Social and cultural history Books

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisThis third and concluding volume from the series, considers the ways in which Indian Catholics have tried to follow the route of two separate traditions, each with its own expectations, patterns and identities.Trade Review“From the complete opposition existing between Lakota (Sioux) culture and that of the European settlers and missionaries who moved into their land to the forces changing Lakota traditions and the Catholic Church as their world enters the 21st century, Vecsey has reached it all.” —Msgr. Paul A. Lenz, Executive Director, Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions“The third volume of Christopher Vecsey’s comprehensive study is a richly textured addition to his portrayal of religious and cultural interactions over the tumultuous half-millenium of contact between Native American people and Catholic Christianity, mainly in North America. ” —Howard L. Harrod, Oberlin Alumni Professor of Social Ethics and Sociology of Religion, Vanderbilt University“[Vecsey] has provided us with an important foundation for reforming our understanding of the espeirential complexities of Christianity in Native North America.” —Western Historical Quarterly“[This is] a fascinating overview of the interfaith dialogue between church leaders and Indian religious authorities during the 1970s. Vecsey’s work is a balanced and fair account of a highly complex and emotionally charged history of Native American Catholicism. It is sensitively written, detailing the complexities while neither assigning blame nor glossing over abuses. Much of what is recounted is tragic and at times heartbreaking. The book is written with a careful balance between data and insightful analysis or commentary. Native American Christianity is a highly complex, multifaceted, and politically and emotionally charged phenomenon. Vecsey’s masterly account is a helpful contribution to an understanding of it.” —The Journal of American History“Concluding his important trilogy on Native American Catholicism, Vecsey’s well-crafted and thorough study demonstrates his characteristic sensitivity to the variety of voices in the historic and contemporary dialogue between Indians and Catholicism.” —Walter H. Conser, Jr., Professor of Religion and History, University of North Carolina at Wilmington“Christopher Vecsey has written a most insightful study of the interaction between Native American traditions and Catholicism, the result of over a decade of research. Through historical documentation and contemporary interviews he presents a well-balanced evaluation of the achievements and failures of Catholicism in the evangelization of Native Americans. This is the best scholarly book on the subject that I have seen.” —Paul B. Steinmetz, S.J., author of Pipe, Bible and Peyote among the Oglala Lakota: A Study in Religious Identity and The Sacred Pipe: An Archetypal Theology“[T]he book provides valuable information on the Catholic church’s experience with Native Americans, focusing mainly on the 20th century. It is an important part of the puzzle of how churches in America relate to Native Americans and to other ethnic groups.” —Journal of the West“...[T]he book achieves its goal of chronicling Native American relations with the Catholic Church. The richness of the book flows from the hundreds of interviews and extensive archival research performed by the author.” —New Mexico Historical Review“After 500 plus years of ‘evangelization’ among the first peoples of the Americas, Vecsey’s third volume shows that Native American people have not lost their identity in the Catholic Church in the United States. Rather, they retain their identity despite enormous social, economic and religious forces to assimilate them into American Catholic society, as well as stormy disagreements among themselves.” —Marie Therese Archambault, O.S.F.

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Book SynopsisSheba, or Saba, was a region of high mountains and vast desert situated in the southwest of the Arabian peninsula, in present-day Yemen. This work provides an overview of this remote civilization, the uniqueness of the region's geography and climate, and major events that shaped its history.Trade Review“[A] much needed contribution to the ancient Near East for the English-speaking world. What Jean-François Breton has produced is an impressive introductory account of our current state of knowledge of Yemen's history in the first millennium B.C. that is complementary to studies of the ancient Orient, and that will provide a more complete picture. . . . [H]is account is fresh, lively, and lucid. Breton is readable and reliable, and as fine an introduction to South Arabia as is now available in English.” —The Historian

