Social and cultural history Books
Harvard University Press Death by a Thousand Cuts OIP
Book SynopsisIn Beijing in 1904, multiple murderer Wang Weiqin became one of the last to suffer the extreme punishment known as lingchi, called by Western observers “death by a thousand cuts.” This is the first book to explore the history, iconography, and legal contexts of Chinese tortures and executions from the 10th century until lingchi’s abolition in 1905.Trade ReviewAn ambitious, important book that will stimulate wide reflection. The authors explore the most infamous of Chinese tortures, tracing the ways in which the concept of 'death by a thousand cuts' took on a life of its own in European discourse about China, as well as in China's discourse about itself. Not the least of the book's virtues is the way it dismantles hasty judgments and received ideas about Chinese culture, ideas that leak from past to present, from the judicial realm to other areas of human activity. Its interdisciplinary reach and the brio with which it is carried out are remarkable. -- Haun Saussy, author of Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural ChinaThis original and ambitious work reaches out to a wide audience. It aims to explain the general position of 'torture' in the Chinese legal system and the specific roles of the extreme punishment known as lingchi, 'death by slicing,' in Chinese political practice. The authors draw on an impressive range of materials as well as an unusual variety of visual images to situate the practice of lingchi in Chinese history, world history, and Western imaginations. The book is revelatory on Georges Bataille's uncertain role in his famous work presenting Chinese death by slicing amidst European practices. The reconstruction of the history of the lingchi practice itself is nuanced and judicious. -- R. Bin Wong, author of China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European ExperienceIn 1904, a French photographer documented the Chinese practice of lingchi, a form of execution that involved slicing off limbs and pieces of flesh. Europeans recoiled from what appeared to be a gruesome, lingering death, citing it as evidence of a uniquely Oriental ruthlessness. This fascinating study argues, however, that lingchi was not entirely about physical suffering--the victim was typically sedated with opium, and killed early in the process--but about a "loss of somatic integrity," the posthumous shame of having been reduced to body parts. Crimes that merited lingchi ranged from killing a paternal grandparent to, in at least one case, cheating on taxes. Throughout, the authors do their best to downplay the exoticism of their subject, pointing to such Western practices as drawing (disembowelling) and quartering (dismembering): "It is hard to see much distinction in degrees of cruelty." * New Yorker *I highly recommend Death by a Thousand Cuts as a book that offers a broad introduction to a history and a culture by concentrating on a single subject. -- Steve Noyes * Vancouver Sun *The authors present a nuanced picture of state-imposed execution and, without at any time condoning, succeed in their goal of contextualizing lingchi in relation to Western forms of punishment, noting the availability of the death penalty for a variety of relatively trivial offences in 18th-century England, as well as the appalling conditions that prevailed on prison ships that sailed from England to Australia...At a time when the debate about what constitutes acceptable forms of physical punishment, as well as the thorny question of a divergence between Western and Asian concepts of human rights, is so prevalent, this challenging and important work will appeal not solely to Sinologists, but to legal historians and students of visual representation. -- Julian Ward * Times Higher Education Supplement *[This book is] a rude awakening to jolt us from the overused numbness and put us face to face with the origin of the phrase, the torture of lingchi. Because history has been sanitized by countless retellings of television drama and simplified texts, the practice of torture is often misunderstood, even by those of us who thought we knew such things. In this notable book, the authors delve into historical archives to produce documents, photos and analyses that are more nuanced than a Hong Kong movie of torture fest, such as the legendary Chinese Torture Chamber Story. Approached by a Western perspective, the authors debunk the traditional Western notion that ruthless executions were rooted in the Chinese culture. Yet, the details they use are not for the faint of heart. -- Raymond Zhou * China Daily *Foucault's work explicitly informs Death by a Thousand Cuts but the purpose of this new book is different from that of the French philosopher. This fascinating and necessarily appalling study describes how photographs of the executed man were circulated by French soldiers and other westerners in the imperial capital and the images added to others of "oriental despotism." Be warned: this is a close reading of lingchi and its significance, which means it contains plenty of toe-curling descriptions of slicing flesh and gougings. Not for the faint-hearted, it offers an engaging insight into the way China's highest legal punishment came to feed into western notions of imperial China as a cruel society. -- Clifford Coonan * South China Post *This is a learned and educational book. -- Jonathan Mirsky * Literary Review *This elegant and innovatively transnational book is intent on restoring lingchi to the legal, moral, and political context in which it made some kind of sense--this is a history of violence that refuses to take the place of pain and violence in human life as timeless...With judicious analysis, imaginative reconstructions from difficult and sparse sources, and a compelling sense of injustice driving it all, the book is gripping. -- Priya Satia * Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. The Execution of Wang Weiqin 2. The Laws of Punishment in Late-Imperial China 3. The Origins and Legitimacy Problems of Lingchi 4. Lingchi in the Ming Dynasty 5. Tormenting the Dead 6. Chinese Torture in the Western Mind 7. Qing Executions and European Supplices 8. Georges Bataille and the Supplice Chinois 9. Retrospective Notes Bibliography Index
£31.41
Harvard University, Asia Center Gendering Modern Japanese History
Book SynopsisThe sixteen chapters in this volume treat men as well as women, theories of sexuality as well as gender prescriptions, and same-sex as well as heterosexual relations in the period from 1868 to the present. Separately, each chapter examines how Japanese have (en)gendered their ideas, institutions, and society.
£26.96
Harvard University, Asia Center Spectacle and Sacrifice
Book SynopsisThis book describes the ritual world of a group of rural settlements in Shanxi province in pre-1949 North China. The great festivals were their supreme collective achievements, carried out virtually without aid from local officials or educated elites. Newly discovered manuscripts allow Johnson to reconstruct the festivals in unprecedented detail.Trade ReviewMainstream culture has traditionally ignored ordinary Chinese farmers, viewing them as simple, ignorant, and incapable of performing complex cultural activities. The rural festivals displayed by Johnson, however, illustrate a totally contrary picture. The rituals and operas of the temple festivals reveal the rich spiritual and religious activities and achievements of local communities, and the villagers' performances demonstrate their dazzling artistic capability and creativity. Supported by plentiful oral and written materials, Johnson utilizes this long-ignored local knowledge to discover and reveal the scope, depth, variations, and complexity of the local reality. This classic anthropological study of local communities should be a precious addition to the study of traditional Chinese society. -- A. Y. Lee * Choice *
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Fishing Wars and Environmental Change in Late
Book SynopsisThis work explores interactions between society and environment in China's most important marine fishery, the Zhoushan Archipelago off the coast of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, from its nineteenth-century expansion to the exhaustion of the most important fish species in the 1970s.Table of ContentsAbbreviations Introduction 1. Migration, Markets, and Marine Life Under the Late Qing 2. Social Organization and Fishery Regulation, 1800-1911 3. Developing the Ocean: Expansion and Reform, 1904-1929 4. Fishing Wars I: Sino-Japanese Disputes, 1924-1931 5. Fishing Wars II: The Cuttlefish Feud, 1932-1934 6. Fishing Wars III: The Zhejiang-Jiangsu Border Conflict, 1935-1945 Continuities and Discontinuities Chinese Characters Notes Works Cited Index
£32.26
Harvard University Press Family Trees A History of Genealogy in America
Book SynopsisAmericans’ long and restless search for identity through family trees illuminates the story of America itself, according to François Weil, as preoccupation with social standing, racial purity, and national belonging gave way to an embrace of diversity in one’s forebears, pursued through Ancestry.com and advances in DNA testing.Trade ReviewFor a nation…so committed presumably to the rejection of birth and blood, the people of theUnited States throughout their history have devoted an enormous amount of energy, time, and money to genealogy and the search for ancestors. To explain this anomaly—indeed, to explain how the search for ancestors evolved in different forms over four centuries and eventually became a distinctly American mode of genealogy—is the burden of François Weil’s well-researched and readable book, Family Trees. Weil, who is chancellor of the Universities of Paris and professor of history at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, knows America well, but he has sufficient distance to be honest and dispassionate about it. The result is a succinct history of genealogy in a nation that supposedly denies the importance of birth and ancestors. -- Gordon S. Wood * New York Review of Books *[An] excellent, long-overdue survey. -- Maud Newton * Harper’s *[Weil] displays both thoroughness and grounding as he stakes out the contours of his American genealogical culture into four distinct periods, with successive dominant meanings and touchstones… Weil convincingly delineates the fact that origins matter; they fill many needs, from the noble to the nasty. * Kirkus Reviews *Weil considers why America’s present- and future-oriented society with blended cultural values so treasures knowledge of group identities… Clear, fully annotated, subtly analyzed, timely, and nuanced, this book offers both general and academic readers a new view of genealogical research in America in a ‘why they did it’ rather than a ‘how to do it’ presentation. -- Frederick J. Augustyn, Jr. * Library Journal *Fascinating… Like the families it’s meant to chronicle, genealogy itself has changed quite a bit over time, but it remains, as ever, a dynamic and captivating quest. * Publishers Weekly *This elegant social and cultural history of genealogy in America is marked by meticulous research and astute comparisons with Europe as American practices gradually diverged. The central theme of democratization flowing, ebbing, and then flowing once again in the twentieth century is brilliantly realized. -- Michael Kammen, past president of the Organization of American HistoriansAcutely conscious of the irony that a culture which prizes novelty is also preoccupied with genealogy, François Weil’s Family Trees provides a revealing window into four centuries of cultural transformation. A sweeping and eloquent account of how a present-minded, future-facing people look to their personal past to understand who they truly are. -- Steven Mintz, author of Huck’s Raft: A History of American ChildhoodBrilliantly conceived, fresh in insight, and gracefully executed, François Weil’s book offers a rich and entertaining account of the American fascination with lineage and identity. In his hands genealogy provides a rich measure of the changing parameters of nationalism and the accommodation of pluralism. -- Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World HistoryA fascinating exploration of the uniquely American obsession with genealogy, François Weil’s Family Trees is cultural history at its very best—a tour de force. -- Ariela Gross, author of What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America
£32.36
Harvard University Press Deportation Nation
Book SynopsisThis book is a chilling history of communal self-idealization and self-protection. By illuminating the shadowy corners of American history, Kanstroom shows that deportation has long been a legal tool to control immigrants’ lives and is being used with increasing crudeness in a globalized but xenophobic world.Trade ReviewKanstroom's legal and social history of deportation reveals the development of a second system within our immigration politics, one of exclusion and expulsion, in which few if any Constitutional protections exist. Kanstroomshows the connections between the deportation of aliens and other removal practices in American history; the warning out of the poor, native-Americans removal, and fugitive slave law-- and makes a powerful and unsettling argument about the uses and abuses of today's immigration system. -- Mae M. Ngai, Columbia UniversityA brilliant study of a deportation system whose goals now include discretionary social control over millions of legal residents. Kanstroom masterfully marshals historical and contemporary evidence to show how our deportation system came about, and how it continues to subject legal residents to harsh treatment that would be unthinkable if applied to U.S. citizens. Both a devastating critique and a careful scholarly analysis, Deportation Nation should change the way we think about the legal treatment of noncitizens. -- Joseph William Singer, Harvard Law SchoolKanstroomunearths an important story, routinely neglected in our shared understanding of our heritage as a nation of immigrants, and he is a gifted story teller. America needs to heed these lessons as we take up another round of immigration reform. -- David A. Martin, University of VirginiaKanstroom is a committed advocate and a provocatively tendentious historian, not a detached policy analyst. This accounts for both the strengths and the limitations of his admirably accessible, well-written, and usefully endnoted book. It will be valuable to anyone who wants to understand the precursors of today’s broad deportation power, as well as its evolution into an instrument of wide-ranging governmental power over the conduct, status, and insecurities of immigrants hoping to sink roots in the USA. -- Peter H. Schuck * Journal of International Migration and Integration *From the deportation of self-proclaimed anarchist Emma Goldman in 1919, to Attorney General Mitchell Palmer's raids against alleged left-wing subversives in the 1920s, to the use of immigration laws against members of groups involved in organized crime and the Communist Party in later decades, and to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, Deportation Nation weaves a fascinating tale of the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of American immigration law. Kanstroom illustrates the government's selective use of immigration law, especially during periods of war and national emergencies...This is a timely book, and I highly recommend it. -- Bob Beer * Federal Lawyer *This is an ambitious, thought-provoking study. -- Elliott R. Barkan * American Historical Review *An ambitious reframing of the history of U.S. immigration law since colonial times. Making rich use of primary and secondary sources, this important book is both a work of legal history and an analysis of modern doctrine and policy. It examines the evolution of deportation as a system of "post-entry social control" that views noncitizens as "eternal guests" on "eternal probation." Kanstroom contrasts deportation as post-entry social control with a concept of deportation as extended border control that is limited to correcting mistakes in the admission process or enforcing the conditions of admission...Deportation Nation makes an invaluable contribution by bringing us to the brink of these questions about a fundamental aspect of justice in immigration, but leaves some of the answers for another day. -- Hiroshi Motomura * Law and History Review *Table of ContentsPreface 1. Introduction 2. Antecedents Part 1: English Roots, Colonial Controls, and Criminal Transportation Part 2: The Alien and Sedition Acts-A "First Experiment" with Ideological Post-Entry Social Control Deportation Part 3: Indian Removal, African-American Exclusion, Fugitive Slave Laws, and "Colonization" 3. From Chinese Exclusion to Post-Entry Social Control: The Early Formation of the Modern Deportation System 4. The Second Wave: Expansion and Refinement of Modern Deportation Law 5. The Third Wave: The "War on Crime," Internment, Political Deportations, and Mass Mexican Removals, 1930-1964 6. Modern Problems of Deportation Law: Discretion, Jurisdiction Stripping, and Retroactivity, 1965-2005
£23.36
Harvard University Press Someday All This Will Be Yours
Book SynopsisHartog tells the heartbreaking stories of how families fought over the work of caring for the elderly, and its compensation, in a time before pensions, Social Security, and nursing homes filled this gap. As an explosive economy drew the young away from home, we see how the elderly used promises of inheritance to keep children at their side.Trade ReviewIn this gem of a book, Hartog reveals the human drama of growing old and dependent, and the enduring dilemma in mixing love and economic need. -- Martha Minow, Dean, Harvard Law SchoolHartog brilliantly illuminates the central role that law has played in shaping Americans' ideas about getting old. Poignant, funny, and analytically razor-sharp, this is a groundbreaking book. -- Dylan Penningroth, author of The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century SouthWith empathy and captivating style, Hartog, a superb historian, offers a memorable analysis of changing family struggles over inheritance and care. -- Viviana A. Zelizer, author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the EconomyThis is a disturbing book, in the best sense--a transformative book. With unique sensitivity and ingenuity, Hartog tells a profound story about the meaning of inheritance and what one owes and is owed as a member of a family, making brilliant history of seemingly eternal human predicaments. -- Amy Dru Stanley, author of From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave EmancipationA page-turner with Dickensian overtones. -- Fred A Bernstein * New York Times blog *Aside from the history of development in this area of law, the book offers a social and cultural history of families caring for their elder members. This book will be of interest not only to those interested in estate law but also students and researchers of gerontology. -- C. Ross * Choice *
