How abolitionist businesses marshaled intense moral outrage over slavery to shape a new ethics of international commerce.

“East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves.” With these words on a sugar bowl, consumers of the early nineteenth century declared their power to change the global economy. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists from Europe to the United States to West Africa used new ideas of supply and demand, consumer credit, and branding to shape an argument for ethical capitalism.

Everill focuses on the everyday economy of the Atlantic world. Antislavery affected business operations, as companies in West Africa, including the British firm Macaulay & Babington and the American partnership of Brown & Ives, developed new tactics in order to make “legitimate” commerce pay. Everill explores how the dilemmas of conducting ethical commerce reshaped the larger moral discourse surrounding production and consumption, influencing how slavery and freedom came to be defined in the market economy. But ethical commerce was not without its ironies; the search for supplies of goods “not made by slaves”—including East India sugar—expanded the reach of colonial empires in the relentless pursuit of cheap but “free” labor.

Not Made by Slaves illuminates the early years of global consumer society, while placing the politics of antislavery firmly in the history of capitalism. It is also a stark reminder that the struggle to ensure fair trade and labor conditions continues.

“Impressive…[Readers] will be rewarded with greater understanding of historical developments that changed the relationship between consumers and producers in a global economy in ways that reverberate to this day.”
—Wall Street Journal

“Everill repositions West Africa as central to the broader Atlantic story of 18th and 19th century economic morality, its relationship with commercial ethics, and the expansion of capitalism.”
—Financial Times

“Offers a penetrating new perspective on abolition in the British Empire by spotlighting a particular cast of characters: the commercial abolitionists in West Africa who fashioned a consumer-focused, business-friendly antislavery ethics. These figures sought to prove the moral and economic superiority of non-slave labor while profiting from the transition away from slavery…Impressive.”
—Jacobin

“East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves.” With these words inscribed on a sugar bowl, nineteenth-century consumers were reminded of their power to change the global economy. Determined to strike at the heart of the slave trade, abolitionist businesses throughout the Atlantic used new ideas of supply and demand, consumer credit, and branding to make the case for ethical capitalism.

Consumers became the moral compass of capitalism as companies in West Africa, including Macaulay & Babington and Brown & Ives, developed clever new tactics to make “legitimate” commerce pay. Yet ethical trade was not without its problems. The search for goods “not made by slaves” unwittingly expanded the reach of colonial enterprises in the relentless pursuit of cheap labor. Not Made by Slaves captures the moral dilemmas roiling the early years of global consumer society and is a stark reminder of the unintended consequences of relying on consumer self-interest to transform global capitalism.

John H. Reagan was one of the most important figures in Texas history; this was the first biography of him to be published. Reagan, who was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, in 1818, came to Texas twenty-one years later—while Texas was still a republic—and stayed to play many major roles in its later economic and political development.

In this excellent biography, Ben H. Procter not only re-creates for us the character of the man, with his forthright integrity and his boundless desire for knowledge, but also places him against the background of the time in which he lived. In vivid language Procter portrays the violence and vigor of pioneer life, the excitement of frontier politics, the dedication, devotion, enthusiasm, and—ultimately—despair of the Civil War, and the bitterness of the struggle with the railroad tycoons and their gargantuan monopolies. Spanning as it does the Republic of Texas, early statehood, the Confederacy, Reconstruction, and the era of the "robber barons," the story of John H. Reagan encompasses a panoramic sweep of mid- to late-nineteenth-century United States history.

Throughout his long life, respect came to Reagan almost as a matter of course. The forceful strength of his personality made an impression few people could ignore. From the day when Colonel Durst hired the young Reagan as a tutor for his children, exclaiming, "This man is a scholar," until the day some fifty years later when Governor Hogg persuaded him to leave the U.S. Senate to become chairman of the new Railroad Commission because the Commission "must be above reproach," his extraordinary character and ability were recognized. In fact, the perceptive intelligence that made him examine all aspects of a situation, and the sturdy integrity and courage that made it impossible for him to abandon a position he believed to be right simply because it was for the moment unpopular, frequently gave him the appearance of a prophet. Although this "prophetic gift" occasionally led to interludes of public disfavor, Reagan was accorded honor, even in his own land—and in later years veneration—that any prophet might envy.