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Book SynopsisAn interpretation of early modern Paris demonstrating that sound was as important as vision during the reign of Louis XIV. Discloses myriad ways in which sound generated an interpenetration of elite and popular culture, revealing complex acoustic dimensions of class, politics, sexuality, and punishment.Trade Review“Hammond concludes this page-turner by highlighting how the songs and sounds of early modern Paris ‘give voice to people who would otherwise have remained silent.’ He is to be thanked for making them heard today.”—Paul Scott Paris Update“By resurrecting sounds that occurred in specific acoustical spaces—and at times by analyzing the ways in which certain sounds traversed spaces—Hammond offers profound insights into issues of social rank, politics, sexuality, and the complex processes through which information circulated. Hammond’s book, which examines a wide array of acoustic experiences and representations, is a valuable contribution to a recent trend in French studies that is attentive to the sonic, the oral, and the performative.”—John Romey Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music“Hammond’s clear prose conjures the sights and sounds of the terrible punishments meted out to . . . unfortunates accused of various misdeeds. . . . Though the book contains no music notation, Hammond and his team have recorded several of the songs on parisiansoundscapes.org so that readers may listen along. Hearing for the first time—or rehearing in a new way—the songs of the condemned, the ordinary, and the historically forgotten is one of the many pleasures of this fine book.”—Michael A. Bane Renaissance Quarterly“[An] unusual, tightly focussed, and evocative book.”—Mark Greengrass French History“Hammond’s evocation of the vanished sound worlds of seventeenth-century France is exemplary, as are the pieces he adds to our puzzle of early-modern sexual activity and sexual identity. That he does so through pages that are consistently a pleasure to read enhances the achievement.”—Laura Mason Journal of Modern History“The book is eclectic, entertainingly written, offering unexpected insights into many aspects of seventeenth-century Paris.”—David Garrioch H-France“The Powers of Sound and Song should encourage all historians to re-evaluate their approach to elements of the past that, at first glance, may seem ephemeral or unknowable, and to view the subjects of their enquiries through all five senses, not just visually. A book that will be valuable not just to music historians and cultural historians, but to historians of sexualities as well, The Powers of Sound and Song shows us how to listen to Paris, a model that will be valuable for urban historians too.”—Una McIlvenna H-France“[There are] many promising avenues for future research opened by The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris, and scholars are indebted to Nicholas Hammond for showing how to break the silence that has for too long muffled the many sounds of early modern France.”—Lewis C. Seifert H-France“The profound originality of this book by Nicholas Hammond is to be applauded. In helping us hear and understand in all its diversity the sonic universe of Paris at the beginning of Louis XIV's personal reign, this stimulating study uncovers a neglected tranche of culture from this period. It needed all the finesse and curiosity of an accomplished researcher to reproduce the complexity of the age, right down to the most somber tones of songs that accompanied the major moments of a period rich in contrast.”—Delphine Denis,Université Paris-Sorbonne“A place of encounter and shared listening for people of all classes, the newly built Pont Neuf becomes, in this academic page-turner, the site of discoveries that transform our understanding of seventeenth-century Paris. Gradually, through the clamor of the public world, we make out the echoes of its vast homosexual subculture. Hammond contributes innovatively to historical sound studies and renders the familiar strange, new, and newly exciting for historians, literary scholars, and musicologists alike.”—Sarah Kay,author of Parrots and Nightingales: Troubadour Quotations and the Development of European Poetry“This erudite, innovative, and highly readable study draws attention to early modern Paris’s neglected soundscapes. Focusing on the Pont Neuf and its singers, Hammond pieces together a compelling microhistory in which song and sodomy simultaneously reveal, contest, and cut across the fundamental distinctions of social class that structure Louis XIV’s France.”—Gary Ferguson,author of Queer (Re)Readings in the French Renaissance“Taking as a motif a recovered song fragment by Jacques Chausson from the Chansonnier Maurepas, Hammond vividly describes the promiscuous power of sound worlds from the time of the Sun King, a period usually associated with displays of visual opulence and absolutist control.”—Aimée Boutin,author of City of Noise: Sound and Nineteenth-Century Paris“This book opens on a vibrant evocation of an aspect of early modern Paris that has been too often overlooked: the sounds of Parisian streets in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nicholas Hammond explores a new way of imagining the early modern city.”—Joan DeJean,author of The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France“An important, absorbing, and astonishingly original book. While scholars have long focused on the visual aspects of French absolutism, Hammond offers an entirely new interpretation by turning his attention to the auditory worlds of early modern Paris. Examining a wide range of acoustic experiences and representations, from songs to remonstrations, the book shows that sound played a crucial role in shaping identities at all social levels. As Hammond traces these acoustic echoes of the past, he creates a gripping narrative that deepens our understanding of class, politics, sexuality, and punishment in seventeenth-century Parisian culture.”—Peter Denney,Griffith UniversityTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsAuthor’s NoteIntroductionPart I: The Power of Sound1. The Sounds of Paris2. Singers and Listeners3. Informé de tout: Sound and Power, 1661–1662Part II: Chausson’s Song4. The Death and Afterlife of Jacques Chausson5. Guitaut, Condé, and the Cordon bleu6. Different WorldsConclusionAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisExamines the relationship between imperial Germany and its empire in southwest Africa (present-day Namibia), exploring how Africans confronted foreign rule and altered German national identity between 1842 and 1915.Trade Review“[An Imperial Homeland’s] walkthrough of the existing literature on German Southwest Africa and its original contributions in Chapter Six of the volume will make it a useful addition to courses on German history and German imperialism.”—Sean Andrew Wempe German Studies Review“An Imperial Homeland traces Germany’s uses of Southwest Africa within a white imperial imaginary that harbored genocidal potential. Blackler explains how the colonial experience in German Southwest Africa affected and transformed German society across a longer time span than is typically considered within the historiography. His work shows that colonial officials, missionaries, soldiers, and settlers adapted racist and civilizationist thought and practice over decades, creating the conditions for devastating and multifaceted violence against thousands of Namibians.”—Michelle R. Moyd,author of Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa

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Book SynopsisA collection of essays examining the history of Quakerism from 1830 to 1937, tracing the resurgence of missionary work and the development of Quakerism as a global faith.Trade Review“The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830-1937 is the authoritative assessment of global Quakerism from 1830 to 1937. It makes extensive use of multiple genres of primary sources and has left no stone unturned in finding a diverse range of voices to include. While other books have dealt with individual topics, this volume provides in one place an examination of the period.”—Jon R. Kershner,author of John Woolman and the Government of Christ: A Colonial Quaker's Vision for the British Atlantic World“This collection of essays represents the most significant scholarship on modern Quakerism produced to date. It will be the go-to source for all future students and scholars working on Quakerism during the key period of its modernization.”—Matthew S. Hedstrom,author of The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth CenturyTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Remapping of Quakerism, 1830–1937Pink Dandelion1. Quakers and Empire Sylvester A. Johnson and Stephen W. Angell2. Quakers and Reform in Nineteenth-Century America: Friends’ Response to Antislavery, Women’s Rights, and the American Civil WarJulie L. Holcomb3. The Loss of Peculiarity and the New Quaker Identity: The Outward and the Inward LifeEmma Jones Lapsansky4. The Revival, 1860–1880Thomas D. Hamm5. Quakers and the Growth of the Pastoral SystemIsaac Barnes May6. Quakers and “Religious Madness” Richard Kent Evans7. Quakers of the Liberal Renaissance, 1870–1930: Rediscovering the Light WithinJoanna Clare Dales8. The Delineation of Quaker SpiritualitiesCarole Dale Spencer9. Quakers and the Social Order, 1830–1937Nicola Sleapwood and Thomas D. Hamm10. Quakers and Missions, 1861–1937 Stephen W. Angell11. The Peace Testimony and the Crisis of World War IRobynne Rogers Healey12. Quakers in PoliticsStephanie Midori Komashin and Randall L. Taylor13. The All-Friends Conferences and Their EffectsDouglas GwynAfterword: Rufus Jones and Quaker HistoryDavid Harrington WattNotes Selected Bibliography List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisExplores the search for religious meaning during World War I and the wide range of spiritual responses that emerged across boundaries. Examines how religious experience and battle experience were intertwined. Trade Review“Drawing on a wide array of sources to illuminate the soldiers' perspective on faith and morals at the service of warring states, Joseph F. Byrnes’s insightful book explicates the inexplicable—that is, the confluence of God-talk and nation-talk among theologians, clergy, the faithful, and the irreligious during a major challenge to Western civilization itself.”—James Smith Allen,author of A Civil Society: The Public Space of Freemason Women in France, 1744-1944

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Book SynopsisOffering a reminder of the complex uses to which institutionalized violence can be put, this study shows how the deadly violence of arena sport and political suicide served a social purpose in ancient Rome.

