Social and cultural history Books

Book SynopsisThe bestselling author of The Beauty Myth, Vagina and The End of America illuminates a dramatic history of John Addington Symonds

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Book SynopsisHunter weaves a rich tapestry of the culture and experience of black women workers in the post-Civil War South. Using a variety of sources, she follows African-American working women from their newfound optimism and hope at the end of the Civil War to their struggles as free domestic laborers in the homes of their former masters.Trade ReviewThe Emancipation Proclamation did not bring freedom to the four million African-Americans who lived in slavery in 1863. Instead, blacks had to claim and define that freedom in tens of thousands of acts of self-assertion during the decades that followed slavery's legal demise. To 'Joy My Freedom vividly depicts one neglected aspect of that struggle by focusing on the lives of urban black women, in particular those who worked as domestic laborers in the post-Civil War South. -- Drew Gilpin Faust * New York Times Book Review *Tera Hunter's imaginative uncovering of these struggles in Atlanta challenges conventional understandings of what is work and who is a worker. It represents the best of the recent marriage of labor history and cultural studies. It builds on feminist theory, which has expanded the conception of labor to include housework, mother-work, and sex work...Grounded in Atlanta's rise from Sherman's ashes, this is no ordinary community study. It addresses a major theme in Southern history: the contestation between freedom with Emancipation and its violent restriction with disfranchisement and Jim Crow...To restore the voices of the black masses is itself a form of hard work. Hunter's genius is to read against the grain of police reports and planter diaries as well as to mine newspapers to recover stories sometimes only seen through shadows cast on white society. -- Eileen Boris * The Nation *Historian Tera W. Hunter looks at how black working-class women defined and experienced freedom between the Civil War and the World War I-era 'Great Migration' of blacks northward, a period when they were excluded from electoral politics as well as from most grass-roots union organizing. Hunter shows that these women saw their work as a means to shore up their self-ownership after slavery, rather than as an end in itself. Black women negotiatied work conditions and, when they found these unacceptable, they quit. The dramatic centerpiece of Hunter's book is a threatened strike by black Atlanta washerwomen in the summer fo 1881...To 'Joy My Freedom is a worthwhile read, powerfully evoking the chaos of the Civil War and the transition of black women workers from slave to free and from rural to urban people. It joins a growing canon that points to the development of political consciousness among black working-class women. -- Dale Edwyna Smith * Washington Post Book World *Tera Hunter's book is a meticulously researched, cogently argued analysis of the `dialectic of repression and resistance' shaping the lives of African American women in the postbellum South. Better still, it's a terrifically told story--a tale of everyday women doing the radical work of defining and demanding freedom for themselves and their communities in a country largely hell-bent on denying them their rights. -- Cynthia Dobbs * San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle *Hunter's achievement in bringing these black women's stories to life is remarkable. Scouring newspaper accounts, personal diaries, household records, government reports and political cartoons, Hunter has reconstructed the myths and stereotypes about black female workers in and around Atlanta. In the process, she sheds light on a chapter of American history and the Southern labor movement that has heretofore remained unexamined...To 'Joy My Freedom is a brilliant reconstruction of New South history...Analytical and objective as this work of history is, [it] is also written with such passion that the stories of these women and the events that shaped their lives--and American history--reads like the best fiction. Hunter's work is a tour de force, valuable and prophetic as America continues to struggle with the issues of work, fairness, sex and race. -- Paula L. Woods * Atlanta Journal/Constitution *In To 'Joy My Freedom, Tera W. Hunter charts the efforts of African-American women in Atlanta to live fulfilling lives despite an all-pervasive racism, which was most terrifying in the city's infamous race riot of 1906...One can only applaud Hunter's efforts to recover the experience of her subjects from obscurity. * Times Literary Supplement *Tera Hunter's book is an exemplary effort to illuminate the particular history of black women domestic workers in Atlanta. By painstakingly pulling together disparate sources, she fashions a story of resistance and backlash that illustrates how these women bravely attempted to achieve true freedom in the face of attacks on their femininity, the stigma of tuberculosis, and outright mob violence. Her account skillfully integrates the oppressive nature of dominant gender roles, the role of class in intraracial subordination, and disease as stigma, although the reasons for the attachment of this stigma particularly to black washerwomen remains unclear. Overall, Hunter succeeds in showing the complexities of a fifty-year struggle by black women workers, who, in their words, fought "to 'joy my freedom." -- Bayo Holsey * Transforming Anthropology *To 'Joy My Freedom is a new departure in recent written history of African American women. Here, working-class women take center stage while black middle-class and elite woman are peripheral. For those who fear tackling the history of women whose personal records are few to nonexistent, Tera W. Hunter's book is at once instructive on how to write such a history and an example of a sophisticated blend of labor, social, and cultural history...Rich in detail and told with compassion and understanding, To 'Joy My Freedom fills in the gaps between contemporary histories of slavery and middle-class female uplift reform. Hunter demonstrates that professional skill, exhaustive research, and ingenious use of sources can give voice to people who leave few personal records and who do not show up in organizational minutes. -- Deborah Gray White * Journal of American History *Tera W. Hunter has written a superb study of the lives and labors of some of the African-American women who struggled through the violent upheaval of emancipation and the crushing imposition of racial segregation in the American South from the Civil War to the 1920s. Hunter's sparkling prose, extensive reading of a wide range of texts, and layered, complex and incisive analysis reveal the work of an impressively humane, imaginative, and mature historian. Her acute descriptions of local conditions and cogent insights into the larger historical context stunningly illuminate the dynamics of race, class, and gender as they played out on the frightening, brutal terrain of southern segregation...Her text constantly engages and re-engages the reader, helping us to imagine the lives of dozens of individuals who walk through the pages of history...This study is a triumph of research, astute analysis, and engaging imagination that deserves to be widely read by students of African-American, labor, and women's studies and of American history. -- Michael Honey * American Historical Review *At the end of the Civil War newly emancipated women moved to Atlanta to find employment as household labourers and washerwomen. This is a study of the workplace experiences and everyday culture of these black working women in the period until the beginning of World War I. Tracing the ways they constructed their own world of work, culture and community organization, Professor Hunter argues that their experiences and efforts were central to the African-American struggle for freedom and justice. The implementation of Jim Crow laws and segregation from the 1880s onward, however, spurred growing numbers of black working women to migrate to the North. * International Review of Social History *Hunter offers valuable explorations into the complexities of African American feminine laborers and the contextualization of their lives. She is to be applauded for providing scholars with easier access to source materials, particularly primary sources. An important contribution to suffragist activism, feminist scholarship, and African American studies. * Library Journal *To 'Joy My Freedom is a tour de force. Moving deftly between white households and black communities, churches and blues clubs, city hall and city streets, Tera Hunter brings black domestic workers alive, body and soul, smashing all stereotypes along the way. By placing black working class women at the center of her narrative, she rewrites the history of the New South and the nation. Her vibrant, complex, beautifully rendered portrait of black working women's struggles at the dawn of the century will move you as surely as it will alter the way we write history. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, New York UniversityBy bringing to life the experiences, aspirations, and struggles of the black domestic workers of Atlanta, Tera Hunter opens a new window on the study of emancipation and its aftermath and, in so doing, tremendously enriches our understanding of Reconstruction and the New South. -- Eric Foner, Columbia UniversityTo 'Joy My Freedom is a work of utmost originality and significance. Tera Hunter brings the virtually invisible world of black working-class women to life [and then] uses those lives as a vantage point from which to reconsider the transition from slavery to freedom, the nature of southern Progressivism, the Great Migration of blacks out of the South during World War I, and the relationship and tensions between work, play, and politics in the New South. -- Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillWith great breadth, sensitivity, and intellectual integrity, Tera Hunter reorients southern history toward the urban working class. This tour de force further liberates African-American history from the need always to relate to whites. Bravo! -- Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton UniversityHunter illuminates the lives of newly emancipated Black women workers in postbellum Atlanta…This book is the story of a new world, built by Black women, with and for each other. -- Daisy Pitkin * Literary Hub *Table of ContentsPreface Prologue "Answering Bells Is Played Out": Slavery and the Civil War Reconstruction and the Meanings of Freedom Working-Class Neighborhoods and Everyday Life "Washing Amazons" and Organized Protests The "Color Line" Gives Way to the "Color Wall" Survival and Social Welfare in the Age of Jim Crow "Wholesome" and "Hurtful" Amusements "Dancing and Carousing the Night Away" Tuberculosis as the "Negro Servants Disease" "Looking for a Free State to Live In" Tables Notes Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisIn 1808 Napoleon invaded Spain and deposed the king. Overnight, Hispanics were forced to confront modernity and look beyond monarchy and religion for new sources of authority. Coronado focuses on how Texas Mexicans used writing to remake the social fabric in the midst of war and how a Latino literary and intellectual life was born in the New World.Trade ReviewReading British colonial writers as the sole founders of American culture lends our history a false sense of teleology, as though we were always going to end up here. One of the greatest strengths of Coronado’s book is its ability to remind us of other paths we might have taken; other worlds different ‘we’s’ might have made… A World Not to Come boldly challenges the dominance of the westward expansion narrative… At once a gripping history, a dizzying synthesis of Enlightenment philosophical currents, and a breathtaking feat of original archival research, his book merits reading by anyone interested in American literature, Latina/o studies, economic history, or Western philosophy. A World Not to Come demands that we recalibrate our sense of what ‘American’ literary history looks like. -- John Alba Cutler * Los Angeles Review of Books *A World Not to Come constitutes an extraordinary contribution to distinct and interconnected lines of scholarly debates engaged with Latin American and trans-hemispheric history. -- Beatriz González-Stephan * S-USIH: Society for U.S. Intellectual History *A World Not to Come is a magnificent first book. Raúl Coronado makes the case that the meeting of Anglos and Mexicans in the Southwest occasioned not only political and military conflict but also epistemological struggle between two different systems of thought. Latinos in the U.S. attempted forge what in hindsight can be seen as a modern social imaginary. The differences between these conflicting visions of an American imaginary are still very much with us and help define the nature of the present interactions between Anglos and Latinos within the boundaries of the U.S. and outside of them. This is a compelling thesis about the need for a ‘transnational’ view of the Americas and the recognition that an undifferentiated history of ‘Latino’ writings cannot easily be extracted from the historical record. Coronado’s argument on both counts should advance significantly our understanding of the relationship between the Anglo and Latin Americas in the nineteenth century. -- Ramón Saldívar, Stanford UniversityIn this brilliantly conceived book, Raúl Coronado turns over the forgotten record of a Texas rebellion, and from it spins an absorbing counter-history of a distinctively Latino tradition of political thought. A World Not to Come will stand as a major contribution to the emergent multilingual portrait of print culture in the U.S., and to the comparative intellectual and literary history of the Americas in general. -- Kirsten Silva Gruesz, University of California, Santa CruzCoronado’s A World Not to Come is already a standard, well on its way to becoming a classic. The comprehensiveness of the research is extraordinary: an extraordinary job, extraordinarily well done. -- Rolena Adorno, Yale UniversityCoronado’s book offers a fascinating alternative history of modernity, one rooted in the forgotten archives of Texas. Well-timed to intervene in contemporary debates on rights theory and sovereignty, Coronado tells the story of how Spanish-American intellectuals of the early nineteenth century took the work of now-forgotten Catholic Reformation thinkers to produce a model of rights based on collective well-being and ‘public happiness.’ The Anglo-American Protestant history of rights suppressed a rich and complex Spanish version, and Coronado finds in these conservative thinkers a revolutionary potential that I believe found fruition in liberation theology in the Americas. -- Carrie Tirado Bramen, University at Buffalo, State University of New YorkIn a work of great originality and breathtaking erudition, Raúl Coronado writes a compelling history of an alternative West, a history spanning continents, oceans, centuries, and genres. The story told in A World Not to Come is the story of modernity itself, inflected through an immense and virtually unstudied archive of Latino writing that the author reads as a fragmented narrative of becoming. This is cultural history of the highest order. -- Anna Brickhouse, University of VirginiaThis is a book about Tejanos and the printing press in the Age of Revolutions. Between 1810 and 1848, Tejanos witnessed momentous sociopolitical, cultural changes and responded by articulating their own peculiar narratives of modernity through the printing press—narratives that both Mexican and U.S. historiographies have erased. Coronado brings these forgotten narratives, poised between utopia and disillusionment, deftly back to life. This is a moving meditation on the making of the first ‘Latino’ public sphere. -- Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, The University of Texas at Austin