The zombie apocalypse hasn’t happened—yet—but zombies are all over popular culture. From movies and TV shows to video games and zombie walks, the undead stalk through our collective fantasies. What is it about zombies that exerts such a powerful fascination? In Not Your Average Zombie, Chera Kee offers an innovative answer by looking at zombies that don’t conform to the stereotypes of mindless slaves or flesh-eating cannibals. Zombies who think, who speak, and who feel love can be sympathetic and even politically powerful, she asserts.

Kee analyzes zombies in popular culture from 1930s depictions of zombies in voodoo rituals to contemporary film and television, comic books, video games, and fan practices such as zombie walks. She discusses how the zombie has embodied our fears of losing the self through slavery and cannibalism and shows how “extra-ordinary” zombies defy that loss of free will by refusing to be dehumanized. By challenging their masters, falling in love, and leading rebellions, “extra-ordinary” zombies become figures of liberation and resistance. Kee also thoroughly investigates how representations of racial and gendered identities in zombie texts offer opportunities for living people to gain agency over their lives. Not Your Average Zombie thus deepens and broadens our understanding of how media producers and consumers take up and use these undead figures to make political interventions in the world of the living.

The publication of the first volumes of Notable American Women in 1971 was a watershed event in women's history. By uncovering and documenting the enormous contributions that women had made--previously overlooked or underappreciated--this important reference work changed the way historians thought and wrote about American history.

This latest volume brings the project up to date, with entries on almost 500 women whose death dates fall between January 1, 1976, and December 31, 1999. The era they shared coincides with the great expansion of opportunities for women in the twentieth century. You will find here stars of the golden ages of radio, film, dance, and television; scientists and scholars; politicians and entrepreneurs; authors and aviators; civil rights activists and religious leaders; Native American craftspeople and world-renowned artists. Women from a broad spectrum of ethnic, class, political, religious, and sexual identities are all acknowledged.

For each subject, Notable American Women offers a substantial interpretive biographical essay by a distinguished authority that integrates the woman's personal life with her professional achievements set in the context of larger historical developments.

This volume will be an indispensable reference for students and scholars of women's history and for anyone interested in the rich and varied lives led by distinguished American women.

The life stories of American women--442 of them--who have in some way affected contemporary American life are explored in this lauded companion to Notable American Women, 1607-1950. The basics--the crucial dates, ancestry, parents, education, marital status, and children--provide invaluable material for both the researcher and the general reader. Beyond these essentials, a brief essay focuses on each woman's life and personality, and evaluates her career from a historical framework. Sixteen new pages of photographs specially selected for the paperback edition have been included.

This superb biographical dictionary covers the lives of exceptional women throughout three and a half centuries of American history. Here are artists, lawyers, reformers, educators, entrepreneurs, physicists, writers, pioneers, presidents' ladies, film stars. Here are those known for their deeds and those famed for their looks--the genteel and the disreputable, the highborn and slave-born. Here are the famous in all areas of endeavor--names like Ruth Benedict, Jane Addams, Willa Cather, Isadora Duncan, Carole Lombard, Sojourner Truth, Pocahontas, Texas Guinan, the Everleigh sisters, Carrie Nation, Amelia Earhart. Here also are many names rescued from obscurity.

Written in the aftermath of the catastrophic sack of Rome in 1527, the historian Paolo Giovio’s dialogue provides an informed perspective on the event from an intimate friend of Pope Clement VII. The work is also remarkable for its discussions of literary style and the much-debated question whether the vernacular could rival or surpass Latin as a vehicle for literary expression. It discusses authors whom Giovio knew personally, such as Ariosto, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Sannazaro, and Vittoria Colonna. The dialogues also contain an extensive survey of Italian noblewomen, shedding new light on their careers and cultural achievements. This volume contains a fresh edition of the Latin text and the first translation of the work into English.