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Book SynopsisRemote and rugged, Michigan's Upper Peninsula has been home to a rich variety of indigenous peoples and Old World immigrants. This book presents and ponders the folk narratives of the region's loggers, miners, lake sailors, trappers, and townfolk.Trade ReviewAn important re-introduction of an American folklore classic. - Carl Lindahl, University of Houston ""A collection of traditions, tales, superstitions, practices, and folk biographies that range from the slyly humorous to the bawdy.... These are human beings, a folk, not sitting for a portrait, but caught alive as it were in fine amber, a permanent possession."" - Thelma G. James, Journal of American Folklore

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Book SynopsisThis work carefully scrutinizes the emotional and intellectual attitudes of the Victorian era.Trade ReviewWinner of the 1957 Christian Gauss Award given by Phi Beta Kappa"The most thorough and comprehensive study of its subject that has yet been written. . . . Here is a full and intelligent analysis of the different facets of that many-sided thing, the Victorian mind and soul. An important part of this analysis is the relating of one attitude and tendency to another, so that, although some are contradictory, the agreements and the discords and their causes are made intelligible. The analysis is supported everywhere by rich and often fresh documentation. Mr. Houghton writes with vigor and clarity. The book seems to me a large and solid contribution to the understanding of Victorian civilization and Victorian literature."—Douglas Bush

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Book SynopsisShibue Io was the daughter of a merchant family in 19th-century Japan and wife of a scholar-doctor of the samurai class. This book draws on the biography of her husband, written by Mori Ogai, to tell her story, and the story of her society, and her times.

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Book SynopsisThe first English hospitals appeared soon after the Norman Conquest. By the year 1300 they numbered over 500, caring for the sick at every level of society. This text traces their origin and follows their development through the crisis periods of the Black Death and the Reformation.

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Book SynopsisThis text examines what it was about late-Victorian society that allowed the trial and subsequent jailing of Oscar Wilde to take place. It examines what the trials say about the taste and morals of Victorian England and argues that the prosecution was linked to wider social and political issues.

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Book SynopsisA thematic discussion of Russian history during the reign of Peter The Great. It covers Russia's foreign policy, the army and navy, economy, society, the arts and religion, and explores the experience of women, and the life of the court. Although this is not a biography of Peter the Great it recounts the events which shaped his early life.Trade Review"Thanks to Hughes' beautifully written...book, for the first time the English-speaking reader is provided with a sufficiently full and just account of the events and institutions of Peter's reign to allow...judgements to be attempted...Her work will without doubt long remain the standard text." Nikolai Tolstoy, Literary Review "A balanced and absorbing account of Peter and his times." Robin Buss, Independent on Sunday "The most comprehensive study of Petrine Russia available in English." Richard Pipes, The New Republic "Hughes has produced such a comprehensive, scholarly and fluently written study of this horrific, complex man and his fascinating times that no one will need to revisit the subject for decades to come." Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday "A superbly comprehensive survey of the Petrine era...Hughes writes in a crisp, factual, scholarly manner...She has a fine eye for significant detail, as well as the grand themes...The contemporary relevance of this splendid piece of history needs no underlining." George Walden, The Daily Telegraph "The scope and source materials of this survey put it into a class by itself...The value of this book is its tremendous wealth of information and its fascinating presentation of existing scholarship. Its clear prose makes it accessible to those without prior knowledge of Russian history." Choice

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Book SynopsisIn this volume, Calvin Luther Martin proposes that the Europeans learned what they wished to learn from the native Americans, not what the Americans actually meant. Drawing on his own experience with native people and on their stories, he offers the reader a different conceptual landscape.

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Book SynopsisThe Soviet Union, an atheist state, endowed itself with the attributes of God. This text shows through individual stories what it meant to construct an entire state on the basis of a false idea, how people were forced to act out this fictitious reality, and its tragic human cost.Trade Review“I had almost given up hope that any American could depict the true face of Russia and Soviet rule. In David Satter’s Age of Delirium, the world has received a chronicle of the calvary of the Russian people under communism that will last for generations.”—Vladimir Voinovich, author of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin

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Book SynopsisA history of what was once viewed as the heart of the American city. Urban historian Robert Fogelson gives an account of how downtown - and the way Americans thought about it - changed between 1880 and 1950, offering a perspective on downtown's rise and fall.Trade Review"A thorough and accomplished history." Samuel Zipp, Washington Post Book World "Superlative... exceedingly provocative as well as informative... makes a vital contribution to the study of American life." Publishers Weekly "A stimulating new history of a long-neglected subject." Witold Rybczynski, Wilson Quarterly