£32.36
Harvard University Press Fugitive Justice Runaways Rescuers and Slavery on
Book SynopsisTells the stories of three of the most dramatic fugitive slave trials of the 1850s, presenting the determination of the fugitives, the radical tactics of their rescuers, the brutal doggedness of the slavehunters, and the tortuous response of the federal courts.Trade ReviewA stirring account of courtroom collisions at the intersection of law, morality and politics. * Kirkus Reviews *An original and compelling account of the fugitive slave question and the antislavery lawyers who pushed the boundaries of advocacy in the name of morally just ends. With his signature style, Lubet reminds us of the strength, but also the limits, of what formal law can do. -- Christopher Alan Bracey, author of Saviors or Sellouts: The Promise and Peril of Black Conservatism, from Booker T. Washington to Condoleezza RiceFugitive Justice is a riveting study of a tragic era in American history when law unmoored from morality and right held sway and the humanity of people treated as property was systematically ignored. Lubet’s brilliant and sensitive work should be read by all who are interested in the development of the American nation. -- Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American FamilyIn this marvelously written and meticulously researched book, Lubet explores the fascinating war-by-proxy over the Fugitive Slave Act, which gave Southerners the right to use hired guns to recapture slaves who had escaped to the North. He brilliantly summons up a time when the last antebellum compromises over slavery were clanking toward their ultimate doom. -- Alex Heard, author of The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow SouthIn the decade before the Civil War, the Fugitive Slave Act radicalized Northerners by placing the law on the side of slave owners seeking to recover their runaways. Lubet’s excellent book skillfully captures the passion of the corrosive courtroom battles that pitted personal conscience against the rule of law and helped persuade North and South that they could no longer dwell together. -- David O. Stewart, author of Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy
£32.36
Harvard University Press Righteous Republic
Book SynopsisWhat India's founders derived from Western political traditions is widely understood. Less well-known is how India's own rich knowledge traditions of 2,500 years influenced these men. Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, showing how five founders turned to classical texts to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood.Trade ReviewAnanya Vajpeyi’s Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India radically advances our understanding of political traditions in a major non-western country. -- Pankaj Mishra * The Guardian *Most historians credit liberal ideas from Britain, absorbed by the Western-oriented Indian elite, with giving birth to modern India. (The Congress Party of Gandhi and Nehru was founded at the suggestion of A.O. Hume, a British civil servant, in 1885.) Few are aware of the extent to which nationalist leaders turned to Indic texts to revive Indians’ sense of collective selfhood, and how extensively these shaped their own political practice and the country’s post-independence social compact. -- Sudha Koul * Wall Street Journal *Ananya Vajpeyi’s Righteous Republic is quite simply the most important interpretation of the evolution of India’s contemporary nationhood since Sunil Khilnani’s The Idea of India, and a useful antidote to the revisionist Imperialism of rising British star-historians like Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson… Fluently written, cogent in argument, studded with penetrating insights, telling aphorisms, with complete mastery of her material, consistently brilliant expression and exposition, this young philosopher-historian takes her definitive place as a commentator and synthesizer of the often varied and contradictory approaches to the idea of India. -- Mani Shankar Aiyar * Financial Express *Ananya Vajpeyi’s Righteous Republic is a unique addition to the discourse around the themes of India’s negotiation with its colonial past and its present political framework… Vajpeyi excels at what she does in the present volume, however, and the book is informed with high standards of intellectual rigour, analytical acuity and—last but certainly not the least—an eminently readable, nearly jargon-free prose. -- Suparna Banerjee * The Hindu *Righteous Republic makes an important contribution to the existing literature and should be read by those who truly want to understand more about the past and present in Indian political thought. This carefully crafted and lucidly written book moves beyond exploring the contemporary essence of Indian thought by looking into a vast array of ideas on democracy, culture, religion, ethnic traditions, nationalist aspirations and identities. It is in all a fine piece of literary scholarship that gives readers an opportunity to engage in sustained and in-depth exploration of a subject that has received scant treatment by scholars. -- Vidhu Verma * The Book Review *Vajpeyi’s quest for the sources of India’s freedom struggle parts ways with traditional historiography on the subject in ways that renders her work unique and groundbreaking… For Vajpeyi, India’s quest for freedom was as much a moral struggle for selfhood as for political freedom… Righteous Republic is a riveting story of five men’s journeys of India’s rich past through their ‘readings’ of texts and artifacts to discover those categories that would flesh out for them the laden ambiguities of ‘swaraj.’ Vajpeyi pulls the reader into uncharted territory, as these five men search and then find what they were looking for not in the dominant western discursive categories that they hadbeen exposed to, but in a pre-modern lexicon… Outstanding scholarship, imbued with modest passion and effortless originality. -- Ashoak Upadhyay * Business Line *[Vajpeyi] weaves the strands of self and sovereignty together to argue that Indian nationalism was a moral project to create a righteous republic distinguished by its ‘solid plinth of moral selfhood and ethical sovereignty,’ without which India would be just another state. -- Kranti Saran * Business Standard *What Vajpeyi’s analysis does so admirably is to deepen our grasp of how the category of the Indian self, which serves as the basis for what is Indian about ‘the people,’ came to be imagined by the makers of modern India. Just as American connotations of terms like ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ are deeply embedded in the American history of slavery, empire, and capitalism, Vajpeyi’s analysis provides us with an approach for grasping the conceptual vocabulary shaped by India’s history of colonialism and nationalism. -- Vivek Bhandari * Democratic World *Ananya Vajpeyi’s Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India is a book that everyone interested in the evolution of the ideas that shaped the modern Indian nation should read. -- Manjula Narayan * Hindustan Times *[Vajpeyi] reads the search for the self through five founders of modern India: Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, and the Tagores, Rabindranath and his nephew Abanindranath… This is a book that must be read, not just for its arguments, which are innovative, and not just for its language, which is evocative, but for its singular achievement in making the familiar unfamiliar, and for demanding the asking of new questions. -- Manu Bhagavan * IBN Live *Righteous Republic is compelling reading about India and its ideological moorings in the making of, during and through the independence movement… Righteous Republic is a book of its own kind, written by a historian; it circumambulates multiple disciplinary terrains: art history, cultural criticism, literary theory, religious studies, and political and cultural history. It also uses poetry, paintings, murals, religious texts and archaeological finds for narrative and analysis. And yet, in covering multiple canvasses in drawing up a complex picture, Vajpeyi does not lose the focus of her research design. A complex subject, dealt with in a multidisciplinary perspective, explained with original and evocative arguments, yet written in lucid and imaginative language, the book is essential reading not only for professional social scientists, but also for anyone interested in comprehending India’s ideological moorings in a fresh perspective. -- Ajay K. Mehra * India International Centre Quarterly *This is a must read for those interested in India’s modern intellectual history. -- Gitanjali Surendran * Indian Express *An engaging intellectual history that helps us better understand 21st-century India. Vajpeyi examines five giants involved in the founding of the republic in 1950—Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and Bhimrao Ambedkar—who all drew inspiration from indigenous traditions as they strove to craft a postcolonial Indian identity. -- Jeff Kingston * Japan Times *In this inspiring and ambitious work, Ananya Vajpeyi charts out an innovative and fresh path to approach the idea of modern India, one that especially shines because of its ingenuity and simplicity… The project is especially unique because there has been no tradition of thinking about the notion of the self, especially in a political sense, in India… Vajpeyi has given us a compelling argument to rethink the political foundations of modern India. Indeed, Vajpeyi’s work convincingly illustrates that India’s precolonial past matters as much as its colonial history. -- Arvind Elangovan * Journal of Asian Studies *Brilliant and extremely engaging… Through a potent combination of close literary reading and excellent sociopolitical and methodological analysis, Vajpeyi puts forward a coherent narrative, which is the story of the formulation of the Indian intellectual self… [A] lucid and original argument. -- Angshukanta Chakraborty * Millennium Post *This is an important book because it takes the discourse on Indian history beyond the realm of politics and sociology and dips into ideas, in particular, the arts. -- Salil Tripathi * Mint *Swaraj: a word pervasive in the Indian philological lexicon, originating from the Sanskrit swa, meaning ‘of the self,’ and rajya—rule. The matter of deciding its true meaning from the combination of its two root verbs should be simple and yet, as Ananya Vajpeyi reveals in her first book on modern India’s political foundations, it all depends on different perceptions of national duty. Vajpeyi’s unique spin on the topic has her examining the classical sources of inspiration behind the teachings of five of India’s most significant founding figures: Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, his nephew Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and BR Ambedkar. The ‘righteous republic’ based on self-rule, under Vajpeyi’s close study, divulges its interwoven web mixing Sanskrit poetry, Buddhist teachings, the legacies of the Emperor Ashoka and Mughal dynasties of the past, and even the Bhagavad Gita, each having played a key role in shaping the political visions of these icons. Despite confessing to the self-perceived inadequacy of her completed work in her conclusion, there is scarcely a fault regarding the author’s zest for the subject, a plus point that proves effective in rousing this reader’s own interest. -- Noori Passela * The National *This is a book that is original, insightful and quirky. -- Swapan Dasgupta * Outlook *Magisterial. -- Mani Shankar Aiyar * Outlook India *It is certainly not a book to be taken lightly. [Vajpeyi] delves deep into India’s past to explain the ideas of these five thinkers who had such a profound impact on the independence movement. -- Mark Tully * Resurgence & Ecologist *Righteous Republic creates a ground from which the moral in modern Indian conceptions of selfhood and the founding moment of the sovereign Republic can possibly be thought anew. -- Tridip Suhrud * Seminar *Magisterial. -- Veena Das and Shalini Randeria * Socio *[An] extraordinarily ambitious and remarkable book… Vajpeyi’s engagement with these seminal figures for modern Indian political thought is scaffolded on a set of unequivocally stated foundational claims that challenge many of the cherished principles governing the study of South Asia in the Indian and Anglo-American academies… Vajpeyi reads each founding father’s deeply felt engagement with tradition, at once cerebral and visceral, through the lens of key concepts that are, importantly, not just political but aesthetic, ethical, moral, and spiritual… Each reading, to which a chapter is devoted, is a masterpiece, combining careful philological and historical work, deft close reading, and incisive political analysis and brimming with astonishing, often counter-intuitive insights… Provocative, brilliant, and erudite, a magnificent reading of readings, Righteous Republic itself stands as a foundational work of scholarship. -- Rohit Chopra * Sunday Guardian *What emerges from Righteous Republic is a sense of the intellectual ferment in India from the turn of the 20th century up to Independence; the sense of men, not just the five in the book, thinking up and imagining a country, rather than just being handed one by the British. The book is as much literary and art criticism as it is history, requiring of Vajpeyi some agile reading. She makes connections her five principals themselves may not have made, particularly in her excellent chapter of Abanindranath Tagore, making us consider afresh men and ideas to which we seem to have become inured. -- Shougat Dasgupta * Tehelka *Vajpeyi is a close and interpretative reader of texts and of paintings. She strives always to be original and writes evocatively. Readers looking for definitive answers will be disappointed. Vajpeyi demands that her readers join her in the journey towards the dark cave of meaning. -- Rudrangshu Mukherjee * The Telegraph *‘Swaraj,’ the key term in Indian nationalism, refers to the self. But what is this self that is the subject of Indian self-rule? Ananya Vajpeyi retraces the field of modern Indian political thought to analyze the answers offered by five canonical figures. Her work is original, acute, sensitive, frequently unconventional, and always delightfully readable. -- Partha Chatterjee, Columbia UniversityA thoroughly original, high-quality, and pathbreaking contribution to Indian intellectual history. -- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Centre for Policy ResearchIn a series of sophisticated and original readings, Ananya Vajpeyi paints an arresting picture of the moral imaginary inside the tradition of modern Indian political thought. Against the grain of much recent interpretation, Vajpeyi argues that modern Indian political thought should be read not through Western categories like freedom, equality, and independence, but through subtle, underlying Indian categories—swaraj, viraha, samvega, dharma, artha, and duhkha. Righteous Republic offers an original and subtle re-reading of a familiar field, and persuades us to view it in a different light. -- Sudipta Kaviraj, Columbia University
£38.21
Harvard University Press Youth in the Fatherless Land War Pedagogy
Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive history of German youth in WWI, this book investigates the dawn of the great era of mobilizing teenagers and schoolchildren for experiments in state-building and extreme political movements like fascism and communism.Trade ReviewThis sophisticated and deeply researched work is the first major study of the ‘war youth generation’ in Germany. Especially original is Donson’s treatment of war pedagogy that institutionalized the populist nationalism of August 1914. By exploring both the common experiences of youth as well as the divergences conditioned by class and gender, he accounts for the polarization within the Socialist and middle class youth movements and ultimately explains why the war generation proved so susceptible to the appeals of the Communists and Nazis. Donson has produced a thought-provoking analysis of some of the wrenching discontinuities in twentieth-century Germany’s agonized history. -- Derek S. Linton, Hobart and William Smith CollegesDonson’s well-researched and nuanced study of German youth during World War I offers fresh perspectives on the history of class, gender, political mobilization, and the legacy of the war. Youth in the Fatherless Land tells a fascinating story of how the war encouraged authoritarianism, reform, and independence, all at the same time. -- Annemarie Sammartino, Oberlin College
£47.56
Harvard University Press From Nazism to Communism
Book SynopsisTracing teachers' experiences in the Third Reich and East Germany, this title analyzes developments in education of crucial importance to both dictatorships.Trade ReviewA compelling study that makes an original contribution. Lansing presents an intriguing local case, the industrial city of Brandenburg an der Havel, which allows him to probe the interaction of the district administration with the citywide teaching staff, individual schools, and specific teachers. This is a considerable advance in the literature, which has so far mostly been confined to the national level. Through this case study Lansing portrays a more graphic view of how dictatorships work or fail to work on the local level. -- Konrad H. Jarausch, University of North CarolinaLansing takes a fascinating subject--how two German totalitarian regimes tried to transform the teaching bodies they inherited from previous regimes--and shows the degree to which both regimes were forced to compromise and restrict their ambitions for making large scale changes. This is the only book that traces the transformations--from republican through Nazi and Communist rule--in a single town, a unique perspective that provides valuable insight into shifts in political and academic culture at the local level. The material is fresh, the arguments original, the writing clear. This is an important, even pioneering, work of German and European history. -- John Connelly, University of California, Berkeley
£71.96
Harvard University Press Palaces of Time Jewish Calendar and Culture in