The ending of absolute, centralized monarchy and the beginning of political combat between nobles and commoners make the years 1787 to 1788 the first stage of the French Revolution. In a detailed examination of this critical transition, Vivian Gruder examines how the French people became engaged in a movement of opposition that culminated in demands for the public's role in government.

Gruder traces the growing involvement of the French people in the public issues of the day, leading to increased politicization. The debates of the Assembly of Notables in early 1787 aroused public support against the monarchy and in late 1788 confirmed public opposition to the nobility. The media--including newspapers and newsletters, pamphlets, literary societies, songs, iconography, and festive activities--disseminated messages of opposition and gave voice to popular aspirations for change. At hundreds of community assemblies throughout France in late 1788, people showed remarkable astuteness about such political issues as voting and representation and demonstrated a capacity for mobilization.

The Notables and the Nation contributes to a renewed interest in the political origins of the French Revolution. It argues that a "bourgeois" revolution did take place as a movement for political aspirations, and invites us to witness the birth of popular representative government.

When the Adjutant General's Office published Raphael Thian's "notes" on U.S. military geography in 1880, it produced an invaluable research tool for generations of military historians to come. In this single documented reference volume, Chief Clerk Thian traced the confusing mutations through which the divisions, departments, and districts of the Army's command had evolved since 1813.

The volume is divided into three parts, beginning with the names of the United States Army Continental Commands, the date and authority for their creation, location of the headquarters, geographical changes and discontinuances, and other details including the geographical boundaries embracing each division, department, and district. Part II is filled with background information on states and territories, and Part III lists the maps contained in The Military Atlas of the United States.

The Addenda to this edition expand and update Thian's work. Notes made by Francis B. Heitman to keep his personal copy current are included, as is the Memorandum published by the government in 1906. This addition lists all changes from 1898 through 1905.

Explores contemporary art that challenges deadly desires for mastery and dominion.
 
Amid times of emboldened cruelty and perpetual war, Rosalyn Deutsche links contemporary art to three practices that counter the prevailing destructiveness: psychoanalytic feminism, radical democracy, and war resistance. Deutsche considers how art joins these radical practices to challenge desires for mastery and dominion, which are encapsulated in the Eurocentric conception of the human that goes under the name “Man” and is driven by deadly inclinations that Deutsche calls masculinist. The masculinist subject—as an individual or a group—universalizes itself, claims to speak on behalf of humanity, and meets differences with conquest.
 
Analyzing artworks by Christopher D’Arcangelo, Robert Filliou, Hans Haacke, Mary Kelly, Silvia Kolbowski, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Martha Rosler, James Welling, and Krzysztof Wodiczko, Deutsche illuminates the diverse ways in which they expose, question, and trouble the visual fantasies that express masculinist desire. Undermining the mastering subject, these artworks invite viewers to question the positions they assume in relation to others. Together, the essays in Not-Forgetting, written between 1999 and 2020, argue that this art offers a unique contribution to building a less cruel and violent society.

 

Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award
Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction
A New York Times Book Review “The Year in Reading” Selection

All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War—a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations.

“[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War…As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.”
—Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times

“In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war…[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.”
—Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review

“Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

Arthur M. Schlesinger (1888-1965) was one of America's mostdistinguished and influential historians. The basis of his conception of history, as he put it in anote found among his papers, isthat "nothing stands still," Themoral he drew from this was theneed for "a liberal, flexible attitude" on the part of both the historian and the citizen.

This volume, with an introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., brings together eleven ofProfessor Schlesinger's essays notpreviously collected in bookform. Written between 1929 and1965, they fall into two sections--"The Scholar," which includesessays dealing with historicalquestions, and "The Citizen,"which includes those dealingwith public affairs. Illustratingthe wide range of ProfessorSchlesinger's professional andhumane interests, these essaysset forth some of his views on thenature of the historical enterprise and record his own involvement in and hopes forAmerican democracy.

