Results by title
28167 books match the query 'History' and 1262 start with b
Bending the Future
Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United StatesEdited by Max Page and Marla R. Miller
University of Massachusetts Press, 2016
The year 2016 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act, the cornerstone of historic preservation policy and practice in the United States. The act established the National Register of Historic Places, a national system of state preservation offices and local commissions, set up federal partnerships between states and tribes, and led to the formation of the standards for preservation and rehabilitation of historic structures. This book marks its fiftieth anniversary by collecting fifty new and provocative essays that chart the future of preservation.
The commentators include leading preservation professionals, historians, writers, activists, journalists, architects, and urbanists. The essays offer a distinct vision for the future and address related questions, including, Who is a preservationist? What should be preserved? Why? How? What stories do we tell in preservation? How does preservation contribute to the financial, environmental, social, and cultural well-being of communities? And if the “arc of the moral universe . . . bends towards justice,” how can preservation be a tool for achieving a more just society and world?
Beneath These Red Cliffs
An Ethnohistory of the Utah PaiutesRonald L. Holt
Utah State University Press, 2006
With a foreword by Lora Tom, chair of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah.
Beneath the Starry Flag
New Jersey's Civil War ExperienceSiegel, Alan A
Rutgers University Press, 2001
Few events in American history can match the triumph and tragedy of the Civil War. Many books have been written about the War between the States, but until now, none has chronicled—in their own words—the many important roles played by people from New Jersey.
Beneath the Starry Flag is a collection of richly detailed eyewitness accounts by New Jerseyans who lived during the Civil War. Drawing from letters, journals, regimental histories, and newspaper accounts, Alan A. Siegel places the reader in the midst of these desperate times. The book depicts the war years chronologically, from the tense days when one state, then another seceded from the Union, through battles lost and won, to the victory at Appomattox and Lincoln’s funeral procession across New Jersey.
Readers will learn of the remarkable valor of New Jersey soldiers such as John Beech, a Trenton potter who won a Medal of Honor for bravery at Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle. They will learn too of the sacrifices made by civilians, such as Cornelia Hancock of Salem County, who ministered to soldiers wounded on battlefields from Gettysburg to Petersburg. Siegel also tells of other people and institutions who played very different roles in the war, including Somerset County’s Daniel Cory, who said he would shoot the president if he could, the state’s leading Copperhead newspapers, which denounced the draft and discouraged enlistments, and the State Legislature, which at one point called for a truce and negotiations to end the conflict.
Siegel allows them all, enlisted men and officers, politicians and plain citizens, patriots and conspirators, to speak in their own words in often moving firsthand accounts. Their motives, emotions, and deeds are chronicled in this collection of stories, some which have been out of print for many years, others that have not been heard since they were first written more than a century ago.
[Beneath the Starry Flag is an invaluable addition to what we know about this remarkable time in American history, perfect for the general reader or Civil War historian.]
Beneath the Surface
A Transnational History of Skin LightenersLynn M. Thomas
Duke University Press, 2020
Beneath the Surface
Understanding Nature in the Mullica Valley EstuaryKenneth W. Able
Rutgers University Press, 2020
The Mullica Valley estuary and its watershed, formed over the last 10,000 years, are among the cleanest estuaries along the east coast of the United States. This 365,000-acre ecosystem benefits from a combination of protected watershed, low human population density, and general lack of extensive development. In Beneath the Surface, marine scientist Ken Able helps the reader penetrate the surface and gain insights into the kinds of habitats, animals, and plants that live there. Readers will gain a better understanding of the importance of these shallow waters; how the amount of salt in the water determines where animals and plants are found in estuaries; the day-night, seasonal, and annual variation in their occurrence; and how change is occurring as the result of climate variation. Throughout the book are insightful sidebars telling intimate stories of where various animals came from and where they are going as they travel through the estuary on their way to and from other portions of the east coast. Beneath the Surface emphasizes the kinds and importance of the animals and plants that live beneath the surface of this unique ecosystem.