Book SynopsisPalaces of Time resurrects the seemingly banal calendar as a means to understand early modern Jewish life. Elisheva Carlebach has unearthed a trove of beautifully illustrated calendars, to show how Jewish men and women both adapted to the Christian world and also forged their own meanings through time.Trade ReviewA remarkable and pioneering study of the Jewish calendar and its significance. Brilliantly researched, gracefully written, and timely -- in every sense of the word. -- Jonathan D. Sarna, author of American Judaism: A HistoryIn a brilliant tour de force, Carlebach presents a masterful and penetrating analysis of the Jewish calendar as literature and material object, and as a dynamic, complex expression of cultural values, religious competition, social discipline, and personal meaning. -- Lois Dubin, author of The Port Jews of Habsburg TriesteFocusing on the measure and meaning of time, Elisheva Carlebach has produced a work of enormous importance for all those interested in the convergence of humanistic and scientific knowledge. -- Jay Berkovitz, author of Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650-1860This study of fascinating, richly illustrated manuscripts and early printed books opens up new horizons in the history not only of the Jewish calendar but also of the Hebrew book, Jewish daily life, personal piety, and the engagement of early modern Jews with surrounding Christianity. -- Sacha Stern, author of Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, 2nd Century BCE to 10th Century CECarlebach takes a narrow subject--sifrei evronot (European Jewish calendars/almanacs) of the 15th to 18th centuries--and mines it for its considerable riches. She demonstrates how these works reflected both Jews' values and beliefs and their interaction with the external Christian society...Carlebach is also particularly good at delving into Jewish folk beliefs as found in the calendars. She is equally illuminating on the calendars' iconography, illustrated by a 1716 calendar that shows the biblical Jepththah's daughter as a teenage European aristocrat...This well-organized and extensively researched book is a magnificent piece of scholarship and a pleasure to read, demonstrating the calendars' importance "as mirrors and agents of change,...indexes of acculturation, and...matchless reflections of the Jewish experience." * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *If you've ever wondered about the Jewish year and its history, Elisheva Carlebach's marvelous new book, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe, has much to offer you. A preeminent specialist on the Jews of early modern Germany, Carlebach concentrates on what became of the calendar in the early modern period. In the 16th century and after, technical literature about time, which had once been treated as an esoteric knowledge reserved for an elite, became widely available to Jews for the first time, and Carlebach traces this process in detail. But as she reaches back to explain the distant origins of early modern debates and practices and sets the calendars into their larger contexts, Palaces of Time provides even more than it promises: a fascinating and provocative introduction, full of surprises, to the Jewish experience of time. Richly documented and sumptuously illustrated, the book tells a sinuous and sometimes wild story, one in which books of many kinds, in all their grubby materiality, play central roles...The book is exemplary. Palaces of Time is cultural history at its finest: a minutely observant, vivid, and passionately enthusiastic guide book to a world of experience that we--or at least most of us--have lost. -- Anthony Grafton * Tablet Magazine *Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe, shows that Jews developed some of the most important theories and discovered some of the most fundamental mathematical underpinnings of early calendar setting. -- Menachem Wecker * Jewish Press *Calendars are the kind of object that are usually taken for granted, that are almost invisible to our everyday glance; therefore they are a perfect subject of analysis for cultural history. Very little good cultural history has been produced about Jewish subjects, and Elisheva Carlebach's book sets a very high standard for the field. Tackling a subject that is ubiquitous but also obscure, Carlebach looks at the topic of Jewish calendars from a number of perspectives. The actual calendrical aspects of the Jewish calendar, the references to non-Jewish dates that were incorporated into many calendars, the startling artistic traditions that are found in many early modern Jewish calendars--each subject is analyzed on its own, and placed in a diachronic and synchronic historical context, explaining how it developed from internal Jewish traditions while incorporating and responding to outside occurrences. Highlights include handwritten calendars from colonial America, symbolic pictures of elephants and bare-bottomed men, informative curses of Christian saints and statistics of fair attendance in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Despite the ostensibly obscure subject matter, Palaces of Time is as far from arcane as can be, written in language that is enjoyable and accessible. The numerous color photographs of Jewish calendars make the volume even more enjoyable and easier to follow. -- Pinchas Roth * Jewish Book Council *This meticulous study of manuscripts and printed books deals with Jewish ways of keeping time, especially during the 16th to l8th centuries in Western and Central Europe. -- R.S. Kohn * Choice *[An] admirable book, beautifully produced and brimming with fascinating pictures and extraordinary facts...[Carlebach] weaves a thoroughly-researched tale of adventures and frequent mishaps in cross-cultural negotiation between Jewish communities and their host societies over several centuries; dealing also with ideological battles, where Christian polemicists attacked Judaism through calendar issues. Anti-Semitic coercion even extended to calendar censorship which could prohibit publicizing rival foreign trade fairs and the sometimes amusing if not plain derogatory nicknames given to gentile festive days. The ubiquitous pocket luach, now so often replaced by an electronic version or a glance at the inside cover of a newspaper for notification of upcoming times and dates, is also dealt with in fascinating detail, its humble transience marked by tribulation and the acute survival instinct of our people under Nazi occupation in Tunisia in 1940 in Judaeo-Arabic and French, or secretly printed in Soviet-ruled Vilna. The book deals with much else of interest, giving a unique view and one of visual delight, ranging from weird and wonderful manuscript illustrations to a table with appropriately depicted "Zodiac man" giving propitious dates for bloodletting from a calendar published in Sulzbach as late as 1789. A worthy contribution to an under-researched subject presented with brio and elegant erudition, certainly one of the most important works of its kind to appear in recent years. -- Yerachmiel Rubin * Jewish Tribune *
£26.96
Harvard University Press A Swindlers Progress Nobles and Convicts in the
Book SynopsisPart Regency mystery, part imperial history, this title presents a tale of adventure and deceit across two worlds - British aristocrats and Australian felons - bound together in an emerging age of opportunity and individualism, where personal worth was battling power based on birth alone. It illuminates the darker side of this age of liberty.Trade ReviewA compelling narrative, full of twists and turns, enticing locales, fascinating characters, and strange paradoxes. It spans two hemispheres, traverses the high-life of the aristocracy on the one hand, and the brutal low-life of Antipodean convicts on the other. -- Iain McCalman, author of Darwin's ArmadaMcKenzie is a rising star in the historical profession, and this important and original book makes impressively plain why this is so. It is that rare accomplishment: a major work of scholarship that also deserves to reach a broader public. -- David Cannadine, author of Mellon: An American LifeAspects of the 19th century, as depicted in this work, could almost be read as a gothic mystery—with a clandestine marriage, anonymous letters, a European countess, and threats of disinheritance not to mention the swindling trickster, whose exploits bear witness to audacity in the face of adversity. However those gothic qualities should not overshadow the more serious aspects of the early 19th-century political power struggle between the abolitionist William Wilberforce and the slave trader Henry Lascelles… While McKenzie's text is based on solid research, it is engaging and offers a new interpretation of the corresponding attitudes, fears, and suspicions in both the metropole and the periphery. -- Tina Picton Phillipps * BBC History *A Swindler's Progress is a highly gripping narrative, its sociological insights conveyed largely through a series of striking human dramas. -- Matthew Reisz * Times Higher Education *
£24.26
Harvard University, Asia Center Children as Treasures
Book SynopsisMark Jones examines the making of a new child's world in Japan, 18901930, and focuses on the institutions, groups, and individuals that reshaped both the idea of childhood and the daily life of children. He also places the story of modern childhood within a broader social contextthe emergence of a middle class in early twentieth century Japan.Trade ReviewThis extremely well researched historical study of the intersection of ideology, politics, and family in modern Japan explores the emergence of a political discourse that supported the construction of a middle class in early-20th-century Japan and details the centrality of child rearing in that discourse...Throughout the book, readers get a clear sense that the Japanese family system is not simply a product of random social forces but was consciously invented to achieve specific political and ideological aims. An excellent work of interest to scholars of Japan, gender studies, and child development. -- J. W. Traphagan * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Childhood, the Middle Class, and Modern Japan Part I: The Emergence of a Late Meiji Middle Class 1. The Moral and the Material: The Family Reformer and the Promotion of a Middle Class 2. The Public Professional and the Middle Class: The Scientific Expert's Quest for Social Influence 3. The Wise Mother and the Little Citizen: Building a Middle Class Part II: Remaking the Middle Class in Taisho Japan: Education, Play, and New Visions of Childhood 4. The Self-Made Woman and the Superior Student: Transgressive Femininity, Educational Achievement, and Meritocratic Modernity 5. The Childlike Child: Play and the Importance of Leisure Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index
£32.26
Harvard University Press The Turbulent World of Franz Göll
Book SynopsisFritzsche traces twentieth-century history through the remarkable diaries of an ordinary Berliner. Franz Göll wrote of hungry winters during WWI, the Berlin bombing, rapes by Russian soldiers, shockwaves cast by Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, the flexing of U.S. superpower, and the strange lifestyles that marked Germany's transition to modernity.Trade ReviewAn extraordinary portrait of an ordinary twentieth-century Berliner's life. As an accomplished historian and a fine writer, Fritzsche uncovers the multiple resonances in Göll's political, social, and intellectual worlds. His deft and systematic handling of the intensely self-reflective Göll is quite simply fascinating. -- Konrad H. Jarausch, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillThe account Fritzsche weaves out of Göll's idiosyncratic yet strangely representative diaries makes for fascinating, exciting reading. There are wonderful nuggets throughout, such as Göll's thoughtful reaction after seeing a pro-euthanasia film in 1941—the only such account by an actual member of the German public of which I am aware—and Göll's response to the notorious Nazi 'degenerate art' exhibition in 1937. This compelling book is for anyone who wants to view history from a more personal level. -- Stephen Brockmann, Carnegie Mellon UniversityInstructive and fitfully absorbing...Readers...will be fascinated by the strange private world of an eccentric obsessive. -- Ian Brunskill * Wall Street Journal *A fascinating glimpse beneath the historical wave...Göll's diary is an amazing artifact in itself: in hundreds of plain, hand-written notebooks (now stored in a Berlin archive), it stretches from the era of Kaiser Wilhelm II to the age of Ronald Reagan. Göll lives through the aftermath of World War I, attends the Nazis' "Degenerate Art" exhibit in 1938, survives the bombing of Berlin during the Second World War, reflects on the rise of the nuclear age, and tries out, well into his fifties, the sexual revolution. All the while he works on his aquarium, travels around Germany, and reads widely and ravenously...Fritzsche helpfully summarizes and explains the diaries, putting them in a broader context and isolating the major themes; he reflects, too, on the very modern project of writing a diary. -- Josh Rothman * Boston Globe online *This is a perceptive analysis of a 20th-century individual who cherished his perceived difference and who was at the same time representative of the masses, for better or worse. -- Ulrike Zitzlsperger * Times Higher Education *In a time when public self-disclosure and blogging seem almost de rigueur, examining the diaries kept by a German everyman for the better part of the 20th century is both curious and refreshing...Though Fritzsche doesn't present extensive English translations of Göll's writings (the originals were impossibly voluminous), the quotations he includes are superb and include many of Göll's poems. He meticulously contextualizes them, convincingly argues the noteworthiness of their rediscovery, and reveals them as subjective attempts to fashion coherence out of increasingly violent times...They are also a sobering record of modern life's impact. Göll's diaries, begun in 1916, when he was 17, and continued until his death in 1984, offer an invaluable and absorbing look at the preoccupations of a turbulent century. * Publishers Weekly *Fritzsche's astounding book opens our eyes, once again, to the disappointing sight of an ordinary human being. And an ordinary human being is just that: ordinary. -- Susanne Klingenstein * Weekly Standard *
£32.36
Harvard University Press Sexual Reckonings
Book SynopsisFocusing on the period from 1920 to 1960, Cahn reveals how both the life of the South and the meaning of adolescence underwent enormous political, economic, and social shifts, with the modern awareness of female sexuality clashing mightily against the white supremacist and patriarchal legacies of the old South.Trade ReviewSexual Reckonings dramatically illustrates how attempts to regulate girls' sexual behavior were at the heart of power relations in the pre-Civil Rights South. Compelling and original, Cahn's recovery of the dreams, hopes, and heartbreaks of poor white and African-American girls of the mid-20th century South have continued to haunt me, long after finishing this remarkable book. -- Annelise Orleck, author of Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on PovertySexual Reckonings is a significant analysis of how black and white teenage young women reshaped their world in the first sixty years of the twentieth century. Based on extensive and imaginative sources, Cahn's work is nuanced, challenging, and brilliantly argued. -- Pete Daniel, author of Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-world War II SouthCarefully researched and beautifully written, Sexual Reckonings forges a new path by tying the history of southern adolescence to the South's own coming of age. -- Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillThis impressive history of the sexual cultures of southern black and white adolescent girls pays careful attention to social fears of sexual danger, state regulatory policies, and the experience of the young women who reshaped sexual meanings over the first half of the twentieth century. Cahn persuasively argues for the centrality of adolescent female sexuality to southern politics, from the changing racial focus of forced sterilizations to the shifting grounds for white resistance to school desegregation. -- Estelle B. Freedman, author of Feminism, Sexuality, and PoliticsSexual Reckonings offers a fascinating analysis of female adolescence in the context of racial, class and cultural upheavals across the twentieth-century South. Cahn transforms our understandings of girlhood and womanhood, sex and society, in the South and the nation, during the critical decades from 1920-1960. -- Nancy A. Hewitt, Rutgers UniversityCahn traces female adolescence in the South from the flapper era through Elvis Presley and rock and roll and the budding civil rights movement, and the vast differences that race and class made in the judgment and treatment of female adolescent behavior. She examines the particularly volatile mixture of race and class for which the South has become famous, as the society struggled to control girls--black and white--to maintain racial purity and social conventions. This is a fascinating look at how young women fit into and affected southern patriarchy and notions of racial purity. -- Vanessa Bush * Booklist *Susan K. Cahn offers an empowering, well-researched, and refreshing look at the South's transformation from the period of 1920 to 1960. She relies on anecdotal evidence of countless adolescent girls, integrating their narratives with the larger narrative of Southern political, economic and cultural change...From poor white girls targeted for "reform" to wartime pickup girls to the rock 'n' roller, Cahn gives readers an insightful understanding of history that will leave you intrigued, indignant, entertained and even confer value on anyone who has suffered injustices, nourishing the possibility for change. -- Sofia Marin * Feminist Review *As public policy wars over morality rage unabated, the bodies of teenage girls and young women remain the battleground, making this book an urgent read...Cahn weaves the experiences and voices of girls from all classes and both black and white communities to show how girls used economic, social and cultural capital to redefine Victorian moral codes and pursue sexual experiences once viewed as the preserve of men. -- France Winddance Twine * Ms. *This work makes a useful contribution to the growing field of the study of girls. -- E. Thompson * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Scarlett Redux 1. "Holding Excitement in Their Hands": The Southern "Girl Problem" 2. Spirited Youth or Fiends Incarnate? 3. "Just as Much a Menace": Race and Sex Delinquency 4. "A Head Full of Diamonds": Fact, Fiction, and African American Girls' Sexuality 5. "Living in Hopes": An Economy of Desire 6. Sex, Science, and Eugenic Sterilization 7. The World War II Pickup Girl and Wartime Passions 8. School Days: Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic, and Romance 9. Would Jesus Dance? The Dangerous Rhythms of Rock 'n' Roll 10. The Sexual Paradox of High School Desegregation Conclusion: Sex, Memory, and the Segregated Past Notes Acknowledgments Index
£24.26
Harvard University Press Three Ancient Colonies