Grand, extravagant, magnificent, scandalous, corrupt, political, personal, fractious; these are terms often associated with the medieval and early modern courts. Moreover, the court constituted a forceful nexus in the social world, which was central to the legitimacy and authority of rulership. As such, courts shaped European politics and culture: architecture, art, fashion, patronage, and cultural exchanges were integral to the spectacle of European courts. Researchers have convincingly emphasised the public nature of courtly events, procedures, and ceremonies. Nevertheless, court life also involved pockets of privacy, which have yet to be systematically addressed. This edited collection addresses this lacuna and offers interpretations that urge us to reassesses the public nature of European courts. Thus, the proposed publication will fertilise the grounds for a discussion of the past and future of court studies. Indeed, the contributions make us reconsider present-day understandings of privacy as a stable and uncontestable notion.

Following the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713)—generally known in the Americas as Queen Anne’s War—a dramatic, decade-long wave of sea-robbery plagued the Atlantic rim. Often glamorized as the “Golden Age of Piracy,” that period saw such colorful pirate leaders as Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, Charles Vane, and “Calico Jack” Rackham and his henchwomen Anne Bonney and Mary Read. Outdoing any of these, a Boston-based laborer, Edward Low, left his mark on pirate history as a “monster,” the most vicious and sadistic raider of them all. Low’s reputation, and those of the other pirates of the time, was crafted through newspaper accounts and popular literature, most notably The General History of the Pyrates, first published in 1724. Romanticized as anti-heroes and egalitarians in a monarchical world who had liberated themselves from the constraints of law and society ashore, these marauders came to enjoy an immortality bestowed upon them by generations of historians, novelists, and moviemakers. That persistent gloss masks a more sordid reality.
            In The Notorious Edward Low: Pursuing the Last Great Villain of Piracy’s Golden Age, historian Len Travers reexamines this critical period through the career of Low, a complicated pirate leader, and his nemesis, Peter Solgard, captain of the Royal Navy warship HMS Greyhound. By the time Solgard, aboard Greyhound, was tracking Low in 1723, the era’s other notable pirates were gone—dead, captured, or disappeared. Drawing on previously unpublished Admiralty records and consulting both contemporary and modern chroniclers, Travers directs readers to much powerful testimony minimized in or excluded from histories of piracy’s “Golden Age,” leveling a critical eye at familiar sources too long accepted at face value. Travers demonstrates that, feared asthey certainly were, pirates were largely ordinary seamen trapped in desperate circumstances who, in the end, had little to show for their efforts. Contrary to popular portrayals, for pirates the second decade of the eighteenth century was a time of radically diminishing returns, scant treasure, buried or otherwise, and increasingly successful suppression by state authorities. One by one, safe havens shut out the sea-rovers, who with their depredations in America quickly squandered the sympathy and support they had once enjoyed among common folk. The Notorious Edward Lowputs individual actors, from colonial governors to captains to common seamen, at center stage, and reveals how British authorities used new anti-piracy laws to reclaim a measure of authority over their fractious North American colonies—a compelling  and meaningful story with its own brand of true-life swashbuckling on the high seas.

Richard III, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra—these were figures of intense signification long before Shakespeare took up the task of giving them new life on the stage. And when he did, Linda Charnes argues, he used these legendary figures to explore a new kind of fame—notorious identity—an infamy based not on the moral and ethical “use value” of legend but on a commodification of identity itself: one that must be understood in the context of early modern England’s emergent capitalism and its conditions of economic, textual, theatrical, and cultural reproduction. Ranging across cultural materialism, new historicism, feminist psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, deconstruction, and theories of postmodernity, the author practices a “theory without organs”—which she provocatively calls a constructive “New Hystericism”—retheorizing the discourses of reigning methodologies as much as those in Shakespeare’s plays.

Novel Competition describes the literary and institutional struggle to make American novels matter between 1965 and 1999. As corporations took over the book business, Hollywood movies, popular music, and other forms of mass-produced culture competed with novels as never before for a form of prestige that had mostly been attached to novels in previous decades. In the context of this competition, developments like the emergence of Rolling Stone magazine, regional publishers, Black studies programs, and “New Hollywood” became key events in the life of the American novel. Novels by Truman Capote, Ann Beattie, Toni Cade Bambara, Cynthia Ozick, and Larry McMurtry—among many others—are recast as prescient reports on, and formal responses to, a world suddenly less hospitable to old claims about the novel’s value. This book brings to light the story of the novel’s perceived decline and the surprising ways American fiction transformed in its wake.
 

