University of Chicago Press Books: New books

Still

David S. Shields — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know about many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery.

Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names.

Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant.

Archaeology of Sympathy

James Chandler — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European culture—a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just literature, art, music, and cinema, but people’s very structures of feeling, their ways of doing and being.

In what is sure to become a critical classic, An Archaeology of Sympathy challenges Sergei Eisenstein’s influential account of Dickens and early American film by tracing the unexpected history and intricate strategies of the sentimental mode and showing how it has been reimagined over the past three centuries. James Chandler begins with a look at Frank Capra and the Capraesque in American public life, then digs back to the eighteenth century to examine the sentimental substratum underlying Dickens and early cinema alike. With this surprising move, he reveals how literary spectatorship in the eighteenth century anticipated classic Hollywood films such as Capra’s It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and It’s a Wonderful Life. Chandler then moves forward to romanticism and modernism—two cultural movements often seen as defined by their rejection of the sentimental—examining how authors like Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf actually engaged with sentimental forms and themes in ways that left a mark on their work.

Reaching from Laurence Sterne to the Coen brothers, An Archaeology of Sympathy casts new light on the long eighteenth century and the novelistic forebears of cinema and our modern world.

Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean

Louise Hardwick — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean sets out to examine the recent major turn in francophone Caribbean literature towards the récit d’enfance—or autobiography of childhood. It connects literary works to recent changes in public and education policy concerning the commemoration of slavery and colonialism both in France and at a global level. Examining key works by major contemporary writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, and Dany Laferrière, it combines approaches from postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, trauma theory, and gender studies to provide a welldefined methodology with which to approach this literary movement.

Conflict of the Faculties

Henk Borgdorff — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The Conflict of the Faculties looks at the emerging field of artistic research as a place of crossover between the artistic and academic worlds. Henk Borgdorff carefully examines how artistic research broadens and deepens traditional academic approaches to studying art, while observing the tension between the two disparate fields in terms of methods and practices.

“Well-written and well-argued, this book will probably become a reference for many studies to come and required reading for anyone active in this domain.”—Frans-Willem Korsten, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Leiden University, the Netherlands

Anchoritism in the Middle Ages

Catherine Innes-Parker; Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Anchoritism in the Middle Ages approaches medieval anchoritism from a variety of critical angles. Individually, the essays challenge perceived notions of the very concept of anchoritic rule and guidance, study the interaction between language and linguistic forms in anchoritic texts, address the connection between anchoritism and other forms of solitude, and explore the influence of anchoritic literature on lay devotion. As a whole, the volume, which ranges from the third century to the sixteenth and spans all of Europe, illuminates the richness and fluidity of anchoritic works and shows how anchoritism pervaded the spirituality of the Middle Ages, for the lay and religious alike.

Anchoritism in the Middle Ages

Catherine Innes-Parker; Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Mortuary Practices and Social Identities in the Middle Ages

Duncan Sayer; Howard Williams — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Building on Heinrich Härke’s influential research on burial archaeology and early medieval migrations, this book sets a new agenda for mortuary archaeology. Using archaeological data, the essays explore how mortuary practices have served in the makeup and expression of medieval social identities. Applying explicit theoretical perspectives to case studies based on a range of European sites, this bookfills the need for a volume that provides accessible material to students, engages with current debates in mortuary archaeology’s methods and theories, and explores the interpretation of medieval social identities through burial data.

Death in Persia

Annemarie Schwarzenbach; Lucy Renner Jones — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Since the rediscovery of her work in the late 1980s, Annemarie Schwarzenbach—journalist, traveler, archaeologist, opium addict, and antifascist novelist—has become a European cult figure among free spirited bohemians.

Available in English for the first time and beautifully translated by Lucy Renner Jones, Death in Persia is a collage of the political and the private, documenting Schwarzenbach’s intimate feelings and public ideas during four trips to Persia between 1933 and 1939. From her reflections on individual responsibility in the lead-up to World War II to her reactions to accusations from her friends of having deserted Europe and the antifascist cause for Tehran, Schwarzenbach recorded a great deal about daily life in Persia, and, most personally, her ill-fated love affair with Jalé, the daughter of the Turkish ambassador.

Chronologically preceding Schwarzenbach’s exquisite travelogue All the Roads are Open, an account of her automobile journey from Geneva to Afghanistan in 1939, Death in Persia is the enthralling diary of an astute observer standing at the crossroads of major events in history and a gorgeous new addition to Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s growing English-language oeuvre.

Disability Studies and Spanish Culture

Benjamin Fraser — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Disability Studies and Spanish Culture is the first book to apply the tenets of disability studies—in particular the study of mental disabilities—to Spanish cultural contexts, offering an assessment of disability as it is engaged by Spanish films, novels, comics, and other artworks. Innovatively bringing disability theory into dialogue with film and literary analysis, Benjamin Fraser shows how formal aspects of art and media in Spain highlight, frame, inform, and are informed by contemporary disability legislation there, as well as by disability advocacy, cultural perception, and social integration. By using the specific context of Spanish culture, he outlines broader shifts in social attitudes and theoretical understandings of disability.

Genus Cyclamen

Brian Mathew — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The Cyclamen is a literary and artistic darling, decorating ceramics, pottery, and jewelry, and found in botanical art references dating back to the first century. It is also a favorite of gardeners, growers, and botanists due to its extraordinary capacity for variation, in colors, shapes, fragrances, and flowering periods.

Genus Cyclamen is a celebration of this remarkable plant. Its science-based emphasis on botany and cultivation is complemented by sections on art and history, including twenty-five newly commissioned paintings and over seven hundred photographs. It provides a wealth of information, including taxonomic descriptions, flowering periods, distribution, and habitat, all based on the deep knowledge and practical experiences of the Cyclamen Society and other cyclamen experts. This book will find a wide audience of growers, gardeners, botanists, and enthusiasts, thanks to its all-encompassing coverage of the cyclamen and its informative, but accessible style.

Local Childhoods, Global Issues

Heather Montgomery — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Although the current plight of children in many parts of the world can leave us with a grim outlook on the future, there are still many positive indicators of a better future for all. Local Childhoods, Global Issues is an interdisciplinary textbook that examines children’s lives across the world, exploring the great differences—and similarities—between childhood experiences across different cultural contexts.

The contributors consider the problems caused by poverty, social inequality, ill health, and violence, but they emphasize that these are challenges for children everywhere—not just those in the poorer countries of the world. They look at how children use their own resources and coping strategies and the sense of agency that results, arguing that in fact very few children are passive victims helplessly awaiting rescue. The contributors prominently feature interviews that highlight the direct perspectives of children themselves.

Michel Houellebecq

Douglas Morrey — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Michel Houellebecq is one of the most successful and controversial contemporary French novelists. Translated worldwide, with three film adaptations of his works, he has also been at the center of a host of media scandals in France. In this book, Douglas Morrey examines Houellebecq’s stark representation of humanity—a terminal state of decadence and decline ripe for replacement by a posthuman successor—looking at the global significance of his visions at the same time that he situates them in the contexts of French literature, culture, and society.

Memory, Narrative and the Great War

David Taylor — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Memory, Narrative and the Great War examines the varied and complex war writings of Patrick MacGill within a contemporary framework. David Taylor tracks how MacGill shifted from heroic wartime narratives in his autobiographical writings to the pessimistic, guiltridden characters in his postwar novel, Fear!, and play, Suspense. Using these texts to show how MacGill remembered and reremembered his wartime experiences, Taylor analyzes MacGill’s writings with implications for a broader interpretation of Great War literature, highlighting wartime memory and narrative as an ever-changing kaleidoscope in which pieces of memory take on different—but equally valid—shapes with the passing of time.

Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World

Gale R. Owen-Crocker; Maren Clegg Hyer — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In this study of Anglo-Saxon daily life, the editors and contributors detail the exploitation of animals for clothing, meat, and parchment; describe the textiles used for dress and furnishing as well as the ships used for travel, trade, and transport; explain the manufacturing processes behind the production of fine metalwork; and discuss the realities of living with ill health and disability. This book demonstrates that an understanding of the material culture of the Anglo-Saxon world can inform reading and scholarship in all areas of Anglo-Saxon studies.

Kennedy in Berlin

Hans-Michael Koetzle; Ulrich Mack — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

“Ich bin ein Berliner.” With these words, John F. Kennedy made history. Addressing a crowd of several hundred thousand in West Berlin, two years after the erection of the Berlin Wall, the young and charismatic president conveyed solidarity and support for West Germany on behalf of the United States, marking the height of good relations between the two countries and a decisive moment in Cold War history as well.

The local media were poised to record this momentous event. Among the photographers and reporters covering the Kennedy visit was twenty-eight-year-old Ulrich Mack, whose never-before-published photographs feature the president in a variety of settings: a triumphal ticker-tape procession down the main street of West Berlin with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt, mayor of Berlin; a visit to the notorious Checkpoint Charlie where Kennedy stands atop the observation deck; a crowd of cheering West Berliners encircling the president following his impassioned speech. Mack’s photographs are technically superb but, more important, they are guided by an instinctive feel for capturing great moments—including those on the sidelines that, in their candor, often surpass the staged appearances. For the modern-day viewer, many of the photos are also remarkable for having been taken at very close range.

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of this historic occasion, Kennedy in Berlin reproduces more than one hundred of Mack’s photos taken throughout the state visit in June 1963—selected by the photographer himself and editor Hans-Michael Koetzle, offering a look at this important event.

Jew Car

Franz Fühmann; Isabel Fargo Cole — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Originally published in 1962, Franz Fühmann’s autobiographical story cycle The Jew Car is a classic of German short fiction and an unparalleled examination of the psychology of National Socialism. Each story presents a snapshot of a personal and historical turning point in the life of the narrator, beginning with childhood anti-Semitism and moving to a youthful embrace—and then an ultimate rejection—of Nazi ideology. With scathing irony and hallucinatory intensity, reflections on the nature of memory, and the individual experience of history, the cycle acquires the weight of a novel.

"Fühmann’s work, beginning with The Jew Car, can be read as a great literary self-analysis in the spirit of Freud. Through his work, he not only became conscious of his own thinking as it was seduced by totalitarianism, he also became capable of describing the mechanisms of a fascist upbringing with striking poetic power, transcending all theory." —Die Welt, on the German edition

Paris-Amsterdam Underground

Christoph Lindner; Andrew Hussey — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The postwar histories of Paris and Amsterdam have been significantly defined by the notion of the “underground” as both a material and metaphorical space. Examining the underground traffic between the two cities, this book interrogates the countercultural histories of Paris and Amsterdam in the mid to late-twentieth century. Shuttling between Paris and Amsterdam, as well as between postwar avant-gardism and twenty-first century global urbanism, this interdisciplinary book seeks to create a mirroring effect over the notion of the underground as a driving force in the making of the contemporary European city.

What Darkness Was

Inka Parei; Katy Derbyshire — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Close to death, an old man collapses and struggles to his bed. The sounds of the endless night unsettle him, triggering images, questions, and memories. In What Darkness Was, Inka Parei, author of The Shadow-Boxing Woman, allows the reader to inhabit a singular German mind. Precise and observant—but uncomprehending and on the brink of hysteria—the old man wracks his brain as the questions flow like water: why did he inherit the building he now lives in? Why did he leave the city that was his home for so long? Is he even here voluntarily? And who was that suspicious stranger on the stairs? Lying in bed, the old man is aware that these questions may be the last puzzles he ever solves.

Combining tight prose with a compulsive delight in detail, Parei’s second novel in English presents a dynamic portrait of the West German soul from World War II through the German Autumn of 1977.

Strategy

Fredmund Malik — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In Strategy, Fredmund Malik once again offers executives in the business world the tools they need to lead their companies. Exploring the technological innovations that have revolutionized business, Malik outlines the problems confronting companies in this novel era. He then discusses the many effective cybernetic systems for strategic navigation and the patterns of transformations to come, along with the economic dynamics that will accompany them. The book also lays out the revolutionary new methods that allow businesspeople around the world to master these new strategies with precision, ease, and unprecedented speed.

Women's Writing in Twenty-First-Century France

Amaleena Damlé; Gill Rye — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Women’s Writing in Twenty-First-Century France is a collection of critical essays on recent literature written by women in France. It takes stock of the themes, issues, and trends in women’s writing of the first decade of the twenty-first century and engages critically with the work of individual authors through close readings. Authors covered include major prizewinners, best-selling authors, and established and new writers whose work has attracted scholarly attention. Topics covered in the essays include translation, popular fiction, society, history, war, family relations, violence, trauma, the body, racial identity, sexual identity, feminism, life-writing, and textual/aesthetic experiments.

Parents, Personalities and Power

Huw S. Thomas; Colin H. Williams — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In Parents, Personalities and Power, Huw S. Thomas and Colin H. Williams draw on research conducted at the Language, Policy, and Planning Research Unit of the School of Welsh, Cardiff University, to examine the implementation of current education policies in medium schools in Southeast Wales, looking in particular at the growth of bilingual education. The book will appeal to those who share an interest in social developments in Welsh and European education.

Champion

Tom Williamson; Robert Liddiard; Tracey Partida — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Focusing on Northampton, Champion offers a radical reinterpretation of the origins of villages and open fields, and their development in the late medieval and post-medieval periods in the Midlands. Instead of the commonly accepted belief that villages and open fields were created in the middle or later Saxon period through a process of “nucleation,” or village planning, the authors of this volume suggest that these settlements only emerged in their classic, regular forms in the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Their findings are based on an innovative use of digital mapping and geographical information systems, and they cast new light on the agricultural practices in the post-medieval period.

Crown Jewels

Randolph Delehanty — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Since the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the national park movement has spread quickly and internationally. There are now over seven thousand national parks in 140 countries, and these numbers continue to grow. But national parks are facing new challenges in the modern age, such as rapid environmental change, the worldwide recession, and political pressures of varying degrees. In this richly illustrated and beautifully designed volume, Randolph Delehantypresents a diverse group of national parks from the United States, East Africa, Italy, Australia, Amazonia, and Tibet. Originally published to coincide with an exhibition at the Presidio of San Francisco, this book is organized into portraits of each park, complete with gorgeous images from internationally renowned photographers and incisive analyses by park experts from each region. Serving as both a testament to the beauty of the natural world and a timely call to action, Crown Jewels shows us that the world’s stunning national parks are an irreplaceable resource with an uncertain future—and all of us are key to securing that future.

Bede: Commentary on Revelation

Faith Wallis — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Commentary on Revelation was Bede’s first venture into Biblical exegesis—an ambitious choice for a young monastic scholar in a newly Christianized land. Interpreting the themes of creation, redemption, history, and time itself, it offers an early look at what would become some of Bede’s primary concerns. It is also a fascinating look at the way apocalyptic thinking was negotiated. Written around 703 CE, it addresses the widespread belief of the period that the end of times was near, offering a powerful counterargument that scholars should interpret Revelations as symbolically representing the struggle of the Church, rather than use it to attempt to calculate the date of the apocalypse. Offering a substantial introduction, this translation provides valuable insights for anyone interested in biblical interpretations during the Middle Ages.

Bede: Commentary on Revelation

Faith Wallis — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Northern Exposures

Jonathan Waterman — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

North of the sixtieth parallel, the sun shines for less than six hours in the winter, and towering mountains are the only skyscrapers. Pristine waters serve caribou, moose, and bears in an unbroken landscape. At any given moment in this spectacular scenery, there’s a chance that Jonathan Waterman is present, trekking across the land. A masterful adventurer, Waterman has spent decades exploring the farthest reaches of our beautiful spaces. The essays and photographs collected in Northern Exposures are a product of this passion for exploration and offer an unparalleled view into adventuring in the north and beyond.

Picking up after In the Shadow of Denali, his first book of essays, Northern Exposures collects twenty-three stories from Waterman’s thirty-year career that show the evolution of the adventurer’s career and work, from ducking avalanches near the Gulf of Alaska, to searching for the most pristine tundra on the continent, and from writing haiku on Denali in the depth of winter to decrying oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Ninety-six spectacular photographs taken by Waterman during his expeditions lend a broader context and allow readers to fully understand his heartfelt argument for protecting these places. Whether active, aspiring, or just armchair adventurers, readers will be inspired by Waterman’s daring spirit.

Northern Exposures

Jonathan Waterman — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Narrative Social Work

Clive Baldwin — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Interest in the contribution narrative makes to other disciplines has been booming in recent years, but its impact in social work has been limited and confined mainly to therapeutic intervention. Narrative Social Work is the first book to extend the narrative lens to explore the contribution of narrative to social work values and ethics, social policy, and our understanding of the self in social, cultural, and political contexts. Clive Baldwin argues that narrative is a richly textured approach to social work that can enhance both theory and practice.

Narrative Social Work

Clive Baldwin — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps

Chet Van Duzer — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

From dragons and serpents to many-armed beasts that preyed on ships and sailors alike, sea monsters have terrified mariners across all ages and cultures and have become the subject of many tall tales from the sea. Accounts of these creatures have also inspired cartographers and mapmakers, many of whom began decorating their maps with them to indicate unexplored areas or areas about which little was known. Whether swimming vigorously, gamboling amid the waves, attacking ships, or simply displaying themselves for our appreciation, the sea monsters that appear on medieval and Renaissance maps are fascinating and visually engaging. Yet despite their appeal, these monsters have never received the scholarly attention that they deserve.

In Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, Chet Van Duzer analyzes the most important examples of sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps produced in Europe. Van Duzer begins with the earliest mappaemundi on which these monsters appear in the tenth century and continues to the end of the sixteenth century and, along the way, sheds important light on the sources, influences, and methods of the cartographers who drew or painted them.

A beautifully designed visual reference work, Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps will be important not only in the history of cartography, art, and zoological illustration, but also in the history of the geography of the “marvelous” and of Western conceptions of the ocean.

Silent Crossing

Pascal Quignard; Chris Turner — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

A prolific essayist, novelist, translator, philosopher, and a critic of rare elegance, Pascal Quignard returns anew to the major questions of existence in The Silent Crossing, a haunting homage to life and liberty, to society and solitude, and to the binding and unbinding that constitute the weft of our lives.

Drawing on materials from across many cultures, Quignard makes an effort to establish shared human values as the breeding ground for a modern Enlightenment. Considering atheism as a spiritual liberation, suicide as a free act, and the rejection of society as a free choice, the author explores philosophical themes that have run through human civilizations—most often as heresies—from our earliest days. In his search for freedom, Quignard questions the binding dependency of religion, querying how, in a world where all forms of society presuppose that someone (or some collective) is looking over our shoulders, we can be free. These reflections, he implies, are the essential spiritual exercise for our times.

Few voices in contemporary French literature are more distinct than that of Quignard. By reading this fragmentary, episodic assemblage of intimate experiences and borrowed tales, we open up a space of liberty, creating for the reader space for meditation and, perhaps, liberation.

“Pascal Quignard is undoubtedly the most iconoclastic of contemporary French authors.”—Catherine Argand, Lire

“Quignard has redefined historical fiction as both hoax and enigma.”—Burning Deck on Wooden Tablets: Apronenia Avitia

September

Thomas Lehr; Mike Mitchell — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Two fathers with two daughters: Martin, professor of German, writes but is studying Earth Sciences at MIT; Tariq, a doctor in Baghdad and Muna, is studying the archaeology of a region that is seen as the cradle of civilization. These two parallel relationships in two very different parts of the world expose the human similarities beneath cultural differences. In Thomas Lehr’s moving and realistic novel, the similarities between these men become a similarity of suffering as well. Martin’s daughter dies with her mother in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and though Tariq survives three wars and Saddam Hussein’s regime intact, his family does not—in the last days of the conflict, his daughter is raped, her lover is murdered, and she sees her sister and mother die in a bomb attack.

Out of these tragedies that almost seem to define the first decade of our century, Lehr has fashioned a richly woven, multilayered tapestry that not only explores the human side but brings out the cultural, historical, social, and political context within which the tragedies occur. The alternating interior monologues of the four main characters engage the reader in language which reaches an unforgettable poetic intensity.

Crime Fiction in the City

Lucy Andrew; Catherine Phelps — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Crime Fiction in the City: Capital Crimes expands upon previous studies of urban space and crime by reflecting on the treatment of the capital city—a repository of authority, national identity, and culture—within crime fiction. The essays examine a broad array of crime writing set in capital cities, from the nineteenth-century gothic city mysteries of Paris, London, and Rome, to contemporary fiction located in newly devolved centers of power like Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Stockholm. The collection brings together academics and creative writers, including an opening reflective essay by Ian Rankin.

Monkey

Desmond Morris — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Monkeys populate our culture, from the adorable hijinks of Curious George and the loyal friendship between Aladdin and Abu to the menacing gait of the winged ones in The Wizard of Oz. We visit them in zoos and even sometimes keep them as pets à la Catherine de Medici and Michael Jackson. As renowned zoologist Desmond Morris shows, it is not surprising that we are so attracted to them. While we sometimes view monkeys as trivial or comic, their mischievousness is delightful, and their urge to explore and love of activity fascinate us.

Monkey unpacks human attitudes toward these animals, tracing our connection with them throughout history. Morris reveals that our fascination with monkeys extends through many cultures and eras—ancient Egyptians revered baboons, monkey deities featured prominently in ancient Chinese and Japanese religions, and sacred status was given to the langur monkey by some groups in India. He also describes how our relationship with monkeys has changed since Darwin, and even become more troubled—this in-depth knowledge of our own origins amplifies our identification with and concern for the idea of monkeys’ primitivism and destructive behaviors. Drawing a vibrant picture of these beguiling animals and their continued popularity with humans, Monkey brings a new understanding to our complicated relationship with the ever-curious George.

Militant Liverpool

Diane Frost; Peter North — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In May of 1983—in the wake of a victory in the Falkland Islands—Margaret Thatcher won the second of her three general election victories. Liverpool, going against the grain in the same year, elected a Labour council that vowed to be different, joining others across the country in refusing to a set a Thatcher-like budget that would hurt the poorest citizens of the United Kingdom. At first wildly popular, the council soon became the center of a battle between city and central governments. Militant Liverpool gets underneath this complex development, offering evenhanded assessments and testimonies from key agents during that time of upheaval. In doing so, it provides historical insight into the similar political and economic environment that Liverpool now faces thirty years later.

Spectacular Miracles

Jane Garnett; Gervase Rosser — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Spectacular Miracles confronts an enduring Western belief in the supernatural power of images: that a statue or painting of the Madonna can fly through the air, speak, weep, or produce miraculous cures. Although contrary to widely held assumptions, the cults of particular paintings and statues held to be miraculous have persisted beyond the middle ages into the present, even in a modern European city such as Genoa, the primary focus of this book.

Drawing upon rich documentation from northwest Italy and elsewhere, Spectacular Miracles shows how these images “work” in a range of historical contexts. Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser vividly evoke ritual animation of the image and the phenomenology of the beholder’s experience. These images, they demonstrate, have the subversive potential of the miraculous image to bypass clerical and secular authority, a power enhanced by reproducibility—devotion is hard to control when a copy of a venerated image is held to carry the same supernatural potential as the original, even when in a digital form mediated by the Internet. Engaging with the history, anthropology, and visual culture of images and religion, Spectacular Miracles is a convincing study of the continuing power of faith and art.

Why Hell Stinks of Sulfur

Salomon Kroonenberg; Andy Brown — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

When people go looking for hell, they go underground. Dante, Aeneas, and Odysseus all journeyed beneath the earth to find the underworld, a place where the dead are tortured according to their sins. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had to deal with a huge underground pit infested with demons below her high school called the Hellmouth. And when Homer Simpson ate the forbidden donut for which he’d sold his soul to the devil, he was sucked through a fiery hole in the ground. Though humans actually haven’t gone more than 7.5 miles into the earth, we associate this mysterious underground realm with darkness and death, and the depths of the earth’s interior remain an inspiration for writers and artists trying to imagine hell.

Why Hell Stinks of Sulfur uses subterranean mythology as a point of departure to explore the vast world that lies beneath our feet. Geologist Salomon Kroonenberg takes us on an expedition that begins in Dante’s Inferno and continues through Virgil, Da Vinci, Descartes, and Jules Verne. He investigates the nine circles of hell, searches a lake near Naples for the gates of hell used by Aeneas, and turns a scientific spotlight on the many myths of the underworld. He uncovers the layers of the earth’s interior one by one, describing the variety of gasses, ores, liquids, and metals that add to the immense variety of color that can be found below us. Kroonenberg views the inside of the earth as a living ecosystem whose riches we are only beginning to discover, and he warns against our thirst for natural resources exhausting the earth.

From the underground rivers and lakes that have never seen the light of day to the story of Saint Barbara—the patron saint of mineworkers—Kroonenberg’s pursuit of the geological foundations of hell is a fascinating journey to the center of the earth.

Nuvuk, the Northernmost

Daniel James Inulak Lum — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

For years, tour guide Daniel Lum has brought visitors as well as his children out to the remote corners of Barrow, Alaska, one of the northernmost cities in the world, to witness polar bears and walrus on the dark, sandy beaches. Over time, snapping pictures for tourists and shooting photographs of his own, he has been a first-hand witness to the profound environmental changes taking place as his homeland shifts and disappears before his eyes.

As arguments over climate change rage in more temperate locales, Nuvuk, the Northernmost is a poignant snapshot of life in a town where these changes are impossible to overlook. Lum’s vivid photographs of wildlife, such as whales, polar bears, and birds, offer rare close-ups of animals few ever see. In addition, Lum provides vivid descriptions and pictures of daily life in and around Barrow, offering a compelling insider’s introduction to living on the tip of the world. With Lum as a capable guide, Nuvuk, the Northernmost is a chance to see a rare world before it changes forever.

Critical Social Work with Children and Families

Steve Rogowski — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This book traces the changing fortunes of radical and critical social work, examining the theory, context, and application of such approaches. Advancing the notion that critical practices are both necessary and possible in the neoliberal world—despite the challenges critical practices face—it explores new approaches to family and child services, arguing for emancipatory practices that are geared toward meeting immediate needs while still offering a vision of a more just and equal future society. Including case studies, key point summaries, and suggestions for further reading, this is a thorough new resource for students and teachers.

Critical Social Work with Children and Families

Steve Rogowski — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Place That Matters Yet

Sara Byala — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

A Place That Matters Yet unearths the little-known story of Johannesburg’s MuseumAfrica, a South African history museum that embodies one of the most dynamic and fraught stories of colonialism and postcolonialism, its life spanning the eras before, during, and after apartheid. Sara Byala, in examining this story, sheds new light not only on racism and its institutionalization in South Africa but also on the problems facing any museum that is charged with navigating colonial history from a postcolonial perspective.

Drawing on thirty years of personal letters and public writings by museum founder John Gubbins, Byala paints a picture of a uniquely progressive colonist, focusing on his philosophical notion of “three-dimensional thinking,” which aimed to transcend binaries and thus—quite explicitly—racism. Unfortunately, Gubbins died within weeks of the museum’s opening, and his hopes would go unrealized as the museum fell in line with emergent apartheid politics. Following the museum through this transformation and on to its 1994 reconfiguration as a post-apartheid institution, Byala showcases it as a rich—and problematic—archive of both material culture and the ideas that surround that culture, arguing for its continued importance in the establishment of a unified South Africa.

Transforming Adult Social Care

Ann Marie Gray; Derek Birrell — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Adult social care has emerged as a distinct policy area in the UK that has come under increasing scrutiny by the government. With the expectation that many more adults will need care and support in the near future, many policy makers have argued for a transformation of adult care. The focus of this wideranging book is on the major themes in the policies governing the provision of adult care. It is one of the first books to deal with adult social care as a distinct entity, providing up-to-date information on contemporary government policies, debates, and research. The book encourages readers to think critically about decisions being made and about the direction of future initiatives.

Transforming Adult Social Care

Ann Marie Gray; Derek Birrell — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Teaching Artist Handbook

Becca Barniskis; Barbara Hackett Cox; Nick Jaffe — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The creation of art is deeply personal yet remains strongly rooted within the collaborative meeting of teacher and student. Over centuries, techniques and encouragement have been passed along from experienced mentors to budding novices. Those who can take on this educator role have the power to inspire new artists and have a lasting impact. The Teaching Artist Handbook series is designed to help working artists develop the skills needed to be effective educators.

Practical and experience-based, this debut volume in the series is designed so that any artist, no matter the medium, will be able to fully conceptualize, create, and implement an effective teaching methodology that reflects his or her own expertise and interests. This collection of essays is written by authors who are all active teaching artists and have inside knowledge and experience. They provide extensive lists of techniques, tools, and ideas drawn from classroom practice. The authors also tackle the questions of what and how to teach and how to assess one’s own teaching, encouraging readers to respond critically and ultimately develop their own style.

Charleston Bulletin Supplements

Virginia Woolf; Quentin Bell; Claudia Olk — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the summer of 1923, Virginia Woolf’s nephews, Quentin and Julian Bell, founded a family newspaper, The Charleston Bulletin. Quentin decided to ask his aunt Virginia for a contribution: “It seemed stupid to have a real author so close at hand and not have her contribute.” But instead of an occasional contribution, Woolf joined forces with Quentin, and from 1923 until 1927, they created booklets of stories and drawings that were announced within the household as Supplements. Written or dictated by Woolf and illustrated by Quentin, these Supplements present a unique collaboration between the novelist during her most prolific years and the child-painter. In Virginia Woolf, Quentin Bell found not only a professional author and an experienced journalist, but, above all, a close companion and conspirator who shared his irreverence and, more often than not, his mischievous sense of humor.

The Supplements are transcribed in full here for the first time alongside forty of Bell’s original illustrations. The articles describe the escapades of family members, household servants, and associates of the Bloomsbury Group, leaving nobody unscathed by the sharp wit of aunt and nephew. Designed to tease the adults, they portray Bloomsbury eccentricities along with the foibles and mishaps of the residents and visitors at Charleston. This is the first time the Supplements have been published since they were written, and will be welcomed by fans of Woolf and her circle.

Footsteps of Liberty and Revolt

Mary-Ann Constantine; Dafydd Johnston — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

All of Europe was swept up in the events of the French Revolution and the radical restructuring of society that occurred in its aftermath. This collection of essays by leading academics explores how Welsh clerics, diplomats, singers, poets, journalists, and soldiers—many of whom traveled to Paris to witness the conflict firsthand—responded to the Revolution.

In Fine Style

Anna Reynolds — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

From an iconic portrait of a young Elizabeth I to the many paintings of Charles I by Flemish master Anthony Van Dyck and the glamorous “Windsor Beauties” of the court of Charles II, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraiture has long been a source of great interest to costume historians. Given the scarcity of surviving garments, it also tells us most of what we know about Tudor and Stuart dress. We’re all familiar with the stockings, voluminous breeches, and elaborate lace ruffs, but did you know that the clothing seen in many of these paintings cost more than the paintings themselves?

For In Fine Style, Anna Reynolds, curator of paintings at the Royal Collection, has drawn on the art of the period, as well as wardrobe inventories, literary references, contemporary accounts, and surviving garments to offer a fascinating account of the elite fashions of the day and the ways in which they were recreated in paint. The gold threads seen throughout the forepart of Elizabeth’s gown were costly, while the red dye that colored it came from crushed beetles and would have had to have been imported from Spain. Other works show their subjects with intricate ruffs, bright stockings, or broad farthingales, each item extravagantly adorned. Indeed, the main focus of Tudor and Stuart clothing was on rich materials that communicated the ability of the wearer to afford them, and, with the rise of the moneyed merchant class, sumptuary laws were established to limit their use to the nobility. Other forms of attire, including ornate hairdos held in place with wire and pleats that had to be set each time the garment was worn left absolutely no doubt as to the fact that the wearer had an army of servants and a wealth of spare time with which to attend to appearance.

Published to accompany an exhibition that will open at Buckingham Palace in May, In Fine Style features works by, among many others, Rembrandt, Rubens, Lely, and Holbein, and is the first book to examine Tudor and Stuart fashion through the use of art.

Mughal India

J. P. Losty; Malini Roy — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Published to accompany a major British Library exhibition, Mughal India showcases the British Library’s extensive collection of illustrated manuscripts and paintings commissioned by Mughal emperors and other officials. Depicting the splendor and vibrant color of Mughal life, the exquisitely decorated works span four centuries, from the foundation of the Mughal dynasty by Babur in the sixteenth century, through the heights of the empire and the “Great” Mughal emperors of the seventeenth century, into the decline and eventual collapse in the nineteenth century.

The lavish artworks cover a variety of subject matter, from scenes of courtly life to illustrations of works of literature. The development of a Mughal style of art can be traced through the illustrations and paintings, as can the influence of European styles. Many of these works have never before been published, and combined here with the engaging narrative of two experts who place each image within its historical and art historical context, they serve to provide us with a beautiful and illuminating view of the art and culture of Mughal India.

Childhoods in Context

Alison Clark — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Childhoods in Context offers a critical exploration of childhood, drawing attention to the physical and social contexts of children’s lives. Through accounts of home and family, school, public spaces, and work, the contributors explore three key arguments: childhood is always located somewhere—either in a place designed for children or territories that children develop for themselves; childhood is experienced through objects, people, places, and everyday routines; and childhood and adult identities are relational—understandings of childhood are dependent on how adulthood is viewed.

Raising important questions about methodological approaches to understanding childhoods in context, this book provides a framework for investigating wider questions about childhood, including the power relationships between adults and children and the influence of gender and inequality.

Edward Pugh of Ruthin 1763-1813

John Barrell — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Born in Ruthin, Denbighshire, Edward Pugh (1763–1813) was a Welsh-speaking artist and writer who worked as a miniaturist in London, exhibiting frequently at the Royal Academy. But Pugh’s passion was the landscape, and he painted remarkable views of North Wales that not only captivate but also reveal the development of the Welsh economy and Welsh national consciousness. Pugh also wrote and illustrated a fascinating, informative, and humorous account of a tour of North Wales around 1800—one of the only travel books written at that time by someone who could actually converse with the inhabitants.