Benedict XVI Rethinking Africa
Tasks for TodayKizito Forbi
St. Augustine's Press, 2024
Benes & Masaryk
CzechoslovakiaPeter Neville
Haus Publishing, 2010
Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality
Women's Activism in Kansas City, 1870 to 1940K. David Hanzlick
University of Missouri Press, 2018
Bengal in Global Concept History
Culturalism in the Age of CapitalAndrew Sartori
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Sartori weaves the narrative of Bengal’s embrace of culturalism into a worldwide history of the concept, from its origins in eighteenth-century Germany, through its adoption in England in the early 1800s, to its appearance in distinct local guises across the non-Western world. The impetus for the concept’s dissemination was capitalism, Sartori argues, as its spread across the globe initiated the need to celebrate the local and the communal. Therefore, Sartori concludes, the use of the culture concept in non-Western sites was driven not by slavish imitation of colonizing powers, but by the same problems that repeatedly followed the advance of modern capitalism. This remarkable interdisciplinary study will be of significant interest to historians and anthropologists, as well as scholars of South Asia and colonialism.
Bengali Women
Manisha Roy
University of Chicago Press, 1992
In a new Afterword, Roy discusses changes in Bengali society and culture over the last two decades which have direct bearings on women's lives: divorce and the breakup of the joint family, education, increasing Westernization via television and women's magazines, and the erosion of traditional religious practices.
Benjamin Franklin and His Gods
Kerry S. Walters
University of Illinois Press, 1999
the towering figure--and mind--of Benjamin Franklin. A Renaissance man
in a Revolutionary time, Franklin had interests and knowledge not only
in religion but in literature, philosophy, politics, publishing, history,
and scientific inquiry, among many other disciplines.
Kerry S. Walters examines Franklin's search for the Divine using a similar,
multifaceted approach--and in so doing has created the first extended
treatment of Franklin's religious thought in thirty years. Walters brings
the same intellectual range and depth to the understanding of Franklin's
beliefs that Franklin brought to his own quest. What emerges from this
pilgrimage into the soul of one of America's greatest figures is a very
human Benjamin Franklin who grew with the accumulation of knowledge to
arrive at a "theistic perspectivism," which provided him with
a philosophical explanation for the diversity of religious faiths--and
a justification for the liberty of conscience he advocated throughout
his life.
Benjamin Franklin and His Gods is an original and beautifully
challenging spiritual and intellectual biography. Destined to be a classic.
Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network
Disseminating Virtue in Early AmericaRalph Frasca
University of Missouri Press, 2005
Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania, and the First Nations
The Treaties of 1736-62Edited by Susan Kalter
University of Illinois Press, 2006
Benjamin Shambaugh and the Intellectual Foundations of Public Hisory
Rebecca Conard
University of Iowa Press, 2001
Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism
From Regionalism to Abstract ExpressionismErika Doss
University of Chicago Press, 1991
"A welcome addition to the growing body of literature that deals with the art and culture of the depression and cold war eras. It is a pioneering work that makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of a puzzling conundrum of American art—the shift from regionalism to abstract expressionism."—M. Sue Kendall, Winterthur Portfolio
"An important scholarly contribution. . . . This book will stand as a step along the way to a better understanding of the most amazing transition in the art of our tumultuous century."—James G. Rogers, Jr., Art Journal
"A valuable and interesting book that restores continuity and political context to the decades of depression and war."—Marlene Park, American Historical Review
Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript
Kevin S. Kiernan
University of Michigan Press, 1997
Kevin S. Kiernan, one of the world's foremost Beowulf scholars, has studied the manuscript extensively with the most up-to-date methods, including fiber-optic backlighting and computer digitization. This volume reprints Kiernan's earlier study of the manuscript, in which he presented his novel conclusions about the date of Beowulf. It also offers a new Introduction in which the author describes the value of electronic study of Beowulf, and a new Appendix that lists all the letters and parts of letters revealed by backlighting.
This important volume will be a must-read not only for the scholar of early English history and literature, but for all those who are interested in practical applications of the new technologies.
