argue that these interactions can produce racial inequality, whether the peopleTrade Review“While many Americans continue to celebrate the collapse of the old Jim Crow order as a relic of the past, Tacit Racism reminds us of the myriad ways that racism continues to influence everyday life in US society and represents what the authors describe as a ‘clear and present danger’ to American democracy today.” -- Joe William Trotter, Jr., author of Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America“Tacit Racism is a very, very important book. It will inform, challenge, disturb, and inspire. Anne Rawls and Waverly Duck bring to the project similar aptitudes for original research and theory joined by constructive differences—the one, Rawls, is a leading expert in applied ethnomethodology; the other, Duck, is a leader in the tradition of new ethnography. She is a bit more the philosopher; he the social theorist. Tacit Racism plows the terrain from Du Bois to Garfinkel and Goffman and sows it with the seeds of rich interview data and compelling field work.” -- Charles Lemert, author of Dark Thoughts: Race and the Eclipse of Society"Tacit Racism ends with a strong and urgent call for the activation of what authors Rawls and Duck refer to as a 'White double consciousness.' The authors contend that learning about the reality of a racialized interaction order could compel White Americans to develop an awareness, or a White double consciousness, of how White Americans are so deeply invested in creating inequitable social environments for Blacks and other communities of color. Overall, Tacit Racism is an interesting and thought-provoking read. As a text to introduce students to the array of interactional dynamics of white supremacy, and the ways that Whites from various backgrounds are complicit in these practices, it is a success." * Symbolic Interaction *"Tacit Racism deepens our understanding of White supremacy by documenting its 'torrential' qualities, its pervasiveness and capacity for self-perpetuation in everyday life....The research [goes] far deeper than [commonplace understandings] of 'systemic racism.'" * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Racism Is a Clear and Present Danger Chapter 1. “White People Are Nosey” and “Black People Are Rude”: Black and White Greetings and Introductory Talk Chapter 2.  “Fractured Reflections” of High-Status Black Men’s Presentations of Self: Non-Recognition of Identity as a Tacit Form of Institutional Racism Chapter 3. Clashing Conceptions of Honesty: Black American “Honesty” in the White Workplace Chapter 4.  “A Man Is One Who Is Responsible for Others”: Achieving Black Masculinity in the Face of Institutionalized Stigma and Racism Chapter 5. The White Self-Interested “Strong Man” Ideal vs. the Black Ideal of “Submissive Civility”: In a Black/White Police Encounter with Jason Turowetz Chapter 6. “Do You Eat Cats and Dogs?”: Student Observations of Racism in Their Everyday Lives Chapter 7. The Interaction Order of a Poor Black American Space: Creating Respect, Recognition, and Value in Response to Collective Punishment Conclusion Digging out the Lies by Making the Ordinary Strange Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWe need to talk about racism before it destroys our democracy. And that conversation needs to start with an acknowledgement that racism is coded into even the most ordinary interactions. Every time we interact with another human being, we unconsciously draw on a set of expectations to guide us through the encounter. What many of us in the United Statesespecially white peopledo not recognize is that centuries of institutional racism have inescapably molded those expectations. This leads us to act with implicit biases that can shape everything from how we greet our neighbors to whether we take a second look at a resume. This is tacit racism, and it is one of the most pernicious threats to our nation. In Tacit Racism, Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck illustrate the many ways in which racism is coded into the everyday social expectations of Americans, in what they call Interaction Orders of Race. They argue that these interactions can produce racial inequality, whether the people involved are aware of it or not, and that by overlooking tacit racism in favor of the fiction of a color-blind nation, we are harming not only our society's most disadvantagedbut endangering the society itself. Ultimately, by exposing this legacy of racism in ordinary social interactions, Rawls and Duck hope to stop us from merely pretending we are a democratic society and show us how we can truly become one.Trade Review“While many Americans continue to celebrate the collapse of the old Jim Crow order as a relic of the past, Tacit Racism reminds us of the myriad ways that racism continues to influence everyday life in US society and represents what the authors describe as a ‘clear and present danger’ to American democracy today.” -- Joe William Trotter, Jr., author of Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America“Tacit Racism is a very, very important book. It will inform, challenge, disturb, and inspire. Anne Rawls and Waverly Duck bring to the project similar aptitudes for original research and theory joined by constructive differences—the one, Rawls, is a leading expert in applied ethnomethodology; the other, Duck, is a leader in the tradition of new ethnography. She is a bit more the philosopher; he the social theorist. Tacit Racism plows the terrain from Du Bois to Garfinkel and Goffman and sows it with the seeds of rich interview data and compelling field work.” -- Charles Lemert, author of Dark Thoughts: Race and the Eclipse of Society"Tacit Racism ends with a strong and urgent call for the activation of what authors Rawls and Duck refer to as a 'White double consciousness.' The authors contend that learning about the reality of a racialized interaction order could compel White Americans to develop an awareness, or a White double consciousness, of how White Americans are so deeply invested in creating inequitable social environments for Blacks and other communities of color. Overall, Tacit Racism is an interesting and thought-provoking read. As a text to introduce students to the array of interactional dynamics of white supremacy, and the ways that Whites from various backgrounds are complicit in these practices, it is a success." * Symbolic Interaction *"Tacit Racism deepens our understanding of White supremacy by documenting its 'torrential' qualities, its pervasiveness and capacity for self-perpetuation in everyday life....The research [goes] far deeper than [commonplace understandings] of 'systemic racism.'" * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Racism Is a Clear and Present Danger Chapter 1. “White People Are Nosey” and “Black People Are Rude”: Black and White Greetings and Introductory Talk Chapter 2.  “Fractured Reflections” of High-Status Black Men’s Presentations of Self: Non-Recognition of Identity as a Tacit Form of Institutional Racism Chapter 3. Clashing Conceptions of Honesty: Black American “Honesty” in the White Workplace Chapter 4.  “A Man Is One Who Is Responsible for Others”: Achieving Black Masculinity in the Face of Institutionalized Stigma and Racism Chapter 5. The White Self-Interested “Strong Man” Ideal vs. the Black Ideal of “Submissive Civility”: In a Black/White Police Encounter with Jason Turowetz Chapter 6. “Do You Eat Cats and Dogs?”: Student Observations of Racism in Their Everyday Lives Chapter 7. The Interaction Order of a Poor Black American Space: Creating Respect, Recognition, and Value in Response to Collective Punishment Conclusion Digging out the Lies by Making the Ordinary Strange Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The elegant prose and the exceptionally rich, detailed, and keen ethnographic insights are among the book’s many strengths. . . . the book is a wonderful addition to the field and will be of interest to audiences concerned about the unintended consequences of social involvement in the absence of intentional efforts by the university to ensure positive and equitable social experiences for all students." * Social Forces *“With rich ethnographic detail, Silver shows that becoming part of the campus community is harder—and often far less rewarding—than it may first seem. While the administration claims that campus involvement is beneficial for students, Silver, through interviews with students and time spent with three student organizations, paints a different picture: racial and gender inequalities are reproduced as students become locked into two-dimensional characters such as ‘the caregiver’ or ‘the entertainer.’ Silver is skilled at demonstrating that diversity can be both celebrated and constrained within a single college campus. This is an important book for scholars and administrators alike.” -- Susan A. Dumais, Lehman College, City University of New York“A master class in ethnographic observation of a thriving college campus. Using an incisive intersectional lens, Silver paints a vivid picture of how college students from a wide range of demographic backgrounds experience extracurricular involvement. While women and racial minorities are often pushed to the margins of group life, despite their interest and assets, white men are rapidly elevated to the center—to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. As colleges around the country exhort students to ‘get involved’ and ‘find your niche,’ this deep analysis reveals that ‘belonging’ is not equally available to all.” -- Laura Hamilton, author of Paying for the Party and Parenting to a Degree“Silver’s The Cost of Inclusion is an insightful, well-written analysis of students’ social roles on residential college campuses. Silver describes how race and gender shape opportunities for leadership and inclusion on campus. The book is a must-read for students and scholars of higher education!” -- Natasha K. Warikoo, author of The Diversity Bargain"The book is engaging and accessible." * Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice (JSARP) *"Faculty advisors and student affairs practitioners alike would benefit from this in-depth analysis of how and why student organizations replicate existing power structures and what might be done to help them operate with more true inclusivity." * The Review of Higher Education *"The book makes important contributions to the literature on student development and higher education. It provides insight into the dynamics of student organizations and practical suggestions for reducing inequality in these spaces.... For these reasons, the book is likely to be of value to scholars of inequality and higher education and student affairs professionals." * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisFor all the talk about a new postracial America, the fundamental realities of American racismand the problems facing black political movementshave not changed. Michael C. Dawson lays out a nuanced analysis of the persistence of racial inequality and structural disadvantages, and the ways that whites and blacks continue to see the same problemsthe disastrous response to Katrina being a prime examplethrough completely different, race-inflected lenses. In fact, argues Dawson, the new era heralded by Barack Obama's election is more racially complicated, as the widening class gap among African Americans and the hot-button issue of immigration have the potential to create new fissures for conservative and race-based exploitation. Through a thoughtful analysis of the rise of the Tea Party and the largely successful blackening of President Obama, Dawson ultimately argues that black politics remains weakand that achieving the dream of racial and economic equality will require the sort of coalition-building and reaching across racial divides that have always marked successful political movements. Polemical but astute, passionate but pragmatic, Not in Our Lifetimes forces us to rethink easy assumptions about racial progressand begin the hard work of creating real, lasting change.