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Trade Review“Cowan’s work fits the bill in many ways. It is easily the most thorough account of the social history of the British coffeehouse ever written.”—Adrian Johns, University of Chicago -- Adrian Johns"Brian Cowan's Social Life of Coffee is an engagingly written, lavishly illustrated, and meticulously researched book. It provides the most comprehensive account of the rise and accommodation of coffee and coffeehouse culture that is currently available. Cowan's book will begin a number of important and intellectually fruitful debates about the rise and extent of virtuoso culture, about the nature and limits of the bourgeois public sphere, and about the gendered nature of social space in Early Modern England."—Steven Pincus, Yale University -- Steven Pincus

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Book SynopsisDescribes the social and cultural significance of pins, needles, thimbles, scissors, and other sewing accessories and tools. Through the stories that grow out of the archaeological findings, this book shows the extent to which such 'small things' were entrenched in the construction of gender, personal identity, and social class.Trade Review"In Findings, Beaudry offers for the first time a scholarly, theoretically enriched and historically situated guide to the needlework and sewing tools of the British isles and North America. She employs these ‘small finds’ to write 'large histories.'"—Lu Ann De Cunzo, Professor of Anthropology and Early American Culture, University of Delaware -- Lu Ann De Cunzo"Comprehensive in its time and geographic scale in a way that is rarely attempted in our field. The work is extraordinarily sound and original scholarship."—Laurie Wilkie, Department of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley -- Laurie Wilkie

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Book SynopsisAmerica emerged from the Reagan years transformed: socially, politically, technologically, and economically. This book tracks the changes of the 1980s in the context of Ronald Reagan's policies and convictions, providing a portrait of a president and of the watershed decade over which he presided.Trade Review"Ehrman's work deserves to become one of the standard reference works for the Reagan period." Steven F. Hayward, Weekly Standard "John Ehrman combines meticulous research, intellectual honesty, originality, and common sense to produce an interpretation of the Reagan era that is illuminating, refreshing, and highly readable." Glen Jeansonne, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Mr. Ehrman has... produced a fascinating tableau of the Reagan era... A brilliant new book, fully deserving its place on the Reagan bookshelf." Robert M. Smalley, Washington Times"

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Book SynopsisWhat was life really like for East Germans, effectively imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain? This book explores the transformation of East German society from the ruins of Hitler's Third Reich to a modernizing industrial state. It also examines changing conceptions of normality within an authoritarian political system.Trade Review"'... a fresh, flowing, thoughtful account... an immensely readable book... Above all, this empathetic account puts East Germans back into their own history. As such, it will surely act not only as a standard work on GDR society, but also as a model for the emerging social history of post-war Europe.' Josie McLellan, Reviews in History / History in Focus 'One does applaud Mary Fulbrook for writing a book that is extremely rich in detail and one that is certainly different from other works on the German Democratic Republic. It provides an excellent framework for further debate on the pros and cons of the first socialist experiment on German soil.' Peter Hylarides, Contemporary Review"

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Book SynopsisSlavery is not and has never been a peculiar institution, but one that is deeply rooted in the history and economy of most countries. Although it has flourished in some periods and declined in others, human bondage for profit has never been eradicated completely.In Slavery: A World History renowned author Milton Meltzer traces slavery from its origins in prehistoric hunting societies through the boom in slave trading that reached its peak in the United States with a pre-Civil War slave population of 4,000,000 through the forced labour under the Nazi regime and in the Soviet gulags and finally to its widespread practice in many countries today, such as the debt bondage that miners endure in Brazil or the prostitution into which women are sold in Thailand. In this detailed, compassionate account, readers will learn how slavery arose, what forms it takes, what roles slaves have performed in their societies, what everyday existence is like for those enchained, and what can be done to endTable of ContentsVolume One: From the Rise of Western Civilizaiton to the Renaissance * Thingor Person? * Between the Tigris and the Euphrates * In the Valley of the Nile * The Children of Israel * Odysseus and His Slaves * The Greek World Expands * When War Becomes Good Business * From Baking Bread to Building the Parthenon * Work, Punishment, and Food * Nature Makes No Slaves * The Rise of Rome * Bargains on the Battlefield * PiracyA Steady Trade * Imperial Slave Market * In Markets, Workshops, and Mines * On Farm and Ranch * Death in the Arena * How Roman Slaves Lived * When Freedom Came * Slave Revolts in Sicily * Spartacus Sets Italy Ablaze * Slaves and Serfs * The Medieval Slave * Domestic Enemies From the Renaissance to Today * People from Heaven * Africa before the Europeans * The Slave Trade * The Middle Passage * A Need for Labor * Indian Slavery in the Americas * Money-Making Machines * A Sugar Island * Barrels of Powder * The Explosion * Built on Africa * Rum and Slaves * Revolution and Cotton * On the Plantation * In the City * The Auction Block * The Law and the Lash * Throw Out the Life Line * Sabotage, Flight, Revolt * Come Freedom * Turn East * Forced Labor * Slavery Today * How to End It?