During the first decade of the century, Evo Morales and other leftists took control of governments across Latin America. In the case of Bolivia, Morales was that country’s first Indigenous president and was elected following five years of popular insurrection after decades of neoliberal governance. Now We Are in Power makes the argument that the so-called Pink Tide should be understood as a passive revolution, a process that has two phases: a period of subaltern struggle from average citizens strong enough to culminate in a political crisis, which is followed by a time of reconciliation and transformation. Angus McNelly examines this movement as it unfolded and evaluates how passive revolution plays out over a prolonged crisis, ultimately demonstrating the inherent contradictions and complications of the process. 

Jim Nichols was a lively, vigorous frontiersman who came to Texas about the time of its Revolution. As with many men of that day, Nichols' formal education was lacking, but he was a born writer with a vivid way of saying things. He had an abundance of exciting events to write about: fighting against Mexicans and Indians, Ranger activities, an attack by wolves, a buffalo stampede, and many other colorful episodes. Nichols' account is fast-moving, fascinating frontier history by a man who was really there.

Drawing on the latest archaeological and textual discoveries, a revealing look at the rich and dynamic civilization of Nubia.
 
Nubia, the often-overlooked southern neighbor of Egypt, has been home to groups of vibrant and adaptive peoples for millennia. This book explores the Nubians’ religious, social, economic, and cultural histories, from their nomadic origins during the Stone Ages to their rise to power during the Napatan and Meroitic periods, and it concludes with the recent struggles for diplomacy in North Sudan. Situated among the ancient superpowers of Egypt, Aksum, and the Greco-Roman world, Nubia’s connections with these cultures shaped the region’s history through colonialism and cultural entanglement. Sarah M. Schellinger presents the Nubians through their archaeological and textual remains, reminding readers that they were a rich and dynamic civilization in their own right.

Our thinking is inhabited by images-images of sometimes curious and overwhelming power. The mushroom cloud, weird rays that can transform the flesh, the twilight world following a nuclear war, the white city of the future, the brilliant but mad scientist who plots to destroy the world-all these images and more relate to nuclear energy, but that is not their only common bond. Decades before the first atom bomb exploded, a web of symbols with surprising linkages was fully formed in the public mind. The strange kinship of these symbols can be traced back, not only to medieval symbolism, but still deeper into experiences common to all of us.

This is a disturbing book: it shows that much of what we believe about nuclear energy is not based on facts, but on a complex tangle of imagery suffused with emotions and rooted in the distant past. Nuclear Fear is the first work to explore all the symbolism attached to nuclear bombs, and to civilian nuclear energy as well, employing the powerful tools of history as well as findings from psychology, sociology, and even anthropology. The story runs from the turn of the century to the present day, following the scientists and journalists, the filmmakers and novelists, the officials and politicians of many nations who shaped the way people think about nuclear devices. The author, a historian who also holds a Ph.D. in physics, has been able to separate genuine scientific knowledge about nuclear energy and radiation from the luxuriant mythology that obscures them. In revealing the history of nuclear imagery, Weart conveys the hopeful message that once we understand how this imagery has secretly influenced history and our own thinking, we can move on to a clearer view of the choices that confront our civilization.

On the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima, Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe called on his fellow scientists to stop working on weapons of mass destruction. What drove Bethe, the head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to renounce the weaponry he had once worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe’s early life and development as both a scientist and a man of principle.

As Silvan Schweber follows Bethe from his childhood in Germany, to laboratories in Italy and England, and on to Cornell University, he shows how these differing environments were reflected in the kind of physics Bethe produced. Many of the young quantum physicists in the 1930s, including Bethe, had Jewish roots, and Schweber considers how Liberal Judaism in Germany helps explain their remarkable contributions. A portrait emerges of a man whose strategy for staying on top of a deeply hierarchical field was to tackle only those problems he knew he could solve.

