Social and cultural history Books

'Witches occupy a clear place in contemporary imagination. We can see them, shadowy, in the corners of the past: mad, glamorous, difficult, strange. They haunt the footnotes of history - from medieval witches burning at the stake to the lurid glamour of the 1970s witchcraft revival. But they are moving out of history, too. Witches are back. They're feminist, independent, invested in self-care and care for the world. They are here, because they must be needed.'What it means to be a witch has changed radically throughout history; where 'witch' was once a dangerous - and often deadly - accusation, it is now a proud self-definition. Today, as the world becomes ever more complicated and as we face ecological, political and economic crisis - witchcraft is experiencing a resurgence. Witches are back.In A Spell in the Wild, Alice Tarbuck explores what it means to be a witch today. Rooted in the real world, but filled with spells, rituals and recipes, this book is an accessible, seasonal guide to witchcraft in the twenty-first century. Following the course of a witch's calendar year while also exploring the history and politics of witchcraft, A Spell in the Wild is the perfect primer for the contemporary witch.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“An engrossing account of a leader who, by converting despair into strength, gave an exiled people both political purpose and the means to attain it.”—Benjamin Balint, Wall Street JournalWinner of the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award in the history category, sponsored by the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies“Derek Penslar, the most original scholar on the history of Zionism today, has written a masterful book, which may indeed become the definitive Herzl biography of our age.”—Michael Brenner, author of A Short History of the Jews“Theodor Herzl was the indispensable catalyst of the Zionist movement that began before him, developed independently of him, and prevailed on its own decades after his death. Penslar’s book unlocks this paradox, and in richly providing the historical context of his leadership, magnifies its achievement.”—Ruth R. Wisse, author of Jews and Power “Derek Penslar has found in Theodor Herzl an amazingly complex character and tells his story with deep insight and great fairness. This biography is innovative, carefully balanced, and engrossing.”—Tom Segev, author of A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion“In his pitch-perfect biography for a new century, accomplished historian Derek Penslar portrays the psychic traits that allowed Theodor Herzl to be elevated by the longings of a fledgling Zionist movement, which he in turn elevated into a political cause that has redefined Jewish and world history down to our present. An elegant masterpiece.”—Samuel Moyn, Yale University

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Book SynopsisAliens, nuclear war and talking dolphins; this book is a study of the weird and wonderful world of the PosadistsTrade Review'Under the grim pressures of 20th century history, and now climate change, Gittlitz shows how explosions of black political humour also contain utopian hopes very necessary to keep alive. As an advocate of Partially Automated Adequate Socialism I can only agree, and applaud this fine addition to leftist history' -- Kim Stanley Robinson, award-winning author of the Mars Trilogy'While Posadism is often treated as a political curiosity, quickly set aside, Gittlitz skillfully paints J. Posadas and his followers in all their depth and complexity: paranoid, idealistic, cultish, fractious, bizarre, proud, far-reaching dreamers. In their bizarre, sometimes revolutionary own ways, they fought for a more just world, one that could finally join the ranks of a far more advanced fraternity awaiting them in the galaxy' -- Anna Merlan, author of 'Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power''An absolute treat. As well as a brilliantly researched biography of Posadas, and a very witty one, it does far more than lampoon him. Rather, it uses his story (and its legendarisation in meme culture) to provide really valuable reflection on revolutionary hope, cults, and the role of irony and despair in the millennial-left milieu' -- David Broder, author of 'First They Took Rome: How the Populist Right Conquered Italy''This book has it all: Trotskyist drama, South American revolutions and aliens from inner and outer space. What's not to like?' -- McKenzie Wark, author of 'Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse?''A provocative and clear-eyed account of communist lunacy, its costs, and why we might need it anyway' -- Malcolm Harris, author of 'Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials''I Want to Believe is most compelling in its consideration of how Posadist ideals live on today, beyond the meme-centric irony and vaporwave aesthetics of the extremely online left' -- Baffler'Gittlitz has recovered an unlikely left-wing hero for these febrile times... and is an able navigator through the ensuing alphabet soup of Trotskyist organisations he travels through' -- Morning Star'Gittlitz does so well in weaving the life of Posadas with the enclosed parallel universe of Trotskyism he created' -- Socialist Resistance'If you find yourself afflicted by capitalist realism, a dip into I Want to Believe and the world of Posadism might be just the thing for you' -- Social Review'There is no reason the left shouldn’t engage in the occasional indulgence of UFOwatching alongside the hard work of organising' -- Dawn Foster‘A cautionary political tale of a radical post-war tendency marked by zealous fanaticism, an enigmatic insurgent horizon caught between utopia and annihilation and the cruellest of gaps separating sincere revolutionary desire and delusional irrelevance’ -- ‘ROAR’Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: THE TRAGIC CENTURY 1. Commentaries on the Infancy of Comrade Posadas 2. Revolutionary Youth or Patriotic Youth? 3. The Death Throes of Capitalism 4. The Origins of Posadism 5. Where are we Going? PART II: THE POSADIST FOURTH INTERNATIONAL 6. The Flying International 7. The Role of Anti-Imperialist and Revolutionary Militants, the Role of Trotskyists, the Program, and Tasks During and After the Atomic War 8. The Macabre Farce of the Supposed Death of Guevara 9. Flying Saucers, the Process of Matter and Energy, Science, the Revolutionary and Working-Class Struggle, and the Socialist Future of Mankind 10. The Accident 11. Hombrecitos 12. Volver 13. What Exists Cannot Be True 14. Arrival of Comrade Homerita to the House PART III: NEO-POSADISM 15. Historical Sincerity 16. Why Don’t Extraterrestrials Make Public Contact? 17. UFOs to the People 18. On the Function of the Joke and Irony in History Timeline Notes Index

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Book SynopsisFrom antiquity to the Middle Ages, the bear’s centrality in cults and mythologies left traces in European languages, literatures, and legends. Michel Pastoureau considers how this once venerated creature was deposed by Christianity and continued to sink lower in the symbolic bestiary before rising again in Pyrrhic triumph as the teddy bear.Trade ReviewPastoureau brings erudition and expertise to his subject as he traces how the bear was a venerated figure in pagan Europe, but dethroned as king of beasts by Christianity. He makes an important contribution by providing a long history of the bear, an animal whose symbolic importance is unknown by many. Readers will be treated to an elegant review of medieval history and theology, as well as informed discussions about the art on cave walls, the boundary between humans and animals in Greek myth, the philosophical foundations of natural history from Aristotle to Buffon, and a wealth of information about popular culture during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. -- Matthew Senior, Oberlin CollegeThe scholarship displayed in this groundbreaking study is the best kind: deep, broad, imaginative. Medievalist Pastoureau takes on the history of the bear, that exceptional animal once said to most resemble man. Once king of the beasts in the West, at times even god, the bear was hunted down in Europe from the time of Charlemagne (d. 814) and its image systematically degraded. By the end of the 12th century, the bear's place as king of the beasts had been usurped by the lion. Henceforth the bear was largely a figure of ridicule. How did this happen? What purposes did the change serve? Pastoureau uses evidence from history, textual analysis, heraldry, anthropology, and iconography to produce an eclectic study that not only reads like a dream but opens avenues for future research. -- David Keymer * Library Journal *William Kotzwinkle (The Bear Went Over the Mountain) and Bella Pollen (The Summer of the Bear) have already demonstrated the appeal of ursine protagonists. But their treatment of our bruinish cousins is nowhere near as encyclopedic as that of Michel Pastoureau, who starts his survey in prehistory and rambles down to the present, tracing the biology, allure, and legends of bears right up to the cuddly teddy bear that represents a hearthside version of the former king of beasts. * Barnes & Noble Review *The animal that dominated the forests of prehistoric and early medieval Europe--and the collective unconscious of Europeans--was, naturally, the largest and strongest creature there, the brown bear...Uncannily human-like in its diet, supposed sexual tastes and ability to stand upright, the bear was seen as an intermediary creature dwelling between the human and animal worlds. It appears in countless myths: Paris, who stole away Helen and sparked the Trojan War, was raised by a she-bear whose milk gave him a taste for abduction. And it has always provided personal names in various European languages, from the epic hero Beowulf (meaning bee-wolf, meaning honey-loving bear) to tennis ace Bjorn (Bear) Borg. What drove Europe's king of beasts from his throne and demoted him to the pitiful dancing entertainer of the late Middle Ages is the core of Pastoureau's engrossing book. And the short answer is Christianity. -- Brian Bethune * Maclean's *The chief subject of Pastoureau's fascinating book...is not the prominent place bears once held in the human imagination but the manner in which they fell from that place. -- Christopher R. Beha * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisThe Medici are famous as the rulers of Florence at the high point of the Renaissance. Their power derived from the family bank, and this book tells the fascinating, frequently bloody story of the family and the dramatic development and collapse of their bank (from Cosimo who took it over in 1419 to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent who presided over its precipitous decline). The Medici faced two apparently insuperable problems: how did a banker deal with the fact that the Church regarded interest as a sin and had made it illegal? How in a small republic like Florence could he avoid having his wealth taken away by taxation? But the bank became indispensable to the Church. And the family completely subverted Florence's claims to being democratic. They ran the city. Medici Money explores a crucial moment in the passage from the Middle Ages to the Modern world, a moment when our own attitudes to money and morals were being formed.To read this book is to understand how much the Renaissance has to tell us about our own world. Medici Money is one of the launch titles in a new series, Atlas Books, edited by James Atlas. Atlas Books pairs fine writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the world, in a new genre - the business book as literature.Trade ReviewTim Parks proves a delightful guide to both the Florentine Renaissance and the family history of one of Europe's greatest dynasties. In Medici Money he wears his considerable learning with refreshing lightness, giving us a wise and witty meditation on money, art and power, Renaissance-style -- Ross King - author of Brunelleschi’s DomeParks brings a novelist's flair to his task and comes out as a hip and snappy narrator. * Independent on Sunday *A straightforward, readable, interesting and witty account of the rise and fall of one of the world's first banks ... A fasinating tale. * Glasgow Evening Times *Successfully captures the spirit of the age and brings alive the characters of Cosimo and Lorenzo, two men whose story remains as fascinating now as it was to their comtemporary friends and enemies. -- Tony Barber * Financial Times *Tim Parks retells the story with a hugely readable breadth and insight. -- Mark Archer * Spectator *Straight-forward, readable, interesting and witty account of the rise and fall of one of the world's first banks ... A fascinating tale. * Birmingham Post *Highlights the excesses and successes of the Florentine Renaissance and charts the glittering ascendancy of one entrepreneurial family against the backdrop of a unique Italian bank. * Good Book Guide *Successfully captures the spirit of the age, and brings alive the characters of Cosimo and Lorenzo, two men whose story remains as fascinating now as it was to their contemporary friends and enemies. * Financial Times *Parks, who is sceptical about bankers, writes about them with pace, wit and some passion. * Economist *A book which is as lively as it is learned. * Scotsman *Witty and penetrating ... Parks deftly unravels these complexities, illustrating both their benefits and the pitfalls with illuminating detail ... Tim Parks recounts the Medicis' story with an infectious enthusiasm. His own conjuring trick is to tell this grand saga, with all its chicanery, in a clear and lucid style. * Sunday Telegraph *Lucky for Italy that Tim Parks decided to live there and write about his new home. His books instruct and entertain. His acute sense of people and history now comes to grand fruition in his tome on the Medici, a gift to anyone who has been dazzled by Florence. Splendid reading -- Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan SunAn erudite and profound examination of the Renaissance banking family. * BBC History Magazine *The fabulous banking boys...fascinating and intricate. * The Guardian *