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Book SynopsisIn the twelfth century, the Catholic Church attempted a thoroughgoing reform of marriage and sexual behavior aimed at eradicating sexual desire from Christian lives. This book illuminates the birth of a cultural movement that managed to regulate selfish desire and render it innocent - or innocent enough.Trade Review"Let the debates begin! Drawing on an astonishing panoply of sources, from European courtly and troubadour literature to Heian Japanese poetry, from canon law to Puri temple dancing, William M. Reddy's important new book challenges our basic assumptions about eroticism, heroism, the nature of marriages, and the legacy of the Middle Ages in modern culture. Reading this impressive study will leave you a different person." (Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University Chicago)"

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Book SynopsisA study of moral education in American universities that examines the consequences of the 19th-century debates over the purpose and pursuit of higher education, and the modernization efforts of the academic reformers of that era.

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Book SynopsisThis volume seeks to go far beyond specialized debates about the alleged superiority of Western traditions. The culmination of Sahlins's ethnohistorical research on Hawaii, is a reaffirmation for understanding difference.

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Book SynopsisExamines the history of political and intellectual life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bengal to show how the concept can take on a life of its own in different contexts. This interdisciplinary study is suitable for historians and anthropologists, as well as scholars of South Asia and colonialism.Trade Review"This is an innovative work of exceptional intellectual quality - a sophisticated study of a significant but analytically intractable subject in Bengali intellectual history. Sartori's approach is methodologically complex, and he combines this with a rich reading of a great deal of Bengali material." - Sudipta Kaviraj, Columbia University"

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Book SynopsisDrawing on memoirs, private correspondences and other sources, this book examines the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Despite rapid recovery and redevelopment, the author describes the social/political conflict and division that followed the fire.