Bethe’s emotional maturation was shaped by his father and by two women of Jewish background: his overly possessive mother and his wife, who would later serve as an ethical touchstone during the turbulent years he spent designing nuclear bombs. Situating Bethe in the context of the various communities where he worked, Schweber provides a full picture of prewar developments in physics that changed the modern world, and of a scientist shaped by the unprecedented moral dilemmas those developments in turn created.

Iran’s nuclear program has generated intense controversy ever since the International Atomic Energy Agency reported in 2003 that Iran was secretly pursuing enrichment activities. Although Iranian officials insist the program is peaceful, many in the international community are skeptical of Iran’s stated aims—and some allege there is no greater nuclear-weapons proliferation danger in the world today.

Nuclear Iran guides readers through the intricate maze of science and secrecy that lies at the heart of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Writing for the general reader, Jeremy Bernstein brings his knowledge as a physicist to bear on the issues, offering elucidations of the scientific principles and technical hurdles involved in creating nuclear reactors and bombs. His explanations range from the physics of fission to methods of isotope separation to the technologies required for weaponizing fissile uranium and plutonium. Iran’s construction of centrifuges capable of producing weapons-grade uranium has received much media attention, and Bernstein explains how these complex devices work. He intersperses many elements of the human story into his discussions of technology, such as the fact that centrifuges were first invented by German war prisoners working in the Soviet Union.

Nuclear Iran turns a spotlight on the controversial underground uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz and heavy water reactor in Arak, and profiles key figures in the ongoing international trade in weapons technology, including the Pakistani physicist A. Q. Khan. This succinct book is timely reading for anyone who wishes to understand the science behind the international crisis surrounding Iran’s nuclear program.

How researchers understood the atomic bomb’s effects on the human psyche before the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
 
In 1945, researchers on a mission to Hiroshima with the United States Strategic Bombing Survey canvassed survivors of the nuclear attack. This marked the beginning of global efforts—by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other social scientists—to tackle the complex ways in which human minds were affected by the advent of the nuclear age. A trans-Pacific research network emerged that produced massive amounts of data about the dropping of the bomb and subsequent nuclear tests in and around the Pacific rim.
 
Ran Zwigenberg traces these efforts and the ways they were interpreted differently across communities of researchers and victims. He explores how the bomb’s psychological impact on survivors was understood before we had the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder. In fact, psychological and psychiatric research on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rarely referred to trauma or similar categories. Instead, institutional and political constraints—most notably the psychological sciences’ entanglement with Cold War science—led researchers to concentrate on short-term damage and somatic reactions or even, in some cases, on denial of victims’ suffering. As a result, very few doctors tried to ameliorate suffering.
 
But, Zwigenberg argues, it was not only that doctors “failed” to issue the right diagnosis; the victims’ experiences also did not necessarily conform to our contemporary expectations. As he shows, the category of trauma should not be used uncritically in a non-Western context. Consequently, this book sets out, first, to understand the historical, cultural, and scientific constraints in which researchers and victims were acting and, second, to explore how suffering was understood in different cultural contexts before PTSD was a category of analysis.

In 1974 India joined the elite roster of nuclear world powers when it exploded its first nuclear bomb. But the technological progress that facilitated that feat was set in motion many decades before, as India sought both independence from the British and respect from the larger world. Over the course of the twentieth century, India metamorphosed from a marginal place to a serious hub of technological and scientific innovation. It is this tale of transformation that Robert S. Anderson recounts in Nucleus and Nation.

Tracing the long institutional and individual preparations for India’s first nuclear test and its consequences, Anderson begins with the careers of India’s renowned scientists—Meghnad Saha, Shanti Bhatnagar, Homi Bhabha, and their patron Jawaharlal Nehru—in the first half of the twentieth century before focusing on the evolution of the large and complex scientific community—especially Vikram Sarabhi—in the later part of the era. By contextualizing Indian debates over nuclear power within the larger conversation about modernization and industrialization, Anderson hones in on the thorny issue of the integration of science into the framework and self-reliant ideals of Indian nationalism. In this way, Nucleus and Nation is more than a history of nuclear science and engineering and the Indian Atomic Energy Commission; it is a unique perspective on the history of Indian nationhood and the politics of its scientific community.