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Book SynopsisDominic Sandbrook''s magnificent account of the late 1970s in Britain The late 1970s were Britain''s years of strife and the good life. They saw inflation, riots, the peak of trade union power - and also the birth of home computers, the rise of the ready meal and the triumph of a Grantham grocer''s daughter who would change everything. Dominic Sandbrook recreates this extraordinary period in all its chaos and contradiction, revealing it as a turning point in our recent history, where, in everything from families and schools to punk and Doctor Who, the future of the nation was being decided.''Magnificent ... if you lived through the late Seventies - or, for that matter, even if you didn''t - don''t miss this book'' Mail on Sunday''Sandbrook has created a specific style of narrative history, blending high politics, social change and popular culture ... always readable and assured ... [A] splendid book'' Stephen Robinson, SundayTrade ReviewMagnificent ... if you lived through the late Seventies - or, for that matter, even if you didn't - don't miss this book. * Mail on Sunday *Sandbrook has created a specific style of narrative history, blending high politics, social change and popular culture ... always readable and assured ... Anyone who genuinely believes we have never been so badly governed should read this splendid book. -- Stephen Robinson * Sunday Times *Nuanced ... Sandbrook has rummaged deep into the cultural life of the era to remind us how rich it was, from Bowie to Dennis Potter, Martin Amis to William Golding. -- Damian Whitworth * The Times *Sharply and fluently written ... entertaining ... By making you quite nostalgic for the present, Sandbrook has done a public service. * Evening Standard *

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Book Synopsis200 countries; one street each; seven years of travelling and collecting photos, stories, facts and figures about each country. This is not just another photography book. It reveals everything that a street means to society: education, wisdom, youth, experience, happiness, stories, food, and so much more. This is the raw material of life, drawn directly from the experiences of the Belgian photographer Jeroen Swolfs. Seeing the street as a unifying theme, he travelled in search of that one street in each place - sometimes by a harbour or a railway station - that comprised the country as a whole. Each stunning image conveys culture, colours, rituals, even the history of the city and country where he found them. Swolfs sees the street as a universal meeting place, a platform of crowds, a centre of news and gossip, a place of work, and a playground for children. Swolfs's streets are a matrix for community; his photographs are published at a time when the unique insularity of local communities everywhere has never been more under threat.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Woods is a knowledgeable and entertaining guide.”—Caleb Crain, The Guardian -- Caleb Crain * Guardian *"Without letting the purveyors of clichés about cliquish homosexuals off the hook, this lively history turns those stereotypes on their heads, taking seriously the queer networks that were central to modernism. Richly literary and attentive to networks of both men and women, Homintern also has a wide geographical range. Russian, Scandinavian and South American texts are thoughtfully integrated with accounts of New York, London, Berlin, Paris and their Mediterranean outposts. Gregory Woods writes with an insider’s flair, but does not sugarcoat the histories he tells. Frank about self-destructive behavior, he is also sensitive to divisions among sexual minorities along lines of ideology, class and generation."—Christopher Reed, author of Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas -- Christopher Reed"A well-researched, compelling study of how countless gay men have affected, influenced, and restructured the cultural climate for more than a hundred years. . . . An information-heavy book that provides a wonderful resource for those interested in learning about the rise of gay poetics at the onset of the twentieth century."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review * Kirkus Reviews *"Woods is a born storyteller, and he tells the story of the interlocking, international gay and lesbian networks in an unflaggingly lively way. This is a book that needs to be published."—David Bergman, author of The Violet Hour and Gay American Autobiography: Writings from Whitman to Sedaris -- David Bergman“Woods’ history of the ‘homintern’ is in turn hilarious and horrifying… documents shocking levels of persecution. Homophobia was pervasive and vicious… But this is not a gloomy book. Woods lovingly presents a range of gloriously outrageous gay and lesbian individuals and couples.”—Joanna Bourke, BBC History -- Joanna Bourke * BBC History Magazine *"Woods regales the reader with an avalanche of stories, ribald gossip, and lengthy asides that collectively confirm the book’s central thesis: gay culture, or at least gays and lesbians, did indeed liberate the modern world."—Brian Kenney, Booklist -- Brian Kenney * Booklist *“Homintern shines a fascinating spotlight on the diverse and informal networks of people who made up the gay communities worldwide which helped to shape art in its many forms over the decades, involving poets, dancers, actors, artists, designers, composers, politicians and spies. . . . This is a book which throws unreasonable prejudice in the trash can where it belongs, clears up misleading myths about gay people, and should be on the reading list of every fresher starting a university degree.”—Richard Edmonds, Hiskind -- Richard Edmonds * Hiskind *"Delicious, satisfying reading. Even readers knowledgeable about post-Oscar Wilde gay culture are unlikely to read more than a paragraph or two without learning something they did not know, and I cheerfully confess that my most frequent margin note was '!!!' . . . The range and depth of Woods' scholarship are remarkable, but the power of Homintern owes as much to the unabated vitality of his writing."—Tim Pfaff, Bay Area Reporter -- Tim Pfaff * Bay Area Reporter *"Gregory Woods’ Homintern is not just a first-rate work of literary and historical scholarship but a deeply moving narrative in its own right. In its global reach, it has no precedent, yet Woods never sacrifices intimacy for grandeur. In the future I have no doubt that scholars and readers will look to this as an essential text, one of those rare books that make other books possible."—David Leavitt, author of The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer -- David LeavittFinalist for the Lambda Literary Awards in the LGBTQ Studies category. -- Lambda Literary Awards * Lambda Literary Foundation *

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Book SynopsisExplores the social, cultural, legal and religious changes that occurred in Oman during the reign of Sultan Qaboos

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Book SynopsisPart of the Hero Classics seriesWomen have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.Based on two talks given by the author, and first published in September 1929, Virginia Woolf''s seminal essay revolves around the central claim that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Outlining the importance of education and financial independence, Woolf draws up a history of women writers and demonstrates how they had to operate as outsiders in a society that sought to exclude them.The Hero Classics series:MeditationsThe ProphetA Room of One's OwnIncidents in the Life of a Slave GirlThe Art of WarThe Life of Charlotte BronteThe RepublicThe PrinceNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American SlaveUtopia

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Book SynopsisAs she awaits her execution at Oxford Castle, a newly wed woman from a God-fearing family, convicted for murdering her housemaid, is pardoned at the last minute by King George II. A butcher suddenly disappears and changes his identity after the tragic death of his young wife. A picture-frame maker from humble origins becomes ‘the richest man in Oxford’ and is at ease socialising with the luminaries of the Victorian art world. And a lovestruck local member of parliament with a serious gambling addiction dies in suspicious circumstances. These are some of the stories of individuals connected with the land and property on Middle Way in Summertown, Oxford, where the author now lives. The book presents an alternative history of Oxford and explores how Summertown evolved from being primarily an artisans’ village to becoming a well-heeled suburb of Oxford. Extensively referenced and using archival sources and interviews, a voice is also given to the living relatives of people connected with the land and property on Middle Way.