Edward Pugh of Ruthin 1763–1813 is the first book to consider the work of this nearly forgotten Welsh artist and writer in detail, linking the history of art in Wales with the social history of the country. John Barrell shows how Pugh’s pictures and writings portray rural life and social change in Wales during his lifetime, from the effects of the war with France on industry and poverty, to the need to develop and modernize the Welsh economy, to the power of the landowners. Almost all of the pictures and accounts we have today of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century North Wales were made by English artists and writers, and none of these, as Barrell demonstrates, can tell us about life in North Wales with the same depth and authenticity as does Pugh.

Intimate Enemies

Kathryn Batchelor; Claire Bisdorff — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Translation—as a concept—has become central to postcolonial theory in recent decades, offering useful insights and metaphors for the processes explored within the framework of postcolonial studies. But translation itself is still an underexplored activity within this discipline. Intimate Enemies rights this wrong, weaving together reflections on translation by translators, authors, and academics working in regions of Africa, the Caribbean, and nations in the Indian Ocean. Moving beyond the traditional view of translation as betraying, at some level, original texts, the contributors instead highlight the potential for translation to counter the destructive effects of globalization, promote linguistic diversity, and reveal the dynamic political and economic contexts in which books are written, sold, and read.

Fashion in Popular Culture

Vicki Karaminas; Toni Johnson-Woods; Joseph Hancock — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

When we open our closet doors each morning, we seldom consider what our sartorial choices say, whether we tend toward jeans and a well-worn concert t-shirt or wingtips and a three-piece suit. Yet, how we dress divulges more than whether we crave comfort or couture; our clothing communicates who we are and how we relate to our culture. But how does a Balenciaga bag or a tough leather jacket topped by liberty spikes signify these things?

Fashion in Popular Culture considers this question. Combining fashion theory with approaches from literature, art, advertising, music, media studies, material studies, and sociology, contributors from across Europe, Australia, and the United States consider the function of fashion within popular culture. Fashion, they show, has the capacity to both influence and be influenced by popular culture, and its meaning is also contingent upon context. Chapters in the book cover both historical and contemporary concerns, addressing a variety of other questions, including the role fashion plays in subcultures.

For students and scholars of fashion and popular culture—or anyone fascinated by what clothing can convey—Fashion in Popular Culture offers an engaging, interdisciplinary analysis.

Cooking of History

Stephan Palmié — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Over a lifetime of studying Cuban Santería and other religions related to Orisha worship—a practice also found among the Yoruba in West Africa—Stephan Palmié has grown progressively uneasy with the assumptions inherent in the very term Afro-Cuban religion. In The Cooking of History he provides a comprehensive analysis of these assumptions, in the process offering an incisive critique both of the anthropology of religion and of scholarship on the cultural history of the Afro-Atlantic World.

Understood largely through its rituals and ceremonies, Santería and related religions have been a challenge for anthropologists to link to a hypothetical African past. But, Palmié argues, precisely by relying on the notion of an aboriginal African past, and by claiming to authenticate these religions via their findings, anthropologists—some of whom have converted to these religions—have exerted considerable influence upon contemporary practices. Critiquing widespread and damaging simplifications that posit religious practices as stable and self-contained, Palmié calls for a drastic new approach that properly situates cultural origins within the complex social environments and scholarly fields in which they are investigated.

Cooking of History

Stephan Palmié — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Great American City

Robert J. Sampson; William Julius Wilson — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

For over fifty years numerous public intellectuals and social theorists have insisted that community is dead. Some would have us believe that we act solely as individuals choosing our own fates regardless of our surroundings, while other theories place us at the mercy of global forces beyond our control. These two perspectives dominate contemporary views of society, but by rejecting the importance of place they are both deeply flawed. Based on one of the most ambitious studies in the history of social science, Great American City argues that communities still matter because life is decisively shaped by where you live.

To demonstrate the powerfully enduring impact of place, Robert J. Sampson presents here the fruits of over a decade’s research in Chicago combined with his own unique personal observations about life in the city, from Cabrini Green to Trump Tower and Millennium Park to the Robert Taylor Homes. He discovers that neighborhoods influence a remarkably wide variety of social phenomena, including crime, health, civic engagement, home foreclosures, teen births, altruism, leadership networks, and immigration. Even national crises cannot halt the impact of place, Sampson finds, as he analyzes the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftermath, bringing his magisterial study up to the fall of 2010.

Following in the influential tradition of the Chicago School of urban studies but updated for the twenty-first century, Great American City is at once a landmark research project, a commanding argument for a new theory of social life, and the story of an iconic city.

Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy

Sandra Laugier; Daniela Ginsburg — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Sandra Laugier has long been a key liaison between American and European philosophical thought, responsible for bringing American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Stanley Cavell to French readers—but until now her books have never been published in English. Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy rights that wrong with a topic perfect for English-language readers: the idea of analytic philosophy.

Focused on clarity and logical argument, analytic philosophy has dominated the discipline in the United States, Australia, and Britain over the past one hundred years, and it is often seen as a unified, coherent, and inevitable advancement. Laugier questions this assumption, rethinking the very grounds that drove analytic philosophy to develop and uncovering its inherent tensions and confusions. Drawing on J. L. Austin and the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she argues for the solution provided by ordinary language philosophy—a philosophy that trusts and utilizes the everyday use of language and the clarity of meaning it provides—and in doing so offers a major contribution to the philosophy of language and twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy as a whole.

Lost World of Fossil Lake

Lance Grande — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The landscape of southwestern Wyoming around the ghost town of Fossil is beautiful but harsh; a dry, high mountain desert with cool nights and long, cold winters inhabited by a sparse mountain desert community. But during the early Eocene, more than fifty million years ago, it was a subtropical lake, surrounded by volcanoes and forests and teeming with life. Buried within the sun-baked limestone is spectacular evidence of the lush vegetation and plentiful fauna of the ancient past, a transitional ecosystem giving us clues to how North America recovered from a great extinction event that wiped out dinosaurs and the majority of all species on the planet.

Paleontologists have been conducting excavations at Fossil Butte for more than 150 years, and with The Lost World of Fossil Lake, one of the world’s leading experts on the fossils from this spectacular locality takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of the discovery and exploration of the site. Deftly mixing incredible color photographs of the remarkable fossils uncovered at the site with an explanation of their evolutionary significance, Grande presents an unprecedented, comprehensive portrait of the site, its treasures, and what we’ve learned from them. Grande presents a broad range of fossilized organisms from Fossil Lake—from single-celled algae to palm trees to crocodiles—and together they make this long-extinct community come to life in all its diversity and splendor. A field guide and atlas round out the book, enabling readers to identify and classify the majority of the known fossils from the site.

Lavishly produced in full color, The Lost World of Fossil Lake is a stunning reminder of the intellectual and physical beauty of scientific investigation—and a breathtaking window onto our planet’s long-lost past.

Seaweeds

Ole G. Mouritsen; Mariela Johansen; Jonas Drotner Mouritsen — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Until recently, seaweed for most Americans was nothing but a nuisance, clinging to us as we swim in the ocean and stinking up the beach as it rots in the sun. With the ever-growing popularity of sushi restaurants across the country, however, seaweed is becoming a substantial part of our total food intake. And even as we dine with delight on maki, miso soup, and seaweed salads, very few of us have any idea of the nutritional value of seaweed. Here celebrated scientist Ole G. Mouritsen, drawing on his fascination with and enthusiasm for Japanese cuisine, champions seaweed as a staple food while simultaneously explaining its biology, ecology, cultural history, and gastronomy.

Mouritsen takes readers on a comprehensive tour of seaweed, describing what seaweeds actually are (algae, not plants) and how people of different cultures have utilized them since prehistoric times for a whole array of purposes—as food and fodder, for the production of salt, in medicine and cosmetics, as fertilizer, in construction, and for a number of industrial end uses, to name just a few. He reveals the vast abundance of minerals, trace elements, proteins, vitamins, dietary fiber, and precious polyunsaturated fatty acids found in seaweeds, and provides instructions and recipes on how to prepare a variety of dishes that incorporate raw and processed seaweeds. Approaching the subject from not only a gastronomic but also a scientific point of view, Mouritsen sets out to examine the past and present uses of this sustainable resource, keeping in mind how it could be exploited for the future. Because seaweeds can be cultivated in large quantities in the ocean in highly sustainable ways, they are ideal for battling hunger and obesity alike.

With hundreds of delectable illustrations depicting the wealth of species, colors, and shapes of seaweed, Seaweeds: Edible, Available, and Sustainable makes a strong case for granting these “vegetables from the sea” a prominent place in our kitchens.

Pay for Your Pleasures

Cary Levine — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, and Raymond Pettibon—these Southern California artists formed a “bad boy” trifecta. Early purveyors of abject art, the trio produced work ranging from sculptures of feces to copulating stuffed animals, and gained notoriety from being perverse. Showing how their work rethinks transgressive art practices in the wake of the 1960s, Pay for Your Pleasures argues that their collaborations as well as their individual enterprises make them among the most compelling artists in the Los Angeles area in recent years.

Cary Levine focuses on Kelley’s, McCarthy’s, and Pettibon’s work from the 1970s through the 1990s, plotting the circuitous routes they took in their artistic development. Drawing on extensive interviews with each artist, he identifies the diverse forces that had a crucial bearing on their development—such as McCarthy’s experiences at the University of Utah, Kelley’s interest in the Detroit-based White Panther movement, Pettibon’s study of economics, and how all three participated in burgeoning subcultural music scenes. Levine discovers a common political strategy underlying their art that critiques both nostalgia for the 1960s counterculture and Reagan-era conservatism. He shows how this strategy led each artist to create strange and unseemly images that test the limits of not only art but also gender roles, sex, acceptable behavior, poor taste, and even the gag reflex that separates pleasure from disgust. As a result, their work places viewers in uncomfortable situations that challenge them to reassess their own values.

The first substantial analysis of Kelley, McCarthy, and Pettibon, Pay for Your Pleasures shines new light on three artists whose work continues to resonate in the world of art and politics.

Cruel Way

Ella K. Maillart; Jessa Crispin — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In 1939 Swiss travel writer and journalist Ella K. Maillart set off on an epic journey from Geneva to Kabul with fellow writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach in a brand new Ford. As the first European women to travel alone on Afghanistan’s Northern Road, Maillart and Schwarzenbach had a rare glimpse of life in Iran and Afghanistan at a time when their borders were rarely crossed by Westerners. As the two flash across Europe and the Near East in a streak of élan and daring, Maillart writes of comical mishaps, breathtaking landscapes, vitriolic religious clashes, and the ingenuity with which the women navigated what was often a dangerous journey. In beautiful, clear-eyed prose, The Cruel Way shows Maillart’s great ability to explore and experience other cultures in writing both lyrical and deeply empathetic.

While the core of the book is the journey itself and their interactions with people oppressed by political conflict and poverty, towards the end of the trip the women’s increasingly troubled relationship takes center stage. By then the glamorous, androgynous Schwarzenbach, whose own account of the trip can be found in All the Roads Are Open, is fighting a losing battle with her own drug addiction, and Maillart’s frustrated attempts to cure her show the profound depth of their relationship.

Complete with thirteen of Maillart’s own photographs from the journey, The Cruel Way is a classic of travel writing, and its protagonists are as gripping and fearless as any in literature.

Five Words

Roland Greene — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Blood. Invention. Language. Resistance. World. Five ordinary words that do a great deal of conceptual work in everyday life and literature. In this original experiment in critical semantics, Roland Greene considers how these five words changed over the course of the sixteenth century and what their changes indicate about broader forces in science, politics, and other disciplines.

Greene discusses a broad swath of Renaissance and transatlantic literature—including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Camões, and Milton—in terms of the development of these words rather than works, careers, or histories. He creates a method for describing and understanding the semantic changes that occur, extending his argument to other words that operate in the same manner. Aiming to shift the conversation around Renaissance literature from current approaches to riskier enterprises, Greene also challenges semantic-historicist scholars, proposing a method that takes advantage of digital resources like full-text databases but still depends on the interpreter to fashion ideas out of ordinary language. Five Words is an innovative and accessible book that points the field of literary studies in an exciting new direction.

Beyond Redemption

Carole Emberton — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the months after the end of the Civil War, there was one word on everyone’s lips: redemption. From the fiery language of Radical Republicans calling for a reconstruction of the former Confederacy to the petitions of those individuals who had worked the land as slaves to the white supremacists who would bring an end to Reconstruction in the late 1870s, this crucial concept informed the ways in which many people—both black and white, northerner and southerner—imagined the transformation of the American South.

Beyond Redemption explores how the violence of a protracted civil war shaped the meaning of freedom and citizenship in the new South. Here, Carole Emberton traces the competing meanings that redemption held for Americans as they tried to come to terms with the war and the changing social landscape. While some imagined redemption from the brutality of slavery and war, others—like the infamous Ku Klux Klan—sought political and racial redemption for their losses through violence. Beyond Redemption merges studies of race and American manhood with an analysis of post-Civil War American politics to offer unconventional and challenging insight into the violence of Reconstruction.

Golf Science

Mark F. Smith — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Golf is perhaps the most complicated simple game ever invented. Golfing greats like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods make the sport look easy, but anyone who has ever picked up a club knows how truly frustrating golf can be. The success of each shot depends on a diverse range of factors, from the club you choose and the speed with which you swing it, to your mood, the weather, and even the type and cut of the grass. Science plays a crucial role in most, if not all, of these factors, and in Golf Science, sports science expert Mark F. Smith investigates the cutting-edge scientific wonders that take the ball from tee to hole.

Each chapter explores a different facet of the game—mind and body, the swing, the equipment, the environment, coaching with technology, the practice process, and the score—and is organized around a series of questions. What happens in the brain during the preshot routine? Does head movement hinder swing performance? Will I hit the ball farther with a longer driver? Why do I lose distance into the wind? What can I learn from watching my ball in flight? How should practice be structured? What are the key stats in golf that I need to know? Each question is examined with the aid of explanatory diagrams and illustrations, and the book can be used to search for particular topics, or read straight through for a comprehensive overview of how golfer and equipment work together.

A must-have for anyone who delights in the spirit of the game, Golf Science will be enjoyed not only by professionals and coaches but also by spectators of the PGA Tour and anyone who enjoys a round of eighteen holes on the weekend.

Galateo

Giovanni Della Casa; M. F. Rusnak — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

“Since it is the case that you are now just beginning that journey that I have for the most part as you see completed, that is, the one through mortal life, and loving you so very much as I do, I have proposed to myself—as one who has been many places—to show you those places in life where, walking through them, I fear you could easily either fall or take the wrong direction.”

So begins Galateo, a treatise on polite behavior written by Giovanni Della Casa (1503–56) for the benefit of his nephew, a young Florentine destined for greatness.

In the voice of a cranky yet genial old uncle, Della Casa offers the distillation of what he has learned over a lifetime of public service as diplomat and papal nuncio. As relevant today as it was in Renaissance Italy, Galateo deals with subjects as varied as dress codes, charming conversation and off-color jokes, eating habits and hairstyles, and literary language. In its time, Galateo circulated as widely as Machiavelli’s Prince and Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. Mirroring what Machiavelli did for promoting political behavior, and what Castiglione did for behavior at court, Della Casa here creates a picture of the refined man caught in a world in which embarrassment and vulgarity prevail. Less a treatise promoting courtly values or a manual of savoir faire, it is rather a meditation on conformity and the law, on perfection and rules, but also an exasperated—often theatrical—reaction to the diverse ways in which people make fools of themselves in everyday social situations.

With renewed interest in etiquette and polite behavior growing both inside and outside the academy, the time is right for a new, definitive edition of this book. More than a mere etiquette book, this restored edition will be entertaining (and even useful) for anyone making their way in modern civilized and polite society, and a subtle gift for the rude neighbor, the thoughtless dinner guest, or the friend or relative in need of a refresher on proper behavior.

When Peace Is Not Enough

Atalia Omer — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The state of Israel is often spoken of as a haven for the Jewish people, a place rooted in the story of a nation dispersed, wandering the earth in search of their homeland. Born in adversity but purportedly nurtured by liberal ideals, Israel has never known peace, experiencing instead a state of constant war that has divided its population along the stark and seemingly unbreachable lines of dissent around the relationship between unrestricted citizenship and Jewish identity.

By focusing on the perceptions and histories of Israel’s most marginalized stakeholders—Palestinian Israelis, Arab Jews, and non-Israeli Jews—Atalia Omer cuts to the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict, demonstrating how these voices provide urgently needed resources for conflict analysis and peacebuilding. Navigating a complex set of arguments about ethnicity, boundaries, and peace, and offering a different approach to the renegotiation and reimagination of national identity and citizenship, Omer pushes the conversation beyond the bounds of the single narrative and toward a new and dynamic concept of justice—one that offers the prospect of building a lasting peace.

Everyday Technology

David Arnold — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In 1909 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on his way back to South Africa from London, wrote his now celebrated tract Hind Swaraj, laying out his vision for the future of India and famously rejecting the technological innovations of Western civilization. Despite his protestations, Western technology endured and helped to make India one of the leading economies in our globalized world. Few would question the dominant role that technology plays in modern life, but to fully understand how India first advanced into technological modernity, argues David Arnold, we must consider the technology of the everyday.