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Book SynopsisBernhard Rieger reveals how a car commissioned by Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche became a global commodity on a par with Coca-Cola. The Beetle’s success hinged on its uncanny ability to capture the imaginations of executives, engineers, advertisers, car collectors, suburbanites, hippies, and everyday drivers across nations and cultures.Trade Review[An] illuminating and elegantly written history… Rieger is particularly good on the gendered nature of Beetle ownership. At a time when fewer than 20 percent of driving licenses in West Germany were held by women, the Beetle became a vehicle for what he calls ‘automotive misogyny.’ …He is very good…on its appeal in the United States, where it became a popular second car for many families in the expanding suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s… It even became an icon of the counterculture. -- Richard J. Evans * London Review of Books *Bernhard Rieger’s The People’s Car conveys how inextricably 20th-century politics, culture and economics are linked… The story of ‘the people’s car’ is, of course, interesting in its own right—its commission, design, post-war production and worldwide success. But what is most intriguing is how a consumer commodity became an icon that, over decades, represented something different for a variety of countries and generations. Rieger shows this to informative and illuminating effect. -- Ulrike Zitzlsperger * Times Higher Education *The People’s Car by Bernhard Rieger chronicles the life of the iconic Volkswagen Beetle, from its 1930s origin as a propaganda tool for Germany’s Third Reich through to the modern day, a run of popularity spanning a remarkable nine decades. Rieger’s research details the car maker’s obsessive pursuit for high-quality, low-maintenance and utterly dependable motoring, which were the treasured hallmarks of the Beetle through the middle part of the 20th century… While the meteoric postwar rise of the Beetle presents a chance to marvel at the model’s simple appeal and outstanding longevity, the years before its manufacture began present the most fascinating reading… The People’s Car is an exhaustive…and fascinating glimpse at a car that stood the test of time and of changing consumer tastes. -- Steve Colquhoun * Sydney Morning Herald *Bernhard Rieger tells the story of the Beetle and he does so with wit and ease… A German chronicle that always keeps an eye on international entanglements. [Rieger’s] cultural history with a transnational reach is…the intelligent alternative to traditional national historiography. -- Hedwig Richter * Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung *An engaging history of how a failed Nazi prestige project became a national icon in three different countries… A provocative look at one product’s unlikely journey through authoritarianism and globalization. -- Joshua Keating * Foreign Policy online *From its original design by Ferdinand Porsche, commissioned by Hitler in the 1930s, to its role as a symbol of a new, post–World War II Germany, the Beetle became second only to Ford’s Model T as a car for the masses and, eventually, a feature of the emergence of the middle class… This overview of the car’s journey from its Third Reich conception to lovable international representation of a renewed Germany is sure to interest die-hard Beetle lovers as well as automobile history buffs. -- Maria Bagshaw * Library Journal (starred review) *The Beetle had a stupendous run, which…Bernhard Rieger traces in his absorbing account… Rieger has written a fascinating book that will inevitably find resonance among those who were themselves touched by the magic of an object made of steel, glass, and plastic that was designed in the heart of Hitler’s Reich. -- Paul Hockenos * The National *The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle is a thorough and compelling new chronicle of the distinctive Bug. -- Jessica Grose * Fast Company online *The story of the Volkswagen Beetle is complex, interesting, international, unlikely, and utterly fascinating. Rieger does an excellent job of bringing together the history, events, and people that produced an iconic automobile that beat all the odds. -- C. J. Myers * Choice *Rieger has succeeded in presenting the first comprehensive account of the truly amazing story of the Volkswagen Beetle. Starting with Hitler’s plans to provide a mass-produced people’s car for his projected ‘Aryan’ society, he shows how this ‘ugly duckling’ became an icon of postwar mass motorization around the world. A compelling read. -- V. R. Berghahn, Columbia UniversityRieger extracts from the history of the Volkswagen not just the story of a product—iconic though it was—but also its significance for Germany’s national image since the 1930s. Deeply researched, this history makes a cracking good read. -- Jane Caplan, coeditor of Concentration Camps in Germany: The New HistoriesWith great richness and imagination, Rieger joins economics and social desire, advertising and politics, technology and culture, to track a distinctive German history through a truly transnational arena. -- Geoff Eley, author of Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany, 1930–1945A fascinating book! Rieger takes readers on the Volkswagen Beetle’s global journey, showing the many meanings of this iconic product in different times and places. His history illuminates the worldwide allure of commodity culture, the spread of socioeconomic inequalities, and the protean meanings of purchased goods. -- Emily S. Rosenberg, editor of A World Connecting: 1870–1945

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Book SynopsisWith a nod to the past, Mintz revisits an alternative to the goal-driven realities of contemporary childhood. An odyssey of psychological self-discovery and growth, this book suggests a vision of childhood that embraces risk and freedom—like the daring adventure on Huck’s raft.Trade Review[Mintz] proposes to set the record straight in his sweeping study of American childhood that effectively synthesizes a large body of scholarship on its subject. The result is an engaging, sober and often poignant account of how adults have viewed and treated children and, equally important, how children’s own experiences and life chances have been heavily influenced by economics, race and ethnicity… The compelling history of childhood he offers us is a valuable reminder that nostalgia for a golden age that never existed is not just misleading, but counterproductive. -- Eric Arnesen * Chicago Tribune *[An] often fascinating and massively documented exploration of four centuries of American childhood… Huck’s Raft is a work of scholarly integrity and humanist zeal. -- Joyce Carol Oates * Times Literary Supplement *The children of the past did possess something lost to their descendants of today: freedom. Once kids were allowed to ride their bikes all over town or idle away the summer in daydreams; they could fail a course or even a grade, and no one got overly excited about it; they might even make serious mistakes and find themselves pregnant or working on the line at Ford rather than studying lines of poetry at college. But now, in our test-driven, increasingly regimented educational system, we forthrightly aim to leave no child behind, which means that we leave no child alone. Slow learners must be sped up, dreamy kids must be made to focus, all must wear uniforms, and, eventually, all must have prizes—or at least AP courses. In the past, parents might exploit their kids as little more than indentured servants or simply ignore them. Today we are their chauffeurs and social secretaries… This is, then, a rich and stimulating book, revealing how much childhood has changed over the centuries and how much some things never change… I suppose that every generation of adults tends to feel, when regarding the young people around them, that the barbarians are at the gates. But really, there’s nothing for us to worry about: One day our children will have children of their own. -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post *Steven Mintz’ brilliant, wide-ranging, but remarkably concise study shows how complex an invention childhood has been in this country… The book is so good on the first 300 years or so of the story that it is somewhat surprising that Mintz is even more provocative on the last 50 years or so, especially on the most recent decade. It seems that no other account of Columbine or ‘No Child Left Behind’ has been as thoughtful or persuasive… This is history at its most instructive and engaging. -- William T. Hamilton * Bloomsbury Review *With the vast number of political and cultural decisions made in America under the guise of ’thinking of the children,’ a book like Steven Mintz’s brilliant Huck’s Raft, which actually does offer plenty of thinking about children, is long overdue. Mintz is aiming to write nothing less than a complete history of childhood in America, tracing kids’ lives from the Puritan era to today and examining the roles they’ve played as workers, soldiers, pioneers, inspirations, burdens, consumers and citizens. -- Matt Konrad * Ruminator *Were this simply a book of trivia about the years of childhood, it would be fascinating reading… However, this work is much more than a collection of curiosities. It is an ambitious attempt to retell the story of America with children as the focus of attention… This work of historical synthesis is likely to become a classic that future historians will be hard-pressed to surpass. -- Robert Holland * Richmond Times-Dispatch *[A] provocative, anecdote-packed analysis of American parents and their progeny. From Puritans to postmoderns, we have shaped our kids to match shifting cultural mores and social desires. -- Char Miller * San Antonio Express-News *Steven Mintz’s Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood offers an impressive and unprecedented synthesis of the relevant scholarly literature… [It] demonstrate[s] that childhood has never been a stable, innocent, or transcendent experience… Reflecting the prevailing literature, the book is a rainbow coalition of inclusion that arches over the panorama of American history. Anyone tempted to criticize the book as a ‘clip job’ misses the underlying importance of Mintz’s signal accomplishment… To any parent trying to figure out what [kind of kid] he’s got, the mundane manifestations of an innocent childhood are the clues to life. Mintz’s book makes some sense out of this mystery. -- James E. McWilliams * Texas Observer *[A] richly detailed study of how childhood in the U.S. has changed over time… Mintz uses history to debunk several myths—that childhood once was care-free, families were stable, and American childhood is the story of either steady progress or decline. -- Steven G. Kellman * USA Today Magazine *Mintz revisits the treatment of children from the Puritan era up to the edge of the millennium, which he calls ‘The Unfinished Century of the Child,’ showing that we have alternately vilified our offspring (the Puritans believed they were born in sin) and glorified them (Victorian parents saw them as pure and angelic)… Mintz’s thorough yet accessibly written study delves into the external forces that have shaped the lives of our young while also probing the internal developments in their collective consciousness. -- Janet Sassi * Library Journal *No aspect of American life is as shrouded in idealizing myth as childhood. In this compelling work of historical synthesis, Mintz argues forcefully…that for most of the past three centuries childhood has been the exception rather than the norm… That childhood has mostly been less than ideal is not surprising. What may be, for many readers, is Mintz’s portrait of just how far from the ideal this country has been—and perhaps continues to be—in meeting the health needs, education and welfare of all its children. * Publishers Weekly *At last, a synthesis of the scattered research on the history of youth. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Mintz’s book is sure to become a classic. -- Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia TrapHuck’s Raft is a rich and fascinating study of the realities of children’s lives—and adults’ ideas about children and our responsibilities towards them—throughout our nation’s history. -- Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children’s Defense FundSteven Mintz’s remarkable and comprehensive book provides the first important synthesis of childhood in American history. Learned and rich in detail, it will become indispensable for all those who want to know more about children’s experiences over the past 400 years. -- Paula Fass, author of Kidnapped: Child Abduction in AmericaHuck’s Raft is a breath of fresh air. This engaging and compelling account of the history of childhood in America is a tonic by a first-rate historian that is both scholarly and beautifully written. A must read for all those concerned with our youth today and in times past. -- Frank F. Furstenberg, author of Managing to Make It: Urban Families and Adolescent SuccessSteven Mintz’s Huck’s Raft is the most comprehensive, culturally sensitive history of American childhood ever written. It illuminates in fascinating detail the variegated experience of the nation’s children, but it is equally successful in revealing the mentalities of the adults who have shaped childhood over time. This book is sure to become the standard in the field. -- John R. Gillis, author of A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family ValuesHuck’s Raft is simply the best overview of the history of childhood in the US. Through masterful scholarship and lively writing, it persuasively exposes some widespread myths about family history, while telling fascinating stories about children’s lives past and present. Mintz’s work shows that historical understanding can guide our responses to the problems of children today. -- Linda Gordon, author of The Great Arizona Orphan AbductionTable of ContentsPreface Prologue 1. Children of the Covenant 2. Red, White, and Black in Colonial America 3. Sons and Daughters of Liberty 4. Inventing the Middle-Class Child 5. Growing Up in Bondage 6. Childhood Battles of the Civil War 7. Laboring Children 8. Save the Child 9. Children under the Magnifying Glass 10. New to the Promised Land 11. Revolt of Modern Youth 12. Coming of Age in the Great Depression 13. Mobilizing Children for World War II 14. In Pursuit of the Perfect Childhood 15. Youthquake 16. Parental Panics and the Reshaping of Childhood 17. The Unfinished Century of the Child Notes Index