Beowulf and the Grendel-Kin
Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century EnglandHelen Damico
West Virginia University Press, 2014
In Beowulf and the Grendel-kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England, Helen Damico presents the first concentrated discussion of the initiatory two-thirds of Beowulf’s 3,182 lines in the context of the sociopolitically turbulent years that composed the first half of the eleventh century in Anglo-Danish England.
Damico offers incisive arguments that major historical events and personages pertaining to the reign of Cnut and those of his sons recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Encomium Emmae Reginae, and major continental and Scandinavian historical texts, hold striking parallels with events and personages found in at least eight vexing narrative units, as recorded by Scribe A in BL, Cotton Vitellius A.xv, that make up the poem’s quasi sixth-century narrative concerning the fall of the legendary Scyldings.
Given the poet’s compositional skill—widely relational and eclectic at its core—and his affinity with the practicing skalds, these strings of parallelisms could scarcely have been coincidental. Rather, Damico argues that examined within the context of other eleventh-century texts that either bemoaned or darkly satirized or obversely celebrated the rise of the Anglo-Danish realm, the Beowulfian units may bring forth a deeper understanding of the complexity of the poet’s compositional process.
Damico illustrates the poet’s use of the tools of his trade—compression, substitution, skillful encoding of character—to reinterpret and transform grave sociopolitical “facts” of history, to produce what may be characterized as a type of historical allegory, whereby two parallel narratives, one literal and another veiled are simultaneously operative.
Beowulf and the Grendel-Kin lays out the story of Beowulf, not as a monster narrative nor a folklorish nor solely a legendary tale, but rather as a poem of its time, a historical allegory coping with and reconfiguring sociopolitical events of the first half of eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England.
Bergson and Russian Modernism
1900-1930Hilary L. Fink
Northwestern University Press, 2012
Berlin Sports
Spectacle, Recreation, and Media in Germany’s MetropolisHeather L. Dichter
University of Arkansas Press, 2024
This book begins with a long-distance equestrian race in the 1890s and continues with the role of media in spectacle, celebrity, urban life, and gender from the 1890s to the 1920s.It then turns to grassroots sport participation and spectatorship as well as sport diplomacy at the elite international level during the postwar period and the years of German division. Next, it explores recreational sport associations within the context of immigration and youth counterculture. It concludes with the 2015 European Maccabi Games, an international Jewish sports festival through which Berlin sought to grapple with the infamous 1936 Olympics and showcase Berlin as a cosmopolitan and multicultural city. Taken together, the book’s scholarly essays on all of these sporting endeavors reveal the rich and varied sporting culture in Berlin and yield fresh insights into spectacle, recreation, and media in the city.
Berlin and the Cold War
Seth Givens; Ingo Trauschweizer
Ohio University Press, 2024
Berlin for Jews
A Twenty-First-Century CompanionLeonard Barkan
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Barkan, voraciously curious and witty, offers a self-deprecating guide to the history of Jewish life in Berlin, revealing how, beginning in the early nineteenth century, Jews became prominent in the arts, the sciences, and the city’s public life. With him, we tour the ivy-covered confines of the Schönhauser Allee cemetery, where many distinguished Jewish Berliners have been buried, and we stroll through Bayerisches Viertel, an elegant neighborhood created by a Jewish developer and that came to be called Berlin’s “Jewish Switzerland.” We travel back to the early nineteenth century to the salon of Rahel Varnhagen, a Jewish society doyenne, who frequently hosted famous artists, writers, politicians, and the occasional royal. Barkan also introduces us to James Simon, a turn-of-the-century philanthropist and art collector, and we explore the life of Walter Benjamin, who wrote a memoir of his childhood in Berlin as a member of the assimilated Jewish upper-middle class. Throughout, Barkan muses about his own Jewishness, while celebrating the rich Jewish culture on view in today’s Berlin.
A winning, idiosyncratic travel companion, Berlin for Jews offers a way to engage with German history, to acknowledge the unspeakable while extolling the indelible influence of Jewish culture.