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Book SynopsisThe United States has long been defined by its religious diversity and recurrent public debates over the religious and political values that define it. In Accidental Pluralism, Evan Haefeli argues that America did not begin as a religiously diverse and tolerant society. It became so only because England's religious unity collapsed just as America was being colonized. By tying the emergence of American religious toleration to global events, Haefeli creates a true transnationalist history that links developing American realities to political and social conflicts and resolutions in Europe, showing how the relationships among states, churches, and publics were contested from the beginning of the colonial era and produced a society that no one had anticipated. Accidental Pluralism is an ambitious and comprehensive new account of the origins of American religious life that compels us to refine our narratives about what came to be seen as American values and their distinct relationship to religion and politics.Trade Review"An impressive, important, powerful, and sweeping book that few scholars could have written." * Journal of Early American History *"Accidental Pluralism challenges the popular notion that puritans saw America as a refuge. . . . Haefeli offers a new explanation of how religious pluralism worked its way into English colonies in North America and the Caribbean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." * Australasian Journal of American Studies *"Accidental Pluralism is brimming with fascinating details about more than a century and a half of English, Scottish, and Irish colonial enterprises, arguably more of them stillborn than successful. And he does a consistently effective job situating these projects with the contentious politics of early modern Britain. The effect is often kaleidoscopic, as patterns of common religious policies and imperatives appear among the various locales for a moment before dissipating into difference and fragmentation." * H-Early America *"[A] rich and ranging study. . . . Accidental Pluralism is a well-written and useful book that grapples with the common religious and political dynamic underlying the disparate efforts of early modern British imperialism. It will be of real value to students and scholars alike." * H-Net *"Origin stories of the United States often highlight religious freedom as a foundational pillar of the earliest English settlers. But Haefeli tells a more complex story in Accidental Pluralism. In this ambitious contribution to the origins of American religious tolerance, Haefeli argues that religious diversity was rarely the hoped-for goal of English expansion in the Atlantic. Rather, toleration arose of necessity from the collapse of political control over the English state church in the highly contested landscape of early modern religious conflict." * New Books Network *“An important study.” * Pennsylvania Literary Journal *“An eye-opening narrative of the many versions of church-and-state attempted or imagined during the great age of British colonization in the Caribbean and North America—a narrative uprooting the assumption that a straight line runs from those attempts to post-1789 schemes to separate church and state. Accidental Pluralism will surprise and probably enchant most students of early American history.” * David D. Hall, author of A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England *“Accidental Pluralism is an outstanding piece of research, encyclopedic in scope. It has a unique and important point of view that needs to be taken seriously by all scholars of early American religion, of toleration and religious liberty, and of the early English empire in general.” * Ned Landsman, author of Crossroads of Empire: The Middle Colonies in the British Atlantic *“A sweeping, grand narrative, which exemplifies Atlantic history at its best. Haefeli chronicles the halting, often unintended, spread of spiritual diversity throughout the English-speaking colonies, and in the process delivers what is in many ways a new, overarching religious history of the early British empire.” * David Como, author of Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War *"Perhaps of most value, is that Haefeli’s broadening the narrative’s perspective without ignoring or dismissing local circumstances, has laid a new path through an often overwhelmingly complex historiography that scholars of this era should find useful." * Journal of Church and State *Table of ContentsIntroductionPart 1: Tudor-Stuart Foundations, 1497–ca. 1607 1. Colonization: Religion, Expansion, Guiana, and Slavery 2. Conformity: Religious Change, Obedience, and Virginia 3. Jurisdiction: Ireland, Scotland, and the Limits of Authority 4. Dissent: English Papists, Puritans, and OthersPart 2: Jacobean Balance, ca. 1607–1625 5. Balance: Virginia, Bermuda, Newfoundland, ca. 1607–1618 6. Polarization: Plymouth, Avalon, Nova Scotia, New England, 1618–1625Part 3: Caroline Transformation, 1625–1638 7. Favorites: Saint Christopher, Barbados, Maryland, 1624–1632 8. Puritans: New England, Providence Island, the Leewards, 1629–1638 9. Catholics: Montserrat, New Albion, Maryland, 1632–1638Part 4: Civil Wars, 1638–1649 10. Fragmentation: Rhode Island, Madras, Trinidad, 1638–1643 11. Toleration: New England, Bermuda, Madagascar, 1643–1646 12. Revolution: New England, the Bahamas, Barbados, the Leewards, 1647–1649Part 5: Commonwealth, 1649–1660 13. Republic: New England, the Caribbean, Acadia, 1649–1654 14. Empire: Surinam, Barbados, Jamaica, Dunkirk, 1654–1660 Conclusion Acknowledgments Abbreviations Note on Transcriptions, Dates, Sources, and Terminology Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn this text, Stuart Sherman argues that innovations in prose emerged simultaneously with the 17th-century revolution in clock technology, enabling authors to recount the new kind of time by which England was learning to live and work.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Before Nature’s formidable erudition will fascinate cuneiformists....For noncuneiformists, the book’s most compelling parts will be its discussions of western civilization’s philosophical attempts to define 'nature', postdating the cuneiform world—from Aristotle to Einstein and his successors." * Science *“Rochberg examines knowledge about the non-human world embodied in Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts. This volume is concrete, detailed, and scholarly in descriptions of how these texts treat observations, regularities, and explanations; the author also teases out an enormous range of implications for the history and philosophy of science. The contrast between the ways in which these texts describe and conceptualize knowledge of the world highlights the manner in which more familiar modern Western concepts of science and knowledge are cultural constructs rather than necessary or inevitable. Precise and clear writing eases an intrinsically challenging work that calls presuppositions into question and raises subtle but consequential distinctions. Scholarly footnotes and a wide-ranging bibliography will facilitate further work, and no doubt some revisions of the author's conclusions. This work will stand as a fundamental reference in any good library of history, philosophy, or cultural studies. Recommended.” * Choice *"A significant addition to current conversations on scribal knowledge and intellectual traditions in the ancient Near East. . . . Before Nature is a must‐read for scholars of the ancient Near East and the Classical world, as well as historians of science and philosophy." * The Historian *"Positing the absence of a Mesopotamian concept of 'nature' as a fundamental discontinuity between Mesopotamian and later Western approaches to the phenomenal world, Rochberg offers a compelling case that they nonetheless display sufficient kinship to grant—indeed, necessitate—a place for cuneiform knowledge in the history of science. . . . Rochberg’s formidable command of ancient sources and modern theoretical literature yields convincing arguments for specific continuities and discontinuities, shedding new light on the conceptual frameworks of Mesopotamian scholarship. . . . Before Nature is at once an innovative analysis of the intellectual output of a specific culture and a thought-provoking take on a perennial question: How can we approach the knowledge traditions of societies that conceive of the world in a fundamentally different way from ourselves? . . . Important reading not only for specialists in ancient scholarship but for all intellectual historians." * Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society *"Rochberg weaves together primary sources from the ancient Near East and classical world alongside concepts and themes from a wide array of modern disciplines—from Assyriology, Classics, and the history and philosophy of science to anthropology, sociology, and economics—creating a dense network of authors and ideas that help to illuminate her many arguments. . . . Before Nature is a very important work that re-conceptualizes science in ancient Mesopotamia. This monograph is a major contribution to both Assyriology and the history and philosophy of science, and will certainly become a central work to those interested in the intersection of these disciplines." * Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies *"Rochberg is a leading figure in the study of Mesopotamian science. . . . Before Nature is her boldest attempt to characterize how the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians thought about their world. Her book is an erudite meditation on what understanding the world might have meant to Mesopotamian scholars. . . . A thoughtful and detailed overview of this world, and the ways in which cuneiform scholars systematized and understood the disparate phenomena they found there." * Inference: International Review of Science *“The naturalness of the concept of nature has recently been challenged by work in social anthropology, philosophy, cognitive science, and history. In this brilliant new book Rochberg brings to bear her unparalleled scholarship and analytic skills to examine what light the ancient Mesopotamians can throw on this fundamental issue. They were arguably the first people we know to undertake the systematic observation, prediction, and explanation of a whole range of phenomena, especially but not exclusively in the heavens. But they did not have ‘nature’ as their target since they had no such concept. So the aims they set themselves, the methods they used, and the assumptions they made about the world they were investigating are crucial to our understanding of the earliest endeavors to engage in what we can recognize as scientific research.” * Geoffrey Lloyd, Needham Research Institute *“Rochberg makes a forceful, erudite, eloquent, and persuasive case that nature was not conceived as a discrete entity in Mesopotamia and that Mesopotamian scientific practices can only be properly understood and accorded their rightful place in the history of science when it is recognized that these practices were not informed by the goal of understanding nature and how it functions. Her command of the pertinent primary and secondary literature relating to Mesopotamian science is truly impressive and is one of the many strengths of the book. The author navigates effortlessly the most recent scholarship in the history of science, anthropology, and many other disciplines in the humanities in which the topics covered in the book have been treated from different perspectives. Before Nature is the only work to examine systematically and comprehensively the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of the whole of Mesopotamian science from such a remarkable analytic and historical perspective. For this and many other reasons, not the least of which is the depth, breadth, and erudition that informs every page of the study, this book will certainly become the stand-alone reference point for this topic for many decades to come.” * Paul Delnero, Johns Hopkins University *“Before Nature is a challenging book in the best sense: it invites readers to rethink their most basic categories—including nature itself—through the lens of ancient Near Eastern conceptions of order and practices of observation, interpretation, and prediction. The evidence for an alternative form of knowledge is presented with rigor and imagination, and the result is an enlarged understanding of order, without nature or causes. Before Nature should be read by all historians of science, regardless of their specialties.” * Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science *"This book is an extremely important landmark for the understanding of Mesopotamian thought and the history of science in Antiquity. . ." * Cadmo: Journal for Ancient History (Translated from Portuguese) *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Ancient Near East, Science, and NaturePart I. Historiography Chapter One. Science and Nature Chapter Two. Old Ideas about Myth and SciencePart II. Cuneiform Knowledge and Its Interpretive Framework Chapter Three. On Knowledge among Cuneiform Scholars Chapter Four. A Cuneiform Modality of OrderPart III. Rationality, Analogy, and Law Chapter Five. The Babylonians and the Rational Chapter Six. Causality and World OrderPart IV. The Cuneiform World of Observation, Prediction, and Explanation Chapter Seven. Observation of Astral Phenomena Chapter Eight. Prediction and Explanation in Cuneiform Scholarship ConclusionAcknowledgments Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited nationwide protests and brought widespread attention police brutality and institutional racism. But Ferguson was no aberration. As Colin Gordon shows in this urgent and timely book, the events in Ferguson exposed not only the deep racism of the local police department but also the ways in which decades of public policy effectively segregated people and curtailed citizenship not just in Ferguson but across the St. Louis suburbs. Citizen Brown uncovers half a century of private practices and public policies that resulted in bitter inequality and sustained segregation in Ferguson and beyond. Gordon shows how municipal and school district boundaries were pointedly drawn to contain or exclude African Americans and how local policies and servicesespecially policing, education, and urban renewalwere weaponized to maintain civic separation. He also makes it clear that the outcry that arose in Ferguson was no impulsive outburst but rather an explosion of pent-up rage against long-standing systems of segregation and inequalityof which a police force that viewed citizens not as subjects to serve and protect but as sources of revenue was only the most immediate example. Worse, Citizen Brown illustrates the fact that though the greater St. Louis area provides some extraordinarily clear examples of fraught racial dynamics, in this it is hardly alone among American cities and regions. Interactive maps and other companion resources toCitizen Brownare available at thebook website.Trade Review“Citizen Brown is an important contribution to the literatures on segregation, suburbanization, and local politics. Gordon creates a compelling and well-documented account of the ways in which local governments first refuse to provide services to certain neighborhoods and then use that lack of services as evidence of blight and grounds for slum clearance. He then offers an excellent, structural explanation for Michael Brown’s murder that is linked to this same connection between public services and local policy.” * Jessica Trounstine, author of Segregation by Design *“Citizen Brown arrives at a propitious moment, when many Americans are still trying to make sense of how and why one of the most explosive incidents in American race relations—the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—occurred not in a center city, where so many of the nation’s best-known racial dramas have played out over the last fifty years, but in a suburb. What Gordon accomplishes here is a much needed, much deeper understanding of what happened there, even when Ferguson isn’t front and center. Citizen Brown is a pioneering foray into a larger, more complicated consideration of the recent history of race relations in American suburbs.” * Mark Krasovic, author of The Newark Frontier *"This innovative study is informed by the deep understanding of legal processes and familiarity with St. Louis’s unique geography that Gordon showed in his previous book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (2008). Citizen Brown also benefits from being grounded in political theory about citizenship and its many meanings." * Missouri Historical Review *Table of ContentsList of Maps and Figures Introduction One / Fragmenting Citizenship: Municipal Incorporation and Annexation Two / Segregating Citizenship: Schools, Safety, and Sewers Three / Bulldozing Citizenship: Renewal, Redevelopment, and Relocation Four / Arresting Citizenship: Segregation, Austerity, and Predatory Policing ConclusionAcknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn Guinea's capital city of Conakry, dance is everywhere. Most neighborhoods boast at least one dance troupe, and members of those troupes animate the city's major rites of passage and social events. In Infinite Repertoire, Adrienne Cohen shows how dance became such a prominenteven infrastructuralfeature of city life in Guinea, and tells a surprising story of the rise of creative practice under a political regime known for its authoritarianism and violent excesses. Guinea's socialist state, which was in power from 1958 to 1984, used staged African dance or ballet strategically as a political tool, in part by tapping into indigenous conceptualizations of artisans as powerful figures capable of transforming the social fabric through their manipulation of vital energy. Far from dying with the socialist revolution, Guinean ballet continued to thrive in Conakry after economic liberalization in the 1980s, with its connection to transformative power retrofitted for a market economy and a rapiTrade Review"[Infinite Repertoire] is a nuanced and meticulously researched account of the historical and the contemporary significance of the Guinean 'ballet'... Cohen advances a solid argument about the significance of the performative arts and the need to study political history in the ways in which it inscribes itself, and is transformed through bodily practices beyond the spoken and written word." * Anthropos *“Infinite Repertoire is a brilliant historical and ethnographic exploration of how aesthetics shape power and how politics are embodied. Ultimately a meditation on time, it argues that the contingencies of performances allow artists to recall the past while creating new narratives for potential futures. This book lyrically examines the interplay among creative improvisation, affective remembering, and material-semiotic order. Cohen shows how performers take account of their changing contexts to constantly remake meaningful and powerful signs.” -- Jesse Weaver Shipley, Dartmouth College “Cohen examines the many informal dance troupes scattered across the urban landscape in Guinea today. In lively prose, Cohen shows how dance in Guinea is a mode of economic advancement as well as cultural performance, a political commentary on the state of things, and, finally, a way of making the world.” -- Brian Larkin, Barnard College, Columbia University“Guinea’s renown for spearheading ‘African ballet’ produced legions of dancers who today artfully combine semiotic resources from both the socialist past and neoliberal present. Infinite Repertoire offers a viscerally kinetic ethnography of the transformative power of dance to mobilize affect and imbue citizen-state relations with a vitality it would otherwise lack. Drawing on her extensive engagement with and participation in Conakry’s dance scene, Cohen crafts a brilliant analysis of postsocialist performativity that sets a new bar for parsing the relationship between aesthetics and politics.” -- Kelly M. Askew, University of MichiganTable of ContentsNotes on Orthography and Transcription Preface: Name-Finding Invitation: City of DancePart I: Aesthetic Politics, Magical Resources 1. Why Authority Needs Magic 2. Privatizing Ballet 3. The Discipline of Becoming: Ballet’s PedagogyPart II: Delicious Inventions 4. Female Strong Men and the Future of Resemblance 5. Core Steps and Passport Moves: How to Inherit a Repertoire 6. When Big Is Not Big Enough: On Excess in Guinean Sabar Epilogue: Embodied Infrastructure and Generative Imperfection Acknowledgments Addendum: Artists in the Diaspora Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisThe Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Haymarket bombing of 1886, and the making and unmaking of the model town of Pullman are remarkable events. This book explores the imaginative dimensions of these events and traces the evolution of interconnected beliefs and actions that increasingly linked city, disorder, and social reality in minds of Americans.Trade Review"Cultural history at its finest....Smith creates a sophisticated account of changing visions of urban America." - Robin F. Bachin, Journal of Interdisciplinary History "This deeply researched, subtle, and complex book seeks to comprehend the significance of three events of signal importance in the development of the American urban landscape." - Douglas Greenberg, Chicago Tribune "What ultimately distinguishes this book is the coherence, grace, and clarity of Smith's interpretations and the beauty of his writing." - John J. Pauly, Journal of American History"