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Book SynopsisA History of the Jewish People presents a total vision of Jewish experiences and achievementsreligious, political, social, and economicin both the land of Israel and the diaspora throughout the ages. It has been acclaimed as the most comprehensive and penetrating work yet to have appeared in its field.Trade ReviewThis ambitious history by six Hebrew University scholars seeks to encompass the full range of the Jewish experience in nationhood and exile. It is an impressive work…considering the necessary compression—5,000 years and a scattering of settings virtually worldwide covered in just over 1,100 pages—the work is an achievement of consequence. -- Robert Kirsch * Los Angeles Times *Here is a work that triumphantly makes available the fruits of a wealth of learning and scholarship that will surely establish new standards for the presentation of research. * Times Literary Supplement *This huge collection of essays by ‘leading scholars at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem’ brings to ultimate expression the ‘peoplehood-and-history’ theory of Jewish historiography. -- Jacob Neuser * American Historical Review *Offering a full panorama of Jewish existence from the dim origins of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. to the hard politics of modern Israel, this work breaks new ground for a one-volume history, both in its range and in its authority… The book as a whole is a monument to scholarship and feeling, immersing the reader on every page in the rich texture of the Jewish heritage. -- Chaim Raphael * Commentary *Represents one of the finest compendia on the topic published to date. * Jewish Week *This work is marked throughout by sound judgment, judicious scholarship, disdain for irrelevant trivia, and avoidance of ideology… A remarkable achievement—all in one volume. * Worldview *Table of ContentsPART I Origins and the Formative Period A. Malamat 1. Introduction

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Book SynopsisThe new edition of this classic history examines the political, economic, social, religious and cultural life of Europe at the height of the Renaissance. J.R. Hale not only records the events of 1480-1520, but also suggests what it was like to have lived in this period. He provides readers with an understanding of the quality of lives of people living at this time and includes processes and personalities not often covered by other books. For the second edition Professor Michael Mallet provides an updated bibliography and an extended introduction explaining the book''s place in the historiography of the subject. The book is arranged thematically, each chapter designed to provide information about a specific field of inquiry and also give an insight into the people of this era. J. R. Hale investigates how these people felt about their environment and the passage of time; their relationships with government and other institutions, from the Church to the family; their economic frTrade Review"Hale's picture of the years around 1500 is generally precise and not out-dated. He anticipated several areas of later writing, for example his emphasis on the history of the lower classes, on the impact of wars, on women's role in society, on social mobility among 'classes'. It is a book for the general public who already has some knowledge of the Renaissance." Gabor Almasi, Central European University Table of ContentsPreface. 1. Time and Space. 2. Political Europe. 3. Individual and Community. 4. Economic Europe. 5. Class. 6. Religion. 7. The Arts and their Audience. 8. Secular Learning. Appendix: Europe c. 1500: A Political Gazeteer. Maps. Bibliography. Index.

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Book SynopsisThis is the first book to survey the experience of servants in rural Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. This is the first book to survey the experience of servants in rural Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Live-in servants were a distinctive element of early modern society. They were typically young adults aged between 16 and 24 who lived and worked in other people's households before marriage. Servants tended to be employed for long periods, several months to years at a time, and were paid with food and lodging as well as cash wages. Both women and men worked as servants in large numbers. Unlike domestic servants in towns and wealthy households, rural servants typically worked on farms and were an important element of the agricultural workforce. Historians have viewed service as a distinct life-cycle stage between childhood and marriage. It brought both freedom and servility for young people. It allowed them to leave home and earn a living before marriage, whilst learning a range of agricultural and craft skills which reduced their dependence on their parents and increased their choice in marriage partners. Still, servants had limited rights: they were under the authority of their employer, with a similar legal status to children. In many countries the employment of servants was tightly controlled by law. Servants could demand their wages, and leave when the contract ended, but had to work long hours and had little say in their work tasksduring employment. While some servants effectively became family members, trusted and cared for, others were abused physically and sexually by their employers. This collection features a range of methodologies, reflecting the variety of source materials and approaches available to historians of this topic in a range of European countries and time periods. Nonetheless, it demonstrates the strong common themes that emerge from studying servants and will be of particular interest to historians of work, gender, the family, agriculture, economic development, youth and social structure. JANE WHITTLE is Professor of Rural History at the University of Exeter. Contributors: CHRISTINE FERTIG, JEREMY HAYHOE, SARAH HOLLAND, THIJS LAMBRECHT, CHARMIAN MANSELL, HANNE ØSTHUS, RICHARD PAPING, CRISTINA PRYTZ, RAFFAELLA SARTI, CAROLINA UPPENBERG, LIES VERVAET, JANE WHITTLETrade ReviewLinked by common themes and rigorous methodologies, the chapters of Servants in Rural Europe: 1400-1900 also constitute independent studies, each amply documented and illustrated by graphs, tables, and microhistories that will constitute an indispensable mine of data and ideas for specialists. * HISTOIRE SOCIALE/SOCIAL HISTORY *This book is a welcome contribution to the existing literature on the history of servanthood. * JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY *Taken together, the chapters provide an innovative analysis of the nature of live-in service within the agrarian economy and make a valuable contribution to early modern economic history. Scholars of women's history, economic history, and social history will find the articles particularly useful and insightful. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Servants in the Economy and Society of Rural Europe - Jane Whittle The Employment of Servants in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Coastal Flanders: A Case-Study of Scueringhe Farm near Bruges - Lies Vervaet The Institution of Service in Rural Flanders in the Sixteenth Century: A Regional Perspective - Thijs Lambrecht A Different Pattern of Employment: Servants in Rural England c.1500-1660 - Jane Whittle Female Service and the Village Community in South-West England 1550-1650: The Labour Laws Reconsidered - Charmian Mansell Life-cycle Servant and Servant for Life: Work and Prospects in Rural Sweden c. 1670-1730 - Christina Prytz Servants in Rural Norway, c.1650-1800 - Hanne Osthus Rural Servants in Eighteenth-Century Münsterland, Northwestern Germany: Households, Families and Servants in the Countryside - Christine Fertig Rural Servants in Eastern France 1700-1872: Change and Continuity over Two Centuries - Jeremy Hayhoe The Servant Institution during the Swedish Agrarian Revolution: The Political Economy of Subservience - Carolina Uppenberg Farm service and hiring practices in mid nineteenth-century England: The Doncaster Region in the West Riding of Yorkshire - Sarah Holland Dutch Live-In Farm Servants in the Long Nineteenth Century: The Decline of the Life-Cycle Service System for the Rural Lower Class - Richard Paping Rural Life-Cycle Service: Established Interpretations and New (Surprising) Data: The Italian Case in Comparative Perspective (Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries) - Raffaella Sarti Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword / Tony A. Johnson, Chair, Chinook Indian Nation Acknowledgments Introduction | Places of Protocol, Places of Heritage 1. “Still, today, we listen to our elders”: Long Histories, Colonial Invasion, and Cultural Resilience 2. “We feel the responsibility”: A Multiplicity of Voices at Cathlapotle 3. “Where is your history?”: Explorers, Anthropologists, and Mapping Native Identity 4. “We honor the house”: Memory and Ambiguity at the Cathlapotle Plankhouse 5. “There’s no way to overstate how important Tribal Journeys is”: The Return of the Canoes and the Decolonization of Heritage Conclusion | Places of Heritage, Places of Protocol Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisBy emphasizing the centrality of human relationships to Ghana’s economic past, Murillo introduces a radical rethinking of consumption studies from an Africa-centered perspective. The result is a keen look at colonial capitalism in all of its intricacies, legacies, and contradictions, including its entanglement with gender and race.Trade Review“With original research and creative methods, Murillo makes a substantial contribution to the analysis of military periods of rule and their concrete effects and concerns with regards to local and import/export trade. Moreover, she writes vividly and precisely.”“This is one of the few, or perhaps the only, comprehensive works on the vital social, economic and cultural history of retail businesses and the ways that they shaped life in a twentieth-century African society. It adds a great deal of texture and richness to the historiography of modern Africa, and challenges and complicates our overall understanding of the structure of colonial and postcolonial society.”“(Market Encounters) brings to bear an impressive range of disparate sources—from Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Ghana—to document these social relationships that shaped the history of consumption or consumer politics in Ghana from the colonial period to the 1980s.” * American Historical Review *“Market Encounters adds to a growing literature on twentieth century Ghana that firmly centers the experiences of everyday Africans in the larger and often sweeping narratives of colonial rule, decolonization and postcolonial nationhood. The book represents a major contribution to studies of modern African history.” * Journal of Social History *

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Book SynopsisIn explaining an improbable liaison and its consequences, A Mattress Maker’s Daughter explores changing concepts of love and romance, new standards of public and private conduct, and emerging attitudes toward property and legitimacy just as the age of Renaissance humanism gives way to the Counter Reformation and Early Modern Europe.Trade ReviewOnce again, Brendan Dooley demonstrates his gift for showing how a minor, forgotten episode can illuminate processes of social and cultural change. -- Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, Cambridge UniversityThis exciting story of love flouting social convention becomes, in Dooley’s meticulously researched and vividly rendered reconstruction, a window onto a wide swath of social history in early modern Genoa, Venice, and Florence—from the difficult life of a family of mattress makers, to the luxury, wars, suspicious deaths, and legal skullduggery which emanated from the Medici court in the age of Galileo. -- Ann Blair, Harvard UniversityThis is a deliciously erudite exploration of the intertwined lives of a bastard of the Medici who strove for a stable foothold in the family and of the ex-prostitute he struggled, ultimately in vain, to hoist into high society as his consort. Ranging across half a continent, the book meditates on war, politics, science, the plastic arts, poetry, self-knowledge, and the odd, sad accidents of love. It is great fun to read. -- Thomas Cohen, York University, Canada

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Mammoth and profusely researched... A work begging to be debated; Slezkine aggregates mountains of detail for an enthralling account of the rise and fall of the revolutionary generation."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

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Book SynopsisIn the second edition of The Machine in America, Pursell brings this classic history up to date with a revised chapter on war technology and new discussions on information technology, globalization, and the environment.Trade ReviewThe Machine in America's modest preface fails to acknowledge the magnitude of the task undertaken by Carroll Pursell... This book succeeds in achieving Pursell's goals. -- Robert Martello Isis 2008 Certainly one of the best introductions to the history of American technology... Highly recommended. Choice 2008 What differentiates this book and makes it especially appealing is its coverage of agricultural and environmental topics. These subjects are often overlooked by historians of technology, and Pursell's inclusion of them represents an important step toward integrating these fields. -- Nicholas Buchanan Agricultural History 2009 The Machine in America has been enduring for multiple reasons, including its solid prose, excellent illustrations and captions, use of current themes (gender, race, class), focus on how society constructs technology, and a critical view of technology as something that historically has been used in America, all too often, to reinforce the powerful rather than help the weak. Industrial Archaeology 2008Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionI. The Transit of Technology1. The Tools Brought Over2. Importing the Industrial Revolution3. Improving TransportationII. The Domestication of the Industrial Revolution4. The Expansion of American Manufactures5. The Mechanization of FarmingIII. The Imprint of American Technology6. Creating an Urban Environment7. Westward the Course of Industry8. Export, Exploitation, and EmpireIV. Technology and Hegemony9. The Coming of Science and Systems10. The Decade of Prosperity and Consumption11. Depression: Study and Subsidy12. Wars and the "American Century"13. Challenge and Change in a Postmodern WorldV. Globalization14. Our (Un)Wired World15. America's Global ReachNotesFurther ReadingIndex