Berlin
Culture and MetropolisCharles Haxthausen
University of Minnesota Press, 1991
Berliner Chic
A Locational History of Berlin FashionSusan Ingram and Katrina Sark
Intellect Books, 2011
Since becoming the capital of reunited Germany, Berlin has had a dose of global money and international style added to its already impressive cultural veneer. Once home to emperors and dictators, peddlers and spies, it is now a fashion showplace that attracts the young and hip. Moving beyond descriptions of Berlin's fashion industry and its ready-to-wear clothing, Berliner Chic charts the turbulent stories of entrepreneurially-savvy manufacturers and cultural workers striving to establish their city as a fashion capital, and being repeatedly interrupted by politics, ideology, and war. There are many stories to tell about Berlin's fashion industry and Berliner Chic tells them all with considerable expertise.
Berlioz and His Century
An Introduction to the Age of RomanticismJacques Barzun
University of Chicago Press, 1982
Berlusconi's Italy
Mapping Contemporary Italian PoliticsMichael E. Shin and John A. Agnew
Temple University Press, 2008
Bernard Daly's Promise
The Enduring Legacy of a Place-based ScholarshipSam Stern
Oregon State University Press, 2022
Bernard Daly escaped the Irish Famine and with his family emigrated to America, where he became the town doctor in Lakeview, Oregon, and then a state legislator, Oregon Agricultural College regent, county judge, rancher, and banker. When he died in 1920, his estate, valued at about a million dollars, established a college scholarship for the youth of Lake County, ensuring that most of them could attend college.
It’s hard to imagine a place more distant from higher education than Lake County in south central Oregon, a county about the size of New Jersey with a population under eight thousand. When the Bernard Daly scholarship was first awarded in 1922, less than two percent of America’s youth went to college, and the percentage was even lower in Lake County.
Today, Lake County students are much more likely to go to college, graduate in four years without debt, go on to graduate school, have successful careers, and contribute to the larger community—all because of a scholarship established a hundred years ago by an immigrant who sought a better life, not only for himself but also for others.
Drawing on more than a hundred personal interviews, an extensive web-based survey, and archival materials, Bernard Daly’s Promise offers unique insights into the benefits of higher education and how it might best be supported—questions that we are struggling with today.
Bernie Whitebear
An Urban Indian's Quest for JusticeLawney L. Reyes
University of Arizona Press, 2006
Bernie Whitebear’s story takes readers from an impoverished youth—including a rare account of life on the Colville Reservation during the 1930s—to the “Red Power” movement as it traces Bernie’s emergence as an activist influenced by contemporaries such as Bob Satiacum, Vine DeLoria, and Joe Delacruz. By choosing this course, Bernie was clearly making a break with his past, but with an eye toward a better future, whether staging the successful protest at Fort Lawton or acting on behalf of Native fishing rights in Puget Sound. When he died in July 2000, Bernie Whitebear had left an inestimable legacy, accomplishing things that no other Indian seemed able to do. His biography is an inspiring story for readers at many levels, an account of how one American Indian overcame hardships and obstacles to make a difference in the lives of his people—and an entire community.
Bernini
His Life and His RomeFranco Mormando
University of Chicago Press, 2011
Sculptor, architect, painter, playwright, and scenographer, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was the last of the great universal artistic geniuses of early modern Italy, placed by both contemporaries and posterity in the same exalted company as Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. And his artistic vision remains palpably present today, through the countless statues, fountains, and buildings that transformed Rome into the Baroque theater that continues to enthrall tourists today.
Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated
Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and EgyptGerald P. Verbrugghe and John M. Wickersham
University of Michigan Press, 2001
Berossos and Manetho offers particular emphasis on and discussion of the languages and scripts used to preserve the glorious past of these lands. Each author receives his own special introduction, which describes his life, the sources of his History, the nature and content of his writings, and his goals and accomplishments. There follows a translation of all the surviving ancient information about each author, and of all that can be recovered of his writings. For the first time, Berossos and Manetho--priests and contemporaries who write just when their lands had been pushed into Hellenization--have been translated in one volume.
