Books

Looking mainly at the years following the British victory in the second Boer War, from 1902 to 1930, Foster examines the influence of painting, writing, architecture, and photography on the construction of a shared, romanticized landscape subjectivity that was perceived as inseparable from “being South African”, and thus helped forge the imagined community of white South Africa.

The editors of this volume contend that transnational actors have exerted a powerful influence in postcommunist transitions. They demonstrate that transitions to democracy, capitalism, and nation-statehood, which scholars thought were likely to undermine one another, were facilitated by the integration of Central and East European states into an international system of complex interdependence. Transnational actors turn out to be the “dark matter” that held the various aspects of the transition together. Leading scholars debate the role and impact of transnational actors and present a promising new research program for the study of this rapidly transforming region.

During the wars for independence in Spanish South America (1808-1826), thousands of slaves enlisted under the promise of personal freedom and, in some cases, freedom for other family members. Blacks were recruited by opposing sides in these conflicts and their loyalties rested with whomever they believed would emerge victorious. The prospect of freedom was worth risking one’s life for, and wars against Spain presented unprecedented opportunities to attain it. Blanchard’s study investigates the issue of slavery from the perspectives of Royalists, patriots, and slaves. He examines the wartime political, ideological, and social dynamics that led to slave recruitment, and the subsequent repercussions in the immediate postindependence era. Under the Flags of Freedom sheds new light on the vital contribution of slaves to the wars for Latin American independence.

Intersecting Tango engages Buenos Aires during the sweeping changes of 1900-1930, to capture a culture in motion through which Buenos Aires transformed itself into a modern, cosmopolitan city. Taking the reader through a dazzling array of sites, sources, and events, Bergero conveys the city in all its complexity. Drawing on architecture and gendered spaces, photography, newspaper columns, schoolbooks, “high” and “low” literature, private letters, advertising, fashion, and popular music, she illuminates a range of urban social geographies inhabited by the city’s defining classes and groups. In mining this vast material, Bergero traces the profound change in social fabric by which these diverse identities evolved, through the processes of modernization and its many dislocations, into a new national identity capable of embodying modernity.

English has become the language of choice for global economic, political, and cultural exchange. Many developing countries (and, notably, many former Soviet bloc countries) have little choice but to “buy into English” as a path to ideological and material betterment. As Catherine Prendergast reveals, however, investing in English has not always been easy and has often disappointed expectations.

Recent acts of terrorism in Britain and Europe and the events of 9/11 in the United States have greatly influenced immigration, security, and integration policies in these countries. Yet many of the current practices surrounding these issues were developed decades ago, and are ill-suited to the dynamics of today’s global economies and immigration patterns. The contributors compare policies on these issues at three relational levels: between individual EU nations and the U.S., between the EU and U.S., and among EU nations. What emerges is a timely and critical examination of the variations and contradictions in policy at each level of interaction and how different agencies and different nations often work in opposition to each other with self-defeating results.

The poet employs colloquial diction, references pop and classical culture, and travels at 1000 miles per hour in his fourth collection. For those who think contemporary poetry is about abject confessions, vacation in Provence and opaque ‘academicisms,’ McDaniel is an intro to a new world.

In 1920, Aleksandr Antonov led an insurgency that became the largest armed peasant revolt against the Soviets during the civil war. Yet by 1921, the revolt had been crushed, and popular support for the movement had all but disappeared. Until now, details of this conflict have remained hidden. Erik Landis mines recently opened provincial and central Soviet archives and international collections to provide a depth of detail and historical analysis never before possible in this definitive account of the uprising.

Martin V. Melosi assembles a comprehensive, thoroughly researched and referenced history of sanitary services in urban America. He examines the evolution of water supply, sewage systems, and solid waste disposal during three distinct eras: The Age of Miasmas (pre-1880); The Bacteriological Revolution (1880-1945); and The New Ecology (1945 to present-day). This abridged edition includes updated text and bibliographic materials. The Sanitary City is an essential resource for those interested in environmental history, environmental engineering, science and technology, urban studies, and public health.

Winner of: George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History Urban History Association Prize for the best book in North American Urban HistoryAbel Wolman Prize from the Public Works Historical SocietySidney Edelstein Prize from the Society for the History of Technology

Gregor Mendel’s “Experiments in Plant-Hybridization,” presented in 1865, became the foundation of modern genetics. Did his research follow the rigors of real scientific inquiry, or was Mendel’s data too good to be true-the product of doctored statistics? In this book, leading experts present their conclusions on the legendary controversy surrounding the challenge to Mendel’s findings by British statistician and biologist R. A. Fisher. In 1936, Fisher suggested that Mendel’s data could have been falsified in order to support his expectations.This volume includes an overview of the controversy; the original papers of Mendel and Fisher; four of the most important papers on the debate; and new updates, by the authors, of the latter four papers, making this book the definitive last word on the subject.

In her third collection, Beatty travels inside the body to the blood that codes us, moving beyond the language of post-confessionialism into fourth-wave feminism, challenging notions of the “romantic” “and the “brutal” and how they exist within us and between us.

Big Steel is the first comprehensive history of the company at the center of America’s twentieth-century industrial life—the United States Steel Corporation. Granted unprecedented access to the U.S. Steel archives, Warren tells the compelling history of this business.

The “Silver Age” (c. 1890-1917) has been one of the most intensely studied topics in Russian literary studies, and for years scholars have struggled with its precise definition. Firmly established in the Russian cultural psyche, it continues to influence both literature and mass media. Rylkova analyzes writings by Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Nabokov, Boris Pasternak and Victor Erofeev to reveal how the construct of the Silver Age was perpetuated and ingrained.

The Floating Bridge, David Shumate’s second collection of prose poems, transports its readers over the chasm between the mundane and the enchanted. We traverse one bridge and find ourselves eavesdropping on Gertrude Stein and her gardener. We take the night bus to Gomorrah to have a look around. Halfway across, each bridge vanishes beneath our feet. Our world shifts. The commonplace begins to glow. We turn the page. Another bridge awaits.

By exploring controversies such as the veracity of the Black Legend, the location of Christopher Columbus’s mortal remains, and the survival of indigenous cultures, this study shows how recorded history became implicated in the struggles over empire.