Everyday Technology is a pioneering account of how small machines and consumer goods that originated in Europe and North America became objects of everyday use in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than investigate “big” technologies such as railways and irrigation projects, Arnold examines the assimilation and appropriation of bicycles, rice mills, sewing machines, and typewriters in India, and follows their impact on the ways in which people worked and traveled, the clothes they wore, and the kind of food they ate. But the effects of these machines were not limited to the daily rituals of Indian society, and Arnold demonstrates how such small-scale technologies became integral to new ways of thinking about class, race, and gender, as well as about the politics of colonial rule and Indian nationhood.

Arnold’s fascinating book offers new perspectives on the globalization of modern technologies and shows us that to truly understand what modernity became, we need to look at the everyday experiences of people in all walks of life, taking stock of how they repurposed small technologies to reinvent their world and themselves.

Image of God

Sharon M. Leon — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

During the first half of the twentieth century, supporters of the eugenics movement offered an image of a racially transformed America by curtailing the reproduction of “unfit” members of society. Through institutionalization, compulsory sterilization, the restriction of immigration and marriages, and other methods, eugenicists promised to improve the population—a policy agenda that was embraced by many leading intellectuals and public figures. But Catholic activists and thinkers across the United States opposed many of these measures, asserting that “every man, even a lunatic, is an image of God, not a mere animal."

In An Image of God, Sharon Leon examines the efforts of American Catholics to thwart eugenic policies, illuminating the ways in which Catholic thought transformed the public conversation about individual rights, the role of the state, and the intersections of race, community, and family. Through an examination of the broader questions raised in this debate, Leon casts new light on major issues that remain central in American political life today: the institution of marriage, the role of government, and the separation of church and state. This is essential reading in the history of religion, science, politics, and human rights.

Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885-1917

Gretchen Soderlund — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the penny presses of the industrial East treated brothels as a mundane, if annoying, aspect of city life. But later in the century, reformers and mainstream papers began to push back against this representation through highly public campaigns against “white slavery.” These newspaper crusades mixed a potent cocktail of lurid sexual detail and sensationalist scandal aimed equally at promoting anti-vice measures, arousing popular demand for progressive reform, and increasing newspaper circulation.

In Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, Gretchen Soderlund offers a new way to understand sensationalism in both newspapers and reform movements. By tracing the history of high-profile print exposés on sex trafficking by journalists like William T. Stead and George Kibbe Turner, Soderlund demonstrates how controversies over gender, race, and sexuality were central to the shift from sensationalism to objectivity—and crucial to the development of journalism in the early twentieth century.

Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885-1917

Gretchen Soderlund — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Kant's Organicism

Jennifer Mensch — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Because it laid the foundation for nearly all subsequent epistemologies, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason has overshadowed his other interests in natural history and the life sciences, which scholars have long considered as separate from his rigorous theoretical philosophy—until now. In Kant’s Organicism, Jennifer Mensch draws a crucial link between these spheres by showing how the concept of epigenesis—a radical theory of biological formation—lies at the heart of Kant’s conception of reason.

As Mensch argues, epigenesis was not simply a metaphor for Kant but centrally guided his critical philosophy, especially the relationship between reason and the categories of the understanding. Offsetting a study of Kant’s highly technical theory of cognition with a mixture of intellectual history and biography, she situates the epigenesis of reason within broader investigations into theories of generation, genealogy, and classification, and against later writers and thinkers such as Goethe and Darwin. Distilling vast amounts of research on the scientific literature of the time into a concise and readable book, Mensch offers one of the most refreshing looks not only at Kant’s famous first Critique but at the history of philosophy and the life sciences as well.

Rhythm of Thought

Jessica Wiskus — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Between present and past, visible and invisible, and sensation and idea, there is resonance—so philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued and so Jessica Wiskus explores in The Rhythm of Thought. Holding the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé, the paintings of Paul Cézanne, the prose of Marcel Proust, and the music of Claude Debussy under Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological light, she offers innovative interpretations of some of these artists’ masterworks, in turn articulating a new perspective on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy.

More than merely recovering Merleau-Ponty’s thought, Wiskus thinks according to it. First examining these artists in relation to noncoincidence—as silence in poetry, depth in painting, memory in literature, and rhythm in music—she moves through an array of their artworks toward some of Merleau-Ponty’s most exciting themes: our bodily relationship to the world and the dynamic process of expression. She closes with an examination of synesthesia as an intertwining of internal and external realms and a call, finally, for philosophical inquiry as a mode of artistic expression. Structured like a piece of music itself, The Rhythm of Thought offers new contexts in which to approach art, philosophy, and the resonance between them.

Body of Faith

Robert C. Fuller — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The postmodern view that human experience is constructed by language and culture has informed historical narratives for decades. Yet newly emerging information about the biological body now makes it possible to supplement traditional scholarly models with insights about the bodily sources of human thought and experience.

The Body of Faith is the first account of American religious history to highlight the biological body. Robert C. Fuller brings a crucial new perspective to the study of American religion, showing that knowledge about the biological body deeply enriches how we explain dramatic episodes in American religious life. Fuller shows that the body’s genetically evolved systems—pain responses, sexual passion, and emotions like shame and fear—have persistently shaped the ways that Americans forge relationships with nature, to society, and to God.

The first new work to appear in the Chicago History of American Religion series in decades, The Body of Faith offers a truly interdisciplinary framework for explaining the richness, diversity, and endless creativity of American religious life.

Magical Tales

Diane Purkiss; Carolyne Larrington — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

A faun carrying an umbrella. A hobbit who makes his home in a hole in the ground. An ill-treated schoolboy with a secret and a scar. Fantasy is among the most beloved genres in children’s literature— and its offerings are often just as eagerly anticipated by adults. But how is it that writers like J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman are able to create such remarkable images?

Magical Tales traces the origin of the genre back through Norse mythology, Arthurian legend, and medieval literature. Drawing on manuscripts and rare books in the renowned collection of the Bodleian Library, the essays turn the spotlight on spell books; grimoires, or magical textbooks; and books of legend and myth whose themes writers like J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis incorporated into their work, inspiring generations of writers that extend to the present day. In serving as a source of inspiration for later literary works, the contributors show, myths and legends have themselves been altered in interesting ways.

Richly illustrated, Magical Tales offers an enchanting take on the development of this wildly popular genre.

Tradescants' Orchard

Barrie Juniper; Hanneke Grootenboer — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the early seventeenth century, England’s leisured classes took an eager interest in fruits from the Mediterranean and beyond, introducing species from abroad into the kitchen gardens and orchards of grand homes. A charming collection of sixty-six early watercolors showing fecund trees with fruits hanging heavily from their branches, The Tradescants’ Orchard is a testament to these broadening horticultural horizons.

The Tradescants’ Orchard reproduces for the first time the entire manuscript, traditionally associated with the renowned father-and-son nurserymen the John Tradescants. The paintings pose many questions: Who painted them and why? What is the significance of the wildlife—birds, butterflies, frogs, and snails—that appear throughout? Why is there only one depiction of an apple tree despite its popularity? Were there others that have since gone missing?

A visual feast that will appeal to botany and gardening enthusiasts, the book also includes an introduction that maps out the mystery of how and why these enigmatic watercolors were made.

Ignoring Nature No More

Marc Bekoff — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

For far too long humans have been ignoring nature. As the most dominant, overproducing, overconsuming, big-brained, big-footed, arrogant, and invasive species ever known, we are wrecking the planet at an unprecedented rate. And while science is important to our understanding of the impact we have on our environment, it alone does not hold the answers to the current crisis, nor does it get people to act. In Ignoring Nature No More, Marc Bekoff and a host of renowned contributors argue that we need a new mind-set about nature, one that centers on empathy, compassion, and being proactive.

This collection of diverse essays is the first book devoted to compassionate conservation, a growing global movement that translates discussions and concerns about the well-being of individuals, species, populations, and ecosystems into action. Written by leading scholars in a host of disciplines, including biology, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, political science, and philosophy, as well as by locals doing fieldwork in their own countries, the essays combine the most creative aspects of the current science of animal conservation with analyses of important psychological and sociocultural issues that encourage or vex stewardship. The contributors tackle topics including the costs and benefits of conservation, behavioral biology, media coverage of animal welfare, conservation psychology, and scales of conservation from the local to the global. Taken together, the essays make a strong case for why we must replace our habits of domination and exploitation with compassionate conservation if we are to make the world a better place for nonhuman and human animals alike.

Ignoring Nature No More

Marc Bekoff — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Edward Lear's Nonsense Birds

Edward Lear — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The Stripy Bird. The Scroobius Bird. The Obsequious Ornamental Ostrich who wore boots to keep his feet quite dry. Of all the animals that sprang from the idiosyncratic imagination of Edward Lear, few feature as frequently as birds, which appear throughout his work, from the flamboyant flock in the Nonsense Alphabet to the quirky avian characters of his limericks, stories, and songs. Lear drew himself as a bird on numerous occasions. In a popular self-portrait—later reproduced on a postage stamp—Lear even represented himself as a portly, bespectacled bird.

Edward Lear’s Nonsense Birds collects more than sixty of Lear’s bird illustrations from across his entire body of work. Often, the birds have hilariously human characteristics. There is, for instance, a Good-Natured Grey Gull, a Hasty Hen, and a Querulous Quail. The Judicious Jay is chiefly concerned with good grooming. The Vicious Vulture, meanwhile, turns out to be a wordsmith whose verses on vellum celebrate veal. Each bird is endowed with a unique personality, while collectively they form a wonderfully amusing flock. Also included are a series of twenty-four hand-colored illustrations.

Bright and beautifully illustrated, this book will make a perfect gift for children of all ages and will also be welcomed by all who love Lear’s work or are interested in learning more about his fascination with birds.

Beyond Nature and Culture

Philippe Descola; Janet Lloyd; Marshall Sahlins — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture?

Culture—as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth—is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Descola shows this essential difference to be, however, not only a specifically Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a sophisticated new framework, the “four ontologies”— animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism—to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, Descola offers nothing short of a fundamental reformulation by which anthropologists and philosophers can see the world afresh.

Androids in the Enlightenment

Adelheid Voskuhl — Fri, 31 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The eighteenth century saw the creation of a number of remarkable mechanical androids: at least ten prominent automata were built between 1735 and 1810 by clockmakers, court mechanics, and other artisans from France, Switzerland, Austria, and the German lands. Designed to perform sophisticated activities such as writing, drawing, or music making, these “Enlightenment automata” have attracted continuous critical attention from the time they were made to the present, often as harbingers of the modern industrial age, an era during which human bodies and souls supposedly became mechanized.

In Androids in the Enlightenment, Adelheid Voskuhl investigates two such automata—both depicting piano-playing women. These automata not only play music, but also move their heads, eyes, and torsos to mimic a sentimental body technique of the eighteenth century: musicians were expected to generate sentiments in themselves while playing, then communicate them to the audience through bodily motions. Voskuhl argues, contrary to much of the subsequent scholarly conversation, that these automata were unique masterpieces that illustrated the sentimental culture of a civil society rather than expressions of anxiety about the mechanization of humans by industrial technology. She demonstrates that only in a later age of industrial factory production did mechanical androids instill the fear that modern selves and societies had become indistinguishable from machines.

American Allegory

Black Hawk Hancock — Thu, 30 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

“Perhaps,” wrote Ralph Ellison more than seventy years ago, “the zoot suit contains profound political meaning; perhaps the symmetrical frenzy of the Lindy-hop conceals clues to great potential power.” As Ellison noted then, many of our most mundane cultural forms are larger and more important than they appear, taking on great significance and an unexpected depth of meaning. What he saw in the power of the Lindy Hop—the dance that Life magazine once billed as “America’s True National Folk Dance”—would spread from black America to make a lasting impression on white America and offer us a truly compelling means of understanding our culture. But with what hidden implications?

In American Allegory, Black Hawk Hancock offers an embedded and embodied ethnography that situates dance within a larger Chicago landscape of segregated social practices. Delving into two Chicago dance worlds, the Lindy and Steppin’, Hancock uses a combination of participant-observation and interviews to bring to the surface the racial tension that surrounds white use of black cultural forms. Focusing on new forms of appropriation in an era of multiculturalism, Hancock underscores the institutionalization of racial disparities and offers wonderful insights into the intersection of race and culture in America.

Essay on the Geography of Plants

Alexander von Humboldt; Aimé Bonpland; Stephen T. Jackson; Sylvie Romanowski — Thu, 30 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The legacy of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) looms large over the natural sciences. His 1799–1804 research expedition to Central and South America with botanist Aimé Bonpland set the course for the great scientific surveys of the nineteenth century, and inspired such essayists and artists as Emerson, Goethe, Thoreau, Poe, and Church.

The chronicles of the expedition were published in Paris after Humboldt’s return, and first among them was the 1807 “Essay on the Geography of Plants.” Among the most cited writings in natural history, after the works of Darwin and Wallace, this work appears here for the first time in a complete English-language translation. Covering far more than its title implies, it represents the first articulation of an integrative “science of the earth, ” encompassing most of today’s environmental sciences. Ecologist Stephen T. Jackson introduces the treatise and explains its enduring significance two centuries after its publication. This edition also includes a poster-sized color reproduction of the Mt. Chimborazo tableau, an icon in the history of science and scientific graphics.

When Peace Is Not Enough

Atalia Omer — Mon, 27 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

American Allegory

Black Hawk Hancock — Mon, 27 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Bas Jan Ader

Alexander Dumbadze — Mon, 27 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

On July 9, 1975, Dutch-born artist Bas Jan Ader set sail from Chatham, Massachusetts, on a thirteen-foot sailboat. He was bound for Falmouth, England, on the second leg of a three-part piece titled In Search of the Miraculous. The damaged boat was found south of the western tip of Ireland nearly a year later. Ader was never seen again.

Since his untimely death, Ader has achieved mythic status in the art world as a figure literally willing to die for his art. Considering the artist’s legacy and concise oeuvre beyond the romantic and tragic associations that accompany his peculiar end, Alexander Dumbadze resituates Ader’s art and life within the conceptual art world of Los Angeles in the early 1970s and offers a nuanced argument about artistic subjectivity that explains Ader’s tremendous relevance to contemporary art.

Bas Jan Ader blends biography, theoretical reflection, and archival research to draw a detailed picture of the world in which Ader’s work was rooted: a vibrant international art scene populated with peers such as Ger van Elk, William Leavitt, and Allen Ruppersberg. Dumbadze looks closely at Ader’s engagement with questions of free will and his ultimate success in creating art untainted by mediation. The first in-depth study of this enigmatic conceptual artist, Bas Jan Ader is a thoughtful reflection on the necessity of the creative act and its inescapable relation to death.

Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities

Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara — Sat, 25 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Discuss real estate with any young family and the subject of schools is certain to come up—in fact, it will likely be a crucial factor in determining where that family lives. Not merely institutions of learning, schools have increasingly become a sign of a neighborhood’s vitality, and city planners have ever more explicitly promoted “good schools” as a means of attracting more affluent families to urban areas, a dynamic process that Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara critically examines in Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities.

Focusing on Philadelphia’s Center City Schools Initiative, she shows how education policy makes overt attempts to prevent, or at least slow, middle-class flight to the suburbs. Navigating complex ethical terrain, she balances the successes of such policies in strengthening urban schools and communities against the inherent social injustices they propagate—the further marginalization and disempowerment of lowerclass families. By asking what happens when affluent parents become “valued customers,” Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities uncovers a problematic relationship between public institutions and private markets, where the former are used to leverage the latter to effect urban transformations.

Writing Science in Plain English

Anne E. Greene — Fri, 24 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Scientific writing is often dry, wordy, and difficult to understand. But, as Anne E. Greene shows in Writing Science in Plain English,writers from all scientific disciplines can learn to produce clear, concise prose by mastering just a few simple principles.

This short, focused guide presents a dozen such principles based on what readers need in order to understand complex information, including concrete subjects, strong verbs, consistent terms, and organized paragraphs. The author, a biologist and an experienced teacher of scientific writing, illustrates each principle with real life examples of both good and bad writing and shows how to revise bad writing to make it clearer and more concise. She ends each chapter with practice exercises so that readers can come away with new writing skills after just one sitting.

Writing Science in Plain English can help writers at all levels of their academic and professional careers—undergraduate students working on research reports, established scientists writing articles and grant proposals, or agency employees working to follow the Plain Writing Act. This essential resource is the perfect companion for all who seek to write science effectively.

Demands of the Day

Paul Rabinow; Anthony Stavrianakis — Thu, 23 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Demands of the Day asks about the logical standards and forms that should guide ethical and experimental anthropology in the twenty-first century. Anthropologists Paul Rabinow and Anthony Stavrianakis do so by taking up Max Weber’s notion of the “demands of the day.” Just as the demand of the day for anthropology decades ago consisted of thinking about fieldwork, today, they argue, the demand is to examine what happens after, how the experiences of fieldwork are gathered, curated, narrated, and ultimately made available for an anthropological practice that moves beyond mere ethnographic description.