Book SynopsisAs a young anthropologist, the author undertook fieldwork in Jamaica, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. This title presents a summation of his work in the region and is a reminder of how anthropology allows people to explore the deep truths that history may leave unexamined.Trade ReviewIn this engaging, delightfully readable and provocative work, Sidney Mintz distills a lifetime of pioneering research to illuminate the making of three Caribbean plantation societies and of the creolized cultures that challenged the slave system from within. The work seamlessly brings together history and anthropology, showcasing Mintz's impassioned and encyclopedic knowledge of the Caribbean. A must-read for all those interested in the history of slavery and the Atlantic world. -- Laurent Dubois, Duke UniversityDrawing upon a lifetime of ethnographic fieldwork in the Caribbean region, Mintz arrives at bold conclusions about the societies and realities of our provocative, complex, and generally undervalued region. -- Nicolette Bethel * Caribbean Review of Books *An engaging, accessible, and masterly work. -- R. Berleant-Schiller * Choice *
£23.36
Harvard University Press Israel Has Moved
Book SynopsisBorn in Europe’s shadow, haunted by the Holocaust, and inspired by the Enlightenment, Israel has changed. Where is this diverse and self-absorbed country heading today? How do its citizens see themselves, globally and historically? Israel Has Moved is a profound and unsettling account of a country that is no longer where we might think.Trade ReviewIt’s rare for any book nowadays to cast totally new light on the Israel–Palestine conflict, but Diana Pinto’s Israel Has Moved does just that. She argues that the political, military and financial elite of Israel are turning away from Europe and even from America, which they regard as mired in economic difficulties and riven by ideological contradictions, and are looking to align themselves with those regimes in the Far East, China in particular, which have, like them, scant regard for human rights and a fierce determination to succeed economically and politically. Written out of a profound reverence for Enlightenment values, this desperately sad yet elegant and witty book asks us to contemplate the possibility that the Enlightenment, far from gradually conquering the globe, may, after 250 years, be slowly dying before our eyes. -- Gabriel Josipovici * Times Literary Supplement *This book takes Israel’s built environment as a departure point to offer broader reflections on shifts in the nation’s psyche, sometimes to brilliant and startling effect. Diana Pinto delineates the physical landscape of present-day Israel—its highways, restaurants and shopping malls—using it to describe the country as it is, not as the rest of the world would like it to be… Pinto’s acute—and, in my view, apt—diagnosis of Israel’s defining ailment is that it is ‘autistic’: trapped inside its own increasingly comfortable, security-defended bubble, unable to connect with—much less identify with—its neighbors, starting with the Palestinians… Overall, the effect is of enjoying an engaging and trenchant dinner party conversation with an intelligent traveller brimming with impressions from a trip. -- John Reed * Financial Times *Pinto’s strength as a writer is her penetrating understanding of what lies beneath the surface of the clichés… Pinto describes a recognizable Israeli mindset which owes nothing to the discourse of post-colonial narratives but rather a unique viewpoint, developed out of centuries of statelessness… Pinto has written about the country rather than being drawn, as so many intellectuals are, to the seamline, the conflict. Knowing that the occupation is wrong, that Zionism was a category error, absolves them of the duty of giving Israel and Israelis any real thought. In China and India the opposite is the case; they’re fascinated by how the place works, what exactly is the secret of its ability to live outside geography. Pinto is the writer to turn to, though her own head is as bashed against the wall of futility as everybody else’s. -- Linda Grant * The Independent *[Pinto] presents impressions and interviews that reveal both Israeli truculence to go its own road as well as deep schisms within Israeli society. The author’s vivid characterizations of Israeli society expose its deeply problematic nature: as ‘autistic,’ in that its brilliant young people and leaders operate within a self-contained obliviousness of others; as a ‘realm of collective psychosis’ in thinking, as ultranationalist religious Zionists do, that the Temple in Jerusalem could ever be rebuilt, since it would obliterate the Dome of the Rock, a holy site for Muslims; as a postmodern Utopia in its scientific and genetic advances; as a ‘very large and ultrasophisticated aquarium’ containing exotic fishes, all ‘turning rapidly away to avoid the others, and all of this in utter silence.’ From the choosing of which road to take into Jerusalem (through heroic landmarks or the less-traveled Route 443 leading to various Arab exits) to the country’s spectacular embrace of high technology and Asian investment, which offer a glaring juxtaposition to the pre-modern lifestyles of the ultraorthodox, everywhere Israel is awash in contradictions. But does Israel really care who thinks so? Fewer and fewer sophisticated Israelis bother to envision a two-state solution, and Pinto fears that this solipsism is engendering a dangerous ‘self-satisfaction bordering on hubris’—and it can’t last… A solid work of intellectual criticism. * Kirkus Reviews *Brilliant and beautifully written. Even those who disagree with Pinto’s analysis cannot deny its force and her deep love and concern for Israel. An equally anguished and powerful rebuttal can be expected from Jerusalem. -- Shlomo Avineri, author of The Making of Modern ZionismIn every chapter vivid colors depict in exquisite detail some delimited aspect of life. Diana Pinto has an eye for the telling detail that helps us feel the complexity, the nuance, the texture, and the flow of social, economic, cultural, and political life in Israel today. -- Tony Smith, Tufts UniversityDiana Pinto’s book is brilliant. She draws a portrait of Israel as a living entity, warts and all, caught between the euphoric power of its creativity, and the weaknesses of its historical contradictions and political impasses. Studded with multi-layered illuminating anecdotes and metaphors, the book could easily pass as a fascinating travel journal. But rigorous intellectual categories lurk behind the highly readable style. -- Saul Friedlander, University of California, Los AngelesA terrific book, so well written that it is hard to put down while offering deep and analytical insights that must be taken seriously by anyone concerned with contemporary Israel. -- Susan Neiman, Director, Einstein Forum
£32.36
Harvard University Press The Black Death and the Transformation of the
Book SynopsisLooking beyond the view of the plague as unmitigated catastrophe, Herlihy finds evidence for its role in the advent of new population controls, the establishment of universities, the spread of Christianity, the dissemination of vernacular cultures, and even the rise of nationalism.Trade ReviewHerlihy proposed that the Black Death led to "the transformation of the West" and shaped crucial aspects of modern thinking and behavior. Briefly and lucidly, Herlihy argued that Europe was...locked into Malthusian stasis, with a population unable to improve its standard of living and possessed of a set of unchanging and stagnating institutions. The Black Death was to shake Europe out of its immobile lethargy and to initiate processes of renewal...Samuel Cohn's succinct introduction provides an excellent commentary on Herlihy's theses. -- Andrew Wear * Times Literary Supplement *Focusing on the Black Death which reduced the population in some European cities by 80 percent, Herlihy draws some powerful parallels between the plague and AIDS...His argument is a provocative one which will lead other historians to re-examine not only the period of the Black Death but the foundations of medieval and modern medicine. -- Lara Marks * History Today *The essays offer a number of fresh perspectives on the Black Death, the series of plagues that ravaged Europe after 1347. * History *[These] essays redefine the historical study of the Black Death...Herlihy's contention is that we can learn from this 'devastating natural disaster'; for example, parallels can be drawn to today's pandemic of AIDS, especially in the resultant bigotries that both engendered...This book, which opens a new chapter on the history and implications of the plague, is essential for all readers of medieval history. * Library Journal *Herlihy died in 1991, leaving these 1985 lectures among his unpublished papers. In them, he raises questions about the impact of the black death on everyday society, agrarian practices, the use of inventions, travel, and medical theory and practice. Because of their provocative ideas and new ways of looking at older assumptions, they are highly worthy of publication. -- William Beatty * Booklist *Bold, novel theories, sure to be controversial, about the medieval pandemic known as the Black Death...Herlihy revisits much of the conventional wisdom about the demographic, cultural, and even medical impact of the plague...A stimulating discussion of some rarely considered aspects of one of history's turning points. * Kirkus Reviews *[A] fine addition to thinking on the [Black Death] and an example of how good historical thought evolves. * Publishers Weekly *The articles in this collection surprisingly are as fresh today as when they were delivered. David Herlihy utilizes new approaches and new forms of evidence to raise intriguing suggestions concerning the economic, social, and cultural history of European civilization and the borderlines between medieval and modern Europe. Supplemented by Samuel K. Cohn's invaluable introduction, they will stimulate a wealth of new historical investigation. This work can be read with profit by undergraduates, graduate students, and professional historians. -- William M. Bowsky, University of California, Davis, author of A Medieval Italian CommuneLiving in the age of AIDS, Ebola fever, and the prospect of new, lethal diseases, we can surely benefit from the historical perspective David Herlihy provides in this wonderful book on the plague of 1348. Herlihy raises important questions about the exact nature of the disease, and how the economy and society of medieval Europe responded to unprecedented catastrophe. How do people explain the origin and course of a new disease? How do people react when the established institutions of church, state, and science fail to offer acceptable explanations for the occurrence of extraordinary levels of mortality? Herlihy answers these questions and offers fresh insights on an old killer that have a timely meaning for the modern world. Cohn provides a wise, contextual introduction and has skillfully edited these essays, making available once more to old friends and new readers the distinctive style and thoughts of David Herlihy. -- Steven Epstein, University of Colorado at Boulder, author of Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval EuropeThe work of a mature, indeed brilliant, scholar. This is a succinct, lucid, provocative, and very learned treatment of the Black Death in its causes and consequences. -- Thomas Kuehn, author of Law, Family, and WomenTable of ContentsIntroduction Bubonic Plague: Historical Epidemiology and the Medical Problems The New Economic and Demographic System Modes of Thought and Feeling Notes Index
£20.66
Harvard University Press Blacks in Antiquity
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£29.66
Harvard University Press Black Jacks
Book SynopsisW. Jeffrey Bolster, master mariner and historian, shatters the myth that black seafaring in the age of sail was limited to the Middle Passage. Rescuing African American seamen from obscurity, this stirring account reveals the critical role sailors played in helping forge new identities for black people in America.Trade Review[A] first-rate contribution. Bolster…spent a decade pulling together for the first time two centuries of seaborne black history… [T]he book crackles with enough drama for many novels or plays. -- Carla Davidson * New York Times Book Review *For the past 10 years, W. Jeffrey Bolster…has labored obsessively to unearth the rich and long-forgotten history of America's black mariners. His newly published book…may prove the most instructive historical offering of the year. It reminds Americans that black seamen, like black cowboys, labored long and to great effect at one of the cultural linchpins of American history… [W]hat's most remarkable about Bolster's book is both the numbers of black sailors he found in the past and the extraordinary wealth of evidence documenting their lives. -- Ken Ringle * Washington Post *[An] extraordinary story… Bolster's writing is intelligent and strong, as he stresses his central point that the life of a black sailor in the age of sail was essentially a dignified one… Bolster argues convincingly that for any ambitious African American trapped in the plantation world of the Americas, the life of a maritime sailor represented a huge leap forward in circumstances and possibilities… The real achievement of Black Jacks is to remind us that black seafaring in the age of sail was not limited to the middle passage, and that black sailors were the eyes, the ears, and the mouthpieces of the African American community at a time when America was attempting to stifle the community's collective cry of outrage… Bolster shows us that for over a century, while seafaring remained a contemptible occupation for the white man, it was a noble occupation for the black man, and it played a central role in the creation of an African American identity. -- Caryl Phillips * New Republic *Himself a master mariner, Bolster presents us with an area of the African diaspora which as been overlooked even by scholars of African American history. His book is important at a number of levels. It is a most original piece of work, based on careful scholarship, yet it also tells a cracking yarn. The subject may seem, at first glance, marginal. In fact it is central, not least because all Africans who survived into the Americas had themselves endured a major maritime experience. We now know, thanks to Bolster, the degree to which maritime experiences formed a continuing theme in African American life from first conquest until the mid-19th century. -- James Walvin * Times Higher Education Supplement *Black Jacks is one of the most significant historical works published thus far in this decade. That it is about an important group of maritime workers—black seamen—is an added bonus. The fact that it is also a joy to read provides a third excellent reason to recommend this book… [It] is an exhaustively researched, beautifully written volume that cries out to be read by a broad cross-section of historians… All in all, this is a book worth owning and returning to repeatedly. Most important, it is that rare book that deserves to be savoured, literally and figuratively. In short, Black Jacks is a magnificent scholarly achievement that can be commended to readers with no serious reservations. -- Lewis R. Fischer * The Northern Mariner *This long-overdue book takes us on a voyage of discovery in what we thought were familiar waters as W. Jeffrey Bolster—a veteran seaman and University of New Hampshire associate professor of history—lifts our collective awareness of a little known maritime subject… Bolster eloquently articulates his keen knowledge of 18th- and 19th-century American sea history as it relates to those of African descent, slave and free, seamen, laborers, statesmen, and entrepreneurs… Black Jacks intellectually broadens our perspective by bringing this unsung saga to a bright light and its rightful position on American and sea history's horizons. -- Steven W. Jones * Sea History *This highly readable book and thoroughly researched study offers interesting details of shipboard racial interaction and surprising information on the reception afforded African Americans in Atlantic and Caribbean ports. -- John C. Walter * Seattle Times *A fascinating, untold, and important story. -- Geoffrey Elan * Yankee Magazine *This book is an excellent combination of scholarship and engagement, always informed by the author's first-hand knowledge of the sea. -- Frank McLynn * Literary Review *In Black Jacks, historian and master mariner W. Jeffrey Bolster tells the long-ignored story of black seamen in this country between 1740 and the end of the Civil War, revealing the critical role that they played in helping to forge a black identity. At the beginning of the this period, Anglo-American deep-sea labor was largely white, and virtually all sea-faring blacks were slaves. By the turn of the nineteenth century, almost one in five U.S. seamen were black, and most of them were free. And at the end of the period, the tide had turned again, and a combination of different factors squeezed most African-Americans out of the maritime labor force. Professor Bolster never loses sight of the larger picture, but he also recognizes the collection of compelling stories that he has gathered—stories of the famous (such as Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery disguised as a sailor), of the nameless, and of many more in between. * Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce *Black Jacks fills a big gap in Atlantic maritime history. It wonderfully describes the heretofore untold contributions of the tens of thousands of free and enslaved black men who served on board ships in the coastal trade and on deep-sea expeditions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Inspired by the tales of elderly black sailors in the Caribbean heard while he was a tall ship captain, Bolster vividly details the adventures and experiences of African American sailors throughout the seafaring world. * U.S. Magazine *Licensed master mariner Bolster writes a descriptively rich, engaging narrative of African American seafarers from the 1740s to the 1860s. He recounts how tens of thousands of African American sailors formed an important sector of the maritime labor force, shaped mariner culture and the identity of free black communities, and linked the Atlantic world of the black diaspora… This excellent study is highly recommended. * Library Journal *Many black sailors were sophisticated linguists, entrepreneurs in port, ready raconteurs; and Bolster draws from a range of literate, often lyrical voices in this little-known labor force… [A] well-researched book. * Publishers Weekly *In Black Jacks, W. Jeffrey Bolster tells an almost unknown side of blacks and the sea, stories of African American slaves, free men, and runaways who worked as seamen from 1740 to 1865. It's the story, he says, of a phenomenon that in all the generally accepted books and museum exhibits was basically being ignored… [Black Jacks] is thoroughly researched and documented. But Bolster knows that history is story, and he has turned out a highly readable book that focuses on the lives of many remarkable men. The black sailors' dedication to