This volume will appeal to all people interested in ancient Israel, Greek history, and ancient history in general.
Gerald P. Verbrugghe is Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University. John M. Wickersham is Professor of Classics and Classics Department Chairperson, Ursinus College.
Bertrand Meniel
Paintings, 1996-2024Bertrand Meniel
The Artist Book Foundation, 2024
Using composite digital photography, self-taught artist Bertrand Meniel incorporates more detail into each of his cityscapes than any other Photorealist to date.
Photorealism is a genre of painting that developed in the United States and Europe using high-resolution photography as its primary source material. Embracing digital photography perhaps more than any other artist working in this genre, Bertrand Meniel is able to incorporate an astonishing amount of detail into his renderings of cityscapes in New York City, Miami, and Paris. Using a variety of photographs of his chosen subject, he manipulates an image to perfection, focusing simultaneously on the foreground and background by combining hundreds of shots on a computer screen.
His choice to depict iconic American scenes in his paintings, particularly those associated with the “American Way of Life,” reflects not just a technical mastery of Photorealism but a deep emotional connection to the culture that captivated him during his youth. His unique perspective, influenced by French artistic traditions and shaped by exposure to American pop culture, allows him to capture in his art the essence of what may be best described as the “New York State of Mind."
Beside You in Time
Sense Methods and Queer Sociabilities in the American Nineteenth CenturyElizabeth Freeman
Duke University Press, 2019
Beside the Troubled Waters
A Black Doctor Remembers Life, Medicine, and Civil Rights in an Alabama TownSonnie Wellington Hereford III and Jack D. Ellis
University of Alabama Press, 2011
A memoir by an African American physician in Alabama whose story in many ways typifies the lives and careers of black doctors in the south during the segregationist era
Beside the Troubled Waters is a memoir by an African American physician in Alabama whose story in many ways typifies the lives and careers of black doctors in the south during the segregationist era while also illustrating the diversity of the black experience in the medical profession. Based on interviews conducted with Hereford over ten years, the account includes his childhood and youth as the son of a black sharecropper and Primitive Baptist minister in Madison County, Alabama, during the Depression; his education at Huntsville’s all-black CouncillSchool and medical training at MeharryMedicalCollege in Nashville; his medical practice in Huntsville’s black community beginning in 1956; his efforts to overcome the racism he met in the white medical community; his participation in the civil rights movement in Huntsville; and his later problems with the Medicaid program and state medical authorities, which eventually led to the loss of his license.
Best Actress
The History of Oscar®-Winning WomenStephen Tapert
Rutgers University Press, 2020
This lavishly illustrated coffee table book offers a vital examination of the first 75 women to have won the Best Actress Oscar over the span of 90 years. From inaugural recipient Janet Gaynor to Frances McDormand’s 2018 acceptance speech that assertively brought women to the forefront, Best Actress: The History of Oscar®-Winning Women serves to promote a new appreciation for the cinematic roles these women won for, as well as the real-life roles many of them played – and still play – in advancing women’s rights and equality. Stories range from Bette Davis’ groundbreaking battle against the studio system; to the cutting-edge wardrobes of Katharine Hepburn, Diane Keaton and Cher; to the historical significance of Halle Berry’s victory; to the awareness raised around sexual violence by the performances of Jodie Foster, Brie Larson, and others.
Showcasing a dazzling collection of 200 photographs, many of which have never before been seen or published, Best Actress honors the legacies of these revered and extraordinary women while scrutinizing the roadblocks that they continue to overcome.
Best Backpacking Trips in California and Nevada
Mike White
University of Nevada Press, 2015
The guide includes thirteen detailed trail descriptions, along with information on additional resources, governing agencies, and permits and fees. It also provides listings of the nearest airports, outdoor retailers, campgrounds, transportation, and amenities and attractions. Accompanying the specific information on each trip are captivating historical vignettes and entertaining personal essays, enhancing the reader’s understanding of the area. Whether journeying from near or far, Best Backpacking Trips of California and Nevada is the most complete resource for turning a dream trip into reality.