Rabinow and Stavrianakis draw on experiences from an innovative set of anthropological experiments that investigated how and whether the human and biological sciences could be brought into a mutually enriching relationship. Conceptualizing the anthropological and philosophic ramifications of these inquiries, they offer a bold challenge to contemporary anthropology to undertake a more rigorous examination of its own practices, blind spots, and capacities, in order to meet the demands of our day.

Literary Miniatures

Florence Noiville; Teresa Lavender Fagan — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Selected from the pages of Le Monde, the interviews conducted by Florence Noiville are unequaled in literary journalism. In Literary Miniatures, Noiville captures the words and views of some of the best known writers of the twentieth century, engaging luminaries like Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, Aharon Appelfeld, and A. S. Byatt in revealing dialogue. In this collection, Noiville converses with Don DeLillo, reasons with Adolfo Bioy Casares, passes the time with Milan Kundera, and gently interrogates John Le Carré.

Fluent in many languages, Noiville conducted a number of these interviews in the subject’s native language, engaging these extraordinary writers on their own terms. Inimitably intimate, the interviews are a window through which readers can come to know the writers behind some of the greatest works of literature of the last one hundred years. Sure to delight lovers of literature and biography, this book is the perfect expression of the art of the interview and a priceless artifact for enthusiasts and scholars alike.

Planning the Home Front

Sarah Jo Peterson — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Before Franklin Roosevelt declared December 7 to be a “date which will live in infamy”; before American soldiers landed on D-Day; before the B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s roared over Europe and Asia, there was Willow Run. Located twenty-five miles west of Detroit, the bomber plant at Willow Run and the community that grew up around it attracted tens of thousands of workers from across the United States during World War II. Together, they helped build the nation’s “Arsenal of Democracy,” but Willow Run also became the site of repeated political conflicts over how to build suburbia while mobilizing for total war.

In Planning the Home Front, Sarah Jo Peterson offers readers a portrait of the American people—industrialists and labor leaders, federal officials and municipal leaders, social reformers, industrial workers, and their families—that lays bare the foundations of community, the high costs of racism, and the tangled process of negotiation between New Deal visionaries and wartime planners. By tying the history of suburbanization to that of the home front, Peterson uncovers how the United States planned and built industrial regions in the pursuit of war, setting the stage for the suburban explosion that would change the American landscape when the war was won.

Demands of the Day

Paul Rabinow; Anthony Stavrianakis — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Out of Many, One

Ruth O'Brien; Thomas Byrne Edsall — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Feared by conservatives and embraced by liberals when he entered the White House, Barack Obama has since been battered by criticism from both sides. In Out of Many, One, Ruth O’Brien explains why. We are accustomed to seeing politicians supporting either a minimalist state characterized by unfettered capitalism and individual rights or a relatively strong welfare state and regulatory capitalism. Obama, O’Brien argues, represents the values of a lesser-known third tradition in American political thought that defies the usual left-right categorization.

Bearing traces of Baruch Spinoza, John Dewey, and Saul Alinsky, Obama’s progressivism embraces the ideas of mutual reliance and collective responsibility, and adopts an interconnected view of the individual and the state. So, while Obama might emphasize difference, he rejects identity politics, which can create permanent minorities and diminish individual agency. Analyzing Obama’s major legislative victories—financial regulation, health care, and the stimulus package—O’Brien shows how they reflect a stakeholder society that neither regulates in the manner of the New Deal nor deregulates. Instead, Obama focuses on negotiated rule making and allows executive branch agencies to fill in the details when dealing with a deadlocked Congress. Similarly, his commitment to difference and his resistance to universal mandates underlies his reluctance to advocate for human rights as much as many on the Democratic left had hoped.

By establishing Obama within the context of a much longer and broader political tradition, this book sheds critical light on both the political and philosophical underpinnings of his presidency and a fundamental shift in American political thought.

Out of Many, One

Ruth O'Brien; Thomas Byrne Edsall — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Trying Biology

Adam R. Shapiro — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In Trying Biology, Adam R. Shapiro convincingly dispels many conventional assumptions about the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial. Most view it as an event driven primarily by a conflict between science and religion. Countering this, Shapiro shows the importance of timing: the Scopes trial occurred at a crucial moment in the history of biology textbook publishing, education reform in Tennessee, and progressive school reform across the country. He places the trial in this broad context—alongside American Protestant antievolution sentiment—and in doing so sheds new light on the trial and the historical relationship of science and religion in America.

For the first time we see how religious objections to evolution became a prevailing concern to the American textbook industry even before the Scopes trial began. Shapiro explores both the development of biology textbooks leading up to the trial and the ways in which the textbook industry created new books and presented them as “responses” to the trial. Today, the controversy continues over textbook warning labels, making Shapiro’s study—particularly as it plays out in one of America’s most famous trials—an original contribution to a timely discussion.

What Soldiers Do

Mary Louise Roberts — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways.

That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty.

While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.

Leo Strauss and the Rediscovery of Maimonides

Kenneth Hart Green — Thu, 16 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In Leo Strauss and the Rediscovery of Maimonides, Kenneth Hart Green explores the critical role played by Maimonides in shaping Leo Strauss’s thought. In uncovering the esoteric tradition employed in Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, Strauss made the radical realization that other ancient and medieval philosophers might be concealing their true thoughts through literary artifice. Maimonides and al-Farabi, he saw, allowed their message to be altered by dogmatic considerations only to the extent required by moral and political imperatives and were in fact avid advocates for enlightenment. Strauss also revealed Maimonides’s potential relevance to contemporary concerns, especially his paradoxical conviction that one must confront the conflict between reason and revelation rather than resolve it.

An invaluable companion to Green’s comprehensive collection of Strauss’s writings on Maimonides, this volume shows how Strauss confronted the commonly accepted approaches to the medieval philosopher, resulting in both a new understanding of Maimonides and a new depth and direction for his own thought. It will be welcomed by anyone engaged with the work of either philosopher.

Nature and Nurture of Love

Marga Vicedo — Thu, 16 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The notion that maternal care and love will determine a child’s emotional well-being and future personality has become ubiquitous. In countless stories and movies we find that the problems of the protagonists—anything from the fear of romantic commitment to serial killing—stem from their troubled relationships with their mothers during childhood. How did we come to hold these views about the determinant power of mother love over an individual’s emotional development? And what does this vision of mother love entail for children and mothers?

In The Nature and Nurture of Love, Marga Vicedo examines scientific views about children’s emotional needs and mother love from World War II until the 1970s, paying particular attention to John Bowlby’s ethological theory of attachment behavior. Vicedo tracks the development of Bowlby’s work as well as the interdisciplinary research that he used to support his theory, including Konrad Lorenz’s studies of imprinting in geese, Harry Harlow’s experiments with monkeys, and Mary Ainsworth’s observations of children and mothers in Uganda and the United States. Vicedo’s historical analysis reveals that important psychoanalysts and animal researchers opposed the project of turning emotions into biological instincts. Despite those criticisms, she argues that attachment theory was paramount in turning mother love into a biological need. This shift introduced a new justification for the prescriptive role of biology in human affairs and had profound—and negative—consequences for mothers and for the valuation of mother love.

Restoring Justice

Edward H. Levi; Jack Fuller; Larry Kramer — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the wake of Watergate, Gerald Ford appointed eminent lawyer and scholar Edward H. Levi to the post of attorney general—and thus gave him the onerous task of restoring legitimacy to a discredited Department of Justice. Levi was famously fair-minded and free of political baggage, and his inspired addresses during this tumultuous time were critical to rebuilding national trust. They reassured a tense and troubled nation that the Department of Justice would act in accordance with the principles underlying its name, operating as a nonpartisan organization under the strict rule of law.

For Restoring Justice, Jack Fuller has carefully chosen from among Levi’s speeches a selection that sets out the attorney general’s view of the considerable challenges he faced: restoring public confidence through discussion and acts of justice, combating the corrosive skepticism of the time, and ensuring that the executive branch would behave judicially. Also included are addresses and Congressional testimonies that speak to issues that were hotly debated at the time, including electronic surveillance, executive privilege, separation of powers, antitrust enforcement, and the guidelines governing the FBI—many of which remain relevant today.

Serving at an almost unprecedentedly difficult time, Levi was among the most admired attorney generals of the modern era. Published here for the first time, the speeches in Restoring Justice offer a superb sense of the man and his work.

Mao's Golden Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution

Alfreda Murck — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In August 1968, the Pakistani foreign minister visited Beijing and presented Chairman Mao Zedong with a crate of mangoes as a diplomatic gesture. The next day, Mao sent the mangoes to the “Worker-Peasant Mao Zedong though Propaganda Teams,” who had been stationed at Quinghua University to put down warring factions of Red Guards ten days previously. The message of this gift was to dismiss the Student Red Guards, who had been leaders of the proletarian movement in China, and in their stead to install workers as the permanent guardians of China’s education system. During the following weeks, the mangoes were distributed to several factories, where they were treated as though they were religious relics. The golden mango was thus a powerful emblem of the power and respect accorded to the proletariat under Mao’s rule.

Mao’s Gold Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution is the catalog for an exhibition of the same title at the Museum Rietberg in Zürich, which explores the golden mangoes’ reverberations throughout Chinese culture for years to come. Included texts focus on the historical narrative of the golden mangoes’ rise to fame; first-person accounts of both students and factory workers; an examination the National Day Parade in 1968, which used the symbol of the mangoes prominently; a critical essay on the 1976 film The Song of the Mango; and an in-depth comparative study of working conditions in China from the late 1960s and today.

Marcel Proust

Adam Watt — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Marcel Proust (1871–1922) spent fourteen years creating In Search of Lost Time, his seven-volume magnum opus. He died when it was only half in print, unable to see it become one of the most important literary works of the twentieth century. Over eighty years later, the work still garners extraordinary levels of critical attention, and Proust’s habits, health, and sexual preferences still keep commentators and fans occupied. In this concise biography, Adam Watt explores the life of a writer whose every experience was stored, dissected, and redeployed within a vast fictional work.

After considering Proust’s earlier years of personal and aesthetic experiment, Watt provides an engaging account of two intertwined processes taking place against the vibrant backdrop of Belle Époque Paris and World War I: the progress of In Search of Lost Time and the simultaneous decline of its author. He demonstrates how Proust’s own periods of ill health and isolation reflected his narrator’s thoughts on desire, love, and loss, as well as his contemplation of beauty, memory, aging, and the possibility of happiness. Drawing on the author’s immense correspondence, the accounts of his contemporaries, and the insights of recent scholarship, Marcel Proust offers a rewarding new portrait of the novelist once described as “the most complicated man in Paris.”

Gorilla

Ted Gott; Kathryn Weir — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Since coming to international prominence in the mid-nineteenth century when English, French, and American scientists first encountered them, the gorilla’s physical resemblance to humans has struck a deep chord. Gorillas quickly came to dominate evolutionary debates and grew prevalent in literature, art, film, and popular culture—they are the focus of movies such as Congo and the inspiration for the video game character Donkey Kong and DC Comics super villain Gorilla Grodd. In Gorilla, Ted Grott and Kathryn Weir provide a compelling and unsettling account of our relationship with these highly intelligent animals as they fight extinction due to habitat destruction, commercial hunting, and disease.

Gott and Weir describe how early European observations of gorillas in their native Africa were the genesis of literary and artistic representations such as King Kong. At the same time, gorillas became symbolic of sexuality and subconscious, uncontrolled urges, and influenced theories of criminality. It was not until Dian Fossey’s research in the 1960s and 1970s that many misconceptions about the gorilla—especially their violence—were dispelled. A notable history of the gorilla’s influence on our culture and its plight at the hands of humans, Gorilla will appeal to any animal lover wanting to learn more about this noble creature and its uncertain future.

Magnetic

Anne Bergeron; Beth Tuttle — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In this in-depth study of what makes a museum an organization successful, Anne Bergeron and Beth Tuttle look at so-called “magnetic” organizations, namely ones that combine a powerful internal alignment with a compelling vision so that they are able to attract critical resources, such as talented and committed employees, loyal audiences, engaged donors, powerful goodwill from the community at large, and the financial capital required to sustain programmatic excellence and growth. Magnetic: The Art and Science of Engagement analyzes six American museums: Children’s Museum in Pittsburgh; Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia; Conner Prairie Interactive History Park in Indiana; The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia; Natural Science Center of Greensboro in North Carolina; and Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Each of these has embraced a shift in ideology and set a new course that has enabled them to achieve a positive reputation and a fruitful engagement with the community. This philosophy of magnetism provides a model not only for museum administration but also for all types of organizations—from corporations to nonprofits—that wish to maximize their involvement with their customers and the wider public while strengthening their own organizational infrastructure.

Up North

Douglas Scott Brookes — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

For everyone from school age to professional, there is no greater pleasure than the summer vacation, the chance to pack our suitcases and escape from workaday life and domestic chores; we look forward to it during the long slog and count down the days on our calendars. But the idea of travel for relaxation is actually a relatively modern concept. The construction of the vast American railroad network that made quick travel over long distances feasible combined with the rise of the middle class, which brought with it the time and money to afford travel, established the phenomenon of summer leisure touring in the late 1800s. As such, the word vacation came to mean not just a school holiday, but travel for pleasure. With the rise of leisure travel came the rise of the tourist destination, resort towns catering specifically to the needs and desires of this new kind of traveler.

Up North looks specifically at the history of two such resort communities on the shores of Lake Huron in Michigan. Like the Hamptons that lure New Yorkers and the Lake Michigan beaches that attract Chicagoans, the communities along Lake Huron were a hot spot of summer fun for thousands of St. Louisans. Focusing on the heyday of Lake Huron beaches between 1880 and 1950, Up North brings together local newspaper columns from the time and excerpts from letters and diaries to paint a vivid portrait of life at these summer resorts. Douglas Scott Brookes’s family vacationed along the Lake Huron Beaches for generations, and in this book he weaves together his family’s experiences with the larger story of the rise of vacationing in America. He examines why summer vacations became popular in the late 1800s, and he seeks to explain what kept tourists coming back, often to the same place year after year, establishing family traditions.

A fascinating perspective on the history of leisure travel in America, Up North celebrates our common need to get away from the humdrum, and it will be welcome reading for all of us daydreaming of crystalline lakeshores.

Ostrich

Edgar Williams — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Ostriches may not be able to fly, but they loom large in the bird kingdom. They are the world’s tallest and heaviest living birds, and they lay the largest eggs. With their long legs, ostriches are also fleet of foot, running up to 43 miles per hour, and formidable fighters—an ostrich kick can kill. But since the beginning of history, these extraordinary and outlandish birds have also been exploited by humans for their eggs, meat, skin, and feathers. In Ostrich, Edgar Williams provides a singular, comprehensive insight into the natural history, behavior, and habitat of this monumental bird.

Williams describes how the demand for ostrich feathers was so great during the Victorian era that vast fortunes were made from ostrich farming, particularly in South Africa and the United States. After fashions changed following World War I, farmers lost their fortunes, but the now domesticated ostrich found a new purpose—today, ostrich farmers produce plumes and leather for luxury markets, as well as meat for grocery stores. In addition to telling its, Williams reveals how the ostrich has been featured in culture, from its representations in cave paintings, medieval manuscripts, and the Bayeux tapestry to its use in advertising and cartoons. Featuring many striking illustrations, Ostrich will interest nature lovers, artists, and fashionistas alike.

Medieval Dogs

Kathleen Walker-Meikle — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Perhaps at no other time in Western history have animals played such a dominant role in the visual and literary arts as they did during the Middle Ages. Animals were prevalent and essential in all aspects of medieval life, and as a result, they were employed by artists for a variety of purposes: to illustrate saint’s lives, populate farm scenes, act as characters in fables, and even crawl among the very letters forming the text. And while artists used a host of animals, both real and fantastic, for these purposes, one of the most popular animals was man’s best friend.

Dogs were as important to humans during the Middle Ages as they are today, and this new book celebrates that association through their appearance in medieval manuscripts. A follow-up book to Kathleen Walker-Meikle’s Medieval Cats, published by the British Library in 2011, Medieval Dogs presents a wealth of dog imagery from a variety of medieval sources and is peppered with fascinating facts about the medieval view of dogs and many stories of people and their pets in the Middle Ages.

Among the themes explored in the accompanying text are the roles of the medieval dog, dog breeds, dogs and saints, the names of dogs, canine faithfulness, veterinary care of dogs, dog feeding, the mourning of dogs and burial practices, and medieval poetry about dogs, with translations of some short poems included here. Medieval Dogs is sure to charm dog lovers and medievalists alike.

Spanish Civil War

Anindya Raychaudhuri — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

While the intricate relationship between history, memory, and representation is of central concern in contemporary society in general, it is perhaps more alive in Spain than in any other European country. The seventy-fifth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War has reignited interest in this field. The Spanish Civil War: Exhuming a Buried Past features cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research on the political, historical, cultural, and literary legacy of the Spanish Civil War by a mixture of new and leading scholars from Europe, North America, and New Zealand.