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Book Synopsis Hundreds of books have been written about The Beatles. Over the last half century, their story has been mythologized and de-mythologized and presented by biographers and journalists as history. Yet many of these works do not strictly qualify as history and the story of how the Beatles'' mythology continues to be told has been largely ignored. This book examines the band''s historiography, exploring the four major narratives that have developed over time: The semi-whitewashed Fab Four account, the acrimonious breakup-era Lennon Remembers version, the biased Shout! narrative in the wake of John Lennon''s murder, and the current Mark Lewisohn orthodoxy. Drawing on the most influential primary and secondary sources, Beatles history is analyzed using historical methods.Trade Review"Weber’s book should be a set text for a course in popular music studies, lucidly demonstrating an approach transferable to the reception history of any number of artist studies." - Dai Griffiths, Popular Music

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Recent decades have seen the yeshiva recreated as an institution for all Jewish men, and in some places for Jewish women as well. Yet in its origin the yeshiva was an elite institution, for men who were prepared to devote themselves to years of Torah study. The most outstanding of the yeshivas were found in Lithuania, and the period between the two World Wars saw important developments in these schools, developments that continue to reverberate in Orthodox society. Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky has made great use not merely of the memoir literature and academic sources, but has immersed himself in archives in order to offer us the first scholarly study of the yeshivas during the interwar years. For those seeking to understand where the yeshivas came from, how they functioned, what ideals guided them, and how unfortunately they came to their end in Eastern Europe, there is no better guide than Klibansky."—Marc B. Shapiro, Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies, University of Scranton"Through a thorough and rigorous study of numerous sources, Ben Tsiyon Klibansky demonstrates that interwar Poland, rightly characterized as an age of decline to Orthodox Judaism, was an age of thriving to one of its major institutions: the Yeshiva. The complete destruction of the Lithuanian yeshivas in World War II, first by the Soviet occupation and then by the Nazi Holocaust, put an end to this thriving institution, but, as Klibansky concludes, they remained a source of inspiration to the renewed yeshivas of the postwar period."—Benjamin Brown, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem"Nowadays the term "Lithuanian Yeshiva" is used for a type of yeshivas that emerged in Lithuania in the nineteenth century and developed a special "school" of learning and a code of living and dressing, which is still existent. Yet, knowledge about yeshivas in Lithuania itself, especially in the twentieth century up till and into the Holocaust, is unknown. Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky's The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshivas bridges this lack in knowledge and uncovers in a fascinating way and based on in-depth research the general picture of this period as well as its particulars. Klibansky successes in depicting and analyzing the renewal and vitality of the Yehiva world vis-à-vis the deep political, social, religious and cultural changes of the first decades of the twentieth century, and by doing so also re-emphasizes the enormous loss to Jewry, Judaism and Yiddishkeit caused by the Holocaust."—Dan Michman, Head, The International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem; Professor (Emeritus) of Modern Jewish History, Bar-Ilan Universit"Few institutions influenced the world of European Jewry as did the yeshivas. The fact that the yeshiva framework was 'emulated' in the United States, Israel, England, France, and elsewhere by newly coalescing traditionalist communities is proof of its lasting significance. At the same time, few institutions were so misunderstood as were the yeshivas. The pious attempts that were written to describe how they functioned missed the key points – usually out of ignorance. Klibansky's magnum opus transforms our understanding of how the traditionalist Jews created structures to maintain adherence. It is no less significant in explaining what the self-conscious modernists in Europe were responding to. In short, it is one of those transformative works that are basic texts for both understanding a world that was destroyed and a new world that was created."—Shaul Stampfer, Sandrow Professor of Soviet and East European Jewish History (emeritus), Hebrew University of Jerusalem"Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky has stepped into a historiographical void of the interwar East European Jewish experience with his The Golden Age of the Yeshivas, a study of all facets of the Lithuanian yeshiva world: leadership, student body, curriculum, economics, and self-image. Through a rare combination of historical empathy and judicious use of sources, Klibansky has reconstructed the interwar Lithuanian yeshivas in all their panoramic commonalities and granular specificities. In so doing, he has parsed the central paradox of the phenomenon of a golden age of the Lithuanian yeshivas, set against the background of Jewish secularization, educational practicality, and political and economic crisis."—Joshua Karlip, Herbert S. and Naomi Denenberg Associate Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva UniversityTable of ContentsIntroductionSection I: Consolidation and Expansion1. The Renewal of the Yeshiva World after the First World War2. Expansion Trends in the Yeshiva WorldSection II: Aspects of the Yeshiva World3. Economy4. Studies5. Leadership6. The TalmidimSection III: The Beginning of the End7. Return to Wandering8. Under Soviet RuleEpilogueBrief BiographiesGlossaryBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Excellently documented... [O]ne of the best pictures that has ever been put together of the twelve men who made up [the] Committee of Public Safety... There is fine scholarship here."--New York Times "An excellent book on the administration of France by the great Committee of Public Safety... [Palmer] has made the members of the Committee living characters and the events of the period real occurrences."--American Political Science Review "A wonderful collective portrait of the Committee of Public safety; from the first sight of the room where they met at the Tuileries, you are plunged into the drama of their adventure."--Biancamaria Fontana, Times Higher EducationTable of ContentsList of Illustrations vi Foreword to the Princeton Classic Edition vii Preface to the Bicentennial Edition xvii 1 Twelve Terrorists to Be 3 2 The Fifth Summer of the Revolution 22 3 Organizing the Terror 44 4 The Beginning of Victory 78 5 The "Foreign Plot" and 14 Frimaire 108 6 Republic in Miniature 130 7 Doom at Lyons 153 8 The Missions to Alsace 177 9 The Missions to Brittany 202 10 Dictated Economy 225 11 Finding the Narrow Way 254 12 Ventose 280 13 The Culmination 305 14 The Rush Upon Europe 335 15 The Fall 361 Epilogue 388 Bibliographical Essay 397 Index 405

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Book SynopsisExploding the assumption that black women's only important musical contributions have been in folk, jazz, and popTrade Review"A reliable, well-written, and scholarly reference text." --Wisconsin Public Radio"This excellent and beautifully produced publication will immediately interest those working in music history and women's studies. It is an exemplary study of significant composers born between 1904 and 1956. . . . Essential." --Choice

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Book SynopsisIslam is the only major world religion that resists the juggernaut of alcohol consumption. In many Islamic countries, alcohol is banned; in others, it plays little role in social life. Yet, Muslims throughout history did drink, often to excess—whether sultans and shahs in their palaces, or commoners in taverns run by Jews or Christians. This evocative study delves into drinking’s many historic, literary and social manifestations in Islam, going beyond references to ‘hypocrisy’ or the temptations of ‘forbidden fruit’. Rudi Matthee argues that alcohol, through its ‘absence’ as much as its presence, takes us to the heart of Islam. Exploring the long history of this faith—from the eight-century Umayyad dynasty to Erdoğan’s Turkey, and from Islamic Spain to modern Pakistan—he unearths a tradition of diversity and multiplicity in which Muslims drank, and found myriad excuses to do so. They celebrated wine and used it as a poetic metaphor, even viewing alcohol as a gift from God—the key to unlocking eternal truth. Drawing on a plethora of sources in multiple languages, Matthee presents Islam not as an austere and uncompromising faith, but as a set of beliefs and practices that embrace ambivalence, allowing for ambiguity and even contradiction.Trade Review'[A] sensitive and nuanced exploration of the inner lives of people with whom, though remote in time and place from us, we would have enjoyed sharing a drink.' -- Asian Review of Books‘This evocative study delves into drinking’s many historic, literary and social manifestations in Islam.’ -- H-Net'That Islamic culture makes no room for alcohol is a myth that has long clouded views of and within Islam. Rudi Matthee debunks this myth with the deftness and authority we have come to expect from one of our most accomplished scholars of Islamic cultures. Intoxicatingly good.' -- Christopher de Bellaigue, author of 'The Islamic Enlightenment' and 'The Lion House''Matthee's fascinating study of wine and wine-drinking in the Muslim world explores not only production and consumption but a rich culture of poetic ecstasy and revelry. Erudite and yet accessible, this outstanding book will find its deserved place within a growing body of sociocultural histories.' -- Abbas Amanat, William Graham Sumner Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University, and author of 'Iran: A Modern History''An excellent and important book covering the entire history of Islam and a very large part of the Islamic world. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, it is engaging and well written throughout.' -- Devin Stewart, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Emory College of Arts and Sciences'The first comprehensive engagement with the history of alcohol in the Islamic world, from the early days of the revelation to the nuances of contemporary alcohol policy and practice in major Muslim-majority countries. A novel, timely and compelling contribution.' -- Maziyar Ghiabi, Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities and Politics, University of Exeter

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Book SynopsisIn this inspirational and practical guide to country life, passionate and hugely knowledgeable countryman Alan Titchmarsh explores the heritage of rural Britain, its landscapes and wildlife, its traditions, customs and crafts. The Lost Skills and Crafts Handbook will help you rediscover your love of the countryside, including:- a checklist of British butterflies and where to find them- how to keep chickens, ducks, goats and sheep- how to make soap, candles and your own herbal remedies- how to track animals and forage for food- essential knot tying- how to build a campfire without matches- how to create a kitchen garden- the origins of country superstitionsAnd much more. With beautiful line art illustrations throughout, this compendium of the British countryside and its delights will be an essential read for any nature lover in your life.