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Book SynopsisIn the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American Indians in the United States and Aboriginal people in Australia suffered a common experience at the hands of state authorities: the removal of their children to institutions in the name of assimilation. White Mother to a Dark Race examines the key roles white women played in these removal policies.Trade Review“An important work. . . . Jacobs’s thoroughness, breadth of comparative research, and fresh analysis of the removal of indigenous children have earned three awards for this book (2010 Bancroft Prize; 2010 Athearn Western History Association Prize; 2010 Armitage-Jameson Prize).”—Christine Choo, American Historical Review"This study stands as an excellent model and should encourage further comparisons between federal Indian policy and other maternalist projects within the United States as well as intimate strategies in other colonial regimes."—Cathleen D. Cahill, Western Historical Quarterly"[White Mother to a Dark Race is] a monumental comparative study."—Cristina Stanciu, Studies in American Indian Literatures“A painstakingly researched and brilliantly written account of the key roles white women played in the removal policies of U.S. and Australian governments in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. . . . If you are ready to remove your blindfold, then this is a must read!”—Carrie Bourassa, Canadian Journal of Native Studies"[Margaret D. Jacobs] has produced a balanced, meticulously researched book filled with heartbreaking stories of loss and uplifting accounts of survival."—Lynette Russell, Great Plains Quarterly"[Jacobs] has taken the study of these nineteenth and early twentieth century institutionalizing policies in a rewarding new direction. . . . I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in indigenous studies, women's studies, and the history of intercultural relations in colonizing situations like the American West."—Nancy J. Parezo, Journal of Arizona History"This book deserves wide readership in U.S. western history, women's history, Indian history, and comparative ethnic studies."—Peggy Pascoe, Montana, the Magazine of Western History"Jacobs' focus on the role of white women, and specifically the function of maternalism, generates important insights into the interrelationship between race and gender in the creation of the modern white nation. Attention to the specificities of colonial regimes in the different locations of Australia and the American West—revealing the uncanny similarities as well as significant differences—can only enhance our critical understanding."—Trish Luker, International Journal of Critical Indigenous StudiesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Maps Preface: White Mother to a Dark Race Acknowledgments A Note on Terms Abbreviations 1. Gender and Settler Colonialism in the North American West and Australia 2. Designing Indigenous Child Removal Policies 3. The Great White Mother 4. The Practice of Indigenous Child Removal 5. Intimate Betrayals 6. Groomed to Be Useful 7. Maternalism in the Institutions 8. Out of the Frying Pan 9. Challenging Indigenous Child Removal Epilogue Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galiciaexamines the contents and context of a rare diary written by a Jewish man from Nazi-occupied Poland. Serving as both a record and an artifact of Samuel Golfard's life, the diary details his attempt to make sense of and resist the event that ultimately destroyed him. Wendy Lower integrates photographs, newspaper articles, documents, and testimonies to create a more complete picture of Golfard's experiences and writings. She also traces the diary's own journey after Golfard's death, from 1943 Poland to the present day.Trade ReviewThis volume combines a powerfully emotional personal narrative with concise and cohesive historical analysis in a way that other source-based books do not. Moreover, it is of great use to both scholars and students. While specialists and historians will surely find Golfard’s testimony textually rich, multi-dimensional, and challenging, the educational value of this volume is substantial. The book is short enough for students to digest easily, and perhaps more important, the historical background and editorial comments make the text a stand-alone work containing all one needs to truly engage with Samuel Golfard’s diary. Lower has produced an accessible yet historically complex commentary on a very special testimony—one that scholars and educators alike will certainly want on their shelves. * Holocaust and Genocide Studies *Golfard's diary is remarkable. It is searing, moving, emotional, yet also analytically sophisticated. The published diary will make a substantial contribution to several fields of study, including the history of Jewish responses during the Shoah, the perpetration of genocide, and Holocaust literature. Lower has done a beautiful job of framing the diary entries so that the reader gains a broader perspective of the unfolding history. This book is a most welcome contribution to the existing body of published source materials, illuminating a lesser-known dimension of the Holocaust that is at the forefront of recent research being conducted in the field. -- Alexandra Garbarini, Williams CollegeIt is a miracle that this diary survived and has now become an invaluable source on the Holocaust in a small town in western Ukraine. It provides a glimpse into the state of mind of those destined for annihilation on the very eve of their destruction. The diarist is insightful and thoughtful. The introduction and commentary provided by Wendy Lower are nuanced and intelligent. One will learn a lot about the Holocaust from reading this book. -- John Paul Himka, University of AlbertaTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Editor’s Note Part I: Introduction to Samuel Golfard's Diary –Reading Jewish Diaries of the Holocaust –The Golfard Diary as a Source of Holocaust History in Poland and Ukraine –The Local Setting of Golfard’s Diary: Peremyshliany (Ukrainian), Przemyślany (Polish), Peremyshlany (German) –Peremyshliany before the Nazi Occupation –The German Occupation of Peremyshliany, 1941–1944 Part II: Samuel Golfard's Diary, January to April 1943 Part III: Related Documents –Wartime Documents –Postwar Documents –Jacob Litman’s Testimonies –Rescue in Peremyshliany : The Example of Tadeusz Jankiewicz and His Family List of Documents Place Names Mentioned in the Diary Bibliography Chronology of Events Related to the Diary Biographies Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisPublished by Eureka Press, Tokyo, and distributed outside Japan by Routledge.From the Introduction by Setsuko KagawaThe history of women’s medical education is one of the most remarkable aspects of social change in nineteenth-century Britain. Before the modernization and professionalization of medicine, women played an important part in the familial or local medical care systems. However, they were gradually excluded from formal medical practice due to a lack of systematic medical education. Women who hoped to enter the medical profession were obliged to fight a long and painful struggle to gain opportunities for medical education. Sometimes they managed to take informal and personal instruction from sympathetic male physicians, or they had to go abroad to search for medical training and university degrees. Female pioneers had to break through the boundaries of gender and nation defined by medical and social authorities, and they made their way across frontiers; they fought to enter men’s universities and, furthermore, they endured a long journey to colonial lands to practice medicine. The whole story of women’s advance in medicine with collective life-histories of early female doctors reveals significant findings that give a new dimension in women’s and gender history as well as medical history. In this series, I collected contemporary writings relating to pioneering women who contributed in opening up a path for women to practice medicine as qualified doctors in Great Britain. Most of them were of English origin with the exception of some American doctors whose achievements had considerable influence upon English practice. Equally they embraced the earnest ambition to practice scientific medicine especially for their sex, as well as the belief that women were men’ s intellectual equals. (… )In the collected writings in this series, we can glimpse one of the most dramatic aspects of English social history from the latter half of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Female pioneers had fought to gain opportunities in medical education as well as access to medical practice. Most of them undertook the challenge to the unknown world; sometimes they tried to enter men’s universities, or go abroad to study at foreign universities, and, furthermore, sailed for colonial lands to practice medicine. The story of women’s medical education is valuable for many historians to explore from a variety of viewpoints, and I hope the writings in this series will be of use to future studies.Table of ContentsVol. 1 : Opening the Medical Profession to Women Introduction by Setsuko Kagawa Barbara Leigh Smith Women and Work, 1857, c. 60 pp. Elizabeth Blackwell Medicine as a Profession for Women, English Woman's Journal, Vol.V, pp.145-160, 1862, c.20 pp. Emily Davies Medicine as a Profession for Women, 1862, in Thoughts on Some Questions Relating to Women, 1860-1908, pp. 34-40, 1910, c. 10 pp. Frances Elizabeth Hoggan Women in Medicine, in Elizabeth Stanton ed., The Woman Question in Europe, pp.63-89, 1884, c. 30 pp. Sophia Jex-Blake Medical Women : A Thesis and a History, 1886, c. 360 pp. Mary Scharlieb Women in Medical Profession, Historical Review; An Address at the Women's Institute on January 25th,1898, pp.1-16. Appendix pp.17-29, 1898, c. 35 pp. Vol.2 : Life and Work of Female Pioneer Educators in Medicine, Part 1 Elizabeth Blackwell Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, 1895, c. 275 pp. Louise Garrett Anderson Elizabeth Garrett Anderson 1836-1917, 1939, c. 340 pp. Vol.3 : Life and Work of Female Pioneer Educators in Medicine, Part 2 Margaret Todd The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake, 1918, c. 600 pp. Vol.4 : Founding Medical Schools for Women Pechey-Phipson, Edith Inaugural Address: London School of Medicine for Women , 1873, c. 35 pp. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson The Student's Pocket Book: Arranged for students of the London School of Medicine for Women, 1878, c. 110 pp. Mary Scharlieb Seven lamps of Medicine: Inaugural address delivered at the London School of Medicine for Women, 1882, c. 25 pp. Isabel Thone Sketch of the foundation and development of the London School of Medicine for Women, 1915, c. 65 pp. Ann Preston Introductory Lecture to the Class of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1859, c. 15 pp. Clara Marshall The Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania: An Historical Outline, 1897, c. 145 pp. Vol. 5 Female Work in Medicine in Colonial India Frances Elizabeth Hoggan Medical Work for Women in India, Englishwoman's Review, No. CXLIV, April 15th, 1885, pp.145-158 & No. CXLV, May 15th, 1885, pp. 194-200), 1882, c. 25 pp. Mary Scharlieb Reminiscences, 1924, c. 250 pp. Margaret Balfour, Ruth Young & Dame Mary Scharlieb The Work of Medical Women in India, 1929, c. 205 pp. Also available: Women’s Body, Health and Physical Education in Nineteenth to Early Twentieth- century Britain Edited and introduced by Setsuko Kagawa, Professor, Nishikyusyu University PUBLICATION DETAILS 5 volumes | £995 148 x 210 mm | c. 2,500. illus. b/w set isbn: 978-4-902454-74-1

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Book SynopsisThe extravagant gardens of the 16th- and 17th-century British aristocracy are well-documented and celebrated, but the more modest gardens of the rural county gentry have rarely been examined. Jill Francis presents new, never-before published material as well as fresh interpretations of previously examined sources to reveal gardening as a practical activity in which a broad spectrum of society was engaged from the laborers who dug, manured, and weeded, to the gentleman owners who sought to create gardens that both exemplified their personal tastes and displayed their wealth and status. Enhanced by beautiful and compelling illustrations, this book contributes to a broader understanding of early modern society and its culture by situating the activity of gardening within the wider social and cultural concerns of the age, reflecting the anxieties, hopes, and aspirations of people at the time. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British ArtTrade Review“sumptuously produced” – John Carey, The Sunday Times“Handsomely designed, generously illustrated and packed full of information and detail.” – Lisa Hopkins, Times Higher Education Supplement“Francis has gathered together an impressive body of information, some of it previously unexplored” —Margaret Willes, Times Literary Supplement“This is a serious book on early- modern society, but we are drawn in by the personal nature of the evidence: the gardeners’ loves, extravagances, and preoccupations.”— Jamie Cable, Church Times“Francis introduces some very interesting new material”—Paula Henderson, Garden History “The book offers much detailed analysis and also demonstrates the diversity of gardens during this period.”— John Edmondson, Welsh Historic Gardens Trust BulletinLong listed for the Historians of British Art Book PrizeListed on Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles List for 2019

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Book SynopsisThe Hidden History of South Africa's Book and Reading Cultures shows how the common practice of reading can illuminate the social and political history of a culture. This ground-breaking study reveals resistance strategies in the reading and writing practices of South Africans; strategies that have been hidden until now for political reasons relating to the country's liberation struggles. By looking to records from a slave lodge, women's associations, army education units, universities, courts, libraries, prison departments, and political groups, Archie Dick exposes the key works of fiction and non-fiction, magazines, and newspapers that were read and discussed by political activists and prisoners.Uncovering the book and library schemes that elites used to regulate reading, Dick exposes incidences of intellectual fraud, book theft, censorship, and book burning. Through this innovative methodology, Dick aptly shows how South African readers used reading and booTrade Review'Archie Dick's Hidden History offers us a fine example of a historian working in an imaginative way to show how, at various junctures in the South African past, book and reading cultures have arisen, survived or even thrived despite the ways in which controlling and repressive regimes have sought to destroy or limit the impact of reading and writing for their own purposes.' -- Charles van Onselen Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, vol. 66:03:2012 'The scholarship is exemplary, and the book opens up new areas of research.' -- Anthony Olden Information and Culture: A Journal of History, October 2013 'Engaging and path breaking book...Rarely, if ever, is a work on South African history published that covers such a vast stretch of time, and is based on such a truly remarkable range of primary sources.' -- Gerald Groenewald Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa; vol 19:1:2014 'Trailblazing study.' -- Daniel Magaziner American Historical Review - vol 119:03:2014 'This is an inventive and engaging book that will do much to advance studies of southern African print culture and reading and their broader significance. Richly researched and lucidly written, the book will lend itself well to classroom use.' -- Isabel Hofmeyr African Studies Review vol 57:03:2014 'This wide ranging book contains a treasure-trove of stories about print cultures in South Africa between the mid-seventeenth century and mid-1990s... Dick has produced a study that is informative as well as ambitious.' -- Stephanie Newell SHARP News vol 24:04:2015Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: The Significance of Common Readers in South Africa 1 Early Readers at the Cape, 1658-1800 2 Literacy, Class, and Regulating Reading, 1800-1850 3 The Women's Building of Nations: History Books in the Early Twentieth Century 4 Books for Troops in the Second World War 5 Politics and the Libraries, Part One: Book Theft, Intellectual Fraud, and Book Burning, 1950-1971 6 Politics and the Libraries, Part Two: Dissident Readers and Librarians in the 1980s Townships 7 Reading in Exile after Soweto, 1978-1992 8 Combating Censorship and Making Space for Books Conclusion: Revealing the Hidden Books and Hidden Readers Notes Index