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Book SynopsisA gripping narrative non-fiction tale about the rise of the early drug culture in America, by the author of the acclaimed Can't Find My Way Home

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Book SynopsisCombining fast-paced accounts of battles with rich cultural background and the latest scholarship, Frank McLynn brings vividly to life the strange world of the Mongols and Genghis Khan's rise from boyhood outcast to world conqueror. McLynn provides the most accurate and absorbing account yet of one of the most powerful men ever to have ever lived.Trade ReviewBooklist, July 2015 "This ambitious and massive effort offers some credible insights into the qualities of Genghis while providing an excellent chronicle of his military campaigns and conquests. Particularly interesting is McLynn's description of thirteenth-century Mongolia, with its incredibly complicated web of tribes, clans, and subclans...This is an informative and admirable effort that is ideal for general readers." Kirkus Reviews starred review, 5/15/15 "A sanguinary and thorough account of 'the greatest conqueror the world has ever known.' McLynn knows the terrain and the times so well that he writes about 12th- and 13th-century history and culture as if it were yesterday. Throughout this intricately detailed text, the author pauses continually to explain relevant devices, personalities, political situations, and geography--all of this gives readers a chance to truly understand...McLynn recognizes that the historical sources must be constantly questioned and analyzed, as victors tend to inflate their victories and losers, to minimize and blame...Thoroughly researched, grim, grisly, and sometimes even grudgingly admiring." Publishers Weekly, 5/18/15 "Sweepingly ambitious and persistently intriguing." The Spectator (UK), 6/27/15 "[Khan's] was an extraordinary, epic story and Frank McLynn does it full justice in a vivid, page-turning biography." Sunday Times (UK), 6/21/15 "A formidable study of the world's greatest conqueror. With this compelling history of a brilliant, complex leader and ruthless master of warfare, McLynn has done his man proud." Sunday Times (UK), "Must Reads," 6/28/15 "A formidable study of the ruthless Mongolian nomad who carved out an empire." The Times (UK), 6/27/15 "McLynn has carefully synthesized the work of hundreds of scholars to create a sensitive and immensely detailed portrait of an extraordinary leader." Shelf Awareness for Readers, 7/31/15 "A staggeringly ambitious biography of history's greatest conqueror...Genghis Khan is fascinating enough to appeal to any history fan." Maclean's, 7/24/15 "McLynn's bio of the legendary, brutal conqueror reveals the Mongol's mantras." My Big Honkin Blog, 7/29/15 "The hundred pages of endnotes clearly illustrates the efforts that McLynn put forth in penning Genghis Khan." Examiner.com, 8/3/15 "Brings us face to face with this complex man who shaped the course of history." InfoDad blog, 8/6/15 "Such a man requires the most substantial possible biography, and McLynn gives him one that resoundingly demonstrates how intricately fascinating history can be...Sumptuous, erudite and stylish, careful to rely on often-contradictory primary sources when any such exist from so remote an era, McLynn's Genghis Khan is a sweeping 650-page trek through times and peoples whose very names sound like the stuff of legend...A book that...makes history come alive." Literary Review, August 2015 "[An] impressive new biography...[A] deeply researched and finely honed portrait...A biography of extraordinary synthesis and historical vision." South China Morning Post, 9/19/15 "McLynn takes an epic story and distills it into a book that will fill readers with awe." Internet Review of Books, 8/18/15 "This complicated book is Frank McLynn's twenty-fourth history, and includes an extensive bibliography, and voluminous notes...If you sink your teeth into it, you won't be disappointed." Military Heritage, November 2015 "This new biography covers the life of this infamous and important man who would today be seen as a genocidal maniac. Time has softened the results of his actions, but the author brings the man vividly to life."