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Book SynopsisA remarkable feat of scholarship, fairness and readability, full of lively detail with a freshness of style which brings new life to the narrative' Anthony SampsonThroughout its turbulent history, South Africa has frequently been the focus of worldwide attention usually hostile. Yet prejudice and ignorance about the country are widespread. The evolution of the present-day Rainbow Nation' has taken place under conditions of sometimes extreme pressure. Since long before the arrival of the first European settlers in the seventeenth century, the country has been home to a complex and uneasily co-existing blend of races and cultures, and successive waves of immigrants have added to the already volatile mixture.Despite the euphoria which greeted the dismantling of the apartheid system and the election as President of Nelson Mandela in April 1994, South Africa's history, racial mix and recent political upheavals suggest it will not easily free itself from the legacy of its tumultuous past. NTrade Review‘A masterly synthesis of past and present scholarship historical storytelling in the grand narrative tradition’Mail & Guardian ‘Sweeping, exhaustive and masterly’Scotland on Sunday ‘Excellent… a balanced account of a very complex story’Stephen Fleming, Irish Independent ‘Vital to an understanding of modern South Africa’Publishers Weekly ‘His assessments are judicious, his opinions fair. Welsh maintains a clear narrative thread through this hugely complex story’Stephen Taylor, New York Times Book Review

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Book SynopsisExplores how black women's geographies are meaningful sites of political opposition. This work offers a fresh interpretation of black women's geographic thought. Analyzing diverse literatures and material geographies, it reveals how human geographies are a result of racialized connections.

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Book SynopsisIn this book, scientist-historian Gordon Goldsborough hits the road in search of adventure and little-known stories from Manitoba's past. Among the places he visits are underground radiation monitoring posts from the Cold War, a remote hydroelectric generating station, cruise ships on the Red River, and the original route of the Trans-Canada Highway.Trade Review"WINNER, BOOK OF THE YEAR, MORE ABANDONED MANITOBA. MCNALLY ROBINSON #1 BESTSELLER, ABANDONED MANITOBA"Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION- On the Road (the old, abandoned highways of Manitoba)- Updates from the previous books (Steamboat Alpha, Atkinson house, Elva grain elevator, Port Nelson, Mallard Lodge, etc.)SITES1. Buller Monument2. Carnegie Library3. Lemiez Sculpture Garden4. Kanuchuan Hydroelectric Generating Station5. Radiation Fallout Reporting Posts6. Sargenia Stone Terraces7. Brandon House8. Duck Factory No. 19. Red River West Channel10. Red River Cruise Ships11. Winnipeg Canoe Club12. Palace Theatre13. Manitoba Hydro Office Building14. Good Harbour Fishing Station15. North Transcona Railway Yard and Transfer Elevator16. Neighbourhood Chain Stores17. CKX Radio Building18. Summerville Curling Rink19. Dene Village and Akudlik20. Salvation Army Citadel21. Winnipeg Garbage Incinerator22. Victoria Court23. Tilston Coal Shed24. Pineland Forest Nursery25. Haynes Chicken Shack26. Brandon Hills Fire Tower27. West Hawk Gold Mine28. Winnipeg Old Exhibition Grounds29. Roseisle Hutterite Cemetery30. Emerson Telephone Exchange Building31. Manitoba Refinery Building32. RCAF BirdCONCLUSION- The neglect of history in Manitoba- The state of archives in Manitoba (archivist survey)- Geographic coordinates for featured sites

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Book SynopsisEffervescent' New Yorker Best Books Of 2022 So FarBursts with colour and incident' FT Best Books of SummerRead this prize-winning historian's immersive ( New York Times) account of the famous writers who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictators and rewrote the rules of modern journalismThey were an astonishing group: glamorous, gutsy, and irreverent to the bone. As cub reporters in the 1920s, they roamed across a war-ravaged world, sometimes perched atop mules on wooden saddles, sometimes gliding through countries in the splendour of a first-class sleeper car. While empires collapsed and fledgling democracies faltered, they chased deposed empresses, international financiers and Balkan gunrunners, then knocked back doubles late into the night.Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is the extraordinary story of John Gunther, H.R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson: a close-knit band of wildly famous American reporters who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictatoTrade Review‘High-speed, four-lane storytelling … Cohen’s all-action narrative bursts with colour and incident’Financial Times ‘A rivetingly raw account’Spectator ‘As effervescent, for more than four hundred pages, as its winsome and hyperactive characters’New Yorker ‘Ambitious … a distressing, immersive recounting of how denial, passivity and pacification aided the rise of authoritarian regimes’New York Times ‘Today the war news is available around the clock on TV screens, in print, and on the internet. Back then the best source of news was an intrepid band of young American newspaper correspondents … prodigious research and sparkling prose. The book is a model of its kind’Wall Street Journal ‘Giddy with the tumultuous drama of the era… the rollicking group biography of a colourful cabal of American war reporters in the 1920s and 30s who landed seminal interviews with dictators and revolutionaries alike’ Marina Hyde, Favourite Reads of 2022 ‘Sheer brilliance of writing and storytelling . . . entwining collective biography with the urgency of journalism’s interwar critiques to produce a riveting and deeply thought-provoking read’ Charlotte Elkins ‘A fresh, fast-paced history of the twentieth-century’s most defining events through the eyes of the foreign correspondents who dashed off to cover them … A riveting narrative that unites public and private affairs with rare fluency and power’Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch ‘Beautifully written … A fascinating reminder of the days when first rate correspondents had not just access, time and money but real influence over world affairs’Caroline Moorehead, author of Martha Gellhorn: A Life ‘Brilliantly conceived, beautifully written, this is a daring new history of the world between the wars …Unforgettable’Adam Tooze, author of Shutdown

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Book SynopsisIn 1500 few Europeans regarded nature as a subject worthy of inquiry. Yet years later the first museums of natural history had appeared in Italy, dedicated to the marvels of nature. Drawing on archives of visitors' books, letters, and pleas for patronage, this title reconstructs the lost social world of Renaissance and Baroque museums.

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Book SynopsisThis fascinating collection of photographs and stories traces the ways in which The Beatles' home town has changed over the past 50 years.

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Book SynopsisHow King’s Cross grew from tile kilns and dust heaps to a vital rail artery, and from decay and dereliction to a site of major redevelopment

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Book SynopsisCovering a range of media and a wide geographical spread, Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean reveals how 19th-century artists in the Middle East and North Africa reckoned with new tools, materials, and tastes from local perspectives.Trade Review"This book is a timely contribution to pressing debates about visual cultures of modernity across the modern Mediterranean. With a geographic diversity reaching from the Ottoman capital across North Africa, the essays in this book address a rich range of themes, from emergent forms of modern historicism to original readings of objects and images that trouble entrenched assumptions about aesthetic value. So too, this book's revisionary perspective makes clear the necessity to address the diversity of visual culture, from painting to photography, from craft work to infrastructure. The collective enterprise of this anthology transforms our understanding of what it meant to be modern across the Islamic Mediterranean."—Mary Roberts, author of Istanbul Exchanges: Ottomans, Orientalists and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture, University of Sydney"Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean combines a compelling and well-researched range of studies that make a valuable contribution to the pluralization of global modernisms in art history, with a focus on nineteenth-century Islamic art and visual culture. This volume is a welcome addition to the literature of Islamic modernity and modern art."—Berin Golonu, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide"This attractive volume addresses the recent scholarly shift from the arts and architecture of the lands of Islam in the early caliphates of the Umayyads and Abbasids through the pre-modern Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal dynasties to modern and contemporary times. An introduction by Graves (Indiana Univ.) and Seggerman (Rutgers Univ., Newark) is followed by 11 essays focused on the different ways in which artists, artisans, and patrons in the Mediterranean lands from Morocco to Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries engaged with European modernity and the colonial enterprise. The essays are roughly grouped around three topics: the introduction of photography and printing with movable type, new modes of craft production, and transportation by steamship and railroad. As with all such collections, the essays are uneven; some are unexpectedly fascinating—for example those on the exchange of photographic albums between the Ottoman sultan and the University of Pennsylvania to foster archaeological projects, the celebrations surrounding the opening of the Suez Canal, the introduction of Krupps' steel I-beam to Istanbul—but others are laden with academic jargon. (Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.)"—J. M. Bloom, Boston College, ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationIntroduction: Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean, by Margaret S. Graves and Alex Dika SeggermanPart I: Picturing Knowledge1. Well-Worn Fashions: Repetition and Authenticity in Late Ottoman Costume Books, by Ünver Rüstem2. Osman Hamdi and the Long Duration of History, by Gülru Çakmak3. Picturing Knowledge: Visual Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Arabic Periodicals, by Hala Auji4. The Muybridge Albums in Istanbul: Photography as Diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire, by Emily NeumeierPart II: Conceptualizing Craft5. The Double Bind of Craft Fidelity: Moroccan Ceramics on the Eve of the French Protectorate, by Margaret S. Graves6. The Manual Crafts and the Challenge of Modernity in Late Nineteenth-Century Damascus, by Marcus Milwright7. The Turn to Tapestry: Islamic Textiles and Women Artists in Tunis, by Jessica GerschultzPart III: Aesthetics of Infrastructure8. Alabaster and Albumen: Photographs of the Muhammad Ali Mosque and the Making of a Modern Icon, by Alex Dika Seggerman9. Tents and Trains: Mobilizing Modernity in the Late Ottoman Empire, by Ashley Dimmig10. Precious Metal: The I-Beam in the Late Ottoman Empire, by Peter Christensen11. November 1869: The Suez Canal Inauguration, by David J. RoxburghTimelineGlossaryIndex