freedom is a recurring theme of the book… Black sailors brought the news of the world, especially the black world, to the plantation slaves when they stopped to pick up or discharge goods, giving the isolated slaves a sense of being part of a much larger community. They provided role models of pride and independence to those who felt beaten down by the rigors of slavery. And they frequently hid slaves aboard their vessels, enabling them to escape to freedom. As Bolster says in his conclusion, black sailors 'contributed to a larger sense of black collectivity… [They] were crucial cultural mediators in the creation of black America.' -- Pat Parnell * King George Journal *Ten years were spent in researching and writing Black Jacks, and the result is a major contribution to African-American and American maritime histories. It is unlikely that readers of the book will ever again limit their view of slavery to field hands and domestics or associate blacks at sea only as victims of the dreaded Middle Passage. The overwhelming number of black seamen prior to the American revolution were slaves… In vivid detail, this book relates the contributions black jacks made to African-American society as sources of pride in accomplishment, as dispensers of knowledge of a world beyond the sea, and as contributors to the formation of a distinctive black culture in America. Bolster has produced a work of sound scholarship that tells a very important story in a most exciting fashion. -- Frederick M. Binder * Journal of the Early Republic *Jeffrey Bolster's personal seafaring experience lends vibrance to his gorgeously detailed account Black Jacks. This deserving analysis of Africa-American sailors, who totaled twenty thousand men and composed one fifth of the United States' maritime labor force by the early nineteenth century, illustrates important ways of conceptualizing both early African-American and maritime history… These is no doubt that Black Jacks will have a powerful impact on the field. Bolster's portrayal of maritime work culture is a significant contribution to our understanding of early African-American work settings. His imaginative research and use of sources, neglected in this review, set a high standard for future work in maritime history. Most importantly, as interest in the fields of both African-American and Atlantic history continues to surge, Bolster has written the best overall assessment to date of African-American seafarers. Black Jacks introduces Bolster as an important figure in these vibrant fields of research. -- Thomas Buchanan * Journal of Social History *W. Jeffrey Bolster charts new ground by examining in detail the role and experiences of African-American seamen in a crucial phase of American history. To support his main argument that 'the rise and fall of African American seafaring in the age of sail was central to the creation of black America,' Bolster skillfully teases out from numerous primary sources material on African-American mariners in Africa and the diaspora… [His] important book provides a fascinating glimpse of the experiences of African-American seamen. His interesting and detailed description of the thousands of captured black sailors held at Dartmoor Prison during the War of 1812 recalls the dangers that often accompanied these individuals, for whom no eighteenth or nineteenth-century society had a clearly defined legal position. Rather than being simply maritime history, this is social history at its most eloquent… By successfully mining many traditional sources, [Bolster] has helped us understand the multifaceted nature of the African-American community. -- Edward L. Cox * American Historical Review *Almost nothing has been set down on the important role both slaves and free blacks played in the maritime trades in the 18th and early 19th centuries… Jeffrey Bolster has now moved to fill that notable gap with a volume sure to make its mark in maritime history. Well researched, carefully documented, precise in its distinctions and pleasantly readable, this book will stand as a tribute to America's seagoing blacks, as well as to its author… As a bonus—reflective of Bolster's 10 years at sea—it vividly portrays life before the mast… For a vicarious experience of life on a sailing vessel…during America's days of sailing glory, this book is the one to read. -- James M. Morris * Daily Press (Hampton Roads, VA) *Black Jacks is more than the story of African American seafarers between 1740 and 1865. It is a vivid account of the fluid and multi-dimensional nature of black identity… Bolster's book is a marvelous and readable account of a previously neglected segment of American history. It convincingly forces us to reconsider the roles blacks played in forging the modern identity of America. Take together with Luraghi's History of the Confederate Navy, these important studies are worthy additions to the bookshelf of anyone who professes an interest in southern history. -- Gene A. Smith * Journal of Southwest Georgia History *From time to time, a new book picks up a long-neglected thread of history and carefully traces the way it is delicately interwoven with the rest of the fabric. To read such a work is not only to appreciate the author's skill and perception, it is to never look at the fabric the same way again. Such a book is Black Jacks, by W. Jeffrey Bolster, seaman and historian… A careful researcher and a level-headed writer, he offers perceptions that bring this history alive. -- Tom Jackson * WoodenBoat Review *Black Jacks investigates a substantial and largely unexamined African American presence aboard Anglo-American coasting craft, 'blue water' merchants, privateers, pirate ships, whalers and naval vessels… Specialist and general readers will surely share Bolster's sense of the importance of his subject and warm to his lively and evocative presentation. -- Peter Thompson * English Historical Review *Black Jacks places sailors of color squarely at the center of Atlantic maritime culture. W. Jeffrey Bolster deserves our thanks for recovering an exciting, essential chapter in African-American history, one that not only deepens our appreciation for the roles black men played (as both able seamen and buccaneers), but also vividly demonstrates the fluidity and multi-dimensional complexity of black identity. -- Charles Johnson, author of Middle PassageBolster's own long experience as a seaman adds a note of realism and color to his fine descriptions of life aboard the early sailing ships. His extensive research has given him a notably sensitive understanding of the precarious lives led by black sailors, both at sea and ashore. He has breathed new life into the neglected history of black mariners, both slave and free. This story has remained too long untold. -- Gerald E. Thomas, Rear Admiral, U.S. NavyOne more of the gaps in African-American history has been filled, thanks to Jeffrey Bolster's book, Black Jacks. Here, Jacks is short for jacktar ('colloq., sailor'). In any given year between 1800 and 1850, Bolster estimates, shipping employed more than 100,000 American males; one-fifth were black… [This] is a seamark book. -- James H. Bready * Baltimore Sun *W. Jeffrey Bolster's purpose here is to urge people to rethink black maritime history… [He] admirably reveals the richness of Africa's legacy to America as it was fashioned over centuries by mariners who endured deprivation and hardship but seized their opportunities with imagination and courage. -- Sari Hornstein * William and Mary Quarterly *Black Jacks is a work of energy, imagination, and deep knowledge of a central experience in African-American history. It exudes Jeffrey Bolster's engagement with the subject, imbuing the history of black sailors with something of the mildewed stench of the forecastle and the bracing aromas of the open sea, the harsh realities of shipboard tyranny and the liberating possibilities of the sea. It will quickly become a central work in African-American history. -- Ira Berlin, University of Maryland at College ParkThis book breaks new ground in seeking to explore and explain trends in employment of blacks, free and enslaved, in the American merchant fleet up to the Civil War… Both maritime historians and historians of American slavery will learn much from Jeffrey Bolster's most useful study. -- David Richardson * Labour History Review *This deeply researched and elegantly written book…is impressive…an important…substantial work of historical scholarship. Students of early America, African America, slavery, and maritime history cannot afford to ignore it. -- Frank Cogliano * Borderlines *This marvelously rich study of a scarcely known, but critically important, aspect of American maritime history will surprise and delight readers. A groundbreaking study told with sensitivity and depth, it demands that we broaden our view of eighteenth and nineteenth century African American labor and its importance to seafaring. -- James Oliver Horton, George Washington UniversityThe fruit of a truly prodigious amount of research carried out by a blue-water sailor turned historian, it deals with an important but largely neglected strand in the cable of American history… He shows many almost entirely forgotten aspects of that vanished world… I shall not soon forget his description of the hundreds of captured black American sailors in Dartmoor during the war of 1812. -- Patrick O'Brian, author of The Yellow AdmiralBolster has done a fine job in illuminating an important part of American maritime history. He makes a valuable contribution to standard antebellum American history by looking at a major period of change from the black sailor's perspective. He is to be congratulated for shedding light on a too-long neglected subject. -- Tom Costa * International Journal of Maritime History *Bolster's book offers a marvelous entry into the world of the black sailor and the way men of African descent spread Afro-Atlantic art and culture across the seven seas. Melville would have been proud to read this text. -- Robert Farris Thompson, Yale UniversityThis [is] a lively exploration of a neglected chapter of American history. -- Michael Kenney * Boston Globe *Black Jacks does stand out as a landmark: the first published history of the American black men that documents their lives as sailors in a broadly conceived Atlantic world… Black Jacks is thought-provoking work that builds upon the studies of slaves and free blacks outside the plantation systems. Bolster applies the insights of the authors of these works to an understudied area in black history. -- Craig T. Marion * Journal of World History *Black Jacks provides a nuanced account of black maritime life and labor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries… Bolster writes with the authority of a seasoned seaman and the sensitivity of a well-trained social historian. Drawing on these aptitudes his account is particularly rich in its explorations of the dynamics of race and class, the generation and play of cultural styles and forms, and the politics of meaning that might be inferred from the descriptive traces of past actions he so ably recovers from his sources… Black Jacks is a well-written, impressively documented, handsomely produced book that certainly does offer a convincing corrective; a book that should appeal to undergraduate and non-academic readers as well as to specialists. -- Charles V. Carnegie * New West Indian Guide *
£17.06
Harvard University, The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Reflections on Memory and Democracy
Book SynopsisIn the twelve essays in Reflections on Memory and Democracy, an interdisciplinary group of contributors explores legacies of authoritarian political regimes noted for repression and injustice, questioning how collective experiences of violence shape memory and its relevance for contemporary social and political life in Latin America.Trade ReviewThis excellent volume makes a clear contribution to the field of Latin American Studies by bringing together analysis of the relation between memory and democracy, on the one hand, with exploration of the unsettledness and complexity of memory, on the other. -- Jeffrey Rubin, Associate Professor of History, Boston UniversityReflections on Memory and Democracy is an extraordinary volume, at once powerful, analytical, and beautiful… The interdisciplinary nature of this volume, coupled with the extraordinary insider knowledge of the contributors, has painted a compelling picture of the difficulties of mobilizing memory in a way that strengthens democratic institutions, practices, and cultures. More centrally, the volume demonstrates the importance of human dignity—the dignity of being remembered—for a high-quality democracy. -- Jocelyn Viterna, Associate Professor of Sociology, Harvard UniversityThis collection of essays by journalists, writers and poets; literary critics, political scientists and historians; philosophers, economists and linguists transcends disciplinary boundaries in a felicitous way. It also offers a challenge to comparative studies, in that apart from its binding focus on Chile it includes essays on Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, Haiti, Mexico and Colombia. What emerges is a multidirectional view of memory politics across the continent that allows the reader to draw inferences between the different national cases discussed and to recognize fundamental differences between, say, Chile and Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. -- Andreas Huyssen * ReVista *The elegantly crafted contributions cover means of historical memory as diverse as investigative journalism, Mayan oral histories, and Argentine fiction. -- Richard Feinberg * Foreign Affairs *
£18.86
Harvard University Press Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World
Book SynopsisRiddle uncovers the obscure history of contraception and abortifacients from ancient Egypt to the 17th century with forays into Victorian England. He explores whether it was possible for premodern people to regulate their reproduction without resorting to dangerous surgical abortions, the killing of infants, or the denial of biological urges.Trade ReviewRiddle’s study is a true turning point in the history of contraception and abortion, which may have large implications for the history of the medical and psychic experience of women in antiquity, folk medicine, and premodern demography. -- W. V. Harris * New York Review of Books *Riddle shows us that ancient contraceptive medical practices were safe, effective and commonly used. Sociological studies on their use remain to be carried out. But it is possible that, between the Middle Ages and the rise of modern contraception, the well-off and city dwellers had little access to effective contraception, thanks to the growth of conventional medicine and the soaring social power of the physician. This is just one of the many intriguing lines of investigation to arise from this book, which shines a different light on what we are generally taught about the ‘progress’ of the modern world. -- Michel Raymond * Nature *[Riddle’s] findings carry important implications for the history of theology, casuistry, pastoral care, social history, the history of sexuality, and the history of popular culture, as well as the history of botany, pharmacy, medicine, and biochemistry… These findings should earn Riddle the gratitude of the numerous historians for whom the reproductive strategies of past generations are an important issue. -- James A. Brundage * American Historical Review *Gives us a valuable glimpse of the long reach of history on fertility and provides food for thought on possible options that science should research for both safety and efficacy. -- Portia Meares * Herb Quarterly *Table of ContentsPreface Population and Sex Evidence for Oral Contraceptives and Abortifacients Soranus on Antifertility Agents Terminology in Dioscorides' De materia medica Early Stage Abortifacients in Dioscorides and Soranus Ancient Society and Birth Control Agents Egyptian Papyrus Sources Greek and Roman Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen The Late Roman Empire and Early Middle Ages The Middle Ages: The Church, Macer, and Hildegard Salerno and Medicine through the Twelfth Century Islam, Arabic Medicine, and the Late Middle Ages Knowledge of Birth Control in the West The Renaissance Later Developments Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index
£26.06
Harvard University, Asia Center Poetic Transformations
Book SynopsisDrawing on vernacular Vietnamese and classical Chinese sources, Ang identifies the different ways two leading statesmen of the time employed literature to transform the frontier region. This book captures a historical moment of overlapping visions, frustrated schemes, and contested desires on the Mekong plains.Trade ReviewAng makes a major contribution to the field of Vietnamese studies as a whole, showing that even the diverse, ever-changing, contested Mekong frontier was deeply connected to a broader and older literary tradition. These texts are challenging to translate, and few scholars have the language skills and historical knowledge to do them justice. Ang does so successfully, and with style. -- Kathlene Baldanza * Journal of Asian Studies *An extremely large-scale piece of research, both intricate and many-faceted, and this research is carried out with admirable skill, thoroughness, and respect for veracity…This study is among the very finest that I have ever read on the history of Vietnam. Reading it greatly enhanced my understanding of the period it deals with. The book deserves the widest possible attention. -- Eric Henry * China Review International *
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Imaginative Mapping
Book SynopsisImaginative Mapping analyzes how intellectuals of the Tokugawa and Meiji eras used specific features and aspects of the landscape to represent their idea of Japan and produce a narrative of Japan as a cultural community. Nobuko Toyosawa argues that the circulation spatial narratives allowed readers to imagine the broader conceptual space of Japan.Trade ReviewThe book is lavishly produced with beautiful four-color illustrations…A genuine contribution to our scholarship on early modern and modern Japanese intellectual history. Toyosawa’s innovative insights into the theme of landscape connect Tokugawa and Meiji-era thought in productive, exciting, and unexpected ways. -- Mark Ravina * Journal of Japanese Studies *Toyosawa analyzes the influential works of several early-modern and modern Japanese scholar-writers that exemplify how the natural landscape has long been a source of power and as a defining core of Japanese identity. -- Rex J. Rowley * Historical Geography *
£43.31
Harvard University Press Red Silk
Book SynopsisAn extensively researched history of China’s Yangzi Delta silk industry, Red Silk compares two very different groups of silk workers and their experiences in the revolution, and how their actions compelled the party-state to adjust its policy that ultimately proved disastrous.