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Book SynopsisBefore Federer versus Nadal, before Borg versus McEnroe, the greatest tennis match ever played pitted the dominant Don Budge against the seductively handsome Baron Gottfried von Cramm. This deciding 1937 Davis Cup match, played on the hallowed grounds of Wimbledon, was a battle of titans: the world's number one tennis player against the number two; America against Germany; democracy against fascism. For five superhuman sets, the duo’s brilliant shotmaking kept the Centre Court crowd-and the world-spellbound.But the match’s significance extended well beyond the immaculate grass courts of Wimbledon. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the brink of World War II, one man played for the pride of his country while the other played for his life. Budge, the humble hard-working American who would soon become the first man to win all four Grand Slam titles in the same year, vied to keep the Davis Cup out of the hands of the Nazi regime. On the other side of the n

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Book SynopsisFrom the bestselling author of World War IV, a brilliant investigation of a central question in American politics and culture. During his career as a neoconservative thinker, Norman Podhoretz has been asked no question more often than “Why are so many Jews liberals?” In this provocative book he sets out to solve this puzzle. He first offers a fascinating account of anti-Semitism in the West to show the historical roots of Jewish mistrust of the right. But, Podhoretz argues, since the Six Day War of 1967 Jewish allegiance to the left no longer makes sense, and yet most Jews continue supporting the Democratic Party and the liberal agenda. Reviewing the history of Jewish political attitudes and examining the available evidence, Podhoretz argues against the conventional explanations for Jewish liberalism—finally proposing his own.

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Book SynopsisBringing together Custer, Sherman, Grant, and other fascinating military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo, this “sweeping work of narrative history” (San Francisco Chronicle) is the fullest account to date of how the West was won—and lost.After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led.The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today.

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Book SynopsisDeath squads have become an increasingly common feature of the modern world. In nearly all instances, their establishment is tolerated, encouraged, or undertaken by the state itself, which thereby risks its monopoly on the use of force, one of the fundamental characteristics of modern states.Trade Review'Campbell and Brenner have produced a book based on case studies that is more than the sum of its parts'. - ECPR NewsletterTable of ContentsDeath Squads: Definition, Problems, and Historical Context; B.B.Campbell PART I: HISTORICAL CASES 'To Induce a Sense of Terror': Caudillo Politics and Political Violence in Northern Nicaragua, 1926-1934 and 1981-1995; M.J.Schroeder Feme Murder: Paramilitary 'Self Justice' in Weimar Germany; A.D.Brenner PART II: DEMOCRATIC REGIME TRANSITIONS Window on the Past: A Declassified History of Death Squads in El Salvador; C.J.Arnson Stage of Siege: Political Violence and Vigilante Mobilization in the Philippines; E.Hedman PART III: SOCIAL CONTROL State Terrorism and Death Squads in Uganda (1971-79); E.Kannyo From Petrus to Ninja: Death Squads in Indonesia; R.Cribb Modernity and Devolution: The Making of Police Death Squads in Modern Brazil; M.K.Huggins PART IV: NATIONAL, ETHNIC, AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITY CONFLICT The Rise and Fall of Apartheid's Death Squads, 1963-1993; K.Gottschalk India's Secret Armies; P.Gossman Territoriality and Plausible Deniability: Serbian Paramilitaries in the Bosnian War; J.Ron Appendix: Other Death Squad Cases About the Contributors

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Book SynopsisAn increased awareness of the importance of minority and subjugated voices to the histories and narratives which have previously excluded them has led to a wide-spread interest in the effects of colonization and displacement.Trade Review'...an impressive accomplishment, exemplifying the many possible opportunities and potential difficulties medievalists face in engaging and contributing to a significant strand of cultural studies.' - Speculum 'The volume is a very strong compilation, and indeed a useful guide to the richness of post-colonial enquiry...The real strength of this book resides in the range and diversity of the topics it examines and the quality of many of the contributions.' - Cynthia J. Neville, Canadian Journal of HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: Midcolonial From Due East to True North: Orientalism and Orientation; S.Conklin Akbari Coming Out of Exile: Dante on the Orient Express; K.Biddick Chaucer after Smithfield: From Postcolonial Writer to Imperialist Author; J.M. Bowers Cilician Armenian Metissage and Hetoum's La Fleur des Histoires de la Terre d'Orient; G.Burger Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands: The Bodies of Gerald of Wales; J.J.Cohen Time Behind the Veil: The Media, the Middle Ages and Orientalism Now; K.Davis Native Studies: Orientalism and Medievalism; J.M.Ganim The Romance of England: Richard Coer de Lyon, Saracens, Jews and the Politics of Race and Nation; G.Heng Marking Time: Branwen, Daughter of Llyr and the Colonial Refrain; P.Ingham Fetishism, 1927, 1614, 1461; S.F.Kruger Common Language and Common Profit; K.Robertson Alien Nation: London's Aliens and Lydgate's Mummings for the Mercers and Goldsmiths; C.Sponsler Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew; S.Tomasch Imperial Fetishism: Prester John among the Natives; M.Uebel