Latinas/os and Asians are rewriting the meaning and history of race in the American South by complicating the black/white binary that has frequently defined the region since before the Civil War. Arriving in southern communities as migrants or refugees, Latinas/os and Asians have experienced both begrudging acceptance and prejudice as their presence confronts and troubles local understandings of race and difference—understandings that have deep roots in each community’s particular racial history, as well as in national fears and anxieties about race.

Nuevo South offers the first comparative study showing how Latinas/os and Asians are transforming race and place in the contemporary South. Integrating political, economic, and social analysis, Perla M. Guerrero examines the reception of Vietnamese, Cubans, and Mexicans in northwestern Arkansas communities that were almost completely white until the mid-1970s. She shows how reactions to these refugees and immigrants ranged from reluctant acceptance of Vietnamese as former US allies to rejection of Cubans as communists, criminals, and homosexuals and Mexicans as “illegal aliens” who were perceived as invaders when they began to establish roots and became more visible in public spaces. Guerrero’s research clarifies how social relations are constituted in the labor sphere, particularly the poultry industry, and reveals the legacies of regional history, especially anti-Black violence and racial cleansing. Nuevo South thus helps us to better understand what constitutes the so-called Nuevo South and how historical legacies shape the reception of new people in the region.

The award-winning former editor of Science News shows that one of the most fascinating and controversial ideas in contemporary cosmology—the existence of multiple parallel universes—has a long and divisive history that continues to this day.

We often consider the universe to encompass everything that exists, but some scientists have come to believe that the vast, expanding universe we inhabit may be just one of many. The totality of those parallel universes, still for some the stuff of science fiction, has come to be known as the multiverse.

The concept of the multiverse, exotic as it may be, isn’t actually new. In The Number of the Heavens, veteran science journalist Tom Siegfried traces the history of this controversial idea from antiquity to the present. Ancient Greek philosophers first raised the possibility of multiple universes, but Aristotle insisted on one and only one cosmos. Then in 1277 the bishop of Paris declared it heresy to teach that God could not create as many universes as he pleased, unleashing fervent philosophical debate about whether there might exist a “plurality of worlds.”

As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, the philosophical debates became more scientific. René Descartes declared “the number of the heavens” to be indefinitely large, and as notions of the known universe expanded from our solar system to our galaxy, the debate about its multiplicity was repeatedly recast. In the 1980s, new theories about the big bang reignited interest in the multiverse. Today the controversy continues, as cosmologists and physicists explore the possibility of many big bangs, extra dimensions of space, and a set of branching, parallel universes. This engrossing story offers deep lessons about the nature of science and the quest to understand the universe.

Although renowned for the excellence of its medieval art, the German city of Nuremberg reached the height of its artistic brilliance during the Renaissance. Beginning its ascendancy during the late fifteenth century, by 1500 the city had blossomed into both Germany's preeminent artistic center and one of the foremost cultural centers in all of Europe. Nuremberg was the home of Albrecht Dürer, the greatest Northern Renaissance master, whose creative genius inspired two generations of German artists. However, Dürer was only one of a host of extraordinary painters, printmakers, sculptors, and goldsmiths working in the city. Georg Pencz, Hans and Barthel Beham, Hans Schäufelein, Jost Amman, and Hans Lautensack were among the most accomplished printmakers of the day. Veit Stoss, Adam Kraft, Peter Flötner, and the Vischer family dominated early sixteenth-century German sculpture. Goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer was rivaled only by Florentine master Benvenuto Cellini in his inventiveness and technical virtuosity.

This remarkably comprehensive volume is the first English-language examination of Nuremberg at its creative peak. Following a mapping of the city's principal landmarks, Guy Fitch Lytle provides a compact historical background for Jeffrey Chipps Smith's detailed discussions of the city's social and artistic history. Smith examines the religious function of art before and during the Reformation to demonstrate the magnitude of the cultural transformations that resulted from the adoption of Lutheranism in 1525. He considers the early manifestations of humanism in Nuremberg and its influence on the art of Dürer and his contemporaries, and he reviews the central role of Dürer's pedagogical ideas and his workshop in the dissemination of Renaissance artistic concepts. Finally, Smith surveys the principal artists and stylistic trends in Nuremberg from 1500 to the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618.