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Book SynopsisEarly childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students' fascination to create unique learning opportunities. Some teachers engage with their students' ideas in ways that make learning collaborative--but not all students have access to these kinds of learning environments. In Segregation by Experience, the authors filmed and studied a a first-grade classroom led by a Black immigrant teacher who encouraged her diverse group of students to exercise their agency. When the researchers showed the film to other schools, everyone struggled. Educators admired the teacher but didn't think her practices would work with their own Black and brown students. Parents of colormany of them immigrantsliked many of the practices, but worried that they would compromise their children. And the young children who viewed the film thought that the kids in the film were terrible, loud, and badly behaved; they told the authors that learning was Trade Review“This book delivers powerful and richly textured evidence of the racialization of children’s opportunities for enacting agency within their own learning. It uncovers the ‘segregation by experience’ that is normalized for young children of color and unapologetically confronts these enduring inequities. Incisively challenging and theoretically persuasive, this book will inspire and motivate a reconceptualization of practices in the early grades." -- Norma Gonzalez, University of Arizona"A brilliant, timely demonstration of the power of early childhood classrooms to perpetuate class and race—or to open to children learning through respect for their agency. Eye-opening!” -- Barbara Rogoff, University of California-Santa Cruz"This book offers rich ethnographic insights into Black and brown children’s agentic activity in a project-based classroom, both from direct observation and from seeing how their activities are viewed by teachers, parents, and other children. It raises provocative questions for teachers who want to challenge limiting racist ideologies and engage in culturally-respectful, transformative pedagogies that cultivate creativity." -- Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, author of Mindful Ethnography: Mind, Heart and Activity for Transformative Social Research