Spoken Word: Short Stories Volume 2

The British Library — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Following the success of its first set of authors reading their own short stories, the British Library is proud to present a second volume featuring a further dozen stories. As before, the majority of the recordings take the form of historic broadcasts sourced from the BBC, to which a handful of rare live recordings have been added. The stories range from humorous anecdotes to more extended pieces investigating social issues, and the twelve authors include such prestigious names as Beryl Bainbridge, Julian Barnes, E. M. Forster, Alasdair Gray, W. Somerset Maugham, Sean O’Faolain, Harold Pinter, Alan Sillitoe, Osbert Sitwell, Rose Tremain, William Trevor, and Fay Weldon. All the recordings are being made available for the first time.

Old Man's Guide to Health and Longer Life

John Hill — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Tho' vegetables may be thought innocent, there are many cases in which they prove hurtful.

Carrots are to be avoided, for no old stomach can digest them.

It isn’t fun getting old, but, as the joke has it, being old is better than the alternative. Most of us worry about getting older, and there is an endless supply of guides out there claiming to hold the tips that will ensure wellness and vitality during our golden years. But before Dr. Oz and protein shakes, aging men turned to physician John Hill and The Old Man’s Guide to Health and Longer Life.

First published in the mid-eighteenth century, The Old Man’s Guide to Health and Longer Life is a lifestyle guide to longevity and good health for old men. Written in an age when the majority of the population didn’t live to see their fortieth birthday, Hill’s book provides practical advice on diet, exercise, and lifestyle, including sleep and emotional health, as well as illuminating insight into the thinking on health and longevity in the mid-eighteenth century. Some of the more prescriptive advice has the hysterical tone expected from eighteenth-century guides and manuals—“The pine-apple, the most pleasant of all fruit, is the most dangerous.”—but more surprising is how full of genuinely good advice the book is and how much of it reads like modern-day health literature. This includes such insightful sayings as: “A warm bath and a glass of wine if you are having difficulty getting to sleep”; “Use medicines only as a last resort—address diet and lifestyle first to resolve illness”; and “Quiet, good humour, and complacency of temper will prevent half the diseases of old people; and cure many of the others.”

Full of both sage wisdom and what now seem ridiculous regimens, The Old Man’s Guide to Health and Longer Life will be the perfect gift for a man of more mature years.

Power to the People

Geoff Kaplan — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Though we think of the 1960s and the early ‘70s as a time of radical social, cultural, and political upheaval, we tend to picture the action as happening on campuses and in the streets. Yet the rise of the underground newspaper was equally daring and original. Thanks to advances in cheap offset printing, groups involved in antiwar, civil rights, and other social liberation issues began to spread their messages through provocatively designed newspapers and broadsheets. This vibrant new media was essential to the counterculture revolution as a whole—helping to motivate the masses and proliferate ideas. Power to the People presents more than 700 full-color images and excerpts from these astonishing publications, many of which have not been seen since they were first published almost fifty years ago.

From the psychedelic pages of the Oracle, Haight-Ashbury’s paper of choice, to the fiery editorials of the Black Panther Party Paper, these papers were remarkable for their editors’ fervent belief in freedom of expression and their DIY philosophy. They were also extraordinary for their graphic innovations. Experimental typography and wildly inventive layouts reflect an alternative media culture as much informed by the space age, television, and socialism as it was by the great trinity of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Assembled by renowned graphic designer Geoff Kaplan, Power to the People pays homage in its layout to the radical press. Beyond its unparalleled images, Power to the People includes essays by Gwen Allen, Bob Ostertag, and Fred Turner, as well as a series of recollections edited by Pamela M. Lee, all of which comment on the critical impact of the alternative press in the social and popular movements of those turbulent years. Power to the People treats the design practices of that moment as activism in its own right that offers a vehement challenge to the dominance of official media and a critical form of self-representation.

No other book surveys in such variety the highly innovative graphic design of the underground press, and certainly no other book captures the era with such an unmatched eye toward its aesthetic and look. Power to the People is not just a major compendium of art from the ’60s and ’70s—it showcases how the radical media graphically fashioned the image of a countercultural revolution that still resounds to this day.

Rise of the Vampire

Erik Butler — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Before Bella and Edward; Stefan and Damon Salvatore; and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, there was Lestat and Louis, The Lost Boys, and Buffy Summers. Before True Blood and Let the Right One In, there was Dark Shadows and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. And then there is the most prominent of them all: Dracula, immortalized by Bram Stoker in 1897. Whether they’re evil, bloodsucking monsters or sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight, vampires have been capturing our imagination since their modest beginnings in the rustic fantasies of southeastern Europe in the early eighteenth century. Today, they’re everywhere, appearing even in movies in Japan and Korea and in reggae music in Jamaica and South Africa. Why have vampires gone viral in recent years?

In The Rise of the Vampire, Erik Butler seeks to explain our enduring fascination with the creatures of the night. Exploring why a being of humble origins has achieved success of such monstrous proportions, Butler considers the vampire in myth, literature, film, journalism, political cartoons, music, television, and video games. He describes how and why they have come to give expression to the darker side of human life—though vampires evoke age-old mystery, they also embody many of the uncertainties of the modern world. Butler also ponders the role global markets and digital technology have played in making vampires a worldwide phenomenon.

Whether you’re a fan of classic vampire tales or new additions to the mythology, The Rise of the Vampire is a fascinating look at our collective obsession with the undead.

'Avant-garde' Art Groups in China, 1979-1989

Paul Gladston — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This book gives a critical account of four of the most significant avant-garde Chinese art groups and associations of the late 1970s and ’80s. It is made up largely of conversations conducted by the author with members of these organizations that provide insight into the circumstances of artistic production during the decade leading up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. The conversations are supported by an extended introduction and other comprehensive notes that give a detailed overview of the historical circumstances under which the groups and associations developed.

Breakfast Book

Andrew Dalby — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

You’ve heard it from doctors, nutritionists, and your mom: breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s also one of the most diverse, varying greatly from family to family and region to region, even while individuals tend to eat the same thing every day. While Americans traditionally like to chow down on eggs, cereal, and doughnuts, the Japanese eat rice and miso soup, and New Zealanders enjoy porridge. But while we know bacon and sausage links belong alongside pancakes and waffles in the early morning hours, we don’t know how breakfast came to be. Taking a multifaceted approach to the story of the morning meal, The Breakfast Book collects narratives of breakfast in an attempt to pin down the mottled history of eating in the A.M.

In search of what people have thought and written—and tasted—about breakfast, Andrew Dalby traces the meal’s origins back to the Neolithic revolution. He follows the trail of toast crumbs from the ancient Near East and classical Greece to modern Europe and across the globe, rediscovering stories of breakfast in three thousand years of fiction, memoirs, and art. Using a multitude of entertaining breakfast facts, anecdotes, and images, he reveals why breakfast is so often the backdrop for unexpected meetings, why so many people eat breakfast out, and why this often silent meal is also so reassuring.

Featuring a selection of historic and contemporary breakfast recipes from around the world, The Breakfast Book is the first book to explore the history of this inimitable meal and will make an ideal morning companion to crumpets, deviled kidneys, and spanakopita alike.

Family Troubles?

Jane Ribbens McCarthy; Carol-Ann Hooper; Val Gillies — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

As the everyday lives of children and young people are increasingly understood as matters of public policy and concern, the question of how we can understand the difference between "normal" family troubles and troubled or troubling families has become more important. In this timely and thought-provoking book, a wide range of contributors address topics such as infant care, sibling conflict, divorce, disability, illness, substance abuse, violence, kinship care, and forced marriage, in an effort to explore how the concept of trouble features in normal families and how the concept of normal features in troubled families.

Occupy

W. J. T. Mitchell; Bernard E. Harcourt; Michael Taussig — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Mic check! Mic check! Lacking amplification in Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street protestors addressed one another by repeating and echoing speeches throughout the crowd. In Occupy, W. J. T. Mitchell, Bernard E. Harcourt, and Michael Taussig take the protestors’ lead and perform their own resonant call-and-response, playing off of each other in three essays that engage the extraordinary Occupy movement that has swept across the world, examining everything from self-immolations in the Middle East to the G8 crackdown in Chicago to the many protest signs still visible worldwide.

“You break through the screen like Alice in Wonderland,” Taussig writes in the opening essay, “and now you can’t leave or do without it.” Following Taussig’s artful blend of participatory ethnography and poetic meditation on Zuccotti Park, political and legal scholar Harcourt examines the crucial difference between civil and political disobedience. He shows how by effecting the latter—by rejecting the very discourse and strategy of politics—Occupy Wall Street protestors enacted a radical new form of protest. Finally, media critic and theorist Mitchell surveys the global circulation of Occupy images across mass and social media and looks at contemporary works by artists such as Antony Gormley and how they engage the body politic, ultimately examining the use of empty space itself as a revolutionary monument.

Occupy stands not as a primer on or an authoritative account of 2011’s revolutions, but as a snapshot, a second draft of history, beyond journalism and the polemics of the moment—an occupation itself.

Stuck in Place

Patrick Sharkey — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the 1960s, many believed that the civil rights movement’s successes would foster a new era of racial equality in America. Four decades later, the degree of racial inequality has barely changed. To understand what went wrong, Patrick Sharkey argues that we have to understand what has happened to African American communities over the last several decades. In Stuck in Place, Sharkey describes how political decisions and social policies have led to severe disinvestment from black neighborhoods, persistent segregation, declining economic opportunities, and a growing link between African American communities and the criminal justice system.

As a result, neighborhood inequality that existed in the 1970s has been passed down to the current generation of African Americans. Some of the most persistent forms of racial inequality, such as gaps in income and test scores, can only be explained by considering the neighborhoods in which black and white families have lived over multiple generations. This multigenerational nature of neighborhood inequality also means that a new kind of urban policy is necessary for our nation’s cities. Sharkey argues for urban policies that have the potential to create transformative and sustained changes in urban communities and the families that live within them, and he outlines a durable urban policy agenda to move in that direction.

Billion-Dollar Fish

Kevin M. Bailey — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Alaska pollock is everywhere. If you’re eating fish but you don’t know what kind it is, it’s almost certainly pollock. Prized for its generic fish taste, pollock masquerades as crab meat in california rolls and seafood salads, and it feeds millions as fish sticks in school cafeterias and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches at McDonald’s. That ubiquity has made pollock the most lucrative fish harvest in America—the fishery in the United States alone has an annual value of over one billion dollars. But even as the money rolls in, pollock is in trouble: in the last few years, the pollock population has declined by more than half, and some scientists are predicting the fishery’s eventual collapse.

In Billion-Dollar Fish, Kevin M. Bailey combines his years of firsthand pollock research with a remarkable talent for storytelling to offer the first natural history of Alaska pollock. Crucial to understanding the pollock fishery, he shows, is recognizing what aspects of its natural history make pollock so very desirable to fish, while at the same time making it resilient, yet highly vulnerable to overfishing. Bailey delves into the science, politics, and economics surrounding Alaska pollock in the Bering Sea, detailing the development of the fishery, the various political machinations that have led to its current management, and, perhaps most important, its impending demise. He approaches his subject from multiple angles, bringing in the perspectives of fishermen, politicians, environmentalists, and biologists, and drawing on revealing interviews with players who range from Greenpeace activists to fishing industry lawyers.

Seamlessly weaving the biology and ecology of pollock with the history and politics of the fishery, as well as Bailey’s own often raucous tales about life at sea, Billion-Dollar Fish is a book for every person interested in the troubled relationship between fish and humans, from the depths of the sea to the dinner plate.

Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art

Vinzenz Hediger; Barbara Le Maitre; Julia Noordegraaf; Cosetta G. Saba — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This vibrantly illustrated introduction to the emerging field of the preservation and presentation of media art brings together the contributions of authors from all over Europe and the United States. This volume can serve as a textbook for students in advanced degree programs in media art and museum studies, as well as an invaluable introduction for general readers. A potent combination of incisive scholarly articles and focused case studies, Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art offers a comprehensive overview of the history, theory, and practical skills of preserving media art.

Perú: Cerros de Kampankis

Nigel Pitman — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The Kampankis mountains are a knife-thin ridge in northern Peru that rises 1,435 m above the surrounding Amazon lowlands. For three weeks, a group of researchers explored both the biological diversity and cultural values of the Cerros de Kampankis landscape, with the aim of promoting the long-term conservation of the area by the local Awajún and Wampis indigenous peoples. Field Museum and Peruvian scientists recorded over 1,700 species of plants, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, including 25 species that appear to be new to science. The report is presented in Spanish and English, and includes conservation recommendations, a technical report on the biological and social findings, appendices, and an executive summary in Wampis and Awajún.

Open Roads, Closed Borders

Michael Gott; Thibaut Schilt — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This is the first collection of essays about French-language road movies, a particularly rich yet critically neglected cinematic category. These films, the contributors argue, offer important perspectives on contemporary French ideas about national identity, France’s former colonies, Europe, and the rest of the world. Taken together, the essays illustrate how travel and road motifs have enabled directors of various national origins and backgrounds to reimagine space and move beyond simple oppositions such as Islam and secularism, local and global, home and away, France and Africa, and East and West.

Poverty, Ethics and Justice

H. P. P. [Hennie] Lötter — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Poverty violates fundamental human values through its impact on individuals and on human environments, and it goes against the core values of democratic societies. Drawing on numerous scientific studies as well as his own experience witnessing the systematic poverty in his home country of South Africa, H. P. P. [Hennie] Lötter presents a holistic profile of poverty and its effects on human lives all the while accounting for the complexity of each individual case. He argues that shared ethical values must guide the planning and distribution of aid and that our society must reevaluate our notions of justice and reimagine the role of the state in order to enable collective human responsibility for poverty’s successful eradication.

Pop Goes the Avant-Garde

Rossella Ferrari — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China is the first comprehensive review of the history and development of avant-garde drama and theater in the People’s Republic of China since 1976. Drawing on a range of critical perspectives in the fields of comparative literature, theater, performance, and culture studies, the book explores key artistic movements and phenomena that have emerged in China’s major cultural centers in the last several decades.

It surveys the work of China’s most influential dramatists, directors and performance groups, with a special focus on Beijing-based playwright, director and filmmaker Meng Jinghui—the former enfant terrible of Beijing theater, who is now one of Asia’s foremost theater personalities. Through an extensive critique of theories of modernism and the avant-garde, the author reassesses the meanings, functions and socio-historical significance of this work in non-Western contexts by proposing a new theoretical construct—the pop avant-garde—and exploring new ways to understand and conceptualize aesthetic practices beyond Euro-American cultures and critical discourses.

Politics of Civil Society

Fred Powell — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In this fully revised edition of his groundbreaking book, Fred Powell looks behind “the mirror of power” to discover the real civil society—or Big Society—that lies beneath it. Articulating three forms of civil society—radical, liberal, and conservative—he examines a complex interplay between state and community, arguing that citizens contend for power via civil society. This is both a historic pursuit dating to antiquity and a contemporary democratic struggle between competing visions of modernity, the stakes of which are no less than “real” politics themselves as experienced by everyday citizens. The second edition includes a new concluding chapter on practical and policy implications.

Politics of Civil Society

Fred Powell — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Quorum

William Fuller — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Quorum, the latest book from William Fuller, is a collection of vivid detours and deadpan visions arranged into forty-five sonnet-like poems. Employing an ear “that hears not what the eye / sees not, in detail,” the poet makes his rounds through a menagerie of abstract persons and personified abstractions, carefully feeding them “their weight in flowers,” to achieve the idiosyncratic consistency of a world transected by allusive filaments of “clouds that don’t exist.” Metaphysical wit freezes up the system and then gives it a liquidity. But “there’s a trace of something else that slips in,” which the poet seems at pains to not identify. If it’s not quite song, neither is it simply irony, nor is it a desire to exceed these, although all are required to make a quorum.

"Fuller’s work is engaging on a deep level like only the great works are. [D]efinitely one of the best books that I have come across lately and is one that should be on any reader’s shelf."—William Allegrezza on Watchword

Nanoart

Paul Thomas — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Examining art that intersects with science and seeks to make visible what cannot ordinarily be seen with the naked eye, provides thorough insight into new understandings of materiality and life. This book includes an extensive overview of the history of nanoart from the work of Umberto Boccioni right up to present-day artists. The author looks specifically at art inspired by nanotechnological research made possible by the Scanning Tunneling Microscope and Atomic Force Microscope in the 1980s, as well as the development of other instruments of nanotechnological experimentation. Nanoart is a sustained consideration of this fascinating artistic approach that challenge how we see and understand our world.

International Garden Photographer of the Year

Philip Smith — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The International Garden Photographer of the Year competition has blossomed into one of the premiere showcases for nature and landscape photography, receiving thousands of entries from both professional and amateur participants. The competition encourages photos that take fresh approaches to their subjects, pushing the boundaries of garden photography. New categories this year are Wildflower Landscapes and Wildlife in the Garden, joining others such as Beautiful Gardens, Greening the City, and a special Young Garden Photographer of the Year.