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Book Synopsis The Before Columbus Foundation 2018 Winner of the AMERICAN BOOK AWARD Tommy J. Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore,is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines. Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genred existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerabilTrade Review"Tommy Curry has written a cool, brilliant defense of the men who are the pariahs of American society: the ones who, regardless of class, find themselves at the bottom of every hierarchy; the ones whose demographics and statistics in terms of the criminal justice, health care, and other systems are abysmal. Countless billions have been made from the portrayal of Black males as Boogeymen. The Man-Not is heavy work, but the general reader will find its arguments well worth the time and effort. This book is controversial. Those who've dogged and stalked Black men in the academy and popular culture for the past few decades are sure to have their critical knives out. I know. But it's rare for an American intellectual to step up, regardless of the fallout. This book is the one that I've been waiting for. Curry has taken a bullet for the brothers."—Ishmael Reed, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Scholar at the California College of the Arts"In a bold—indeed, fearless—intervention in the ongoing race/gender/sexual orientation debates, Tommy Curry challenges the cozy consensus among self-conceived progressives in the humanities. The oppression of black men has been conceptually erased, he argues, by theoretical frameworks indifferent to the social science data that refute them. Sure to ignite a firestorm of controversy, The Man-Not is an impassioned protest against orthodoxies, both mainstream and radical, white and black. It is required reading for anyone interested in understanding oppression or having unquestioned assumptions put to the test." —Charles W. Mills, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center "The Man-Not introduces a progressive black male studies that is decidedly nonfeminist, and the book demands a radical rethinking of the category of 'gender' itself.... It is impressive to watch Curry build arguments and the seamless manner in which the philosopher moves between sources across disciplines.... (It is) refreshing to read a book that has little time for academic pleasantries and is so eager to transcend the boundaries of traditional gender theorizing.... (R)eaders from diverse academic backgrounds can still learn much in its pages." —Men and Masculinities"This book reads as a spiritual successor to W.E.B. Dubois's 1906 keynote speech delivered during the second annual Niagara Movement Conference.... Curry echoes the same sentiment that Black men have been subjugated due to systemic violence, denial of rights, and oppression. The author is open and candid that this is as much an emotional book as an academic one.... It is an impassioned plea for justice and legitimation that is often read in books but rarely felt.... The book is an incredible piece of scholarship for Black Male Studies and completely convincing in its claim that there is not only a need for Black Male Studies but a need to study it across multiple disciplines, particularly at the intersection of race, masculinity, law, politics, and class. His ability to deliver scholarship that is part literature review, part critique, part analysis, and part biography makes this book an important piece of work set to help steer Black Male Studies into a new, exciting direction."—Sociology of Race and Ethnicity"Curry offers a provocative discussion of black masculinity by critiquing both the social and academic treatment of killings of black men and boys in the US. The author forces readers to reevaluate the interpretations and stereotypes the media uses. He argues that gender studies has disadvantaged black men by imposing and supporting negative historical stereotypes and ignoring the diversity of black boys and men and by falsely aligning black masculinity with white masculinity.... The present book is an attempt to fill the gap by presenting a philosophical theory on black masculinity that Curry claims is nonexistent in philosophy.... (A)n excellent basis for discussions of the academic constructs of legitimacy in research. Many readers may find this book an uncomfortable read, and that is the very reason it should be read....Summing Up: Highly recommended." —Choice"The Man-Not is an impressive book, sure to upset scholars invested in static gender theory based on racial myths reproduced in the academy in lieu of empirical debates addressing the impossibility of Black patriarchy amid anti-Black achievement policies that disproportionately affect Black males.... The Man-Not exemplifies the deep, risky criticism that all scholars should aspire to, particularly as Curry’s call for the institutionalization of Black male studies is compelling.... Curry’s argument is contentious yet indispensable amid the oftentimes deadly systemic oppressions that Black males encounter."--Women's Studies in Communication

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Book SynopsisFor thousands of years, humans have built walls and assaulted them, admired walls and reviled them. Great Walls have appeared on nearly every continent, the handiwork of people from Persia, Rome, China, Central America, and beyond. They have accompanied the rise of cities, nations, and empires. And yet they rarely appear in our history books.Spanning centuries and millennia, drawing on archaeological digs to evidence from Berlin and Hollywood, David Frye uncovers the story of walls and asks questions that are both intriguing and profound. Did walls make civilization possible? Can we live without them?This is more than a tale of bricks and stone: Frye reveals the startling link between what we build and how we live, who we are and how we came to be. It is nothing less than the story of civilization.

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Book SynopsisChallenges long-accepted historical orthodoxy about relations between the Spanish and the Indians in the borderlands separating what are now Mexico and the United States. While most scholars describe the decades after 1790 as a period of relative peace, Mark Santiago argues it was a period of sustained, widespread, and bloody conflict.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAltered States genuinely moves forward in laying a path for new, insightful, and valuable information on the American Buddhism that is developing in our global society. D. E. Osto's groundbreaking research will be appreciated by scholars, and their accessible style will be enjoyed by nonacademic readers. -- Charles Prebish, author of Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in AmericaAltered States deftly guides us through the neglected territory of psychedelic Buddhism. This is a fascinating story, full of vivid characters and supported by solid research. Still, I believe it makes a greater contribution by situating these practices and persons within the larger contexts of tantra, of American religion, and of cutting-edge neuropsychology and consciousness studies. The result is—to use le mot juste—mind blowing. -- Franz Metcalf, author of What Would Buddha Do?: 101 Answers to Life's Daily Dilemmas"[Altered States] mixes statistics and surveys, historical overview, personal experience, and ethnographic texture to uncover the intertwining history of two fast-growing movements in American spirituality.... This overview will appeal to anyone interested in Buddhism, psychedelic possibilities, and understanding how both are forging a controversial new American religious experience. * Publishers Weekly *Osto’s book is exceptional in its ability to focus the conversation about entheogens within religious perspectives. . . . They also point to more complex questions regarding the nature of subjectivity, experience, and scientific study. * Religious Theory *Of interest to anyone who wants to explore the intersection between traditional religion and altered states of consciousness, be they induced by psychedelics or any other means. * OPEN *Provocative.... The book is worth buying, reading, and quoting. * PsycCritiques *Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Buddhism and the Psychedelic Connection2. The Psychedelic Revolution3. The Buddhist Revolution4. Opening the Door: Psychedelics as a Gateway to Buddhist Practice5. Closing the Door: The Fifth Precept and Graduating from Psychedelics6. Keeping the Door Open: Psychedelics as an Adjunct to Buddhist Practice7. Are Psychedelics "the True Dharma"?: Debates, Presuppositions, and Philosophical IssuesConclusionsPostscriptNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe Holocaust is usually understood as a European story. Yet, this pivotal episode unfolded across North Africa and reverberated through politics, literature, memoir, and memory—Muslim as well as Jewish—in the post-war years. The Holocaust and North Africa offers the first English-language study of the unfolding events in North Africa, pushing at the boundaries of Holocaust Studies and North African Studies, and suggesting, powerfully, that neither is complete without the other. The essays in this volume reconstruct the implementation of race laws and forced labor across the Maghreb during World War II and consider the Holocaust as a North African local affair, which took diverse form from town to town and city to city. They explore how the Holocaust ruptured Muslim–Jewish relations, setting the stage for an entirely new post-war reality. Commentaries by leading scholars of Holocaust history complete the picture, reflecting on why the history of the Holocaust and North Africa has been so widely ignored—and what we have to gain by understanding it in all its nuances. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.Trade Review"This fascinating and original volume profoundly challenges inherited understandings of the Holocaust as a purely European phenomenon. Offering far-ranging original research, the contributors illustrate how one of modernity's defining horrors played out in North Africa. In so doing, they convincingly show that Vichy's race laws, anti-Semitic agitation, and deportations represented ruptures—but also continuities—with North Africa's colonial order."—Joshua Schreier, Vassar College"The Holocaust and North Africa extends the geographical and historical horizons of Holocaust studies. It challenges a Eurocentric focus, exploring the diverse persecution experiences and memories of Jews in North and West Africa, and raises interesting questions about the interdependencies of Nazi, Vichy, and fascist policies with colonial practices."—Wolf Gruner, Founding Director, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research"As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, it is important to understand how ordinary Muslims comprehended what was happening to their Jewish neighbors, to their country, and to themselves under Nazi and Vichy oversight. Even more importantly, we must understand the experience of the North African Jews themselves. Boum and Stein's book is a good start."—Lawrench Rosen, Jewish Review of Books"This collection of fifteen essays and commentaries by noted scholars constitutes an invaluable contribution to the growing body of literature on the Holocaust, North Africa, and the Middle East....The wealth of new sources both primary and secondary that they have uncovered bodes well for the expansion of our knowledge and understanding of the Shoah in its connections with North Africa."—Francis R. Nicosia, Holocaust and Genocide Studies"[This] is an important and timely book....a unique and welcome addition to our understandings of the mid-twentieth century Maghreb, the death throes of European colonization, the Shoah, and the ways in which these sites, events, and memories continue to shape the Mediterranean region today."—Nicholas Ostrum, EuropeNow"[A] rich and illuminating volume, which, in my view, fully achieves its aims. The essays enrich our understanding of how the Holocaust unfolded in North Africa, most notably by unveiling the deep entanglement between colonialism and fascism....[The Holocaust and North Africa] shows the fruitfulness of a joint work of reflection, scrutiny, and interpretation."—Piera Rossetto, Quest"[A] exceptionally valuable volume focusing on an area of study far too long in the shadows....The Holocaust and North Africa is an absorbing work that will undoubtedly whet the appetite of many a student of the Holocaust, eager to know more about what happened to Jews in that part of the world during the war years."—Diane Cypkin, Martyrdom & Resistance"The underlying agenda of The Holocaust and North Africa is to encourage further, in-depth research in this hitherto neglected area of study. Even at this relatively late stage of Holocaust historiography, there are archives and testimonies waiting to be examined and deciphered. As shown in these essays, comparative research does not imply the drawing of similarities between situations, but rather a deeper understanding of the complex mosaic of the Holocaust—confined neither to Europe nor to European Jews."—Denis Charbit, Studies in Contemporary JewryTable of ContentsIntroduction —Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein 1. Between Metropole and French North Africa: Vichy's Anti-Semitic Legislation and Colonialism's Racial Hierarchies —Daniel J. Schroeter 2. The Persecution of Jews in Libya Between 1938 and 1945: An Italian Affair? —Jens Hoppe 3. The Implementation of Anti-Jewish Laws in French West Africa: A Reflection of Vichy Anti-Semitic Obsession —Ruth Ginio 4. "Other Places of Confinement": Bedeau Internment Camp for Algerian Jewish Soldiers —Susan Slyomovics 5. Blessing of the Bled: Rural Moroccan Jewry During World War II —Aomar Boum and Mohammed Hatimi 6. la recherche de Vichy: The Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives and the Implementation of the Statut des Juifs in Tunisia —Daniel Lee 7. Eyewitness Djelfa: Daily Life in a Saharan Vichy Labor Camp —Aomar Boum 8. The Ethics and Aesthetics of Restraint: Judeo-Tunisian Narratives of Occupation —Lia Brozgal 9. Fissures and Fusions: Moroccan Jewish Communists and World War II —Alma Heckman 10. Recentering the Holocaust (Again) —Omer Bartov 11. Paradigms and Differences —Susan Rubin Suleiman 12. Sephardim and Holocaust Historiography —Susan Gilson Miller 13. Stages in Jewish Historiography and Collective Memory —Haim Saadoun 14. A Memory That Is Not One —Michael Rothberg 15. Holocaust and North Africa —Todd Presner

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1963, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod's pioneering work traces the role of the Arab intelligentsia in increasing Arab awareness of Europe and in shaping an Arab image of the West.Trade Review'Palestine's foremost academic and intellectual' Edward Said, Guardian 'One of the first Arab-American scholars to have a really serious effect on the way the Middle East is portrayed in political science and in America.' Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University 'A significant contribution to the study of Arab adjustment to the modern age. Abu-Lughod has combined insight and careful interpretation with thorough scholarship.' C. F. Dawn, University of IllinoisTable of ContentsPreface v Introduction: The Setting of Westernization 3 I Arab Awareness of the West: Modern Beginnings 11 The Napoleonic Proclamations * The Arab Chroniclers of the French Expedition II The Development of the Translation Movement 28 Unorganized Official Interpreting * Random Translation * Organized Period of Official Translation * The Decline of Official Translation * The Revival of the Translation Movement III The Nature of the Translated Material 46 Translations Undertaken * List of Translations * Content of the Translations * Other Translators of the Nineteenth Century * A Digression on Ninth and Nineteenth-Century Translation * Justifications for the Translations * Impact of Translations on Arab Intellectual Development IV Arab Travellers to Europe 66 Pre-Nineteenth-Century Travellers * Nineteenth- Century Travellers * Travel Accounts * The Subject Matter of Travel Books * Impact of the Travels V Travellers' Views of Europe: Political and Social Organization 86 The Political Organization of the State * Private Organizations VI Travellers' Views of Europe: The Educational 115 System and the Social Order Education and Learning * Miscellaneous Sociological Observations VII Arab Attitudes and Reactions to Western 135 Achievements Statements of Individual Writers * Reactions to th Invidious Comparisons VIII Conclusions and Subsequent Developments 155 Bibliography 169 Index 181