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Book SynopsisEarly childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students' fascination to create unique learning opportunities. Some teachers engage with their students' ideas in ways that make learning collaborative--but not all students have access to these kinds of learning environments. In Segregation by Experience, the authors filmed and studied a a first-grade classroom led by a Black immigrant teacher who encouraged her diverse group of students to exercise their agency. When the researchers showed the film to other schools, everyone struggled. Educators admired the teacher but didn't think her practices would work with their own Black and brown students. Parents of colormany of them immigrantsliked many of the practices, but worried that they would compromise their children. And the young children who viewed the film thought that the kids in the film were terrible, loud, and badly behaved; they told the authors that learning was Trade Review“This book delivers powerful and richly textured evidence of the racialization of children’s opportunities for enacting agency within their own learning. It uncovers the ‘segregation by experience’ that is normalized for young children of color and unapologetically confronts these enduring inequities. Incisively challenging and theoretically persuasive, this book will inspire and motivate a reconceptualization of practices in the early grades." -- Norma Gonzalez, University of Arizona"A brilliant, timely demonstration of the power of early childhood classrooms to perpetuate class and race—or to open to children learning through respect for their agency. Eye-opening!” -- Barbara Rogoff, University of California-Santa Cruz"This book offers rich ethnographic insights into Black and brown children’s agentic activity in a project-based classroom, both from direct observation and from seeing how their activities are viewed by teachers, parents, and other children. It raises provocative questions for teachers who want to challenge limiting racist ideologies and engage in culturally-respectful, transformative pedagogies that cultivate creativity." -- Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, author of Mindful Ethnography: Mind, Heart and Activity for Transformative Social Research