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Book SynopsisPART I: THE NOVEL: LEROUX'S DISTINCTIVE CHOICES AND THEIR WIDER CONTEXTS The Original Fantôme's Mysteries: An Introduction The Psychoanalytic Veneer in the Novel: Le Fantôme's 'Unconscious Depths' and their Social Foundations Leroux's Sublimations of Politics: From Degeneration and the Suppression of Carnival to the Abjection of Mixed 'Otherness' The Ghost of the Counterfeit: Leroux's Fantôme and the Cultural Work of the Gothic PART II: THE MAJOR ADAPTATIONS: NEO-GOTHIC SUBLIMATIONS OF CHANGING CULTURAL FEARS Universal's Silent Film: The Recast Scapegoat, the Quest for the Widest Audience, and the Management of Labor The 1943 Remake: Recombining Film Styles, Struggling with Psychoanalysis, and Sanitizing World War II The Culture of Adolescence: The Lloyd Webber Musical and the Adaptations that Paved the Way, 1962-1986 Different Phantoms for Different Problems: Some Adaptations Since the Musical The Phantom's Lasting Significance: An Assessment of its Cultural Functions Notes IllustratiTrade Review'The book offers quite a remarkable account of Leroux's Phantom and its various adaptations, an account notable for the skilful combination of textual scholarship, cultural-historical research, subtle critical interpretation and innovative theoretical approach.' - Fred Botting, Keele University 'This book is a well-written, thorough, and engaging assessment that I would recommend as one of particular use to scholars interested in the Gothic novel, adaptation, opera, European history, and psychoanalysis and the novel.' - Joanna Aroutian, Gothic StudiesTable of ContentsPART I: THE NOVEL: LEROUX'S DISTINCTIVE CHOICES AND THEIR WIDER CONTEXTS The Original Fantôme's Mysteries: An Introduction The Psychoanalytic Veneer in the Novel: Le Fantôme's 'Unconscious Depths' and their Social Foundations Leroux's Sublimations of Politics: From Degeneration and the Suppression of Carnival to the Abjection of Mixed 'Otherness' The Ghost of the Counterfeit: Leroux's Fantôme and the Cultural Work of the Gothic PART II: THE MAJOR ADAPTATIONS: NEO-GOTHIC SUBLIMATIONS OF CHANGING CULTURAL FEARS Universal's Silent Film: The Recast Scapegoat, the Quest for the Widest Audience, and the Management of Labor The 1943 Remake: Recombining Film Styles, Struggling with Psychoanalysis, and Sanitizing World War II The Culture of Adolescence: The Lloyd Webber Musical and the Adaptations that Paved the Way, 1962-1986 Different Phantoms for Different Problems: Some Adaptations Since the Musical The Phantom's Lasting Significance: An Assessment of its Cultural Functions Notes Illustrations Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisA Pulitzer Prize-winning Arab-American journalist looks at the Iraq war from the perspective of ordinary Iraqi citizens--representing a variety of religious and political beliefs from all levels of society--confronted by the dislocations, hardships, tragedies, and harsh realities of the conflict. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

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Book SynopsisLooking at the sociohistorical and sociocultural context, this study investigates examples of anorexia nervosa, a highly symbolic form of nonverbal discourse, in a selection of French novels spanning the period 1835-1889.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Eve's Curse A Woman's Place: "Much Ado About Nothing" Lenten Ladies: "Tis a Consummation Devoutly to Be Wished" Worth Her Weight: Embonpoint and la Femme-Homme The Cult of Fragility: How Enfeeblement Leads to Empowerment Conclusion Bibliography

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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