Nuremberg: A Renaissance City, 1500-1618 is the permanent record of an exhibition organized by the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery as part of the centennial celebration of the University of Texas at Austin. As such, it represents not only a thorough introduction to the cultural heritage of Nuremberg during its period of greatest glory but also a catalogue of the more than two hundred objects borrowed for the exhibition from public and private collections in the United States, Canada, and Germany. The catalogue contains biographical sketches of forty-five major artists of the period. Over three hundred illustrations depict the city and its most magnificent artistic treasures.

During the twentieth century modern births in America came to involve mostly male physicians, hospitals, technological interventions, and quick, routine procedures. In a unique and detailed historical study, Nurse-Midwifery: The Birth of a New American Profession, Laura E. Ettinger fills a void with the first book-length documentation of the emergence of American nurse-midwifery. This occupation developed in the 1920s involving nurses who took advanced training in midwifery. In Nurse-Midwifery, Ettinger shows how nurse-midwives in New York City; eastern Kentucky; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and other places both rebelled against and served as agents of a nationwide professionalization of doctors and medicalization of childbirth. Nurse-Midwifery reveals the limitations that nurses, physicians, and nurse-midwives placed on the profession of nurse-midwifery from the outset because of the professional interests of nursing and medicine. The book argues that nurse-midwives challenged what scholars have called the “male medical model” of childbirth, but the cost of the compromises they made to survive was that nurse-midwifery did not become the kind of independent, autonomous profession it might have been.

Today, nurse-midwives have assumed a larger role in mainstream health care than before, yet they are still marginalized. As in the past, nurse-midwives’ futures will depend on continuing changes in American attitudes about childbirth, health care, and women professionals as well as on their own ability to adapt to the changes. The history of the profession suggests that nurse-midwives will continue to navigate in difficult waters in a middle space between the mainstream and the margins of medicine and between the nursing profession and midwifery traditions.

In Nursing Civil Rights, Charissa J. Threat investigates the parallel battles against occupational segregation by African American women and white men in the U.S. Army.

As Threat reveals, both groups viewed their circumstances with the Army Nurse Corps as a civil rights matter. Each conducted separate integration campaigns to end the discrimination they suffered. Yet their stories defy the narrative that civil rights struggles inevitably arced toward social justice. Threat tells how progressive elements in the campaigns did indeed break down barriers in both military and civilian nursing. At the same time, she follows conservative threads to portray how some of the women who succeeded as agents of change became defenders of exclusionary practices when men sought military nursing careers. The ironic result was a struggle that simultaneously confronted and reaffirmed the social hierarchies that nurtured discrimination.

Two structuring concepts have predominated in discussions concerning how Middle Eastern men enact their identity culturally: domination and patriarchy. Nurturing Masculinities dispels the illusion that Arab men can be adequately represented when we speak of them only in these terms. By bringing male perspectives into food studies, which typically focus on the roles of women in the production and distribution of food, Nefissa Naguib demonstrates how men interact with food, in both political and domestic spheres, and how these interactions reflect important notions of masculinity in modern Egypt.

In this classic ethnography, narratives about men from a broad range of educational backgrounds, age groups, and social classes capture a holistic representation of masculine identity and food in modern Egypt on familial, local, and national levels. These narratives encompass a broad range of issues and experiences, including explorations of traditions surrounding food culture; displays of caregiving and love when men recollect the taste, feel, and fragrance of food as they discuss their desires to feed their families well and often; and the role that men, working to ensure the equitable distribution of food, played during the Islamist movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2011. At the core of Nurturing Masculinities is the idea that food is a powerful marker of manhood, fatherhood, and family structure in contemporary Egypt, and by better understanding these foodways, we can better understand contemporary Egyptian society as a whole.