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Book SynopsisIn an era marked by atrocities perpetrated on a grand scale, the tragedy of the comfort women - mostly Korean women forced into prostitution by Japanese army - endures as one of the darkest events of World War II. This study reveals that the forces of Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy together determined the fate of Korean comfort women.Trade Review"A courageous, judicious, and well-written book that refuses to yield to knee-jerk responses or politically correct narratives, but rather insists on setting the comfort women within broader historical and cultural contexts. Sympathetic and sensitive, C. Sarah Soh nevertheless challenges both feminist and ethnic nationalist paradigms in an astonishing display of objectivity." - Gail Lee Bernstein, author of Isami's House: Three Centuries of a Japanese Family"

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Book SynopsisA heavily illustrated history of two centuries of male beauty in British culture. Spanning the decades from the rise of photography to the age of the selfie, this book traces the complex visual and consumer cultures that shaped masculine beauty in Britain, examining the realms of advertising, health, pornography, psychology, sport, and celebrity culture. Paul R. Deslandes chronicles the shifting standards of male beauty in British culturefrom the rising cult of the athlete to changing views on hairlessnesswhile connecting discussions of youth, fitness, and beauty to growing concerns about race, empire, and degeneracy. From earlier beauty show contestants and youth-obsessed artists, the book moves through the decades into considerations of disfigured soldiers, physique models, body-conscious gay men, and celebrities such as David Beckham and David Gandy who populate the worlds of television and social media. Deslandes calls on historians to take beauty and gendered aesthetics seriTrade Review"The American historian Deslandes has identified ‘a distinctively British culture of male beauty’ that stretches back two centuries, and he explores this in his wide-ranging and well-illustrated book. . . . both welcome and genuinely illuminating." * Literary Review *"[The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain] is a straightforward history of the way images of male beauty were promulgated in England from the early 1800s to the present, and its strength comes primarily from the photographs, reproductions of advertisements, cartoons from Punch, and other memorabilia Deslandes has been studying and collecting over the years. Above all, it's the photographs. The pictures here really are worth a thousand words." * Gay and Lesbian Review *"In this illustrated volume, historian Deslandes traces the history of two centuries of male beauty in British culture, unpacking high and popular culture's influence on male beauty standards. The book moves across different male figures from disfigured soldiers, physique models, gay men, and celebrities like David Beckham, and explore the connection between beauty, race, youth, empire and degeneration." * DNA Magazine *"This is a thoroughly researched, clearly written study of how the male visage and the male body has been promoted and received by straight, queer, male, and female eyes over two centuries, with special attention to grooming. Bolstering his thesis with 105 well-chosen figures and 16 color plates, Deslandes contributes a uniquely valuable interpretation of imperial, racial,consumerist, and sexual themes in modern British culture. He examines the creation and public evolution of British male identity and its 20th-century centering in celebrity culture, paying special attention to Rupert Brooke and David Beckham. The author’s discovery and use of previously unknown historical materials is amazing and surprising. With such new and instructive material, this volume deserves the notice of all modern cultural historians. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *"Meticulously researched and richly illustrated. . . [this] book does an admirable job of shedding light on the rich and varied visual culture that since the nineteenth century has had the beautiful male face and body at its center—hairstyles, clothes, physiques, and their meanings may have changed, but beauty, it seems, remained something to be displayed, consumed, collected, and judged, as well as admired." * American Historical Review *"This engaging, readable book opens up a rich field of inquiry that will hopefully feed into a revitalized, more expansive approach to masculinity studies in modern British history." * Cultural and Social History *“With a keen eye toward race, gender, and sexuality, Deslandes takes us on a journey across intellectual and health cultures, modes of representation, and the emergence of modern selfhood to chronicle male beauty in Britain across two centuries. In this meticulously researched and richly illustrated book, Deslandes not only chronicles beauty, he has produced it. This is, simply, a gorgeous book.” -- Sharrona Pearl, author of Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other“A wonderful and much-anticipated book. Deslandes draws on a wealth of materials, many of which will be new even to expert readers. Taking on the concept of beauty in relationship to masculinity, and doing so over an impressively long period, Deslandes reveals how beauty was central to fashioning the modern self and that British culture was particularly preoccupied with masculine forms of attractiveness.” -- Nadja Durbach, author of Many Mouths: The Politics of Food in Britain from the Workhouse to the Welfare State“Deslandes skillfully unveils the aesthetic history of British masculinity that has been hiding, as it were, in plain sight. He dispels the common myth that beauty is a historically feminine quality, and vividly demonstrates how ideals of male attractiveness have long mattered in shaping values, identity, sexuality, and social status.” -- Christopher R. Oldstone-Moore, author of Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair“The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain is an extraordinary work of archival recovery and an important intervention across the histories of masculinities and sexualities, bodies and subjectivities, and mass culture and consumerism in Britain and beyond. Working at the cutting edge of recent work in histories of masculinity, Deslandes insists that we understand masculinity as an aesthetic category as much as a question of experience, culture, or performance. In making this case, he draws upon an astonishing and compelling array of print and material culture, ephemera, and personal testimonies. His stories of hairdressers and male models, pornographers, and ordinary British men will delight, challenge, and often surprise readers.” -- Matt Houlbrook, author of Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman CrookTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction Part One Setting the Stage: The Foundations of Modern Male Beauty Chapter 1 Physiognomists and Photographers Chapter 2 Beauty Experts and Hairdressing Entrepreneurs Chapter 3 Artists, Athletes, and Celebrities Chapter 4 Poets, Soldiers, and Monuments Part Two Men on Display in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries Chapter 5 Brylcreem Men, Cinema Idols, and Uniforms Chapter 6 Teenagers, Bodybuilders, and Models Chapter 7 Youthful Rebels, Gender-Benders, and Gay Men Chapter 8 Insecure Men, Metrosexuals, and Spornosexuals Epilogue Acknowledgments Archival Collections Consulted Notes Index