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Book SynopsisThe first history of the Soviet home front experience during World War II and of the civilians who bore the burden of total war and played a critical role in the global victory over fascism.After Hitler''s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, German troops conquered the heartland of Soviet industry and agriculture and turned the occupied territories into mass killing fields. The country''s survival hung in the balance.In Fortress Dark and Stern, Wendy Z. Goldman and Donald Filtzer tell the epic tale of the Soviet home front during World War II. Against the backdrop of the Red Army''s early retreats and hard-fought advances after Stalingrad, they present the impact of total war behind the front lines in a chronicle of spirited defense efforts, draconian state directives, teeming black markets, official corruption, and selfless heroism. In one of the greatest wartime feats in history, Soviet workers rapidly evacuated factories, food, and people thousands of miles to the east. After long and dangerous journeys in unheated boxcars, they built a new industrial base beyond the reach of German bombers. As the Soviet state reached the height of its power, imposing military discipline and sending millions of people to work thousands of miles from home, ordinary people withstood starvation, epidemics, and horrific living conditions to supply the front and make the Allied victory possible This book examines the dark and painful war years from a new perspective, telling the stories of evacuees, refugees, teenaged and women workers, runaways from work, prisoners, and deportees.Based on a vast trove of new archival materials, Fortress Dark and Stern reveals a history of suffering, sacrifice, and ultimate triumph largely unknown to Western readers.Trade ReviewTwo well-established authors...have combined efforts to create a truly masterful narrative of the gigantic task of mobilizing the home front for a war of unprecedented scale. The story that they tell is as dynamic as the unstable fronts of the war and yields numerous surprises....The wealth of archival sources they have brought to bear, command of the secondary literature, and strongly mounted argument combine to create a book that not only provides a concise account of a major historical event but also gives us a new and convincing interpretation....Most impressively, throughout the book Goldman and Filtzer do an exemplary job of toggling between the grand scale of events and what they meant to individual people....Their narrative is gripping....We now have an authoritative, multifaceted account of the largest labor mobilization in human history. * Brandon Schechter, American Historical Review *A brief review cannot do justice to the breadth and depth of Goldman and Filtzer's account of the Soviet homefront. The book makes an important contribution to understandings of Stalinism as a system, exploring both its power and its limits ... A monument to the contributions and suffering of Soviet civilians, the book reclaims the Soviet victory for "all the world's people, part of an ongoing international struggle against virulent nationalism, race hatred, anti-Semitism, and exploitation" (378). * Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Journal of Interdisciplinary History *Fortress Dark and Stern is a welcome and long overdue addition to the literature that doesn't just fill a gap-it fills a gaping hole!... [It] sheds light on a relative Soviet success story of the early war period that tends to be lost among the battles being fought and hundreds of thousands of casualties suffered at the front. Although it may seem too obvious to state, without the efforts and sacrifices of those in the Soviet rear, the Red Army would have been unable to keep on fighting. How and why the Soviet home front held up, in the face of wartime trials that would have crippled many other nations, is undoubtedly a story worth telling. * Alexander Hill, Journal of Slavic Military Studies *A sweeping, yet detailed account of the Soviet home frontDEL. The true innovation of this bookDELconsists in its presentation of the home front as a core constituent of the war effort as a whole, a dynamic constellation of factories, farms, railways, and offices that kept the Red Army (RA) armed, clothed, and fed and whose ability to do so ultimately depended on the RA's own ability to hold and liberate the country's territoryDEL.The authors also pay tribute to the resilience and resourcefulness of the Soviet people, arguing that they remained overwhelmingly committed to the war effort throughout its durationDEL.A piece of stellar scholarship * Yiannia Kokosalakis, Journal of Slavic Military Studies *Goldman and Filtzer's volume is a major contribution to the study of WW II and a worthy addition to any library. * C. C. Lovett, CHOICE *Most readers lack an understanding of the Great Patriotic War that began with the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941....Unfortunately, historians have overlooked a significant decision by Stalin that made a German victory highly unlikely—the order that all vital industries and agriculture, including workers, in the path of the Wehrmacht be evacuated. Goldman and Filtzer examine the role the Soviet home front played in their new study, Fortress Dark and Stern. The authors not only relate the political ramifications of the decisions made by Soviet leadership, both their successes and failures, but also, and more important, they recount the pain and suffering of the Russian people by drawing on personal accounts of that herculean task. The final defeat of the Third Reich was made possible by those sacrifices. Goldman and Filtzer's volume is a major contribution to the study of WW II and a worthy addition to any library. * Choice *Fortress Dark and Stern...depicts in vivid and often horrifying detail what life was like for noncombatants, whose enormous sacrifices supported the army's efforts and contributed to the victory over the Nazis....The fullest story to date of the Soviet home front, of the civilians who lived in dire conditions, often working double and triple shifts and sometimes dropping dead on the factory floor, in order to keep the army and the country going. * Maria Bloshteyn, Los Angeles Review of Books *This book describes the extraordinary experience of people on the Soviet home front during World War II; specifically the devastating anguish of the war, and Soviet citizens' grim determination to prevail... Much has been published about the wartime Soviet Union since 1991, but this book's forceful style and its use of Soviet sources ensure it will have lasting value in World War II scholarship. The use of personal anecdotes and statistical evidence is laudable. * Zachary Irwin, formerly with Penn State Behrend, Library Journal *Fortress Dark and Stern presents a definitive social history of the Soviet Union at war. Impeccably researched by two of the most distinguished historians in the field, this book conveys the triumphs and tragedies of what was a total war like no other. It is a major contribution to the study of the Soviet Union and the Second World War. * Lynne Viola, author of Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial *How did Stalin's Soviet Union claim victory in the Second World War? In Fortress Dark and Stern, two consummate historians at the peak of their powers investigate the Soviet people's epic struggle on the home front to arm, feed, and clothe soldiers who marched against fascism from Stalingrad to Berlin. Based on prodigious archival evidence, memoirs, and new scholarship, this beautifully written book tells a story essential for a new generation of students and citizens. * Dan Healey, University of Oxford *To be a Soviet civilian during the war with Germany was to strive and to suffer. Many faced bad or impossible choices. Fortress Dark and Stern describes the predicaments, fates, and accomplishments of the millions behind the lines in unforgettable detail. * Mark Harrison, University of Warwick *Drawing on a vast array of new archival sources, Wendy Goldman and Donald Filtzer offer the most comprehensive account to date of the Soviet Home front during World War II. The authors' novel findings about the role of the Stalinist state during the war will give rise to debates and disagreements among historians. No future study of the Soviet Home front and the Eastern Front generally will be complete without reference to this book. * Oleg Budnitskii, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow *For decades, historians have debated how the Soviet Union managed to withstand the immense blow dealt by the German invasion in 1941. As Fortress Dark and Stern persuasively argues, it was the home front that assured Soviet survival in 1941 and, ultimately, victory in 1945. Drawing on rich, newly discovered archival materials, this book shines a bright light on the lives and the labor of millions of ordinary citizens, predominantly women, who emerge as the unsung heroes of the Soviet war epic. * Jochen Hellbeck, Jochen Hellbeck, author of Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich *Offers...an unparalleled overview of the Soviet home front. In clear and lucid prose, Goldman and Filtzer tell the story of the vast movement east in the wake of the invasion, the gargantuan efforts to provision the population, the desperate mobilization of labor, and the struggle to maintain the population's physical health and retain their loyalty in the face of formidable challenges to both... Wartime labor mobilization and labor discipline have received only limited attention from historians, and in Fortress Dark and Stern they finally get their due... It paints a compelling picture of the tremendous costs of waging war as they were experienced far from the frontlines. * Rebecca Manley, Russian Review *This book could not be more timely. Wendy Goldman and Donald Filtzer have written an impressively comprehensive account of the support system that, they argue, was essential to the World War II victory of the Red Army in Europe. Using extensive archival materials, they paint a picture of a government based on an ideology of rationalism and science trying desperately to manage the chaos of an initially successful invasion, huge losses of land, people, and property, the decimation of its military, a massive evacuation, plagues, corruption, poor planning, and an exceptionally brutal occupying force... This book is... also a reminder of the resonance that the enormous suffering of the peoples of the Soviet Union still has today and the way that memories of the war shape so many of the actions of current leaders. * Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, Aspasia *That text made excellent use of the then-available Russian language sources. * Home Front Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Oxford University Press Spring/Summer 2021 Trade Catalog Introduction: Total War Ch. 1 Panic, Scorched Earth, and Evacuation Ch. 2 Rolling East and Resettlement Ch. 3 The Staff of Life: Feeding the People Ch. 4 Illicit Provisioning: Inequality, Leveling, and Black Markets Ch. 5 "All for the Front": Free Labor, Prisoners, and Deportees Ch. 6 Millions in Motion: The Labor System in Crisis Ch. 7 Runaways: Labor Desertion and State Coercion Ch. 8 The Public's Health Ch. 9 "Our Cause is Just": Loyalty, Propaganda, and Popular Moods Conclusion. 'Brick Dust and Ashes': Liberation and Reconstruction Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Impressive. . . . Lakota America takes us from the sixteenth century to the present, with painstaking, carefully marshaled detail, but its real feat is in threading how the Lakota philosophy and vision of the world guided their reinventions and their dealings with colonial powers. . . . Hämäläinen has the novelist’s relish for the strange, pungent detail . . . [in this ] accomplished, and subtle, study.”—Parul Sehgal, New York TimesNamed one of the New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2019“A brilliant, bold, gripping history.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard, Best Books of 2019“[A] profound history of the Lakota people. . . . Hämäläinen’s book emphasizes that to understand American history it is vital to understand Lakota—and, by extension, Native American—history. . . . Lakota America joins, and in many respects leads, a growing body of work centered on single-tribe histories through which we can see, for the first time, the wild making of America.”—David Treuer, New York Review of Books“Turned many of the stories I thought I knew about our nation inside out.”—Cornelia Channing, Paris Review, Favorite Books of 2019“A comprehensive history of the tribe.”—The Economist“You’ll catch something roiling beneath that professional composure: a lively truculence that gives this book its pulse, and its purpose. Pekka Hämäläinen’s impressive history is also a quarrel with the field, with how history—especially the history of indigenous Americans—has been told and sold.”—Parul Sehgal, International New York Times“There are comparative lessons here about the vulnerability that can lie behind apparent power and the strength that comes from apparent weakness.”—David A. Nichols, Reviews in HistoryCHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles, 2020Finalist in the PROSE Awards North American and U.S. History category, sponsored by the Association of American PublishersLonglisted for the 2020 Cundill History Prize, sponsored by McGill University Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize, sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation.Winner of the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize, sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies“Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse live in history as great warriors. Hämäläinen’s brilliant exploration of the history and culture of the people that produced these two men is destined to become a classic.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University“Deeply researched, epic in scale, interpretatively adventurous, and ambitious, Lakota America will influence historians for years.”—Richard White, Stanford University“Like the Lakotas he studies, Pekka Hämäläinen is a shapeshifter. He is nuanced, nimble, and wise, with an uncanny capacity for reinvention as new understandings come to light. The result is stunning. To read Lakota America is to rethink American history itself.”—Elizabeth Fenn, University of Colorado, Boulder“Lakota America is beautifully researched, persuasively argued, and justifiably audacious in its reach and implications. It is both a landmark in American Indian history and a provocative rethinking of North American history generally.”—Elliott West, University of Arkansas