£53.51
Harvard University, Asia Center Rise of a Japanese Chinatown
Book SynopsisRise of a Japanese Chinatown focuses on a Chinese immigrant community in the Japanese port city of Yokohama from the Sino-Japanese War of 18941895 to the normalization of Sino-Japanese ties in 1972 and beyond. It tells the story of how Chinese immigrants found an enduring place within a monoethnic state during periods of war and peace.
£17.95
Harvard University Press American Sutra
Book SynopsisWinner of the Grawemeyer Award in ReligionA Los Angeles Times BestsellerRaises timely and important questions about what religious freedom in America truly means.Ruth OzekiA must-read for anyone interested in the implacable quest for civil liberties, social and racial justice, religious freedom, and American belonging.George TakeiOn December 7, 1941, as the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the first person detained was the leader of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist sect in Hawaii. Nearly all Japanese Americans were subject to accusations of disloyalty, but Buddhists aroused particular suspicion. From the White House to the local town council, many believed that Buddhism was incompatible with American values. Intelligence agencies targeted the Buddhist community, and Buddhist priests were deemed a threat to national security. In this pathbreaking account, based on personal accounts and extensive research in untapped archives, Duncan Ryuken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of thTrade ReviewAmerican Sutra tells the story of how Japanese American Buddhist families like mine survived the wartime incarceration. Their loyalty was questioned, their freedom taken away, but their spirit could never be broken. A must-read for anyone interested in the implacable quest for civil liberties, social and racial justice, religious freedom, and American belonging. -- George Takei, actor, director, and activistIn his revealing new history of Japanese American internment, Williams foregrounds the Buddhist dimension of the Japanese American experience. His moving account shows how Japanese Americans transformed Buddhism into an American religion, and, through that struggle, changed the United States for the better. -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The SympathizerExplores for the first time the significance of religion, particularly Buddhism, among Japanese-Americans incarcerated at Heart Mountain and the nine other camps overseen by the War Relocation Authority…A searingly instructive story about America from which all Americans might learn. -- Peter Manseau * Smithsonian *Williams’ account of Japanese American Buddhists in internment—tales of suffering borne with dignity, and thereby transformed into great compassion—is the fruit of painstaking labor to unearth the buried stories and lives upon which American Sutra has been inscribed. -- Mark Unno * Buddhadharma *Williams delivers a pioneering reinterpretation and retelling of the internment through the lens of religion… A pleasure to read. * Choice *Magisterial and engaging…Provid[es] a comprehensive overview of the wartime experience of Japanese American Buddhists—a majority in the camps, U.S. military service, and the community as a whole. He shows how racism and religious intolerance fed on and intensified each other, long before the war. -- Vince Schleitwiler * International Examiner *American Sutra is a critically important, carefully researched, and deeply moving work of scholarship and storytelling that brings to light—from a dark and shameful period in our nation’s past—a forgotten part of our religious and cultural history. This book raises timely and important questions about what religious freedom in America truly means. -- Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time BeingA pioneering work on the history of Japanese Americans during WWII—an instant classic. -- Tetsuden Kashima, author of Judgment without TrialDuncan Williams’s book is deep, detailed, and timely, especially at a time when the meaning of ‘citizenship’ in America is still unsettled. -- Gary Snyder, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Turtle IslandAmerican Sutra movingly and insightfully tells the long-buried true history of the ordeals suffered and triumphs achieved by Japanese American Buddhist individuals unjustly dispossessed and interned during WWII who drew on their Buddhist faith to remain loyal to the nation. I cannot recommend this compelling work highly enough for anyone who faces clearly the present-day conflicts of identities and yet aspires to a twenty-first-century vision of America’s still-possible promise for the world. -- Robert A. F. Thurman, Columbia UniversityBy recounting the struggle of those interned to maintain their faith and traditions in the face of an unforgivable assault on both, American Sutra tells a larger tale of how America’s storied commitment to religious freedom so often clashes with its history of white, Christian exceptionalism. Reading this book, one cannot help but think of the current racial and religious tensions that have gripped this nation—and shudder. -- Reza Aslan, author of Zealot and God: A Human HistoryThere’s much to praise about this book, but one thing that I find especially powerful is Williams’ impressive archival work—in particular, the research that indicates how much the U.S. government saw Buddhism as a national security threat, even in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, and how differently Japanese American Buddhists were treated compared to their Christian counterparts. * Anxious Bench *Detailed and thoughtful narratives that weave together federal policy and its real-world impact on Japanese American Buddhists and Christians, illuminating the intricate threads that tie Whiteness, Christianity, and American national identity together…Any discussion of race and White supremacy in the United States that does not address religion and Christian supremacy is inherently incomplete, and Williams’ American Sutra does a beautiful job of presenting the two together in ways that both resonate and inform. -- Khyati Joshi * Anxious Bench *Sheds light on an under-researched and under-publicized portion of the story of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II…Highly recommended reading for all people, especially people interested in interfaith experiences, United States history, specifically the World War II internment, or learning more about Buddhism. -- Kathryn Nishibaya * Anglican and Episcopal History *A compelling and compassionate inclusion of Japanese American Buddhists in the ‘story of America.’…A rich collection of personal trials and triumphs and a model of compassion for its subject. -- Robert G. Kane * H-Net Reviews *Williams’s granular story of Japanese American Buddhists decenters the discourses of American Buddhism that have been historically erased, or that have denigrated the experiences of Asian Americans in favor of valorizing white converts. Furthermore, the book effectively expands the contours of religious diversity in the West—demonstrating the unique ways that war shaped religious practice—and adds a fascinating layer to the entangled histories of race and incarceration in the region. -- Jean-Paul R. Contreras deGuzman * New Mexico Historical Review *A carefully researched and artfully told account of the importance of Buddhism to the Japanese American wartime experience…Williams’ book is a landmark and essential reading. -- Justin B. Stein * Journal of Religion in Japan *
£15.15
Harvard University Press Hattiesburg
Book SynopsisWinner of the Zócalo Public Square Book PrizeBenjamin L. Hooks Award FinalistAn insightful, powerful, and moving book.Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of JusticeSturkey's clear-eyed and meticulous book pulls off a delicate balancing act. While depicting the terrors of Jim Crow, he also shows how Hattiesburg's black residents, forced to forge their own communal institutions, laid the organizational groundwork for the civil rights movement.New York TimesIf you really want to understand Jim Crowwhat it was and how African Americans rose up to defeat ityou should start by visiting Mobile Street in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the heart of the historic black downtown. There you can still see remnants of the shops and churches where, amid the violence and humiliation of segregation, men and women gathered to build a remarkable community. Hattiesburg takes us into the heart of this divided town and deep into the lives of families on both sides of the racial divide to show how the fabric of their existTrade ReviewIlluminating… Sturkey’s clear-eyed and meticulous book pulls off a delicate balancing act. While depicting the terrors of Jim Crow, he also shows how Hattiesburg’s black residents, forced to forge their own communal institutions, laid the organizational groundwork for the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s. * New York Times *Hattiesburg is where racial democracy meets white supremacy, where technology meets nature, where old slavery money meets the indebted sharecropper, where imagination meets the unimaginable, where the ballot meets the bullet. Sturkey’s magnificent portrait reminds us that Mississippi is no anachronism. It is the dark heart of American modernity. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American OriginalHattiesburg, Mississippi, was the quintessential New South city, built on the promise of quick cash and persistent oppression. In this brilliantly braided history, William Sturkey shows how African Americans made it into a place of opportunity, community, resilience, and rebellion. Hattiesburg is an insightful, powerful, and moving book. -- Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz AgeSturkey’s beautifully written portrait of Hattiesburg, Mississippi—from its founding after the Civil War through the emergence of the modern civil rights movement—offers a fresh history of Jim Crow’s development and decline, unlike any other I have read. Sturkey features people with agency, acting to shape their lives and improve their community, while showing how these individuals were acting within the context of broad economic trends related to war, depression, migration, and more. A wonderfully compelling book. -- Emilye Crosby, author of A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, MississippiIn this masterful biography of an American place, Sturkey compels us to look anew at the world made by white supremacy and remade by the black freedom struggle. Hattiesburg is a timely reminder of how much remains to be said about our shared, segregated past, and few have said more in a single book than this author. This bold, imaginative book is essential reading for anyone seeking to fathom Jim Crow’s rise, fall, and resilience—in Mississippi and well beyond. -- Jason Morgan Ward, author of Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights CenturyHattiesburg is not connected in the popular mind with civil rights history in the way of Selma and Montgomery, but Sturkey’s vibrant history makes a strong case that, to understand how the civil rights movement emerged, it’s essential to spend time there. * Publishers Weekly *When they are at their best, historians craft powerful, compelling, often genre-changing pieces of history…William Sturkey is one of those historians…A brilliant, poignant work of history…Shows us—in a powerful way—the utility of taking a longer, more systematic view of the Jim Crow period. * Journal of African American History *Sturkey provides a moving account of the evil of white supremacy. * Choice *
£18.86
Harvard University Press Fearless Women
Book SynopsisElizabeth Cobbs traces the American quest for gender equality back to the Revolution, when the founding principle of equality became a battering ram against hierarchy. These are stories of American women, famous and obscure, who struggled in public and private to secure new rights, defend their freedom, and gain control over their own lives.Trade ReviewIn the skillful hands of Elizabeth Cobbs, intrepid women of diverse backgrounds come alive on the page as they struggle to defend their own honor, care for their families, and fight for equality, autonomy, and dignity in a nation that has long denied them. Fearless Women is a gripping panoramic history that pairs ingenious excavation with enlightening explanation to relight the fire of feminist political identity at the very moment when we need it most. -- Tiya Miles, author of All That She CarriedFeminism has given Americans a common language, Elizabeth Cobbs argues in this brilliant and inspiring book, making her case through sixteen paired biographies of diverse, carefully selected female subjects, both well-known (Mary Church Terrell, Frances Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly) and unknown (Abigail Bailey, Ann Marie Riebe, Yvonne Swan). A remarkable and gripping achievement. -- Mary Beth Norton, author of Liberty’s DaughtersWhat a great read! In unfailingly crackling prose, Cobbs freshly retells some familiar stories and colorfully excavates many new ones. Rich, consistently compelling, and often moving in detail, Fearless Women brilliantly illuminates women’s long struggle for equality in America, while making a robust case for the centrality of that struggle in the master narrative of American history. A magnificent achievement. -- David M. Kennedy, author of Freedom from FearThe well-researched stories Cobbs tells are at once harrowing and exhilarating…Cobbs’s subjects [are] women who, having taken the worst their country had to offer, gave in return their energy and determination to drive its most progressive agendas. -- Christine Bold * Times Literary Supplement *Fearless Women is so well-written, so well researched, and so engaging that you will find it of real value even as it tells some stories you thought you already knew…We should all welcome the hope that it bestows. -- Roberta Silman * Arts Fuse *An excellent and well-researched deep dive into the lives of women who insisted that they be considered an integral part of the American experience…This is an exciting and compelling read. * New York Journal of Books *Cobbs’s history reclaims feminism as a national social movement that has been pronounced un-American, exclusionary, and on the radical fringe…The breadth of this history is impressive and the depth of the research in terms of plumbing both published and manuscript sources for details about these women’s lives and the campaigns they waged, commands our scholarly attention and praise. -- Karen Garner * H-Diplo *Cobbs’s novelistic skills shine as she dramatizes policy debates and draws on personal memoirs and other sources to bring each woman to life…Feminists will savor the depth and intimacy of this optimistic survey. * Publishers Weekly *The right to compete, learn, lobby, vote, earn equal pay, obtain equal legal protection, and be assured of physical safety are among the issues the author examines through the lives of her brave protagonists. A fresh, well-researched perspective on women’s history. * Kirkus Reviews *Unflinching…Delivering a timeless message of equality, Fearless Women is wide-ranging in its biographical surveys of the women who shaped the US’s struggle for women’s rights since her founding. * Foreword Reviews *Who are the feminist patriots and where did they come from? Covering US history since 1776, this book tackles women’s drive for equality, or at least access, to sixteen different ‘rights’ starting with education and ending with physical safety. * Senior Women Web *
£26.96
Harvard University Press Building for Oil
Book SynopsisBuilding for Oil records the rise of the Petroleum Group in the central government while revealing the everyday stories and struggles of the working class. The book traces the roots and maturation of the Chinese socialist state and its early industrialization and modernization policies during a time of unprecedented economic growth.