This eagerly anticipated sixth collection of finalists brings together an exceptional group of photos, ranging from a split-second shot of hummingbird wings to eerily beautiful x-rays of flowers. Photos spill across the pages, allowing readers to pore over every detail. And though the beauty of the images can speak for itself, each photo comes with descriptions that tell how the photographer caught each moment and what camera and settings were used. The collection reminds us that despite advances in technology, the people behind the cameras are still the true talent.

This year’s best photos will be shown in exhibitions across the world, with shows in New York City, London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Nuremburg, Lisbon, and more. With a winning combination of beautiful images and insight into the photographer’s process, this collection will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of any gardener, nature lover, or photography enthusiast.

Illustrating Shakespeare

Peter Whitfield — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

For centuries, artists have been drawn to the plays of Shakespeare, translating his lines into brushstrokes and interpreting his characters and scenes in their own vision. From Henry Fuseli’s Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head and William Blake’s Brutus and the Ghost of Caesar to Eugène Delacroix’s Othello and Desdemona and John Millais’s Ophelia, these works will forever influence our reception of the Bard.

In Illustrating Shakespeare, Peter Whitfield draws on an extraordinary array of historical evidence to chronicle the way artists have embraced Shakespeare over the years. Whitfield shows how some artists succeeded in capturing the psychological truth of the dramas, while others merely dressed them up to suit the taste of their time. In addition, he reveals how the history of Shakespearean art parallels that of theater production. The artistic tradition spawned by Shakespeare’s plays is extremely important to his legacy, making this gorgeous volume a must-read for scholars and fans alike.

Literary Lacan

Santanu Biswas — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The relationship between literature and psychology is long and richly complex, and no more so than in the work of Jacques Lacan, the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud. The Literary Lacan: From Literature to ‘Lituraterre’ and Beyond is dedicated to assessing Lacan’s significant contribution to literary studies and the contribution, in turn, of literature to Lacanian psychoanalysis.

The first essays in this collection provide close readings of Lacan’s literature-related work, specifically his work on Hamlet, his homage to Marguerite Duras and Lewis Carroll, his concept of Lituraterre, and his seminar on James Joyce. Other essays examine Lacan’s theories in conjunction with works of major writers such as Samuel Beckett. The book concludes with essays that investigate Lacan and literature more broadly, including the applicability of literature to psychoanalysis.

With well-known contributors including Slavoj Zizek, Jacques-Alain Miller, Russell Grigg and Ellie Ragland, this volume will appeal not only to specialists in literary and Lacanian theory but also to students and enthusiasts of the master and the literature that inspired him.

Local Portraiture

Carmen Pérez González — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This thoughtfully and meticulously researched book explores the work of indigenous Iranian photographers and the way in which their photographs reflect their society and surroundings. In order to highlight how photography reflects local culture, Carmen Pérez González, a photographer herself, offers a comparative visual analysis of nineteenth-century Iranian photographs and paintings created during the same time period and in the same place in order to show that aesthetic preferences are rooted in the socio-cultural habits of artists. This lushly illustrated book is a testimony to the unique power and historical value of photographic portraits and their enduring power to capture local realities.

Louis I. Kahn - Silence and Light

Alessandro Vassella — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Louis I. Kahn (1901–74) was one of the foremost architects in America during the twentieth century. His notable buildings include the Yale Study Center; the Salk Institute in Pasadena, California; and the Exeter Library in Exeter, New Hampshire. On February 12, 1969, Kahn gave a lecture at the School of Architecture at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. Entitled Silence and Light, the lecture explains Kah's spiritual understanding of architecture, which goes far deeper than simply constructing buildings. He also gives a remarkably prescient account of a belief in sustainable architecture that prefigures the twenty-first century’s focus on green technology. The lecture is represented in transcripts into five different languages (German, Italian, English, French, and Spanish), as well as an audio recording of Kahn giving the lecture in English included on CD. To complement the original text, the editor has included a preface written by Kahn’s close friend and fellow architect Balkrishna V. Doshi, as well as many of Kahn’s own images and drawings, some of which have never been published before.

Legend

Marie Bronsard; Sonia Alland — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In this strikingly original memoir, Marie Bronsard reweaves the history of her family—and the legend of her grandmother—leaving no stone unturned and no skeleton in the closet.

Egocentric and domineering, Bronsard’s grandmother was once a vibrant and sensual beauty. In Indochina at the end of the Second World War, she thrived in the social life of the French colony, but her young soldier husband sought a quieter existence, finding solace in the companionship of their adolescent daughter, Bronsard’s mother. The consequences of this choice reverberate throughout the family. But far from being an airing of grievance or dirty laundry, Bronsard’s memoir has the air of catharsis—here, the pain, secrets, and comic moments of Bronsard’s family are remembered with gentle humor, understanding, and affection. A wry irony tempers emotion, and it is in these pages that the author at last finds it possible to name the woman of the legend and perhaps bring her grandmother a measure of peace.

Memories from the Twentieth Century

Luigi Pintor; Gregory Elliot — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In these three short books—Servabo: A Fin De Siècle Memoir, Miss Kirchgessner, and The Medlar Tree, collected in one volume in English for the first time—Luigi Pinto retraces a life marked, often in spite of itself, by politics. At once intransigent and ironic, these autobiographical texts are written “to reorder in the imagination things that don’t add up in reality.”

From the idyll of his Sardinian childhood to the transformative experience of the anti-Fascist resistance, and from post-war militancy to the dismal regression of Italian culture, Pintor captures memories that are intensely personal and inseparable from political and intellectual experience. Episodes and observations recur across all three books, but the tropes of autobiography are insistently displaced. Sparse and evocative prose, borrowing from the aphorism and fable, struggles to give form to personal and political despair, while Pintor never relents on the attachments and convictions that shape a life.

Mutability

Andrea Brady — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

A chronicle of motherhood and infancy, Brady’s Mutability marks the excesses of attention and love in this unique relationship, the gradual unfurling of one person into two. In poems and prose, these scripts offer a “model of duplicity,” revealing how the beginnings of language, the spaces which open up through movement, the undeniable possibility of harm, and the unbearable intimacy between mother and child challenge the premise of individual autonomy. Seeking “a writing of honest particularity, not clean, in a form which would catch rather than cauterize this pouring,” Mutability brilliantly captures the experience of motherhood.

At the same time, Brady explores the child-space, a utopian place of discovery and adaptation, as an arena of risk, violence, possession, and privation. Carefully observing the consequences of “the beginning of all possibility, and the beginning of its finitude,” the book notes the child’s discovery of being a new person to “the discovery of an exit.” Brady’s unique and moving book celebrates and investigates life’s most essential relationship.

Monastic Wales

Janet Burton; Karen Stöber — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Monastic Wales brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, working in the areas of history, archaeology, literature, and material culture, to investigate the importance of medieval monasteries in the shaping of Welsh culture, politics, society, and economy. It demonstrates the importance of Welsh monasteries and nunneries, chronicling the many and diverse ways in which religious men and women and their communities contributed to the shaping of the equally diverse regions we now call Wales.

Female Gothic Histories

Diana Wallace — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Female Gothic Histories is an important new study of the ways in which women writers have used the gothic novel to symbolize and counter their exclusion from traditional historical narratives. Beginning with a detailed reading of Sophia Lee’s critically neglected The Recess, one of the earliest historical gothic fictions, Diana Wallace traces the development of this form from works by Elizabeth Gaskell, Vernon Lee, Daphne du Maurier, and the modern gothics of Victoria Holt, to the phenomenally popular novels of Sarah Waters.

George Eliot and the Gothic Novel

Royce Mahawatte — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

George Eliot and the Gothic Novel tracks George Eliot’s reading of gothic and sensational literature and her responses to them in her own works. Royce Mahawatte focuses on the frightening, startling, and melodramatic elements of Eliot’s fiction, placing Eliot within a culture of mid-Victorian sensationalism and highlighting the connections between her and authors like Mary Braddon, Wilkie Collins, and Edward Bulwer Lytton. Mahawatte argues that suspenseful and popular tropes play a significant role in Eliot’s literary ethics and creativity and that our understanding of the author’s writing needs to be broadened to include her extensive and complex engagement with the gothic tradition.

How Europe Shapes British Public Policy

Janice Morphet — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

How Europe Shapes British Public Policy examines how the European Union became a sectarian issue for citizens of the UK. It analyzes the effects of EU membership in the shaping of key areas, including trade and privatization, the single market, the environment, and the development and implementation of a devolved and decentralized governance. Discussing the ways UK citizens have grown politically disengaged as a result of EU political practices and policy making, it goes on to examine the implications this has had for the depoliticization of government and civil services.

Dark Company

Gert Loschütz; Samuel P. Willcocks — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

“Of course I had to end up here . . .”

Over ten rainy nights, Thomas, an ex-bargeman who used to be skipper of his own boat, walks the muddy fields of the landlocked German interior and remembers the events that lost him his home, his boat, and his livelihood: his apprenticeship in the cold halls of the Royal Naval College in London; the dangers of the mean streets and waterfront of New York in the 1970s, and Poland under martial law; Germany after the reunification, when for a year or so it seemed that the whole country drifted rudderless, drawn by the current of history to who knows where. In this novel from Gert Loschütz, Thomas remembers childhood, his first love, and the warnings of his grandfather: Beware the dark company! This mysterious band of men and women dressed in black cast a shadow over his story, as he wrestles with the secrets, the unplumbed depths of his soul, the hazards lurking below a seemingly placid surface, and throughout it all, the rain, falling night after night.

Dark Company is a superb example of a distinctly German tradition in weird fiction which claims its roots in Kafka and Herbert Rosendorfer.

David Gorlæus (1591-1612)

Christoph Lüthy — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

When David Gorlæus, a prospective theology student, passed away tragically at twenty-one years old, he left behind two highly innovative manuscripts, which were published posthumously in 1620 and 1651, respectively. As his identity was unknown, seventeenth-century readers understood him both as an anti-Aristotelian thinker and a precursor of Descartes. In contrast, by the twentieth century, historians depicted him as an atomist, natural scientist, and even a chemist. David Gorlæus (1591–1612) seeks to pull together what is known of this enigmatic figure. Combining multiple historical sources, Christoph Lüthy provides a narrative of Gorlæus’s life that casts light on his exceptional body of work and places it firmly at the intersection between philosophy, the nascent natural sciences, and theology.

“Christoph Lüthy is the first to tell the complete story of David Gorlæus and to reconstruct his image on the basis of all remaining sources. Showing in a convincing way that Gorlæus is one of the key figures in the renewal of atomistic philosophy in the seventeenth century and a major influence on many philosophers that are much better known, he leaves us with the melancholy picture of someone who died too young to become one of the heroes of the scientific revolution.”—Theo Verbeek, Utrecht University

Environmental Law and Policy in Wales

Patrick Bishop; Mark Stallworthy — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Environmental Law and Policy in Wales addresses key law and policy issues that have arisen over the last several years in Wales in response to the changing climate. Editors Patrick Bishop and Mark Stallworthy bring together leading members of the Welsh environmental law academy to deliberate on the development of environmental protection legislation in Wales and its effect on sustainability in the near future and beyond.

Cinema Makers

Anna Schober — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The Cinema Makers investigates how cinema spectators in southeastern and central European cities became cinema makers through such practices as squatting in existing cinema spaces, organizing cinema "events," writing about film, and making films themselves. Drawing on a corpus of interviews with cinema activists in Germany, Austria, and the former Yugoslavia, Anna Schober compares the activities and artistic productions they staged in cities such as Vienna, Cologne, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica, Zagreb, and Sarajevo. The resulting study illuminates the differences and similarities in the development of political culture—and cinema’s role in that development—in European countries with pluralist-democratic, one-party socialist, and post-socialist traditions.

Starlite Terrace

Patrick Roth; Krishna Winston — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building—the titular Starlite Terrace—Patrick Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth’s dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation.

In “The Man at Noah’s Window,” Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in High Noon. In “Eclipse of the Sun,” Moss, who lives in fear of the next holocaust, awaits a visit from the long-lost daughter he has tracked down. In “Rider on the Storm,” Gary, a rock drummer and born-again Christian, who “almost played” on the Turtles’ 60s-hit “Happy Together,” strives to find escape from his personal guilt. And in “The Woman in the Sea of Stars,” June, a former Hollywood studio secretary whose husband once cheated on her with Marilyn Monroe, makes the best of a disconnected life until she emerges reborn through ashes strewn in the illuminated swimming pool of the Starlite Terrace.

In each of these four tales of wanna-bes and almost-weres, Roth's L.A. portraits unfold in rare style, and, in Krishna Winston’s masterful translation, the hopeless, loveless perversion of an Ed Ruscha-inspired California becomes a compelling pageant of all-American grotesques that is not to be missed.

Ware's Victorian Dictionary of Slang and Phrase

J. Redding Ware — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Acutely aware of the changes affecting English at the end of the Victorian era, writer and journalist J. Redding Ware set out to record words and turns of phrase from all walks of life, from the curses in common use by sailors to the rhyming slang of the street and the jargon of the theater dandies. In doing so, he extended the lifespan of words like “air-hole,” “lally-gagging,” and “bow-wow mutton.”

First published in 1909 and reproduced here with a new introduction by Oxford English Dictionary editor John Simpson, Ware’s Victorian Dictionary of Slang and Phrase reflects the rich history of unofficial English. Many of the expressions are obsolete; one is not likely to have the misfortune of encountering a “parlour jumper.” Order a “shant of bivvy” at the pub and you’ll be met with a blank stare. But some of the entries reveal the origins of expressions still in use today, such as calling someone a “bad egg” to indicate that they are dishonest or of ill-repute. While showing the significant influence of American English on Victorian slang, the Dictionary also demonstrates how impressively innovative its speakers were.

A treasure trove of everyday language of the nineteenth century, this book has much to offer in terms of insight into the intriguing history of English and will be of interest to anyone with a passion for words.

Thresherphobe

Mark Halliday — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In his sixth collection, Mark Halliday continues to seek ways of using the smart playfulness of such poets as Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch to explore life’s emotional mysteries—both dire and hilarious—from the perpetual dissolving of our past to the perpetual frustration of our cravings for ego-triumph, for sublime connection with an erotically idealized Other, and for peace of spirit. Animated by belief in the possible truths to be reached in interpersonal speech, Halliday’s voice-driven poetry wants to find insight—or at least a stay against confusion—through personality without being trapped in personality. History will leave much of what we are on the threshing floor, Halliday notes, but in the meantime we do what we can; let posterity (if any!) say we rambled truly.

Collaborating Planner?

Ben Clifford; Mark Tewdwr-Jones — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This book aims to understand how both specific planning and broader public sector reforms have been experienced and understood by chartered town planners working at local levels of authority across Great Britain. Each chapter outlines the reaction by professionals to reforms promoted by successive central and devolved governments over the last decade, before considering the broader issues of what this tells us about how modernization is rolled out by frontline public servants. This book fills a glaring gap in scholarship and makes ideal reading for students and researchers interested in the UK planning system.

Edward Pugh of Ruthin 1763-1813

John Barrell — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

David Nash

Michelle Payne — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Over a forty-year span, a select group of trees has found new life beyond their natural ones as part of David Nash’s stunning sculptures. Using only materials that have met an organic end, Nash has shaped and scorched, chiseled and chopped to create fascinating and often epic sculptures. Thanks to a year-long residency at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the public had a unique chance to see Nash in action as he worked to create an evolving exhibition in one of the world’s greatest gardens.

Capturing all of this and more is the retrospective David Nash: A Natural Gallery. It serves as a visual interpretation of Nash’s work, both during his residency at the Gardens and his artistic career as a whole. The book chronicles the exhibits Nash created over his year at Kew, with rich photographs that show the works developing over time and their interplay with the changing seasonal background. Older works are also featured with explanations that detail Nash’s process, including where the source materials were found, what tools were used, and interpretations of the work. The book also includes essays that explore different facets of Nash’s art and practice, in which academics and critics offer their analysis of the methods used by Nash and his commitment to the environment, which he calls our “outer skin.” Together, the striking images and insightful analyses give readers a special glimpse of the creative processes as Nash creates his ethereal statements about humanity’s relationship with nature.

Reclaiming Individualism

Paul Spicker — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Reclaiming Individualism reviews the scope of individualist approaches to public policy, considering how they shape contemporary policy practices. It argues for a concept of individualism based on rights, human dignity, shared interests, and social protection, providing a thorough analysis and classification of individualism as applied to social and public policy. An important resource for those working or studying in these fields, it is a powerful restatement of some of the key values that led to the establishment of individualism as such a strong social force.

Occupy

W. J. T. Mitchell; Bernard E. Harcourt; Michael Taussig — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Attila

Giuseppe Verdi; Helen Greenwald; Temistocle Solera; Maria Piave — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Verdi’s Attila, his ninth opera, had its premiere at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in March 1846. Based on the German play Attila, King of the Huns, the libretto has its own storied history: as Verdi fell seriously ill before the work’s completion, the main librettist moved permanently to Madrid, leaving the last act of Attila only a sketch. It was then that Verdi called upon Francesco Maria Piave, the librettist for two of his earlier works, who at the composer’s behest scratched plans for a large choral finale and decided instead to concentrate on the dramatic roles of the protagonists.