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Book SynopsisThe new edition of a prize-winning memoir-in-poems, a meditation on life as a queer Indigenous man—available for the first time in the United States “i am one of those hopeless romantics who wants every blowjob to be transformative.” Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut poetry collection, This Wound Is a World, is “a prayer against breaking,” writes trans Anishinaabe and Métis poet Gwen Benaway. “By way of an expansive poetic grace, Belcourt merges a soft beauty with the hardness of colonization to shape a love song that dances Indigenous bodies back into being. This book is what we’ve been waiting for.” Part manifesto, part memoir, This Wound Is a World is an invitation to “cut a hole in the sky / to world inside.” Belcourt issues a call to turn to love and sex to understand how Indigenous peoples shoulder their sadness and pain without giving up on the future. His poems upset genre and play with form, scavenging for a decolonial kind of heaven where “everyone is at least a little gay.” Presented here with several additional poems, this prize-winning collection pursues fresh directions for queer and decolonial theory as it opens uncharted paths for Indigenous poetry in North America. It is theory that sings, poetry that marshals experience in the service of a larger critique of the coloniality of the present and the tyranny of sexual and racial norms.Trade Review"This Wound Is a World is a decolonial wildfire from which the acclaimed writer Billy-Ray Belcourt builds a new world and it’s the brilliant, radiant, f*cked up Indigenous world I want to live in. . . . [His book] redefines poetics as a refusal of colonial erasure, a radical celebration of Indigenous life and our beautiful, intimate rebellion. This is a breathtaking masterpiece."—Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer and musician"This book is a monument for the future of poetic possibility. It is rare to be able to call a book something so grand and full—and have it be utterly true. That's what This Wound Is a World affords us: myth and hyperbole pressed into a lived and realized life. A reckoning for and of the wreck—bravely buoyant, alive, and finally here."—Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds"This Wound Is a World is a wonder. It is filled with humor, sadness, sadness about sadness, sex, profound and profane lyricism, and above all power. Billy-Ray Belcourt’s voice is uniquely plangent and self-aware. The book is a world with worlds inside it. It means to de-colonize any possible reader’s pre- or mis-conceptions about what it means to be alive and Indian today."—Tommy Orange, author of There There"This luminous collection’s formal experimentation arises from an urgent need to address the complexity of learning “how to love and be broken at the same time.” As the title suggests, woundedness is a resource for forging avenues toward a yet unimagined future."—Star Tribune"This collection is an answer to and a reckoning with story and with sadness itself: its ever-presence in the telling of the Indigenous body, the queer body, the body moving through stages of love and loss."—American Poets"Belcourt makes good on the promise of his title through poetry in which sadness, grief, and death are seamlessly entwined with love, sex, and cruising both within and across racial lines."—Native American and Indigenous Studies Table of Contents

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"

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Book SynopsisAn enthralling guide to one of the world's great cities that blends history and insights into the present day from one of the most astute commentators on the politics of Istanbul'' PETER FRANKOPAN''A love letter to this ancient capital'' THE TIMESWalking along the crumbling defensive walls of Istanbul and talking to those he passes, Alexander Christie-Miller finds a distillation of the country's history, a mirror of its present, and a shadow of its future.Caught between two seas and two continents, Istanbul lies at the centre of the most pressing challenges of our time. With environmental decay, rapacious development and tightening authoritarianism straining its social fabric to breaking point, it represents the precipitous moment civilizations around the world are currently facing.In and around its crumbling Byzantine-era fortifications, Alexander Christie-Miller meets people who are experiencing the looming crisis and fighting back, sometimes triumphing despite the odds.To the City Trade Review EARLY PRAISE FOR TO THE CITY 'A love letter to this ancient capital…a work of storytelling skill and passion, a handsome tribute to a city that always transfixes' The Times 'The author is a sensitive and patient presence, piecing together these stories over many pages. Spending time at a teahouse, an animal shelter and a former Dervish hall that is now an academic institution, he brings to life the rich variety of these neighbourhoods. While Christie-Miller’s focus remains on the streets surrounding the walls, his characters offer broader insights into Turkey’s social and political make-up. He is also sensitive to the poetry of his surroundings, captured in moments of lyrical precision: “Behind them I saw the remains of the Byzantine sea wall hanging like a scrap of old parchment strung out to dry in the sun' Financial Times ‘Alexander Christie-Miller is an exceptionally fluent and imaginative writer who knows Turkey intimately’ Max Hastings 'An absorbing and thoroughly engaging study of modern-day Turkey. His research is first class, and he writes very well…Christie-Miller’s love of the city and its people shines through this wonderful book' Literary Review 'Between the ancient minarets that punctuate the city’s skyline, the author seeks out the real soul of Istanbul in its diverse peoples, past and present, by raising up voices rarely heard' National Geographic Magazine 'Alexander Christie-Miller has written a gripping portrait, with both the sweeping scope of a historian and the intimate, laser-like eye of a travel writer. This also a deeply humane account of a legendary city, not always well served by its leaders' Daniel Metcalfe author of Blue Dahlia

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Book SynopsisA collection of humanity’s most inspiring ideas throughout time, bringing perspective to the challenges and wonders of being alive. This is an unusual sort of history book: a history of ideas – and not just any old ideas, ideas from across time and space that are best suited to healing, enchanting and reviving us. Along the way, we travel around the world, from the very beginnings of our species right up to the modern age. We hear about the Ancient Greeks and Romans, we learn about Buddhism and Islam, we acquire ideas from Hinduism and the European Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Modernity. Deliberately eclectic, the book gives us a panoramic, 3,000-year view over the finest insights of a diversity of civilisations. Every idea hangs off an image – it could be a place, a document, a building or a work of art – that has something very specific to teach us. There are ideas here that will stick in our minds because they can help to answer the biggest puzzles we may have: about the direction of our lives, the issues of relationships, the meaning of existence. The book amounts to a feast for the intellect and the imagination – to make us into the best sorts of historians, those who know how to use the past to shed light on their own lives.