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Book SynopsisFor one week in late July of 1877, America shook with anger and fear as a variety of urban residents, mostly working class, attacked railroad property in dozens of towns and cities. The Great Strike of 1877 was one of the largest and most violent urban uprisings in American history. Whereas most historians treat the event solely as a massive labor strike that targeted the railroads, David O. Stowell examines America's predicament more broadly to uncover the roots of this rebellion. He studies the urban origins of the Strike in three upstate New York citiesBuffalo, Albany, and Syracuse. He finds that locomotives rumbled through crowded urban spaces, sending panicked horses and their wagons careening through streets. Hundreds of people were killed and injured with appalling regularity. The trains also disrupted street traffic and obstructed certain forms of commerce. For these reasons, Stowell argues, The Great Strike was not simply an uprising fueled by disgruntled workers. Rather, it

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[Infinite Repertoire] is a nuanced and meticulously researched account of the historical and the contemporary significance of the Guinean 'ballet'... Cohen advances a solid argument about the significance of the performative arts and the need to study political history in the ways in which it inscribes itself, and is transformed through bodily practices beyond the spoken and written word." * Anthropos *“Infinite Repertoire is a brilliant historical and ethnographic exploration of how aesthetics shape power and how politics are embodied. Ultimately a meditation on time, it argues that the contingencies of performances allow artists to recall the past while creating new narratives for potential futures. This book lyrically examines the interplay among creative improvisation, affective remembering, and material-semiotic order. Cohen shows how performers take account of their changing contexts to constantly remake meaningful and powerful signs.” -- Jesse Weaver Shipley, Dartmouth College “Cohen examines the many informal dance troupes scattered across the urban landscape in Guinea today. In lively prose, Cohen shows how dance in Guinea is a mode of economic advancement as well as cultural performance, a political commentary on the state of things, and, finally, a way of making the world.” -- Brian Larkin, Barnard College, Columbia University“Guinea’s renown for spearheading ‘African ballet’ produced legions of dancers who today artfully combine semiotic resources from both the socialist past and neoliberal present. Infinite Repertoire offers a viscerally kinetic ethnography of the transformative power of dance to mobilize affect and imbue citizen-state relations with a vitality it would otherwise lack. Drawing on her extensive engagement with and participation in Conakry’s dance scene, Cohen crafts a brilliant analysis of postsocialist performativity that sets a new bar for parsing the relationship between aesthetics and politics.” -- Kelly M. Askew, University of MichiganTable of ContentsNotes on Orthography and Transcription Preface: Name-Finding Invitation: City of DancePart I: Aesthetic Politics, Magical Resources 1. Why Authority Needs Magic 2. Privatizing Ballet 3. The Discipline of Becoming: Ballet’s PedagogyPart II: Delicious Inventions 4. Female Strong Men and the Future of Resemblance 5. Core Steps and Passport Moves: How to Inherit a Repertoire 6. When Big Is Not Big Enough: On Excess in Guinean Sabar Epilogue: Embodied Infrastructure and Generative Imperfection Acknowledgments Addendum: Artists in the Diaspora Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisThis text is a history of how the obsession with homosexuality is deeply tied to changing American anxieties about social and sexual order in the modern age. It argues that homosexuality served as a marker of the abnormal against which contradictory concepts of the normal were defined.

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Book SynopsisA sobering excavation of how deeply nineteenth-century American banks were entwined with the institution of slavery. It's now widely understood that the fullest expression of nineteenth-century American capitalism was found in the structures of chattel slavery. It's also understood that almost every other institution and aspect of life then was at least entangled withand often profited fromslavery's perpetuation. Yet as Sharon Ann Murphy shows in her powerful and unprecedented book, the centrality of enslaved labor to banking in the antebellum United States is far greater than previously thought. Banking on Slavery sheds light on precisely how the financial relationships between banks and slaveholders worked across the nineteenth-century South. Murphy argues that the rapid spread of slavery in the South during the 1820s and '30s depended significantly upon southern banks' willingness to financialize enslaved lives, with the use of enslaved individuals as loan collateral proving cTrade Review"Murphy’s meticulously researched and clearly written study examines the role of banks in what she terms the concomitant 'financialization' of human property and the southwestern expansion of plantation economies in the mid-19th-century South. . . . The lives of enslaved persons caught in the web of the capitalist marketplace haunt the pages of Murphy's excellent work." * Choice *“A tremendous accomplishment. We cannot fully understand the history of banking in the United States without reckoning with Murphy’s important findings. Banking on Slavery sets the stage for new understandings of the history of capitalism and its relation to slavery.” * Claire Priest, author of Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America *"In a pathbreaking account of the way Americans financed slavery, Murphy connects the vast sweep of that tragedy to the banking that made it possible. Detail by dollar detail, she exposes the structures that transmuted enslaved people into assets and collateral, building white wealth all the while. A powerful--and chilling--book." -- Christine Desan, author of Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism"More surprising has been the lack of historical analysis of the banking firms and financial practices that underwrote the expansion of slavery in the antebellum United States. In her groundbreaking new book, Banking on Slavery, historian Sharon Ann Murphy corrects this glaring omission." * Sean Vanatta, Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction: Banking in the Nation’s Largest Slave Market Part I: Financing Southwestern Expansion through the 1810s 1 The Limits of Early Bank Financing of Slavery 2 Adapting Slave Financing to the Needs of the Frontier South during the Nation’s First Boom and Bust Part II: Financing an Empire of Slavery in the 1820s and 1830s 3 Old South Banks and Frontier Finance 4 Pushing Financial Boundaries with Traditional Banks 5 Reimagining Banking for a Slave Economy Part III: The Collateral Damage of the Panics of 1837 and 1839 6 Foreclosing (or Not) on Delinquent Slaveholders 7 Escaping Debt: Bankruptcy, Fraud, and Going to Texas 8 When Banks Fail 9 From Commercial Banking to Private Finance Epilogue: Banks, Debt, Emancipation, Reparations, and Memory Acknowledgments Abbreviations Notes Index

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Book SynopsisProviding the definitive history of pawnbroking in the United States from the nation's founding through the Great Depression, this title demonstrates that the pawnshop was essential to the rise of capitalism.Trade Review"A remarkable and remarkably original book. With her keen ear for the stories and anecdotes that make the milleus of the working poor come alive, Wendy A. Woloson captures the vivid and untold history of pawnbroking from the late eighteenth century through the Great Depression, and writes with panache on the many changes this period heralded." (Ann Fabian, Rutgers University)"

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Book SynopsisThis text offers a systematic social history of a major American city undergoing industrialization. It examines Detroit's evolution between 1880 and 1920 and discovers the way in which ethnic and class elations profoundly altered its urban scene.