In years since, Attila has become one of Verdi’s most popular and oft-staged early works. The composers’ inimitable vitality, soaring arcs of melody, grand choruses, and passion are here amply apparent. This critical edition, based on Verdi’s autograph full score preserved at the British Library, restores the opera’s original text and accurately reflects the composers’ colorful and elaborate musical setting, while Helen Greenwald’s masterful introduction discusses the opera’s origins, sources, and performance questions, and her critical commentary details editorial problems and their solutions.

Place That Matters Yet

Sara Byala — Mon, 13 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages

Eleanor Johnson — Sat, 11 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Literary scholars often avoid the category of the aesthetic in discussions of ethics, believing that purely aesthetic judgments can vitiate analyses of a literary work’s sociopolitical heft and meaning. In Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages, Eleanor Johnson reveals that aesthetics—the formal aspects of literary language that make it sense-perceptible—are indeed inextricable from ethics in the writing of medieval literature.

Johnson brings a keen formalist eye to bear on the prosimetric form: the mixing of prose with lyrical poetry. This form descends from the writings of the sixth-century Christian philosopher Boethius—specifically his famous prison text, Consolation of Philosophy—to the late medieval English tradition. Johnson argues that Boethius’s text had a broad influence not simply on the thematic and philosophical content of subsequent literary writing, but also on the specific aesthetic construction of several vernacular traditions. She demonstrates the underlying prosimetric structures in a variety of Middle English texts—including Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and portions of the Canterbury Tales, Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love, John Gower’s Confessio amantis, and Thomas Hoccleve’s autobiographical poetry—and asks how particular formal choices work, how they resonate with medieval literary-theoretical ideas, and how particular poems and prose works mediate the tricky business of modeling ethical transformation for a readership.

Arbitrary Rule

Mary Nyquist — Fri, 10 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Slavery appears as a figurative construct during the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century, and again in the American and French revolutions, when radicals represent their treatment as a form of political slavery. What, if anything, does figurative, political slavery have to do with transatlantic slavery? In Arbitrary Rule, Mary Nyquist explores connections between political and chattel slavery by excavating the tradition of Western political thought that justifies actively opposing tyranny. She argues that as powerful rhetorical and conceptual constructs, Greco-Roman political liberty and slavery reemerge at the time of early modern Eurocolonial expansion; they help to create racialized “free” national identities and their “unfree” counterparts in non-European nations represented as inhabiting an earlier, privative age.

Arbitrary Rule is the first book to tackle political slavery’s discursive complexity, engaging Eurocolonialism, political philosophy, and literary studies, areas of study too often kept apart. Nyquist proceeds through analyses not only of texts that are canonical in political thought—by Aristotle, Cicero, Hobbes, and Locke—but also of literary works by Euripides, Buchanan, Vondel, Montaigne, and Milton, together with a variety of colonialist and political writings, with special emphasis on tracts written during the English revolution. She illustrates how “antityranny discourse,” which originated in democratic Athens, was adopted by republican Rome, and revived in early modern Western Europe, provided members of a “free” community with a means of protesting a threatened reduction of privileges or of consolidating a collective, political identity. Its semantic complexity, however, also enabled it to legitimize racialized enslavement and imperial expansion.

Throughout, Nyquist demonstrates how principles relating to political slavery and tyranny are bound up with a Roman jurisprudential doctrine that sanctions the power of life and death held by the slaveholder over slaves and, by extension, the state, its representatives, or its laws over its citizenry.

Scramble for the Amazon and the "Lost Paradise" of Euclides da Cunha

Susanna B. Hecht — Thu, 09 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The fortunes of the late nineteenth century’s imperial and industrial powers depended on a single raw material—rubber—with only one source: the Amazon basin. And so began the scramble for the Amazon—a decades-long conflict that found Britain, France, Belgium, and the United States fighting with and against the new nations of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil for the forest’s riches. In the midst of this struggle, Euclides da Cunha, engineer, journalist, geographer, political theorist, and one of Brazil’s most celebrated writers, led a survey expedition to the farthest reaches of the river, among the world’s most valuable, dangerous, and little-known landscapes.

The Scramble for the Amazon tells the story of da Cunha’s terrifying journey, the unfinished novel born from it, and the global strife that formed the backdrop for both. Haunted by his broken marriage, da Cunha trekked through a beautiful region thrown into chaos by guerrilla warfare, starving migrants, and native slavery. All the while, he worked on his masterpiece, a nationalist synthesis of geography, philosophy, biology, and journalism he named the Lost Paradise. Da Cunha intended his epic to unveil the Amazon’s explorers, spies, natives, and brutal geopolitics, but, as Susanna B. Hecht recounts, he never completed it—his wife’s lover shot him dead upon his return.

At once the biography of an extraordinary writer, a masterly chronicle of the social, political, and environmental history of the Amazon, and a superb translation of the remaining pieces of da Cunha’s project, The Scramble for the Amazon is a work of thrilling intellectual ambition.

These Kids

Kysa Nygreen — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Few would deny that getting ahead is a legitimate goal of learning, but the phrase implies a cruel hierarchy: a student does not simply get ahead, but gets ahead of others. In These Kids, Kysa Nygreen turns a critical eye on this paradox. Offering the voices and viewpoints of students at a “last chance” high school in California, she tells the story of students who have, in fact, been left behind.

Detailing a youth-led participatory action research project that she coordinated, Nygreen uncovers deep barriers to educational success that are embedded within educational discourse itself. Struggling students internalize descriptions of themselves as “at risk,” “low achieving,” or “troubled”—and by adopting the very language of educators, they also adopt its constraints and presumption of failure. Showing how current educational discourse does not, ultimately, provide an adequate vision of change for students at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, she levies a powerful argument that social justice in education is impossible today precisely because of how we talk about it.

These Kids

Kysa Nygreen — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Stung!

Lisa-ann Gershwin; Sylvia Earle — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Our oceans are becoming increasingly inhospitable to life—growing toxicity and rising temperatures coupled with overfishing have led many marine species to the brink of collapse. And yet there is one creature that is thriving in this seasick environment: the beautiful, dangerous, and now incredibly numerous jellyfish. As foremost jellyfish expert Lisa-ann Gershwin describes in Stung!, the jellyfish population bloom is highly indicative of the tragic state of the world’s ocean waters, while also revealing the incredible tenacity of these remarkable creatures.

Recent documentaries about swarms of giant jellyfish invading Japanese fishing grounds and summertime headlines about armadas of stinging jellyfish in the Mediterranean and Chesapeake are only the beginning—jellyfish are truly taking over the oceans. Despite their often dazzling appearance, jellyfish are simple creatures with simple needs: namely, fewer predators and competitors, warmer waters to encourage rapid growth, and more places for their larvae to settle and grow. In general, oceans that are less favorable to fish are more favorable to jellyfish, and these are the very conditions that we are creating through mechanized trawling, habitat degradation, coastal construction, pollution, and climate change.

Despite their role as harbingers of marine destruction, jellyfish are truly enthralling creatures in their own right, and in Stung!, Gershwin tells stories of jellyfish both attractive and deadly while illuminating many interesting and unusual facts about their behaviors and environmental adaptations. She takes readers back to the Proterozoic era, when jellyfish were the top predator in the marine ecosystem—at a time when there were no fish, no mammals, and no turtles; and she explores the role jellies have as middlemen of destruction, moving swiftly into vulnerable ecosystems. The story of the jellyfish, as Gershwin makes clear, is also the story of the world’s oceans, and Stung! provides a unique and urgent look at their inseparable histories—and future.

Top Student, Top School?

Alexandria Walton Radford — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Most of us think that valedictorians can write their own ticket. By reaching the top of their class they have proven their merit, so their next logical step should be to attend the nation’s very best universities. Yet in Top Student, Top School?, Alexandria Walton Radford reveals that many valedictorians do not enroll in prestigious institutions. Employing an original five-state study that surveyed nine hundred public high school valedictorians, she sets out to determine when and why valedictorians end up at less selective schools, showing that social class makes all the difference.

Radford traces valedictorians’ paths to college and presents damning evidence that high schools do not provide sufficient guidance on crucial factors affecting college selection, such as reputation, financial aid, and even the application process itself. Left in a bewildering environment of seemingly similar options, many students depend on their parents for assistance—and this allows social class to rear its head and have a profound impact on where students attend. Simply put, parents from less affluent backgrounds are far less informed about differences in colleges’ quality, the college application process, and financial aid options, which significantly limits their child’s chances of attending a competitive school, even when their child has already managed to become valedictorian.

Top Student, Top School? pinpoints an overlooked yet critical juncture in the education process, one that stands as a barrier to class mobility. By focusing solely on valedictorians, it shows that students’ paths diverge by social class even when they are similarly well-prepared academically, and this divergence is traceable to specific failures by society, failures that we can and should address.

Does Science Need a Global Language?

Scott L. Montgomery; David Crystal — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In early 2012, the global scientific community erupted with news that the elusive Higgs boson had likely been found, providing potent validation for the Standard Model of how the universe works. Scientists from more than one hundred countries contributed to this discovery—proving, beyond any doubt, that a new era in science had arrived, an era of multinationalism and cooperative reach. Globalization, the Internet, and digital technology all play a role in making this new era possible, but something more fundamental is also at work. In all scientific endeavors lies the ancient drive for sharing ideas and knowledge, and now this can be accomplished in a single tongue— English. But is this a good thing?

In Does Science Need a Global Language?, Scott L. Montgomery seeks to answer this question by investigating the phenomenon of global English in science, how and why it came about, the forms in which it appears, what advantages and disadvantages it brings, and what its future might be. He also examines the consequences of a global tongue, considering especially emerging and developing nations, where research is still at a relatively early stage and English is not yet firmly established.

Throughout the book, he includes important insights from a broad range of perspectives in linguistics, history, education, geopolitics, and more. Each chapter includes striking and revealing anecdotes from the front-line experiences of today’s scientists, some of whom have struggled with the reality of global scientific English. He explores topics such as student mobility, publication trends, world Englishes, language endangerment, and second language learning, among many others. What he uncovers will challenge readers to rethink their assumptions about the direction of contemporary science, as well as its future.

Top Student, Top School?

Alexandria Walton Radford — Thu, 02 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Subject of Murder

Lisa Downing — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The subject of murder has always held a particular fascination for us. But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizen—a special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely?

In The Subject of Murder, Lisa Downing explores the ways in which the figure of the murderer has been made to signify a specific kind of social subject in Western modernity. Drawing on the work of Foucault in her studies of the lives and crimes of killers in Europe and the United States, Downing interrogates the meanings of media and texts produced about and by murderers. Upending the usual treatment of murderers as isolated figures or exceptional individuals, Downing argues that they are ordinary people, reflections of our society at the intersections of gender, agency, desire, and violence.

Disturbing Practices

Laura Doan — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

For decades, the history of sexuality has been a multidisciplinary project serving competing agendas. Lesbian, gay, and queer scholars have produced powerful narratives by tracing the homosexual or queer subject as continuous or discontinuous. Yet organizing historical work around categories of identity as normal or abnormal often obscures how sexual matters were known or talked about in the past. Set against the backdrop of women’s work experiences, friendships, and communities during World War I, Disturbing Practices draws on a substantial body of new archival material to expose the roadblocks still present in current practices and imagine new alternatives.

In this landmark book, Laura Doan clarifies the ethical value and political purpose of identity history—and indeed its very capacity to give rise to innovative practices borne of sustained exchange between queer studies and critical history. Disturbing Practices insists on taking seriously the imperative to step outside the logic of identity to address questions as yet unasked about the modern sexual past.

Disturbing Practices

Laura Doan — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Longevity Seekers

Ted Anton — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

People have searched for the fountain of youth everywhere from Bimini to St. Augustine. But for a steadfast group of scientists, the secret to a long life lies elsewhere: in the lowly lab worm. By suppressing the function of just a few key genes, these scientists were able to lengthen worms’ lifespans up to tenfold, while also controlling the onset of many of the physical problems that beset old age. As the global population ages, the potential impact of this discovery on society is vast—as is the potential for profit.

With The Longevity Seekers, science writer Ted Anton takes readers inside this tale that began with worms and branched out to snare innovative minds from California to Crete, investments from big biotech, and endorsements from TV personalities like Oprah and Dr. Oz. Some of the research was remarkable, such as the discovery of an enzyme in humans that stops cells from aging. And some, like an oft-cited study touting the compound resveratrol, found in red wine—proved highly controversial, igniting a science war over truth, credit, and potential profit. As the pace of discovery accelerated, so too did powerful personal rivalries and public fascination, driven by the hope that a longer, healthier life was right around the corner. Anton has spent years interviewing and working with the scientists at the frontier of longevity science, and this book offers a behind-the-scenes look at the state-of-the-art research and the impact it might have on global public health, society, and even our friends and family.

With spectacular science and an unforgettable cast of characters, The Longevity Seekers has all the elements of a great story and sheds light on discoveriesthat could fundamentally reshape human life.

Bitter Wormwood

Easterine Kire — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Kohima, 2007. A young man has just been gunned down in cold blood—the latest casualty in the conflict that has brutalized the people of Nagaland, in the neglected northeastern corner of India. Rich in culture and history, Bitter Wormwood traces the story of one man’s life from 1937 until 2007, offering poignant insight into the human cost behind the political headlines of one of India’s most beautiful regions.

In a gripping story that brings to life the processes that propel social change and transform communities, Easterine Kire skillfully renders the small incidents of Mose’s childhood, his family, and the routines and rituals of traditional village life, painting an evocative picture of a peaceful way of life, now long-vanished. The coming of radio into Mose’s family house marks the beginning of the changes that will connect them to the wider world. They learn of partition, independence, a land called America. Mose and his friends become involved in the Naga struggle for independence, and are caught in a maelstrom of violence that ends up ripping communities apart.

Chicago Business and Industry

Janice L. Reiff — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

From its humble beginnings as a fur-trading outpost, Chicago has become one of the foremost centers of world finance and trade. With its blue-collar work ethic and an economic history that extends into virtually every segment of American industry, it certainly lives up to its moniker as the City That Works.

Drawing on the award-winning Encyclopedia of Chicago, Janice L. Reiff has compiled a unique history of work in the Windy City. Beginning with an overview of the city’s commercial development, Chicago Business and Industry considers how key industries shaped—and were shaped by—both the local and global economies. The city’s phenomenal population growth, its proximity to water, and its development of railroads made Chicago one of the most productive markets for lumber and grain throughout the nineteenth century. The region’s once-booming steel industry, on the other hand, suffered a dramatic decline in the second half of the twentieth century, when already weakened demand met with increasing international competition. Chicago Business and Industry chronicles the Chicago region’s changing fortunes from its beginning.

Reiff has compiled and updated essays from the Encyclopedia covering the city’s most historically famous—and infamous—companies, from the Union Stock Yard to Montgomery Ward to the Board of Trade. The book concludes with a historical account of labor types and issues in the city, with attention to such topics as health-care workers, unemployment, and unionization. Today, Groupon and a host of other high-tech firms have led some experts to christen Chicago the Silicon Valley of the Midwest. Reiff’s new introduction takes account of these and other recent trends.

Engaging, accessible, and packed with fascinating facts, Chicago Business and Industry invites readers into the history and diversity of work in the city, helping them understand how Chicago became Chicago.

Cairo to Constantinople

Sophie Gordon — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the spring of 1862, Queen Victoria commissioned the leading British photographer Francis Bedford to accompany her son and heir, the future King Edward VII, on an ambitious journey across the Middle East. This beautifully illustrated book traces their tour throughout Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Greece alongside excerpts from Prince Edward’s diary and other newly discovered archival material, published here for the first time.

Over the course of several months, Bedford produced more than two hundred negatives, including images of architecture and stunning landscapes, from a breathtaking view of the Garden of Gethsemane to shots of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx. He was the first Christian granted permission to photograph sacred sites in Jerusalem. Bedford also captured many photographs of the people he encountered on the tour, both locals and members of the royal party.

Cairo to Constantinople is the first book to focus on the photographs taken during Prince Edward’s travels in the Middle East. Taken during a time of great change in the area, these extraordinary photographs will fascinate anyone with an interest in the history of the Middle East or in photography’s role in documenting civilization.

Marking Modern Times

Alexis McCrossen — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The public spaces and buildings of the United States are home to many thousands of timepieces—bells, time balls, and clock faces—that tower over urban streets, peek out from lobbies, and gleam in store windows. And in the streets and squares beneath them, men, women, and children wear wristwatches of all kinds. Americans have decorated their homes with clocks and included them in their poetry, sermons, stories, and songs. And as political instruments, social tools, and cultural symbols, these personal and public timekeepers have enjoyed a broad currency in art, life, and culture.

In Marking Modern Times, Alexis McCrossen relates how the American preoccupation with time led people from across social classes to acquire watches and clocks. While noting the difficulties in regulating and synchronizing so many timepieces, McCrossen expands our understanding of the development of modern time discipline, delving into the ways we have standardized time and describing how timekeepers have served as political, social, and cultural tools in a society that doesn’t merely value time, but regards access to time as a natural-born right, a privilege of being an American.