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Book SynopsisA sweeping exploration of the shaping role of animal skins in written culture and human imagination over three millenniaTrade ReviewEcocritical Book Award Finalist, sponsored by ASLE“This book of remarkable conception—from bioarcheology to contemporary book art, across many millennia and cultures—surpasses previous routine responses to reveal parchment as a deep archive of both human and animal history.”—Daniel Wakelin, University of Oxford“On Parchment has great range: it spans millennia, treats Jewish, Muslim, and Christian literatures, and matches stories of a Dun Cow with studies of its distant relatives’ DNA. This book is erudite and provoking by turns; an enriching, unsettling, and necessary challenge to established ideas about the literary past.”—Alexandra Gillespie, University of Toronto“In an epic sweep, Bruce Holsinger examines both the medieval fascination with this precious material and the modern fixation. On Parchment is an intelligent and engaging book that will capture the attention of medievalists and students.”—Raymond Clemens, coauthor of Introduction to Manuscript Studies“Elegant, capacious, and engaging, this is an astoundingly broad yet detailed investigation into the manufacture, use, and imaginative understandings of parchment across a range of cultures from antiquity to the present.”—Peggy McCracken, University of Michigan“In this deeply researched and creative book, distinguished medievalist and novelist Bruce Holsinger grapples with the manifold ways in which humans have literally enrolled animals in the task of memorializing the past. This book puts conversations about archival methods and historical memory in direct contact with the natural sciences, and it does so in ways that are deeply important for the humanities.”—Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

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Book SynopsisEdward Jenner is a giant of modern medicine. Throughout history, smallpox had plagued humanity with disfigurement, blindness and death. It was an incurable blight, the suffering of which Jenner helped to end.Surmising from the immunity of milkmaids that cowpox might be some defence against the ravages of smallpox, in 1793 he took some of the matter from a human case of cowpox and inserted it into the arm of a young boy. To test this, the first human-to-human vaccination, he subsequently inoculated the boy with smallpox itself, and found him to be immune from the disease. In 1979 smallpox was declared extinct.In this concise biography, Rob Boddice tells the story of Jenner’s life, his medical vision and his profound legacy. It is a story that encompasses revolutions in medical experimentation, public health provision and the prevention of other diseases, from anthrax to measles, but above all it highlights the profound impact that Jenner’s vision has had upon humanity’s battle against disease.

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Book SynopsisIn antebellum New Orleans, whites and Blacks died in droves from yellow fever. But the fortunes of survivors were less equal. Kathryn Olivarius explores the resulting framework of immunocapital. For whites, immunity signaled creditworthiness. For enslaved Blacks, immunity enhanced their exploitability, relegating them to the harshest labor.Trade ReviewThis book is prescient for the questions it provokes about our experiences of COVID-19…Necropolis shows how elite white people exploited disease in this uniquely unhealthy space for their own personal gain…Olivarius’s new perspectives on yellow fever, immunocapitalism, and the politics of acclimation are a powerful addition to this important body of scholarship that will influence a generation of scholars to come on the intersections of racism, slavery, and public health. -- Richard M. Mizelle, Jr. * The Lancet *More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the social, economic and political implications of public health crises are more apparent than ever—as is the fact that people of color and poorer communities often bear the brunt of these contagions’ consequences. [This] new analysis of yellow fever in antebellum New Orleans highlights striking parallels with the ongoing pandemic. -- Karin Wulf * Smithsonian *Olivarius’s account is rich in thick descriptions of this fevered environment. She adeptly resurrects voices not just from elite men but from women, the impoverished, and even from former slaves…An excellent reconsideration of the impact of yellow fever on a major southern trading port in the antebellum era. -- Margaret Humphreys * Civil War Book Review *Necropolis makes a compelling argument for the near-determinative nature of disease in antebellum New Orleans…It is also hard to imagine [a book] more thought-provoking or more appropriate as a mirror to our current moment. Thus, Necropolis will stimulate all readers—as much the general public as students of medical history, American slavery, capitalism, or the South writ large. -- Robert Colby * H-Net Reviews *Necropolis offers revelatory insights into how capitalism controls responses to disease, and how disease exacerbates inequalities, arguments that feel particularly prescient in the midst of an ongoing coronavirus pandemic…An engrossing and timely work of scholarship. -- Kevin McQueeney * Journal of Southern History *Olivarius puts a rich trove of primary sources to good use, lending the volume authenticity in its arguments and engaging readability while demonstrating the lengths to which New Orleans residents went to preserve the cyclical epidemic status quo, which preserved Creole dominance and limited the success of American and European immigrants. * Choice *Captivating…Olivarius illuminates the complex workings of ‘immunocapitalism’ and paints a vivid picture of antebellum New Orleans. This is a timely and thought-provoking look at how disease outbreaks have exacerbated inequality in America. * Publishers Weekly *A brilliant book. Olivarius’s insightful reading of sources and beautiful writing give us a new and important way to think about slavery, race, health, and hierarchy. This transformative work is a pivotal addition to the scholarship on American slavery. -- Annette Gordon-Reed, author of On JuneteenthOlivarius delivers a stunning account of ‘high-risk, high-reward’ profiteering in the yellow fever–ridden Crescent City. Nineteenth-century New Orleans appears as a world in which a deadly virus altered every aspect of a brutal social system, exacerbating savage inequalities of enslavement, race, and class—inequalities that will have readers pondering the choices we make as a society in epidemics of our own. -- John Fabian Witt, author of American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19A real page-turner. Necropolis propels the reader along, not least because the parallels to our coronavirus pandemic are impossible to ignore. Olivarius is convincing in her argument that disease was an important way to wield power—political, economic, and racial. This fresh, beautifully written book makes original contributions to the literatures on medicine, capitalism, politics, and welfare. -- Leslie M. Harris, author of In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863In flowing prose, Olivarius offers an intriguing account of the systematic relationship between yellow fever and power in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Her innovative term ‘immunocapitalism’ brings together multiple threads to show the ways in which yellow fever was not simply a natural phenomenon, no matter how much those who profited because of its inequitable impact tried to naturalize it. Deeply researched, extremely well written, and provocatively argued, Necropolis is a rich and fascinating book. -- Edward E. Baptist, author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American CapitalismThe remarkable thing about Necropolis is that its subject has been hiding in plain sight all along. In nineteenth-century New Orleans, yellow fever was more than an episodic worry; it saturated everyday consciousness, splitting the world between those who had gained immunity and those who had not. No effort was spared to prove that the scourge’s supposedly deterministic properties not only necessitated African enslavement, but also produced the foreign exchange that kept the urban economy humming. Olivarius unpacks this story with skill and feeling in a book of truly impressive research and scope. -- Lawrence N. Powell, author of The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans

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Book SynopsisA definitive account of the great revolt of Jews against Rome and the destruction of the Jerusalem TempleTrade Review“Through his close analysis of the war, making extensive critical use of Josephus’s works, [Rogers] raises and resolves important questions about the nature of a revolt whose ripples can still be felt in our own time.”—David Abulafia, Catholic Herald“In his excellent new book . . . Guy MacLean Rogers tries to figure out precisely what compelled the Jews of the first century to rebel against the Roman Empire.”—Simeon Cohen, Times of Israel“A beautifully produced and thought-provoking book. . . . Fascinating questions [are] debated within these pages.”—Sara Jo Ben Zvi, Segula: The Jewish History MagazineCHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2022“A remarkable achievement. Guy Rogers provides a powerful, moving reconstruction of the scale, scope, and consequences of the great Jewish war against Rome. Thoughtful, careful, and thorough, this is a major contribution to scholarship. Rogers’ lively and engaging style makes it eminently accessible to a broad audience.”—Erich S. Gruen, University of California at Berkeley“Guy Rogers brings a profound grasp of the Roman world, historical flair, and fine judgment to this new, in-depth political and military study of the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome. This is an important and exciting book about an event that changed the course of history and that has a perennial hold on our emotions and imagination.”—Tessa Rajak, University of Oxford“Written with passion and wit, this patient and remarkably detailed reconstruction offers fresh interpretations of matters large and small, leading persuasively to the view of the war as a profound crisis with far-reaching and lasting consequences, whose meaning has been urgently debated to this very day.”—Jonathan Price, Tel Aviv University“Rogers provides a sweeping and detailed overview. This important work, written by a leading authority, will immediately become the standard reference on the First Jewish Revolt against Rome.”—Jodi Magness, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“Guy Rogers provides a lucid yet terrifying account of the ‘Jewish War’—the uprising of the Jews in 66 CE, and the Roman empire’s savage response, in a story that stretches from Rome to Jerusalem. It is characterized by inter- and intra-communal violence, desperate acts of resistance and bravery, and imperial repression, culminating in the destruction of the Temple, the execution of the brilliant Jewish military commander Simon bar Giora, and the capture of Masada. But Rogers is also a great historian: his narrative is a clinical, forensic examination of context, background, political culture, causality, contingency, and sources—especially the extraordinarily intimate view of events provided by the figure of the Jewish aristocrat, leader and turncoat Josephus.”—John Ma, Columbia University “Guy Rogers has retold the story of the Jewish revolt of AD 66–73/4, a turning point in Jewish history, taking full account of modern scholarship, in a style aimed at a wide audience, vividly painting the heroism and tragedy of the clash between civilizations, whose impact survived to this very day in the ethos of modern Israel.”—Hannah Cotton, Hebrew University in Jerusalem