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Anecdotes, stories and clearly enunciated insights and analysis put The Last Hockey Game right up there on the shelf with Ken Dryden's The Game. There can be no question after reading this excellent addition to hockey's literary canon that our game isn't now and will never be the same as it was then." -- Jim Millican * Winnipeg Free Press *"The Last Hockey Game is a bold, intimate, often brilliant feat of storytelling. Bruce McDougall takes a single game, a proverbial grain of sand, and spins it into a universe. The resulting energy illuminates not just the core, the solid centre, but the ragged outer edges of the game's greatest franchises, the Leafs and Canadiens, at the height of their greatness." -- Charles Wilkins"I saw this game, and I have to say the book is even better. The Last Hockey Game has all the inside innocence, ego, snubbed cigars, honest scars and pro-gossip from the glory days when the NHL was about to lose its virginity." -- Bill Gaston"It's about a game and its players, employees in a trade where even excellent work guaranteed nothing, least of all fair treatment yet they played their hearts out, for the love of the game. But the question you'll ask yourself most often while reading The Last Hockey Game is: 'How did he find that out?'" -- Jean-Patrice Martel

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Book SynopsisExplores the intertwined histories of Jews and the American Left through a rich variety of primary documents. Written in English and Yiddish, this title includes documents that reflect the entire spectrum of radical opinion, from anarchism to social democracy, Communism to socialist-Zionism.Trade ReviewFrom America's leading historian of Yiddish-speaking radicalism comes this rich anthology of contemporary Jewish-American voices from the 1880s through the 1940s. Among the diverse experiences and points of view reflected here, Michels convincingly identifies three dominant threadssocialist awakening as a rite-of-passage, the agony and ecstasy of political struggle, and Yiddish-based education as a labor-centered project with an uncertain agenda for national emancipation. -- Leon Fink,editor of Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the AmericasMichels has assembled a fine collection of primary sources, one that successfully illuminates the experiences of Jewish radicals and uncovers many unknown and remote voices. This book will appeal to both lay readers and a scholarly audience. -- Evan C. Rothera * Yearbook of German-American Studies *This book will stimulate the mind and gladden the heart of anyone who cares about the history of American Jews or the American left and the always close, if eternally tempestuous relationship between them. Tony Michels has assembled a feast of documents and is an expert guide to their meaning and context. -- Michael Kazin,author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a NationHe has made an important contribution to out understanding of one significant aspect of American Jewish history * The Jewish Chronicles *Whether devoured in big chunks, or savored in small bites, Jewish Radicals is a fun and fortifying read. * Jewish Currents *[Michels] has made an important contribution to our understanding of [a] significant aspect of American Jewish history. * Buffalo Jewish Review *Recommended for upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Jewish-Socialist Nexus Tony MichelsPart I: AwakeningsAbraham BisnoEmma GoldmanAlexander BittelmanLucy Robins LangPaul JacobsPart II: In Struggle Di nyu-yorker yidishe folkstsaytungDovid EdelshtatBernard VaynshteynDi arbeter tsaytungWomen's Societies Alexander BerkmanAbraham ShiplacoffIsadore WisotskyRose Pastor StokesAbraham CahanLouis WaldmanLouis MichelJusticeSam DarcyUpton SinclairThe NationWomen's Circle, Branch 417Isadore BernickFrank CrosswaithJennie CohenJ. B. S. HardmanPart III: Life of the Mind Ida Van EttenEducation SocietiesPauline NewmanBernard G. RichardsPhillip DavisNew York TimesA. FaynmanB. SheyferOswald Garrison VillardUnited Jewish Workers' Cultural SocietyInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' UnionN. GlassUnited Council of Yiddish Women's Reading Circles of DetroitNathan AusubelPart IV: The Russian Revolution New York TimesLouis WaldmanKatherina MarysonNew York TimesMoissaye J. OlginWorkers' (Communist) Party; Roger Baldwin and Earl BrowderNokhum KhaninMax GranichVanguardPaul JacobsThe New InternationalJewish LifePart V: The Question of Zionism Jacob MilchDer yidisher kemferRandolph BourneHerts BurginThe ForvertsDi morgn frayhaytHayim GreenbergSamuel WeissBezalel ShermanArthur RosenbergErnest MandelAlbert GlotzerAlexander Bittelman Recommended Reading Index About the Editor

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Book SynopsisA hard look at an ugly chapter in America's historyTrade ReviewThis book is, as Schweik convincingly caharacterizes it, 'a history of the harm done bylet us allow the phrase some forcelack of regard.' It provides useful background for understanding current efforts to encode and enforce protections for the disabled and disadvantaged. -- Marilyn Chandler McEntyre * The Christian Century *The range of concerns illuminated by Schweik's materialist and historicist focus on the ordinances proves that The Ugly Laws has succeeded, as the book's poignant last words put it, in showing how much more we understand when we begin to face the history of disability' -- Jean Franzino * Register of the Kentucky Historical Society *The Ugly Laws is a focused and deeply mined interrogation of a familiar cultural figurethe unsightly beggarthat has not until now been critically examined. Schweik is a virtuosa of both close reading and the big picture, merging historical scholarship with analysis of the discursive elaboration and cultural work of the unsightly beggar figure. The Ugly Laws is an essential text. -- Rosemarie Garland-Thomson,author of Extraordinary BodiesSchweik uses & unsightly beggar laws in American cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore fundamental questions about disability, race, gender, and class in new and often startling ways. The book is beautifully written, delightfully thought-provoking, and deeply researched. It is quite honestly the best work of scholarship I have read in a long time. -- Douglas C. Baynton,author of Forbidden SignsThoughtful, comprehensive, insightful, readable, and full of interesting characters and colorful digressions, The Ugly Laws is an admirable piece of scholarship and a significant contribution to the literature. -- Robert L. Burgdorf Jr.,author of Americans with DisabilitiesSchweik delivers a compelling and insightful examination of disability norms, municipal law, and American culture. . . . She gives voice to the fascinating stories of the unsightly, the alienated, and the excluded. A valuable contribution for anyone interested in disability theory, poverty law and policy, and social history. -- Paul Steven Miller,Director, Disability Studies Program, University of WashingtonSchweik draws on a deep index of resources, from legal proceedings to out-of-print books, to tell the story of individuals long lost to history. * Publishers Weekly *Schweik draws on a deep index of resources, from legal proceedings to out-of-print books, to tell the story of individuals long lost to history. * Publisher’s Weekly *This cultural history is a revelation, rich with insights that let us ponder our own encounters with disability and the categories we make. * The Cleveland Plain Dealer *What is ugliness, and how ugly is too ugly? Perverse though such discrimination might seem today, Schweik suggests that re-examining such laws ‘might prove very useful as a way of foregrounding the inevitable ambiguity of the category of & disability. * The Chronicle Review *Standing at the intersection of disability history and poor peoples history, opens a window on an attractive landscape for scholars to explore. * Journal of American History *Part investigative reportage, historiography, anecdote, legal study, cultural critique, and life writing, SchweiksUgly Lawsis an important and necessary addition to disability studies scholarship and also happens to be a fascinating piece of storytelling. [] There is much to applaud inThe Ugly Laws. Schweik extends disability studies scholarship by taking an interdisciplinary approach to the history of disability. Her research and writing provide insights and revelations in regards to disability discrimination. Scholars in disability studies, rhetoric, and related fields of study will find much value in her contribution. * JAC: Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Politics *Overall, this is a thorough, careful, and sensible work, which is both fascinating and also moving as an account of social oppression of disabled people. * Metapsychology Online Reviews *Susan Schweik... has written a brilliant study of the ugly laws that illuminates this largely forgotten corner of the American history of body impairments, aesthetic norms, and urban spatial regulation. Schweiks book serves, too, as a powerful demonstration of the vast potential of disability studies, like gender studies and queer theory with which it is frequently allied, to enlarge and to transform our understandings of what is frequently taken for granted as natural, to shed new light on the subterranean recesses of culture, and not simply to assist us to think outside the box, but to question whether there needs to be a box at all... The riotous encounters she analyzes, with their mixture of menace, chaos, conflicting cultures, and colorful characters, paint fascinating, Dickensian word pictures that bring to life the illusive, urban crowd and its antagonists in compelling and analytically pointed ways. * Journal of Social History *In analyzing the ugly laws, Schweik reveals how individuals have come to define their identities around work and self-sufficiency, and how the failure of those with disabilities to do so can result in character assassination of these individuals as frauds and morally bankrupt, diseased tricksters and thieves. A subtle and complex study. * Choice *Shweik combines a sophisticated grasp of disability, critical race and social theory, extensive archival and legal research, close textual analysis, and broad reading in a wide range of historical and other literatures. Her account brings the insights of disability history and theory to bear on systems of exclusion, subordination, and othering more generally in American life as the United States entered the twentieth century... This is a powerful book, essential reading for scholars of disability, race, gender, sexuality, immigration, urban, legal, social movement, and twentieth-century history more generallyindeed, for anyone concerned about law and its power and the limits of that power to define borders of belonging. * American Historical Review *Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. The stark photo by Paul Strand illustrating The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public conveys perfectly the realities and subtleties described in its pagesincluding the fear, pity, and revulsion with which the public so often regards those with physical disabilities. * California Lawyer *Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction I The Emergence of The Ugly Laws 1 Producing the Unsightly 2 Getting Ugly 3 The Law in Context 4 The Law in Language 5 Dissimulations II AT the Unsightly Intersection 6 Gender, Sexuality, and the Ugly Law 7 Immigration, Ethnicity, and the Ugly Law 8 Race, Segregation, and the Ugly Law III The End of The Ugly laws 9 The Right to the City 10 Rehabilitating the Unsightly 11 All about Ugly Laws (for Ten Cents) Conclusion Appendix: The Ugly Laws Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"What emerges from this deeply critical, at times humorous, foray into African American food history is a theoretical work as sensuous as the subject matter. Witt takes the reader on a journey through popular food discourses and along the way unpacks the signifiers of belonging, resistance, abjection, purity, and lust. Reading Black Hunger, I was reminded that food is not simply good to eat, it is also good to think with."—American Anthropologist"A fascinating look at food’s role in African-American culture."—Chicago Sun-Times"A well-researched and insightful discussion of the creation of mythology about black women and food."—Women’s Review of Books"The work is an impressive collection of cultural artifacts that allow a reader to understand the political implications of purchasing a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup, or the gender-specific implications that adopting a vegetarian diet may hold for African American women."—MultiCultural Review Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ProloguePart I Servant Problems One "Look Ma, the Real Aunt Jemima!" Consuming Identities under Capitalism Two Biscuits Are Being Beaten: Craig Claiborne and the Epistemology of the Kitchen DominatrixPart II Soul Food and Black masculinity Three "Eating Chitterlings Is Like Going Slumming": Soul Food and Its Discontents Four "Pork or Women": Purity and Danger in the Nation of Islam Five Of Watermelon and Men: Dick Gregory's Cloacal ContinuumPart III Black Female Hunger Six "My Kitchen Was the World": Vertamae Smart Grosvenor's Geechee Diaspora Seven "How Mama Started to Get Large": Eating Disorders, Fetal Rights, and Black Female AppetiteEpilogue Appendix African American Cookbooks Chronological Bibliography of Cookbooks by African Americans Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewFrom Publishers WeeklyIn this acerbic collection of essays, Comanche cultural critic and art curator Smith (Like a Hurricane) riffs on the romantic stereotypes of Indian as “spiritual masters and first environmentalists,” as tragic victims of technology and civilization, as primal beings brimming with nomad authenticity, their every artifact a gem of folk art. Such tropes, he complains, hide the riotous complexity of the modern Indian experience, which he visits in pieces that explore his grandfather's Christian church, Sitting Bull's savvy manipulation of his media image (he had an agent) and the author's own Comanche forebears, who were both “world-class barbarians” and avid adopters of the white man's gadgetry. These loose-limbed essays range all over the landscape, from Hollywood westerns to the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee to (somewhat obscurely) the contemporary Indian art scene. Smith doesn't entirely square his view of Indians as “just plain folks” with his advancing of a unique Indian cultural perspective, but his keen, skeptical eye makes such ironies both amusing and enlightening.