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Book SynopsisAn unflinching look at how eugenics and population control continued to inform family planning in 1970s Canada.Trade Review"Challenging Choices moves the history of the abortion debates of the 1970s along in important ways -- both by considering reproductive justice as the critical paradigm and by foregrounding racialization, socioeconomic status, place, age, and gender in new ways." Mary-Ellen Kelm, Simon Fraser University“Challenging Choices provides a rich and impressively diverse analysis of 1970s reproductive discourses in Canada. Its astutely nuanced interpretations benefit from authors Erika Dyck and Maureen Lux’s expertise in the history of eugenics and Indigenous-government relations, respectively. The book constitutes a welcome contribution to the historiography on eugenics, deinstitutionalization, and disability as well as reproductive and Indigenous rights in Canada.” Spontaneous Generations

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Book SynopsisBased on a close analysis of nearly 2,000 fan letters written to Malcolm Muggeridge after his conversion to Christianity, this book reconstructs the lived religion of ordinary people from a transnational perspective in the 1970s. These letters provide a glimpse into the experiences and concerns of Western Christians after the religious crisis of the 1960s.Trade Review"Through a close reading of Malcolm Muggeridge's fan mail, Searching for God in Britain and Beyond successfully places emotions at the heart of our understanding of the Western religious crisis of the late twentieth century. Reagles offers us fascinating insights into a textual community grappling with questions of identity, betrayal, and secularization." Sam Brewitt-Taylor, University of Oxford, author of Christian Radicalism in the Church of England and the Invention of the British Sixties, 1957–1970"Reagles approach is robust, well informed, and insightful. He has uncovered a rich, illuminating and highly significant tranche of unexamined primary material which sustains this excellent exploration, and offers new perspectives into an arena of enduring controversy." Alana Harris, Kings College London, and author of The Schism of '68: Catholicism, Contraception and Humanae Vitae in Europe, 1945–1975

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Book SynopsisBetween 1917 and 1923, invasion, revolution, war, and grim living conditions claimed unimaginable numbers of Ukrainian lives. Velychenko examines the social background to the political history of revolutionary Ukraine, documenting the country's demographic losses during the Ukrainian and Russian revolutions.Trade Review"Life and Death in Revolutionary Ukraine is the first scholarly attempt, in any language, to systematically tackle the issues of social conditions and violence against civilians in revolutionary Ukraine. This book is a welcome addition to the study of Europe's continuum of upheaval and crisis, which in Eastern Europe continued until 1922–23. It also places the Ukrainian experience in the context of anti-colonial wars for national liberation and, hence, global history." Borislav Chernev, author of Twilight of Empire: The Brest-Litovsk Conference and the Remaking of East-Central Europe, 1917–1918“Anyone who studies violence should read this book.” University of Toronto Quarterly

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Book SynopsisThe 1950s and 1960s were a transformative period in Britain, and an important part of this was how Britons’ lives were changed when they began flying abroad for their holidays. In A World Away Law investigates how something that previously only the rich could afford became available to working-class holidaymakers.Trade Review“In A World Away the post-war clamour for foreign package holidays is revealed through the people, places, and planes that shaped it. Looking beyond the stereotypes, Michael John Law provides welcome new insights into the fabled death of the British seaside holiday and, by judging the package tour on its own terms, asserts its rightful place in Britain’s leisure history.” Kathryn Ferry, author of Seaside 100: A History of the British Seaside in 100 Objects

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Book SynopsisThrough a comparative analysis of medical texts produced in England and France, Lori Jones reveals changing perceptions across four centuries. Using plague tracts to explore how medical and wider social understandings of the plague evolved, this innovative study considers the array of factors that influence how people think about epidemic disease.Trade Review“Patterns of Plague is an innovative, well-crafted and important study in intellectual, cultural, and medical history. Jones's writing is sophisticated and her interpretations original and well-substantiated.” Mary Lindemann, University of Miami

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Book SynopsisDistant Stage examines the neglected histories of Canada-Brazil relations and the role culture played in Canada’s pursuit of an international identity. French-Canadian artists, intellectuals, and diplomats are at the heart of both. Eric Fillion shows how Brazil served as a distant stage where Canadian identity politics and aspirations could play out.Trade Review“The research in Distant Stage is excellent, and the writing is really exceptional; it is a pleasure to be guided through the significance of the interwoven cultural episodes at the heart of this book. This is truly a study of two countries’ relations in the cultural and diplomatic fields, not simply Canada's approach to one country. Nonetheless, it does a great deal to rectify the neglect of Quebec, French Canada, and Catholicism in English scholarship on Canada and the world.” David Webster, Bishop's University and author of Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World

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Book SynopsisIn Enthusiasms and Loyalties Keith Grant draws on a fascinating range of archival sources from Cornwallis Township, Nova Scotia, during the years 1770–1850 to explore a diversity of public feelings, from disaffected Loyalists and unfeeling enthusiasts, as well as passionate patriots and ecstatic revivalists, in the revolutionary and Enlightenment Atlantic.Trade Review“Enthusiasms and Loyalties is an important, engaging study, examining the way that Nova Scotians attempted to deal with the impact of the American Revolution and its aftermath. By concentrating on the role that emotion and sentiment played in that process, Grant gives much needed colour and vibrancy to some well-trodden historiographical landscape.” Todd Webb, Laurentian University and author of Transatlantic Methodists: British Wesleyanism and the Formation of an Evangelical Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec

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Book SynopsisThe Peoples’ War? offers alternative approaches to the history of the Second World War, the changes that it catalyzed, and how it is remembered. The volume challenges the nationally unifying narrative of the war as a “Peoples’ War” and explores the event as a global experience.Trade Review"Each chapter provides a contribution to an understanding of the war beyond long dominant narratives. Moreover, this collection seeks to propel further research into the impact of the war from the same societal-political level of examination that it employs. The Peoples’ War? is intentionally posed as a question, in part, to stimulate additional questions itself and, at this essential function of scholarship, it delivers." *Journal of Military *

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