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Book SynopsisWalter Rodney was a scholar, working class militant, and revolutionary from Guyana. Strongly influenced by Marxist ideas, he remains central to radical Pan-Africanist thought for large numbers of activists’ today. Rodney lived through the failed –though immensely hopeful -socialist experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, in Tanzania and elsewhere. The book critically considers Rodney's contribution to Marxist theory and history, his relationship to dependency theory and the contemporary significance of his work in the context of movements and politics today. The first full-length study of Rodney’s life, this book is an essential introduction to Rodney's work.Trade Review"Zeilig is not stretching when he calls Rodney, 'A revolutionary for our time.'" —New York Times “Zeilig has done a remarkable job in researching and organizing the text into one detailed book that provides the greatest insight into the life and work of Walter Rodney from primary sources...Zeilig writes: ‘What we see in the Archive — and what I have tried to capture in this book – is Rodney’s exhaustive historical work and scholarship.’ He has been very successful in doing just that. This book is a very interesting and informative read.” —Review of African Political Economy "This book is a welcome addition to the composition on the life and death of Walter Rodney and deals with the cover up of his assassination in the most authentic way since the C of I report of 2016." —Donald Rodney "Seeing, listening to or reading Walter Rodney, before and after his unfortunate death, something always puzzled and stayed with me – The How of Walter Rodney. How did this relatively young brother from a small Caribbean nation gain such a vast world view? How was he able to grasp the conditions of the Pan African world so firmly and translate those conditions through his socialist worldview? How was Rodney able to move so fluidly through communities in the Caribbean, the US, the UK, Africa and literally the whole of the Pan African world? How was he accepted and loved as kin in all of those communities? And how did he become the number one target of a Guyanese government desperately plotting to end his life? And of late, my big one, how does Walter Rodney still endure timelessly in the immediate consciousness of so many Pan-African activists and thinkers today? Without fail Leo Zeilig’s enduring A Revolutionary for Our Time answered these and so many other “how's” beyond my considerations." —Paul Coates, Black Classic Press "Through exacting research, exacting presentation, and careful analysis, Leo Zeilig offers a remarkable contribution to radical thought and practice worthy of Walter Rodney's legacy.”—Olufemi Taiwo, assistant professor of philosophy at Georgetown University and author of Reconsidering Reparations and Elite Capture "Leo Zeilig takes readers through the choices that Walter Rodney made. Choices both small and large, but all taking Rodney to the heights of scholarship, organization, family, comradeship. Zeilig offers a compelling narrative and an incisive analysis of Rodney’s ferocious commitments to revolutionary change. This is a fascinating and vital study of Rodney’s life."—Diane C. Fujino, professor and author, Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama "The Black Lives Matter movement’s embrace of radical and pan-Africanist ideas has introduced Walter Rodney to a new generation of activists. A Revolutionary for Our Time is an urgently-needed contribution, one that situates the importance of Rodney’s Marxism, his life and work, in working-class and anti-racist struggle. It is a must-read account of a revolutionary who understood that nothing short of socialism could bring liberation." —Lee Wengraf, author, Extracting Profit: Imperialism, Neoliberalism, and the New Scramble for Africa "This is a splendid narrative of Walter Rodney’s legendary life and work across three continents. Leo Zeilig’s singular achievement is to have brilliantly located Rodney, the Black Power Marxist, at the intersection of the politics of radical nationalism and visionary socialism that suffused the pan-African world in the 60s and 70s. An unforgettable read.'’ —Issa Shivji, Emeritus Professor, University of Dar es Salaam "A Revolutionary for Our Time is both timely and necessary. Through Walter Rodney's ideas and actions, it engages the weighty issues of the current moment. More than a biography of a remarkable individual, we get the optics of a family committed to radical, worldwide transformation and the crosscurrent of people who embraced them as well as the local-global networks of power they dared to challenge." —Kwasi Konadu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Endowed Chair, Colgate University }“The book connects Rodney's thinking to his lived experiences across the world and the decades in which he lived. At a time when context is particularly essential, Zeilig's book provides an essential narrative that situates Rodney not only in the history of revolutionary thought, but also at our contemporary moment, arguing that Rodney's ideas make him a revolutionary not only for his but for our time." —Erin MacLeod, Vanier College

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Book SynopsisDrawing on literature along with the visual and performing arts, Anthony B. Pinn theorizes religion as a technology for interrogating human experiences understanding the ways in which things are always involved in processes of exchange and interplay.Trade Review“Religion isn't what people do but how they interpret, Anthony B. Pinn argues in this provocative work. Building on years of scholarly insight, Pinn asks readers to see how in their human relationships and their exchanges with the material world they embody religion. A must-read for scholars of religion.” -- Kathryn Lofton, Yale University“Anthony B. Pinn’s exploration into the interplay among religion, spirituality, and the performance of black creativity is a force to behold. Writing with probing insight, Pinn underscores the liminal spaces and edges where the bodily and the embodied blur the lines between the pedantic and the spectacle, imploding along the way the artifice of the sacred in exchange for the sanctity of artistic liberation.” -- Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts"A significant contribution to the subfield of art and religion, probing in thought-provoking ways the relationship between the two. . . . Readers will find the book a rigorous training in developing the hermeneutical 'eyes to see,' that do not guarantee, but are essential for, any meaningful action." -- Michael D. Nichols * Religious Studies Review *"Anthony B. Pinn’s Interplay of Things is a rich, sophisticated, and deeply rewarding meditation on the phenomenological structure of the human encounter with things in the world." -- Donovan Schaefer * Material Religion *Table of Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Definitions and Considerations 1 Part I. Meaning 1. Things 25 2. The Art of Placement 45 Part II. Interplay 3. Artistic Expression of Transience 59 4. The "Stuff" of Performance 83 5. The Art of Elimination 108 Part III. Restricting 6. Pieces of Things 133 7. "Captured" Things 148 8. Problem Things 172 Epilogue. Confronting Exposure, or A Psycho-Ethical Response to Openness 187 Notes 201 Bibliography 249 Index 265

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Book SynopsisSeparated by a narrow stretch of swamp-like waters, and distinguished by the colour of their skin, the Black Jews and the White Jews have been locked in a rancorous feud for centuries. Only now, when their combined number has diminished to fewer than fifty and they are on the threshold of extinction, have the two remaining Jewish communities in south India begun to realise that their destiny, and their undoing, is the same. Living in Cochin alongside this last generation, Edna Fernandes tells their story from the illustrious arrival of their ancestors from the court of King Solomon, through their long heyday of wealth, tolerance and privilege to their present twilight existence, as synagogues crumble into disuse and weddings become a thing of the past, leaving only funerals.Trade ReviewA touching, investigative account ... Fernandes movingly captures the sombre, embattled mood of this population in countdown mode * Sunday Times *Fernandes' material is fascinating ... The story of these Jews is so compelling and the author's reporting of it so assiduous ... Indeed, she has unearthed gems * The Economist *

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Book SynopsisThe life of pioneering photographer Barbara Ker-Seymer''Thoroughly entertaining... Knights expertly evokes this hedonistic period'' The Times''A picturesque portrayal of a world that sounds as thoroughly maniacal as it was modern'' Daily Telegraph''I just called myself Ker-Seymer Photographs,'' Barbara said. ''I didn''t think it was necessary to have your sex displayed on the photographs.''Vivacious, sassy, out to have fun, Ker-Seymer was committed to independence.One of a handful of outstanding British photographers of her generation, Ker-Seymer''s work defined a talented, forward-looking network of artists, dancers, writers, actors and musicians, all of whom flocked to her Bond Street studio. Among her sitters were Evelyn Waugh, Margot Fonteyn, Cyril Connolly, Jean Cocteau and Vita Sackville-West. Barbara Ker-Seymer (1905-1993) disdained lucrative ''society'' portraits in favour of unfussy ''modernTrade ReviewA picturesque portrayal of a world that sounds as thoroughly maniacal as it was modern... entertaining reading... full of colourful detail -- Catherine Ostler * Daily Telegraph *Thoroughly entertaining... Knights expertly evokes this hedonistic period -- Roger Lewis * The Times *Knights's book is so entertaining, skipping through affairs, snobbery and wild parties * Daily Telegraph *I can't remember reading a Bright Young Thing account that so graphically immerses a reader in their world * Julie Kavanagh, author of Rudolf Nureyev: The Life and Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton *

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Book SynopsisContaining an urgently needed archival database of historical evidence, this volume includes both a consolidated presentation of the documentary records of black people in Tudor and Stuart England, and an interpretive narrative that confirms and significantly extends the insights of current theoretical excursus on race in early modern England. Here for the first time Imtiaz Habib collects the scattered references to black people-whether from Africa, India or America-in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and arranges them into a systematic, chronological descriptive index. He offers an extended historical and theoretical interpretation of the records in six chapters, which serve as an introductory guide to the index even as they articulate a specific argument about the meaning of the records. Both the archival information and interpretive scholarship provide a strong framework from which future historical debates on race in early modern England can proceed.Trade Review'Imtiaz Habib's meticulous examination of English sources, both manuscript and printed, will profoundly reshape the ongoing arguments about "race" in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. For decades to come, scholars in many fields will gratefully mine Habib's chronological chart of 448 records of "black people" between 1500 and 1677 and debate his extensive analysis. Black Lives in the English Archives is a major contribution.' Alden T. Vaughan, Columbia University, USA '...A valuable reference for ethnic historians, archivists, and Anglophiles...Recommended.' Choice ’Imtiaz Habib has done us a great service by providing this accessible database of references to Africans, Indians and Americans in early modern England, some never published before.’ Times Literary Supplement '[Habib's] book is a detailed and sophisticated study that makes a significant contribution towards filling the yawning gap in our knowledge, a gap that apparently we did not know was there. ...[an] important contribution to advancing historical understandings of race and colonialism in early modern England.' ParergonTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Missing (Black) Subject1 Early Tudor Black Records The Mixed Beginnings of a Black Population2 Elizabethan London Black RecordsThe Writing of Absence3 Black Records of Seventeenth-Century LondonABenign Neglect and the Legislation of Enslavement4 Black People outside London, 1558–1677The Provincial Backdrop5 Indians and OthersThe Protocolonial DreamAfterword

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Book SynopsisMarco Beretta is Professor of History of Science at the University of Bologna, Italy.

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