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Book SynopsisIn this mesmerizing political memoir, Frank Wilderson recollects his turbulent life as an expatriate in South Africa during the furious last gasps of apartheid, where he taught at universities by day, and helped the ANC coordinate clandestine propaganda and launch psychological warfare by night.Trade Review"[F]requently beautiful. . . . Angry and paranoid." * Kirkus Reviews *"Wilderson has offered an important and groundbreaking story of the last days of apartheid. . . . More than anything Incognegro teaches us that the fall of apartheid was not bloodless or peaceful, that the corruption of neo-colonialism inhabits South Africa still, and it invites us, wherever we are, inside or outside South Africa, to tear down ourselves to the very foundations." -- Meta L. Schettler * Callaloo *"Wilderson's epic . . . offers thoughtful and provocative detail and nuance on each [read]. The book makes you rethink the idea of what a hero is and why and who crowned Nelson Mandela as such. It reveals the soul wrenching challenge of what it means to be an activist. It prompts a redefinition of success. And Wilderson takes on what he describes as some left-wingers' deep need to cling to the notion that South Africa's apartheid was different than racism on U.S. soil." -- Esther Armah * New York Amsterdam News *"Radical, defiant, and searingly honest, this memoir about being active in the freedom struggle in the U.S. and in post-apartheid South Africa is bound to spark passionate argument as Wilderson weaves together his personal story with his politics, always critical of those in power." -- Hazel Rochman * Booklist *"Wilderson's stinging portrait of Nelson Mandela as a petulant elder eager to accommodate his white countrymen will jolt readers who've accepted the reverential treatment usually accorded him. . . . Wilderson has a distinct, powerful voice and a strong story that shuffles between the indignities of Johannesburg life and his early years in Minneapolis . . . a riveting memoir of apartheid's last days." * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisPresents the cultural and literary history of black dandyism from the 1700s to the 1960s.Trade Review“Miller’s study incites a much-needed dialogue between existing scholarship on the figure of the dandy—particularly its performative queering of modern narratives of masculinity and nationhood—and the legacies of imperialism and slavery that attest to the constant, if silent, presence of race and racializing discourse in those same narratives. . . . [A]n absorbing and timely study of the black dandy.” - Jaime Hanneken, Comparative Literature“Encompassing the genres of drama, fiction, photography, film, and sculpture, Miller's study highlights the ways in which diaspora can be located in the image and the imagination of the body and its garments. . . . The value of Miller's text is in its historical range.” - Alisa K. Braithwaite, Modern Fiction Studies“Monica L. Miller's book is the first of its kind: a lengthy written study of the history of black dandyism and the role that style has played in the politics and aesthetics of African and African American identity. She draws from literature, film, photography, print ads, and music to reveal the black dandy's underground cultural history and generate possibilities for the future. . . . [U]ncanny feats of scholarship that illustrate ways in which the figure of the black dandy has been an elephant-in-the-room — albeit a particularly well-dressed one.” - D. Scot Miller, San Francisco Bay Guardian“A model for cultural studies, Slaves to Fashion brings the rich,interdisciplinary scholarship of the black dandy into the twenty-first century, serving the fields of both black and American studies.” - Pamela J. Rader, MELUS“Miller has performed a cultural excavation, sifting through fragments of visual and literary culture to trace a history of black style and assemble the first history of black dandyism. Her work deserves a place among the finer recent contributions to black performance studies. . . .” - Kristin Moriah, Callaloo“Monica L. Miller’s close readings dazzle, and her historical reach—confident and unforced—is as long as the transnational arc of black dandyism here is wide. Arresting, discerning, responsible, and urgent, Slaves to Fashion is path-breaking. Literary criticism, visual history, and black Atlantic studies never looked so good.”—Maurice O. Wallace, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775–1995“Revising and augmenting scholarship on minstrelsy, literary representations of blackness, and black sartorial aesthetics and visual culture, Slaves to Fashion is an impressive and meticulously researched treatise on the history of the black dandy. It fills a gap in the scholarship on the cultural politics of black self-fashioning.”—E. Patrick Johnson, author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity“Encompassing the genres of drama, fiction, photography, film, and sculpture, Miller's study highlights the ways in which diaspora can be located in the image and the imagination of the body and its garments. . . . The value of Miller's text is in its historical range.” -- Alisa K. Braithwaite * Modern Fiction Studies *“Miller has performed a cultural excavation, sifting through fragments of visual and literary culture to trace a history of black style and assemble the first history of black dandyism. Her work deserves a place among the finer recent contributions to black performance studies. . . .” -- Kristin Moriah * Callaloo *“Miller’s study incites a much-needed dialogue between existing scholarship on the figure of the dandy—particularly its performative queering of modern narratives of masculinity and nationhood—and the legacies of imperialism and slavery that attest to the constant, if silent, presence of race and racializing discourse in those same narratives. . . . [A]n absorbing and timely study of the black dandy.” -- Jaime Hanneken * Comparative Literature *“Monica L. Miller's book is the first of its kind: a lengthy written study of the history of black dandyism and the role that style has played in the politics and aesthetics of African and African American identity. She draws from literature, film, photography, print ads, and music to reveal the black dandy's underground cultural history and generate possibilities for the future. . . . [U]ncanny feats of scholarship that illustrate ways in which the figure of the black dandy has been an elephant-in-the-room — albeit a particularly well-dressed one.” -- D. Scot Miller * San Francisco Bay Guardian *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Stylin' Out 1 1. Mungo Macaroni: The Slavish Swell 27 2. Crimes of Fashion: Dressing the Part from Slavery to Freedom 77 3. W. E. B. Du Bois's "Different Diasporic Race Man 137 4. "Passing Fancies": Dandyism, Harlem Modernism, and the Politics of Visuality 176 5. "You Look Beautiful Like That": Black Dandyism and the Histories of Black Cosmopolitanism 219 Notes 291 Bibliography 347 Index 371

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Book SynopsisWalk in the footsteps of history with this stunning volume that brings more than thirty Civil War battlefields to life.   From the “First Battle of Bull Run” to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House four years later, this book celebrates the history and scenic beauty of these hallowed grounds in a large-format, beautifully produced volume.   Explore more than thirty Civil War battlefields— from Antietam to Chancellorsville, Gettysburg to Shiloh—including the first five national battlefield parks preserved by veterans in the 1890s. Each battlefield features extensive photos of the key sites and monuments, as well as beautiful landscapes and historic archival photography. The essays enable the reader to understand each battlefield from a strategic perspective—its topography, geography, and military value—the battle’s seminal moments, and its historical significance, and guide the reader on how best to toTrade Review"Civil War Battlefields: Walking the Trails of History offers a new viewpoint on this important time in United States history. Black and white photographs taken during the war are a sharp contrast to the colorful photos taken now. Both are scattered throughout the book and often give a different perspective to the same landscape, separated by a century and a half. Showcasing the trails gives you a better idea of the sacrifices made by the soldiers who fought on each side. Walk the trails and breathe the air, touch the cannons, stare across an open field and imagine a wall of soldiers advancing towards you. Look at the monuments and put a face to the name. Walk the trails of history."—Outdoor Blogger Network "While those photos are included, and are well done, the author provides more sweeping photographs showing the topography and scenery of the battlefield, giving the reader a better sense of the terrain where the battles took place and how the landscape might have appeared to the armies of the time."—New York Journal of Books "Traveling from the Battle of First Manassas to Appomattox Court House, stopping along the way at nearly three dozen battlefields, the author first sets the scene at each location by laying down in stirring prose the events that took place there. Then, he selects a number of trails that you can follow through these hallowed places to not just gain a feel for the lay of the land, but to practically feel how the battles progressed. Illustrated with 230 remarkable photographs, a mix of present-day scenics and historic Civil War-era images, this hefty, 336-page hardcover book is certain to hold the attention of those interested in the war for hours.” —National Parks Traveler"Civil War Battlefields: Walking the Trails of History offers a new viewpoint on this important time in United States history. Black and white photographs taken during the war are a sharp contrast to the colorful photos taken now. Both are scattered throughout the book and often give a different perspective to the same landscape, separated by a century and a half. Showcasing the trails gives you a better idea of the sacrifices made by the soldiers who fought on each side. Walk the trails and breathe the air, touch the cannons, stare across an open field and imagine a wall of soldiers advancing towards you. Look at the monuments and put a face to the name. Walk the trails of history.” —Snug Harbor Bay"Best Reference Titles of 2017: History. Created in association with the Civil War Trust, the leading organization in Civil War battlefield preservation, and with a foreword by novelist Jeff Shaara, this impressive look at 32 major battlefields contains essays, detailed maps, historic photographs, and suggested hikes (ranging from .2 to 14 miles). Most striking are the images of the battlefields as they look today: beautiful, hallowed landscapes.” — Library Journal

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Book SynopsisA JPS bestseller, this is the definitive work of scholarship on the medieval conception of the Jew as devil - literally and figuratively. Through documents, analysis, and illustrations, the book exposes the full spectrum of the Jew's demonization as devil, sorcerer, and ritual murderer. The author reveals how these myths still exist in transmuted form in the modern era.

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Book SynopsisThe story of a Cherokee boyhood of the 1930's.

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Book SynopsisLong before Greeks dominated the ancient Mediterranean, Phoenicians were the lords of the sea. Setting out from their Levantine cities, they introduced their alphabet, art, technology, and gods to places as far as off as Iberia. Carolina López-Ruiz highlights the enduring Phoenician imprint, displacing the Hellenocentric model of the ancient world.Trade ReviewA masterclass in historiographic and cultural research aiming to upend common stereotypes regarding Phoenicians and their role ‘in the making of the Mediterranean.’ It demonstrates solid, up-to-date research and a thoughtful approach to a variety of topics. -- Vadim Jigoulov * H-Soz-Kult *A real plea in favor of Phoenician studies, this volume offers an original and welcome contribution to research on the archaic Mediterranean. -- Hédi Dridi * American Journal of Archaeology *[A] substantial and important contribution…to the ancient history of the Mediterranean. López-Ruiz’s work does justice to the Phoenicians’ role in shaping Mediterranean culture by providing rational and factual argumentation and by setting the record straight. -- Hélène Sader * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *This is an important and substantial contribution to our understanding of the development of the Mediterranean in a crucial period. -- Hugh Bowden * Middle Ground Journal *An important new book…Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean offers a powerful call for historians of the ancient Mediterranean to consider their implicit biases in writing ancient history and it provides an example of how more inclusive histories may be written. -- Denise Demetriou * New England Classical Journal *Ground-breaking…Succeeds in its goal of showcasing the Phoenician imprint on the Mediterranean world and challenging the Hellenocentric model that has dominated scholarship of this region. The author is to be congratulated on her landmark study. -- Ann E. Killebrew * Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies *For generations, the Phoenicians have been an invisible culture, overwritten by Greek historians. Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean restores their rightful position as the principal engine of the early Iron Age, connecting the eastern Mediterranean to North Africa and Spain. With a light touch and a masterful command of the literature, López-Ruiz replaces old ideas with a subtle and more accurate account of the extensive cross-cultural exchange patterns and economy driven by the Phoenician trade networks that ‘re-wired’ the Mediterranean world. A must read. -- J. G. Manning, author of The Open SeaA call to recognize the role of the Phoenicians and acknowledge our own preconceptions and prejudices about ancient history, López-Ruiz’s magnum opus will not only revolutionize our understanding of the Early Iron Age Mediterranean but also how we write the history of this region in the future. -- Denise Demetriou, author of Negotiating Identity in the Ancient MediterraneanLópez-Ruiz weaves together evidence from diverse scholarly fields to spotlight the central role played by Phoenicians in shaping the ancient Mediterranean world. The result is a study as rich as the Phoenicians’ own famed luxury arts. -- Tamar Hodos, author of The Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age