£16.16
Harvard University Press CineMobility
Book SynopsisIn Cine-Mobility, Han Sang Kim argues that the force of propaganda films in Korea were derived primarily from the new mobility afforded by transportation. Kim explores the association between cinematic media and transportation mobility, and its connection with the new culture of mobility, including changes in gender dynamics, that accompanied it.Trade ReviewPerhaps the best academic book produced on the subject of Korean literature, film, and culture over the past twenty years…Han Sang Kim has achieved a feat in the English language that no one outside Korea has yet to match—that of telling a fascinating story about the intimate relationship between Korean socioeconomic phenomena (transportation) and media (screen) throughout the twentieth century. -- Kyung Hyun Kim * Seoul Journal of Korean Studies *Its breath of research is impressive—from Korean, American, and Japanese original sources, the subject of the visual mobility of Korea during the past century is groundbreaking and innovative, and the overall historical narrative is brilliant and unique. I can’t think of another book that takes this approach in understanding Korea during the twentieth century. I read it from the beginning to end in about two or three sittings, and each and every chapter read as if there were more truth to be told about the author’s unorthodox approach at examining the history of Korean development. -- Kyung Hyun Kim, author of Hegemonic Mimicry: Korean Popular Culture of the Twenty-First CenturyHan Sang Kim’s wonderful new book offers a vivid exploration of South Korea’s twentieth-century experience of modernity, focusing on technologies and representations of mobility within a political-economic framework. Admirably broad in scope, it covers trains, automobiles, and planes as they appear in feature films, documentaries, and TV shows. Kim fluidly combines a transnational perspective with deep dives into national history, and his exceptional knowledge of Korean visual culture enables him to trace continuities and ruptures across the colonial divide. Filled with nuanced textual interpretations, this book expands our understanding of Korean modernity immeasurably. A major contribution to the field of Korean studies. -- Christina Klein, author of Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korea Cinema
£35.66
Harvard University Press Objects of Love and Regret
Book SynopsisAcclaimed historian and museum curator Richard Rabinowitz tells the story of his immigrant Jewish family through the everyday objects in their lives, from chairs and bottle openers to bottles of perfume. Vivid, absorbing, and powerfully honest, this is a story of one family and one community but also of emotional touchstones that anchor us all.Trade ReviewCould the flood of memories that for Proust became Remembrance of Things Past have been stirred not by the taste of a tea-soaked petite madeleine—but instead, as in historian Richard Rabinowitz’s deeply moving family memoir, Objects of Love and Regret: A Brooklyn Story, by the accidental discovery of a nearly century-old wooden-handled bottle opener?…His tenderly detailed evocation of times that are no more remind us that we, too, have the tools to pry open the past and revive what we thought we had forgotten. -- Diane Cole * Washington Post *Rabinowitz is artful in drawing out the memories and meanings they elicit. Perhaps even more valuable is his encouragement to the rest of us to examine our material world, and to follow his lead. -- Julia M. Klein * Forward *It’s a fascinating read; distinct from books about extraordinary immigrant dynasties like Hadley Freeman’s House of Glass. But that’s what makes it captivating. It could be my family, or yours, one of thousands and thousands of similar stories that make up the tapestry of diaspora history. * Jewish Chronicle *[Rabinowitz] uses ordinary objects to tell extraordinarily meaningful stories on the complex forces and psychological consequences of history, trauma, economics, cultural values, and societal norms that profoundly shaped his family over the 20th century…Timeless. * Enchanted Prose *Rabinowitz has a poetic approach to viewing the past…[This book] serves as a way for readers—particularly young readers who never knew this generation—to understand the choices they made, and how those choices still affect their children and grandchildren. -- Rachel Esserman * The Reporter *The tale of a bottle opener found in a kitchen drawer opens worlds of domestic, immigrant, family, and economic history. This is a book about how the past lives in us, even as we resist it or are unaware of it. Rabinowitz is a storyteller of rare verve and insight, offering us delight, discovery, and an honest account of joy and pain. -- David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of FreedomToo many memoirs only look inward. The wiser memoirists realize that your life is about the you who observes and embraces the world. In Objects of Love and Regret, Rabinowitz is a historian of the heart who uses ordinary objects to tell the story of his family. Fittingly, he begins with a bottle opener purchased by his mother, which becomes his instrument for opening everything as only he can. This scrupulous, meditative writer generously gives us lives that matter. -- Roger Rosenblatt, author of Making Toast: A Family StoryI can’t praise this marvelous book enough. Poignant and moving, it is at once a personal tribute and a work of history. Rabinowitz creates meaning through everyday objects that illuminate the inner life of a single family and the culture that surrounds it. It is one of the most interesting and original books I have read on American Jews and the city of New York. -- Tony Michels, author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New YorkObjects of Love and Regret welcomes us, outsiders, to the inner life of an Eastern European Jewish family in New York. A work of serious historical detection, it drives home an important point. History need not be about strangers, but can just as powerfully be about those who raised us but whose stories we actually never knew. Everything triggers historical inquiry, even an ordinary bottle opener. -- Hasia R. Diner, author of The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000Rabinowitz recognizes how the extraordinary lurks in the ordinary, and in this imaginative and eloquent book he musters common domestic objects in the lives of his Eastern European Jewish immigrant family to tell a story that, while it does not contain all of America, contains an important and powerful part of it. -- Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896
£22.46
Harvard University Press Power for a Price
Book SynopsisThe Qing dynasty office purchase system (juanna), which allowed individuals to pay for government appointments, was regarded in traditional Chinese historiography as inherently corrupt and anti-meritocratic. Lawrence Zhang's groundbreaking study of a broad selection of new archival and other printed evidence contradicts this widely held assessment.Trade ReviewWith exacting research and sweeping vision, Lawrence Zhang has offered the most sophisticated study yet written of how the Qing state and Chinese society negotiated the path to office. By showing that the examination system can only be understood in relation to office purchase, Power for a Price becomes one of those rare books that genuinely transforms our understanding of late imperial China. -- Matthew W. MoscaLawrence Zhang's book is the most important study of Qing-dynasty official recruitment and elite formation to appear within the last twenty years. Zhang demonstrates that, as part of the strategic portfolio of many of the era's most successful officials and lineages, the purchase of degrees, offices, and shortcuts to appointment complemented Confucian education and examination success. Far from being the stigmatized last resort of exam failures in the desperate last decades of the dynasty, direct purchase of degrees and offices in fact constituted a regular, approved practice right through the Qing, providing a steady source of revenue (not unlike the sale of bonds) that enabled the imperial state to tap private wealth by promising repayment through future appointment. Far from being a betrayal of social mobility, the relatively low price of the lower degrees and offices made purchase a far more realistic route to upward mobility than examination alone, which tended to reinforce and reproduce elite status. This book will be required reading for all historians of China. -- Matthew Sommer
£24.26
Harvard University Press The Global in the Local
Book SynopsisIn the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, world-historic political, economic, and technological developments transformed everyday life in places like Zhenjiang, a midsize Chinese river town. Xin Zhang explores the local negotiation of globalization through the experience of Zhenjiang’s merchants, entrepreneurs, and ordinary residents.Trade ReviewErudite and compelling. With never-been-told stories and innovative applications of the ‘glocalization’ concept, Zhang leaves readers with a visceral understanding of time and place in nineteenth-century Zhenjiang. This will be a major contribution to both modern Chinese history and the burgeoning field of global studies. -- Stephen R. Halsey, author of Quest for Power: European Imperialism and the Making of Chinese StatecraftAn exemplary book that significantly contributes to our understanding of not only China’s important transition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but also the extension of global linkages through war, commerce, and technology. By showing how global changes were deeply intertwined with local reality, Zhang successfully demonstrates that the interaction between the two is nonetheless a negotiation. -- Prasenjit Duara, author of Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern ChinaCrucial, agenda-setting history. In a field that has traditionally focused on the countryside or large cosmopolitan hubs like Shanghai, work on medium-sized cities is scarce. Zhang’s impressive research on Zhenjiang not only illuminates an intermediate link in the chain connecting treaty ports to village China; it also humanizes the abstract process of globalization, revealing how locals emerged as cocreators of a globally embedded city. -- Kenneth Pomeranz, author of The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
£32.26
Harvard University Press The House in the Rue SaintFiacre
Book SynopsisOfficially, revolutionary France granted all citizens a right to property. In practice, however, there was significant continuity with the Old Regime. H. B. Callaway argues that the state’s fraught attempts to confiscate property from Parisian émigrés reveal contradictions in ideas of ownership considered foundational to modern property rights.Trade ReviewA fascinating book. Drawing on rich case studies from contested properties in revolutionary Paris, Callaway shows in convincing detail how the ideal of the citizen property owner inescapably clashed with the role of the property owner as an actor in the marketplace. Anyone interested in the history of this tumultuous period will find much to savor in Callaway’s work. -- David A. Bell, author of Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of RevolutionConceptually bold, intensely researched, and elegantly presented, The House in the Rue Saint-Fiacre changes our understanding of how property was viewed and used during the French Revolution and beyond. Callaway deftly leverages the tools of social history to shed new light on a topic most often seen through the lens of legal or intellectual history. -- Leora Auslander, author of Cultural RevolutionsAn illuminating exploration of what émigré property confiscations can tell us about the complexities of French revolutionary policy as practice. Significantly, in examining conflicts over property, Callaway highlights the continued importance of family as a critical unit for the defense of assets. -- Julie Hardwick, author of Sex in an Old Regime City: Young Workers and Intimacy in France, 1660–1789Carefully researched and compellingly written, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of what the French Revolution meant to both private lives and public political culture. Shining welcome light on the murky details of émigré property confiscations, Callaway chronicles how obdurate social and legal realities obliged the state to forgo the democratic promise of 1789. -- Colin Jones, author of Paris: The Biography of a City
£32.26
Harvard University Press Betting on the Civil Service Examinations
Book SynopsisIn Betting on the Civil Service Examinations, En Li places the history of Chinese weixing, or surname guessing, for civil service examinations in a larger context. Li traces institutional revenue innovations surrounding lottery regulation and depicts an expansive community stretching among Guangdong, Southeast Asia, and North America.
£43.31
Harvard University Press Betting on the Civil Service Examinations
Book SynopsisIn Betting on the Civil Service Examinations, En Li places the history of Chinese weixing, or surname guessing, for civil service examinations in a larger context. Li traces institutional revenue innovations surrounding lottery regulation and depicts an expansive community stretching among Guangdong, Southeast Asia, and North America.
£26.96
Harvard University Press The Making of Chinas Post Office
Book SynopsisThe Making of China’s Post Office traces the origins and early development—and the political maneuverings and economic imperatives—of the institution. Using Chinese archives, Tsai illustrates the extent to which local agency shaped the design and development of the first nationwide modernization project to directly impact people’s daily lives.
