Of the many literary phenomena that sprang up in eighteenth-century England and later became a staple of Victorian culture, one that has received little attention until now is the “Family Bible with Notes.” Published in serial parts to make it affordable, the Family Bible was designed to enhance the family’s status and sense of national and imperial identity.

Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies reveals in its study of the production and consumption of British commercial Family Bibles startling changes in “family values.” Advertised in the eighteenth century as providing the family with access to “universal knowledge,” these Bibles suddenly shifted in the early nineteenth century to Bibles with bracketed sections marked “to be omitted from family reading” and reserved for reading “in the closet” by the “Master of the family.” These disciplinary Bibles were paralleled by Family Bibles designed to appeal to the newly important female consumer. Illustrations featured saintly women and charming children, and “family registers” with vignettes of family life emphasized the prominent role of the “angel in the house.”

As Mary Wilson Carpenter documents in Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies, the elaborate notes and “elegant engravings” in these Bibles bring to light a wealth of detail about the English commonsense view of such taboo subjects as same-sex relations, masturbation, menstruation, and circumcision. Her reading of literary texts by Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the context of these commercial representations of the “Authorized Version” or King James translation of the Bible indicates that when the Victorians spoke about religion, they were also frequently speaking about sex.

This volume on Muslim life focuses on young male migrants of rural origin who move to build better lives in Bougouni, a provincial town in southwest Mali. Describing themselves as “simply Muslims” and “adventurers,” these migrants aim to be both prosperous and good Muslims. Drawing upon seventeen months of fieldwork, author André Chappatte explores their sense of prosperity and piety as they embark on tunga (adventure), a customary search for money and more in a tradition that dates back to the colonial period.

In the context of the current global war on terrorism, most studies of Muslim life have focused on the politics of piety of reformist movements, their leaders, and members. By contrast, In Search of “Tunga” takes a perspective from below. It opens piety up to “simply Muslims,” although the religious elites have always claimed authority and legitimacy over piety. Is piety an exclusive field of experiences for those who claim to strive for it? What does piety involve for the majority of Muslims, the non-elite and unaffiliated Muslims? This volume “democratizes” piety by documenting its practice as going beyond sharply defined religious affiliations and Islamic scholarship, and by showing it is both alive and normative, existential and prescriptive. As opposed to studies that build on the classic historical connections between the Maghreb and the Sahel, the southbound migration from the Sahel documented in this book stresses the overlooked historical connections between the southern shores of the Sahara and the lands south of those shores. It demonstrates how the Malian savanna, this former buffer-zone between ancient Mande kingdoms and thereafter remote areas of French Sudan, is increasingly becoming central in today’s Sahel contexts of desiccation and insecurity.