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Book SynopsisThe Great, the Pious, the Fair; the Wise, the Lame, the Mad. Imprisoned, deposed, exiled. Excommunicated, assassinated; devout, debauched; loved, loathed — the Middle Ages produced a fascinating array of monarchs. From Britain to Russia, from Scandinavia to Sicily, from the 9th century CE to the completion of the Reconquista of Spain in 1492, Kings & Queens of the Medieval World explores the captivating stories of monarchs from all across Europe. Arranged thematically, the book groups the kings and queens by their achievements – military leaders, law-makers, religious reformers, patrons of the arts. These are stories of monarchs leading their armies into battle to expand or defend their territory, and of kings – and queens – going on crusade – both within Europe and to the Holy Land. These, too, are stories of, on the one hand, countries united by marriage, and, on the other, sons scheming against fathers in an effort to gain – and maintain – power. And yet these are also the stories of the people who constructed beautiful cathedrals, who founded universities and supported artists, of religious kings who were later canonised, of kings who created more just legal systems, established parliaments and permanent armies, and laid the foundations for more modern governments and societies. Featuring the major European dynasties, Kings & Queens of the Medieval World is a lively account of monarchs from Charlemagne to Alexander Nevsky to Ferdinand and Isabella. Illustrated with 180 colour and black-and-white artworks, photographs and maps, this is a colourful, accessible history.Table of ContentsIntroduction MILITARY LEADERS Charlemagne (800-814) – king of the Franks who defeated the Lombards and made incursions into Muslim Spain and campaigned against the Saxons to the East. Uniting most of western Europe for the first time since the Romans, he was crowned Emperor of the Romans by the Pope. Louis the Pious (814–40) – King of Aquitaine and King of the Franks, Son of Charlemagne, reconquered parts of northern Spain from the Muslims, including Barcelona and Pamplona. William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, King of England – Norman invasion of England (1066). Alexander Nevsky (1221–63) – rose to legendary status in Kievan Russia on account of his military victories over German and Swedish invaders while agreeing to pay tribute to the powerful Golden Horde. Casimir the Great (1310–70) – doubled the size of Poland, mostly through wars in what is modern-day Ukraine. Władysław II Jagiełło (r.1386–1434) – Born a pagan in Lithuania, Władysław was the Grand Duke of Lithuania, before becoming King of Poland. The allied Polish–Lithuanian victory against the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, secured the Polish and Lithuanian borders and marked the emergence of the Polish–Lithuanian alliance as a significant force in Europe. Philip II Augustus of France – broke up the Angevin Empire presided over by the crown of England and defeated a coalition of his rivals (German, Flemish and English) at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. Robert the Bruce, king of Scots, led Scotland during the First War of Scottish Independence, defeating King Edward II of England at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Edward III, who transformed the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe, launching the conflict that became known as the Hundred Years’ War to reclaim land in France, and defeating the French at Crécy (1346). Henry IV of England, deposed his cousin Richard II. Richard later died in prison, possibly of starvation. Henry went on to defeat the Welsh uprising led by Owain Glyndwr. Henry V of England and his defeat of the French at Agincourt (1415), bringing him close to conquering France. English civil conflict: The Wars of the Roses – Edward IV, Richard III and Henry Tudor (Henry VII) Ivan III ‘The Great’ of Russia (1462–1505) tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde over the Rus. CRUSADERS, PERSECUTORS AND RELIGIOUS REFORMERS Monarchs on crusade: Richard I (the Lionheart) of England, Philip II of France, Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor led the Third Crusade. Louis IX took part in the Seventh and Eighth Crusades, dying on the latter. Louis’ son, Philip III, later died on the Aragonese Crusade. Sigismund von Luxembourg, Holy Roman Emperor, led the last West European Crusade – the Crusade of Nicopolis of 1396 against the Turks. The crusaders, with forces from across Europe, were defeated in a single day. In attempting to reform England’s relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, Henry II of England (1154–89) came into conflict with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket. Becket was later murdered by followers of the king. Jews: In 1182, Philip II of France expelled all Jews from his lands; John I, Duke of Brittany drove them out of his duchy in 1239; and in the late 1240s Louis IX of France expelled the Jews from the royal demesne. In 1306, Philip IV ‘the Fair’ expelled the Jews from France. Edward I of England first exploited Jews, taxing them; in 1279, in the context of a crack-down on coin-clippers, he had 300 of them executed and finally expelled remaining Jews from the country in 1290. In contrast, Casimir the Great of Poland (1310–70) encouraged Jews to settle in his country. Devoutly religious, Louis IX of France (1226–70) punished blasphemy, gambling, interest-bearing loans and prostitution. Philip IV of France’s (1285–1314) persecution and execution of the Knights Templar. Władysław II Jagiełło (r.1386–1434) – the Pagan duke of Lithuania became a Christian and subsequently converted Lithuania to Christianity. Ferdinand and Isabella and the Spanish Inquisition QUEENS Following the death of Henry I of England, Empress Matilda, his only surviving child, fought his nephew, Stephen of Blois, for control of England in a war that lasted, on and off, for 20 years (1135–54). When her son, Henry II, became king in 1154, she settled in Rouen, was in charge of the administration of Normandy for her son and founded Cistercian monasteries. Eleanor of Aquitaine, first married Louis VII of France, but their marriage was annulled on grounds of consanguinity. Later she married Henry II of England, making her Queen of France (1137–1152) and then of England (1154–1189). She led armies several times in her life, including taking part in the Second Crusade (1147–1149). Blanche of Castile, mother of Louis IX (1226-70), reigned in the first years of her son’s reign until he reached maturity. She brought an end to the 20-year-long Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars. Isabella of France (1308–27) – estranged from her husband, King Edward II of England, Isabella began an affair with noble Roger Mortimer and led an army against Edward, deposing him. She may also have been responsible for Edward’s death. She then acted as regent to her 14-year-old son, Edward. Four years later, Edward led a coup against Mortimer, killing him and becoming King Edward III. No longer politically active, Isabella lived out the remaining decades of her life in style. Joanna I of Naples (1343–82) – who sided with the Avignon Papacy and was assassinated. Margaret I of Denmark (1387–1412), who was also monarch of Sweden and Norway. Isabella I of Castile (1474 –1504) – married Ferdinand II of Aragon and formed the basis for the later political unification of Spain under their grandson, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. She reorganized the governmental system, brought the crime rate to the lowest it had been in years, and unburdened the kingdom of the enormous debt her brother had left behind. Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Reconquista of Spain, forcing the conversion to Christianity or expulsion of Jews and Muslims. They also financed Christopher Columbus’s exploratory voyage that led to the opening to the New World. PATRONS & BUILDERS Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, founded the University of Naples, and is author of the first treatise on the subject of falconry. Edward the Confessor (r. 1042 – 5 January 1066) built an early Westminster Abbey, which was rebuilt in the 13th century by Henry III. Richard II finished Westminster Hall in the late 14th century. Philip II Augustus (1180–1223) played a significant role in one of the greatest centuries of innovation in construction and education in France. With Paris as his capital, he had the main thoroughfares paved, built a central market, Les Halles, continued the construction begun in 1163 of Notre-Dame de Paris, constructed the Louvre as a fortress, and gave a charter to the University of Paris in 1200. Roger II of Sicily (1130–54) – developed Norman-Arab-Byzantine culture, architecture, map-making. Louis IX of France (1226–70), having bought presumed relics of Christ, built Sainte- Chapelle. In response to the Mongol invasions, Bela IV of Hungary (1235-70) promoted the development of fortified towns, allowing the barons and the prelates to erect stone fortresses and to set up their private armed forces. Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor (1346–78), made Prague his capital. His patronage of the city led to the building of the first Charles Bridge, Charles University, Prague Castle and the Cathedral of Saint Vitus. Casimir the Great of Poland (1310–70) built extensively, including Wawel Castle in Krakow. Henry VI of England founded King’s College, Cambridge in the 15th century. Philip the Good of Burgundy (1419–67) was a great patron of Flemish musicians and artists, including Jan van Eyck. Ivan III of Russia renovated the Moscow Kremlin in the late 15th century. LAW-MAKERS & SOCIAL REFORMERS Philip II (1179-1223) transformed France from a small feudal state into the most prosperous and powerful country in Europe. He checked the power of the nobles and helped the towns to free themselves from seigniorial authority, granting privileges and liberties to the emergent bourgeoisie. King John of England agreed to the limitations of royal power in Magna Carta. Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, re-established Roman law, which counterbalanced the papal power that had dominated the German states since the conclusion of the Investiture Controversy earlier in the 12th century. Louis IX of France (1227-70) – Saint Louis – developed French royal justice, in which the king is the supreme judge to whom anyone is able to appeal to seek the amendment of a judgment. He banned trials by ordeal, tried to prevent the private wars that were plaguing the country and introduced the presumption of innocence in criminal procedure. Edward I of England (1272–1307) established Parliament as a permanent institution and thereby also a functional system for raising taxes. Known as the ‘Polish Justinian’, Casimir the Great (1310–70) reformed Polish law. John III of France (1350–64) created the Franc in an effort to stabilise the country’s currency. Charles V of France (1364–80) established the first permanent army paid with regular wages, which liberated the French populace from the companies of routiers who regularly plundered the country when not employed. Louis XI of France (1461–83) brought France out of the Middle Ages, establishing the modern structure of government that lasted until the French Revolution. George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia between 1458 and 1471, a Hussite, attempted to spread a Message of Peace across Christendom by uniting the states in what can be regarded as an early idea of the European Union. It would have a Parliament and member states would pledge to settle all differences by exclusively peaceful means. He sent a member of his court on a European tour with a draft treaty, but the idea wasn’t taken up. In the late 15th century, Ivan III of Russia laid the foundations of what later became called the Russian state. Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAn outspoken opponent of pro-Russian, authoritarian, and far-right streams in contemporary Czech society, Martin C. Putna received a great deal of media attention when he ironically dedicated the Czech edition of Rus–Ukraine–Russia to Miloš Zeman—the pro-Russian president of the Czech Republic. This sense of irony, combined with an extraordinary breadth of scholarly knowledge, infuses Putna’s book.Examining key points in Russian cultural and spiritual history, Rus–Ukraine–Russia is essential reading for those wishing to understand the current state of Russia and Ukraine—the so-called heir to an “alternative Russia.” Putna uses literary and artistic works to offer a rich analysis of Russia as a cultural and religious phenomenon: tracing its development from the arrival of the Greeks in prehistoric Crimea to its invasion by “little green men” in 2014; explaining the cultural importance in Russ of the Vikings as well as Pussy Riot; exploring central Russian figures from St. Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin.Unique in its postcolonial perspective, this is not merely a history of Russia or of Russian religion. This book presents Russia as a complex mesh of national, religious, and cultural (especially countercultural) traditions—with strong German, Mongol, Jewish, Catholic, Polish, and Lithuanian influences—a force responsible for creating what we identify as Eastern Europe.Trade Review“Finally a book on the development of Russian spirituality arising from extensive knowledge and a deep understanding of Russian history. In an era where many speak and write about the politics of Russia, be it positively or negatively, studying the roots is vital.” -- Karel, Prince of Schwarzenberg, former Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs * on the Czech edition *“An ideal textbook for diplomats and politicians.” -- Martin Bedrich, managing editor of "Salve" * on the Czech edition *“A fascinating examination of Russian history with unrivaled connections to culture and religion. It explores the eternal struggle between East and West, between patriotism and religious devotion—forces upwelling under Putin’s rule today.” * Respekt Magazine, Books to Buy column, on the Czech edition *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Bjornlie’s translation is fluid and excellent. . . .this is a much-needed and masterfully crafted addition to the historical corpus, of interest to historians, Byzantinists, and scholars of the ancient world interested in the Ostrogothic Court, Justinian’s conquest of Ravenna, and the early Byzantine world." * Reading Religion *Table of ContentsIntroduction Italy in the Sixth Century Cassiodorus as Statesman and Author The Variae as an Epistolary Collection Nachleben The Variae in Translation Chronology of Key Events Indictional Years Relative to Cassiodorus’s Tenure in Public Offices Maps THE VARIAE Book 1 Book 2 Book 3 Book 4 Book 5 Book 6 Book 7 Book 8 Book 9 Book 10 Book 11 Book 12 Bibliography of Related Reading Index of Individuals Index of Concepts, Peoples, and Terms Index of Places

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