£53.51
Harvard University Press The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay 16251725
Book SynopsisIn a rich blend of architectural and social history, Cummings reconstructs a splendid narrative of innovations, of restless, migratory people and their architectural and social responses to their environment. It is the first chapter in the long saga of America's preoccupation with technology, showing how it affected the early American home.Trade ReviewAfter more than 25 years of research into the houses and the associated documentary material Abbott Cummings has produced a book which deserves the description ‘definitive study’ …English scholars will be well served when someone produces a book of this quality concerned with traditional buildings in the old world rather than the new. -- Richard Harris * Architectural Review *Abbott L. Cummings’ book is an in-depth history of the framed house almost as if it were a work of art that was losing meaning as the ‘era of technical reproducibility’ approached… From [his] meticulous technical treatment one learns the unique nature of these pioneer homes… The book concludes by underscoring, from the stylistic viewpoint, a sort of common character in the architecture of Massachusetts Bay which endures until the present. The framed house was not just the link between the Old and New World, it also was the mythical commencement of the American constructional tradition. * Domus [Italy] *This will probably be the definitive book on 17th-century American architecture. Richly illustrated, highly detailed, it…will reward careful study by those interested in the subject. -- Geoffrey Elan * Yankee Magazine *A major contribution to American architectural history…[with] solidly researched, eloquently presented text… The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay will be the standard reference for architects, architectural historians and preservationists for many years to come. -- Dell Upton * AIA Journal *[A] meticulous, wonderfully illustrated book… [Cummings] has made a grand book. It fills the lap, enchants the eye, and illuminates all Massachusetts Bay. -- R. C. Haskett * Journal of American History *
£77.31
Harvard University Press Encyclopaedia of American Ethnic Groups
Book SynopsisThe Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups is a guide to the history, culture, and distinctive characteristics of the more than 100 ethnic groups who live in the United States. The origins, history and present situation of the familiar as well as the virtually unknown are presented succinctly and objectively.Trade ReviewCertain to be the standard reference work, to which scholars and lay people alike are certain to turn for many years to come. There is literally no other work which approaches it in comprehensiveness. Even more impressive, however, is the quality of the articles. The editors should be congratulated. -- Seymour Martin LipsetThis is a major work of scholarship, something that has never been attempted before. It will be an enduring monument to the foresight and large-mindedness of those responsible for its landmark publication. It will be something our grandchildren will thank us for. -- Daniel Patrick MoynihanTable of ContentsGroups and Definitions Acadians Marietta M. LeBreton Afghans David C. Champagne Africans Afro-Americans Thomas C. Holt Albanians Aleuts Dorothy M. Jones Alsatians Frederick C. Luebke American Indians Edward H. Spicer Amish John A. Hostetler Anglo-American Anglo-Saxon Appalachians Dwight Billings and David Walls Arabs Alixa Naff Armenians Robert Mirak Aryan Asian Assyrians Arian B. Ishaya and Eden Naby Australians and New Zealanders Andrew Parkin Austrians Frederick C. Luebke Azerbaijanis Alexandre Bennigsen Bangladeshi Enayetur Rahim Basques William A. Douglass Belgians Pierre-Henri Laurent Belorussians Paul Robert Magocsi Bosnian Muslims William G. Lockwood Bulgarians Nikolay G. Altankov Burmese Canadians, British Alan A. Brookes Cape Verdeans Francis M. Rogers Carpatho-Rusyns Paul Robert Magocsi Central and South Americans Ann Orlov and Reed Ueda Chinese H.M. Lai Copts Raef Marcus Cornish John Rowe Cossacks Paul Robert Magocsi Creole Richard A. Long Croats Cubans Lisandro Perez Czechs Karen Johnson Freeze Danes Dorothy Burton Skardal Dominicans Glenn L. Hendricks Dutch Robert P. Swierenga East Indians Joan M. Jensen Eastern Catholics Paul Robert Magocsi Eastern Orthodox Thomas E. Bird English Charlotte J. Erickson Eskimos Arthur E. Hippler Estonians Tonu Parming Ethnic Heritage Studies Program Filipinos H. Brett Melendy Finns A. William Hoglund Foreign Stock French Patrice Louis Rene Higonnet French Canadians Elliott Robert Barkan Frisians Gentile Georgians Nathela Chatara Germans Kathleen Neils Conzen Germans from Russia La Vern J. Rippley Greeks Theodore Saloutos Gypsies Ian F. Hancock Haitians Michel S. Laguerre Hawaiians Alan Howard Hispanic Hungarians Paula Benkart Hutterites John A. Hostetler Icelanders Valdimar Bjornson Indochinese Mary Bowen Wright Indonesians Iranians John H. Lorentz and John T. Wertime Irish Patrick J. Blessing Italians Humbert S. Nelli Japanese Harry H.L. Kitano Jews Arthur A. Goren Kalmyks Arash Bormanshinov Koreans Hyung-chan Kim Kurds Margaret Kahn Latvians Edgar Anderson Lithuanians Arunas Alisauskas (need accents) Luxembourgers Paul Robert Magocsi Macedonians Maltese Manx Ann Orlov Mexicans Carlos E. Cortes Mormons Dean L. May Mother Tongue Muslims Thomas Philipp Nordic North Caucasians Alexandre Bennigsen Norwegians Peter A. Munch Oriental Oriental Orthodox Thomas E. Bird Orthodox Thomas E. Bird Pacific Islanders Bradd Shore Pakistanis Arif Ghayur Pennsylvania Germans Poles Victor Greene Portuguese Francis M. Rogers Puerto Ricans Joseph P. Fitzpatrick Race Romanians Gerald J. Bobango Russians Paul Robert Magocsi Scotch-Irish Maldwyn A. Jones Scots Gordon Donaldson Serbs Michael B. Petrovich and Joel Halpern Slovaks M. Mark Stolarik Slovenes Rudolph M. Susel South Africans Stanley Moss Southerners John Shelton Reed Spaniards Spanish Frances Leon Quintana Spanish-Surname Swedes Ulf Beijbom Swiss Leo Schelbert Tatars Alexandre Bennigsen Teutonic Thai Tri-Racial Isolates Turkestanis Alexandre Bennigsen Turks Talat Sait Halman Ukrainians Paul Robert Magocsi Welsh Rowland Berthoff Wends George R. Nielsen West Indians Reed Ueda Yankees Oscar Handlin Zoroastrians Eden Naby Thematic Essays American Identity and Americanization Philip Gleason American Indiand, Federal Policy Toward Edward H. Spicer Assimilation and Pluralism Harold J. Abramson Concepts of Ethnicity William Peterson Education Michael Olneck and Marvin Lazerson Family Patterns Tamara K. Hareven and John Modell Folklore Roger D. Abrahams Health Beliefs and Practices Noel J. Chrisman and Arthur Kleinman Immigration: Economic and Social Characteristics Richard A. Easterlin Immigration: History of U.S. Policy William S. Bernard Immigration: Settlement Patterns and Spatial Distribution David Ward Intermarriage David M. Heer Labor David Brody Language: Issues and Legislation Abigail M. Thernstrom Language Maintenance Joshua A. Fishman Leadership John Higham Literature and Ethnicity Werner Sollors Loyalties: Dual and Divided Mona Harrington Methods of Estimating the Size of Groups Charles A. Price Naturalization and Citizenship Reed Ueda Pluralism: A Humanistic Perspective Michael Novak Pluralism: A Political Perspective Politics Edward R. Kantowicz Prejudice Thomas F. Pettigrew Prejudice and Discriminatino, History of George M. Fredrickson and Dale T. Knobel Prejudice and Discrimination, Policy Against Nathan Glazer and Reed Ueda Religion Harold J. Abramson Resources and Research Centers Edward Kasinec Survey Research James D. Wright, Peter H. Rossi, and Thomas F. Juravich Maps Tables Appendix I Appendix II
£154.36
Harvard University Press Passions of the Renaissance
Book SynopsisReaders will relish this large-scale yet intimately detailed examination of the blossoming of the ordinary and extraordinary people of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. This third in the popular five-volume series celebrates the emergence of individualism and the manifestations of a burgeoning self-consciousness over three centuries.Trade ReviewIn the original sense of the term, A History of Private Life is a series of essays: attempts at a new, non-narrative kind of history. Sumptuously illustrated with pictures, maps, and photographs, the book is a feast for the eye; it is fascinating, often compelling in its exquisite details… A kaleidoscopic effect is doubtless part of the authors’ purpose: to question our assumption that we understand the history of Renaissance individualism and make us realize that it is as complicated as the variety of traces left by three centuries of private life. -- Maureen Quilligan * New York Times Book Review *This is a bold and seductive book… Richly illustrated, with contributions from foremost French historians, it is set fair to become the authoritative history of intimacy in the early modern West. -- Lyndal Roper * Times Higher Education Supplement *Its broad chronological scope, its remarkable effective integration of essays by different historians, and above all its ability to represent the seemingly frivolous details of private life in a challengingly theoretical matrix make this an important and exciting work for historians of Early Modern Europe. -- Lawrence Wolff * Journal of Social History *The new emphasis on the history of everybody has now been consecrated in [this] ambitious five-volume series…masterfully translated by Arthur Goldhammer… Copious illustrative materials—paintings, drawings, caricatures, and photographs, all cannily chosen and wittily captioned to display domestic life… Magnificent. -- Roger Shattuck * New York Times Book Review *Together these five compact volumes cover much of the history of the classical world, and do so with both ease and authority. * Washington Post Book World *Table of ContentsIntroduction by Philippe Aries 1. Figures of Modernity by Yves Castan, Fran&ccdeil;ois Lebrun, Roger Chartier Introduction by Roger Chartier Politics and Private Life The Two Reformations: Communal Devotion and Personal Piety The Practical Impact of Writing 2. Forms of Privatization by Jacques Revel, Orest Ranum, Jean-Louis Flandrin, Jacques Gelis, Madelaine Foisil, Jean Marie Goulemot Introduction by Roger Chartier The Uses of Civility The Refuges of Intimacy Distinction through Taste The Child: From Anonymity to Individuality The Literature of Intimacy Literary Practices: Publicizing the Private 3. Community, State, and Family: Trajectories and Tensions by Nicole Castan, Maurice Aymard, Alain Collomp, Daniel Fabre, Arlette Farge Introduction by Roger Chartier The Public and the Private Friends and Neighbors Families: Habitations and Cohabitations Families: Privacy versus Custom The Honor and Secrecy of Families Epilogue by Roger Chartier Notes Bibliography Credits Index
£41.36
Harvard University Press In Struggle
Book SynopsisWith its radical ideology and tactics, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was the cutting edge of the civil rights movement in the '60s. This sympathetic yet evenhanded book records for the first time the complete story of SNCC's evolution, of its successes and its difficulties in the ongoing struggle to end white oppression.Trade ReviewNot only an important contribution to the history of the struggle for civil rights; it also enlarges our general understanding of contemporary politics and culture. -- Abigail Thernstrom * New Republic *To anyone who would understand SNCC, this is an essential book. -- James Polk * Newsday *This splendid history of SNCC has successfully captured the dynamic interplay of two parallel but contradictory elements… This is a well-researched, balanced, and analytical assessment of the history of a primarily black student activist group that, with all its failings, made its special contribution to the political awakening of American blacks and to the changing of American institutions and practices. -- Abraham Holtzman * American Political Science Review *In Clayborne Carson SNCC has at last found a scholar capable of probing its radical and fractious nature in a manner both sympathetic and prudently critical… Students of social protest will be deeply in the author’s debt for years to come. -- Francis M. Wilnoit * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part One. Coming Together 1. Sit-ins
£26.96
Harvard University, Asia Center Rise of a Japanese Chinatown
Book SynopsisRise of a Japanese Chinatown focuses on a Chinese immigrant community in the Japanese port city of Yokohama from the Sino-Japanese War of 18941895 to the normalization of Sino-Japanese ties in 1972 and beyond. It tells the story of how Chinese immigrants found an enduring place within a monoethnic state during periods of war and peace.
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center Radical Inequalities
Book SynopsisThe Chinese Communist welfare state was established with the goal of eradicating income inequality. Paradoxically, it widened that gap, undermining a primary objective of Mao Zedong's revolution. Nara Dillon traces the origins of the Chinese welfare state from the 1940s to the 1960s to uncover the reasons why the state failed to achieve this goal.
£35.66
Harvard University Press The Making of Late Antiquity
Book SynopsisPeter Brown presents a masterly history of Roman society in the second, third, and fourth centuries. Brown interprets the changes in social patterns and religious thought, breaking away from conventional modern images of the period.Trade ReviewNo summary of its contents can do justice to this complex and fascinating book, written with all Peter Brown’s refreshing panache. We are presented with an age of vitality, where historians used to find a creeping paralysis; the canvas comes alive with the spectacular successes of individuals who belie the conventional wisdom of the stifling oppressiveness of late Roman institutions; and the cautious uncertainty of the ‘age of anxiety’ disappears in a vigorous emphasis on the recognition and display of power… In a book devoted to human beings it is the portraits of individuals, perceptively located in their social and religious surroundings, which are naturally to the fore. [Brown] has shifted the emphasis of late Roman studies from institutions to individuals, and to the discernment of what made late antique men ‘tick’—a task for which he is without equal. -- E. D. Hunt * Classical Review *The Making of Late Antiquity is most successful, I think, as a study of shifts in the religious imagination… Brown is sensitive to the multifaceted quality of the Late Antique view of the soul, and some of his most creative work is in discussions of demons and angels as imaginal faces of the self and its changing relation to the holy. From the private dreams of Aristides to the public withdrawal of Anthony, Brown has sketched a remarkable shift in a culture’s vision of itself. His argument is as persuasive as it is eloquent. -- Patricia L. Cox * Church History *This brief work by one of the most influential social historians of the twentieth century…provides scholars and serious students of the period of the second through fourth centuries with a well-documented and colorful exposition of the nature of the holy and of popular society in the late Roman Empire… Many will find its call to view the period with the ancients’ own eyes quite refreshing. -- Jason T. Larson * Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin *A provocative book. -- Robert L. Wilken * Religious Studies *[Brown’s] interpretations are sensitive, vivid, and strongly persuasive. He offers a fascinating sketch of the distinctive configurations and interactions of religious, cultural, and social factors which gradually came to define life in the Mediterranean world of the late fourth and early fifth centuries…he has, by judicious use of analytic concepts and graphic vignettes, captured the ‘feel’ of the religious life of the period. -- Eugene V. Gallagher * Theological Studies *Table of Contents1. A Debate on the Holy 2. An Age of Ambition 3. The Rise of the Friends of God 4. From the Heavens to the Desert: Anthony and Pachomius Notes Index
£26.06
Harvard University Press Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in
Book SynopsisEarly in 1788, Franz Anton Mesmer arrived in Paris and began to promulgate an exotic theory of healing that almost immediately seized the imagination of the general populace. Robert Darnton's lively study provides a useful contribution to the study of popular culture and the manner in which ideas are diffused down through various social levels.Trade ReviewA fascinating study of the effects that the theories of the notorious Viennese physician, Franz Mesmer, had upon social and political thinkers during the two decades preceding the French Revolution. This book is a skillful exploration of the various psychological factors that made mesmerism a widely accepted attitude… [The book] will interest literary scholars as well as historians since mesmerism is examined as a phenomenon that bequeathed an attitude that found its expression in the writings of the preromantics and the romantics. * Virginia Quarterly Review *This is an excellent book and one of singular interest both to the historian of science and to the French historian. * Isis *[An] excellent and exemplary study in the history of ideas. Based on a thorough study of manuscripts, pamphlets, and journals, learned in its broad setting and persuasive in its internal logic, supported by richly relevant quotations and reproductions of contemporary engravings, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France provides a commendable model for those interested in the way ‘true’ and ‘false’ ideas interact and broadly influence behavior. * Science *Table of Contents1. Mesmerism and Popular Science 2. The Mesmerist Movement 3. The Radical Strain in Mesmerism 4. Mesmerism as a Radical Political Theory 5. From Mesmer to Hugo 6. Conclusion Bibliographical Note Appendix 1. Mesmer's Propositions Appendix 2. The Milieu of Amateur Scientists in Paris Appendix 3. The Societe de l'Harmonie Universelle Appendix 4. Bergasse's Lectures on Mesmerism Appendix 5. The Emblem and Textbook of the Societes de l'Harmonie Appendix 6. An Antimesmerist View Appendix 7. French Passages Translated in the Text Index
£28.76
Harvard University Press The Politics of German Child Welfare from the
Book SynopsisEdward Dickinson traces the story of German child welfare policy over an extended period of conflict and compromise among competing groups-progressive social reformers, conservative Protestants, Catholics, Social Democrats, feminists, medical men, jurists, and welfare recipients themselves.Trade ReviewAt the center of Edward Ross Dickinson's excellent study are the contests and conflicts that shaped the field of child welfare in Germany across four changes of regime between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1960s. This long time span--and Dickinson's adept charting of continuities and ruptures in the visions and practices of child welfare across it--bespeaks only one of the book's many ambitions. Impressively cognizant of the pertinent historiography of state, welfare, and civil society in Germany and other European countries, Dickinson's book resituates social reform and social policy at the heart of the state-civil society nexus in modern Germany...Grounded in an obviously rich collection of archival sources, Dickinson analyzes a myriad of organizations and institutions...A nuanced analysis. -- Kathleen Canning * American Historical Review *By focusing on the politics of the German child welfare system from the mid-19th to the late 20th century, Dickinson's excellent study raises provocative questions concerning the connections among the process of modernization, the development of the welfare state, and the rise of fascism. * Choice *Through an examination of child welfare policy in Germany between 1871 and 1961, this study addresses continuity and discontinuity in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century German history and the relationship between the modern welfare state and modern regimes forms (e.g. democracy and fascism). Dr. Dickinson concludes, among others, that the politics of child welfare policy in Germany reflected democratic continuities between the Empire and the Federal Republic that were as important as the antidemocratic continuities between the Empire and the Third Reich. * International Review of Social History *Its contributions to the fields of welfare state history and modern German history are clear and compelling. -- Mary Jo Maynes, University of MinnesotaTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Society, Politics, and Modern Social Policy 1. The Inception of Modern Child Welfare Policy, 1840-1895 2. Competing Reform Conceptions in the 1890s 3. Expansion and Consolidation, 1900-1914 4. The Struggle over Child Welfare Policy, 1910-1914 5. Child Welfare Policy in the Great War, 1914-1918 6. Revolution and the National Child Welfare Act, 1918-1924 7. Child Welfare, Bureaucracy, and "Cultural War," 1924-1929 8. The Great Depression and National Socialism, 1930-1945 9. Child Welfare Policy in the Federal Republic, 1945-1961 Conclusion: Democracy, Fascism, and Social Policy Notes Index
£63.71