Best Backpacking Trips in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico
Mike White
University of Nevada Press, 2016
This is the second book in a series of detailed guidebooks covering all the best “life-list” backpacking vacations in the spectacular backcountry of the American West. This new volume specifically covers the best such adventures in the states of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Every conceivable aspect of trip planning is covered in the guide, including maps and descriptions of the trail, where to locate the nearest airport, other area attractions that shouldn’t be missed, and guide services that are available. A noteworthy feature of the book is the individual vignettes that give insight into the historical significance of many of the trails. Also unique are the interesting and humorous personal accounts that the authors share from their personal experiences hiking these routes. Backpackers will find a wide range of outstanding trips, from high mountain adventures to some of the world’s best lower-elevation canyon hikes. Best Backpacking Trips in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico provides an extensive choice of terrific expeditions.
Best Laid Plans
Cultural Entropy and the Unraveling of AIDS Media CampaignsTerence E. McDonnell
University of Chicago Press, 2016
McDonnell argues that these well-designed campaigns are undergoing “cultural entropy”: the process through which the intended meanings and uses of cultural objects fracture into alternative meanings, new practices, failed interactions, and blatant disregard. Using AIDS media campaigns in Accra, Ghana, as its central case study, the book walks readers through best-practice, evidence-based media campaigns that fall totally flat. Female condoms are turned into bracelets, AIDS posters become home decorations, red ribbons fade into pink under the sun—to name a few failures. These damaging cultural misfires are not random. Rather, McDonnell makes the case that these disruptions are patterned, widespread, and inevitable—indicative of a broader process of cultural entropy.
Best Little Town
A Brief History of Tuckerman, ArkansasWayne Boyce
Mockingbird Press, 2015
Best Practice
Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in ChinaKimberly Chong
Duke University Press, 2018
Best Years
Going to the Movies, 1945-1946Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron
Rutgers University Press, 2009
Best Years is a panoramic study, shining light on this critical juncture in American historyand the history of American cinemaùthe end of World War II (1945) and a year of unprecedented success in Hollywood's "Golden Age" (1946). This unique time, the last year of war and the first full year of peace, provides a rich blend of cinema genres and typesùfrom the battlefront to the home front, the peace film to the woman's film, psychological drama, and the period's provocative new style, film noir.
Best Years focuses on films that were famous, infamous, forgotten, and unforgettable. Big budget A-films, road shows, and familiar series share the spotlight. From Bergman and Grant in Notorious to Abbott and Costello in Lost in a Harem, Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron examine why the bond between screen and viewer was perhaps never tighter. Paying special attention to the movie-going public in key cities--Atlanta, New York, Boston, Honolulu, and Chicago--this ambitious work takes us on a cinematic journey to recapture a magical time.
Best of Companions
Henry Ford and the Protection of Birdlife in AmericaRick Simek
University of Michigan Press, 2027
Immediately following the success of the Model T, Henry Ford turned to how he could apply his newfound wealth toward protecting birdlife on his new rural acreage in Dearborn, Michigan. Best of Companions weaves Henry Ford’s personal and very public participation in bird protection into the overall national push to save disappearing North American birdlife in the early twentieth century.
Acting on his love of birds, Ford formed acquaintances and friendships with some of the most prominent North American wildlife conservation activists of the time. Michigan Audubon Society President Jefferson Butler was recruited to plan, establish, and promote an expansive, visionary bird protection project known as Henry Ford’s Bird Farm. Highlighting the economic benefit of birds, the farm modeled how farmers could use both natural and artificial means to boost populations of native insectivorous bird species on their land, reducing crop damage from insects and increasing agricultural productivity. Best of Companions takes readers on an exciting journey through Ford’s ambitious efforts to secure passage of the first federal bird protection law in the United States, to support the Migratory Bird Treaty with Canada, and to improve the lives of farmers.
Best of the Wurst
Weird and Wonderful Stories of Wisconsin SausageJesse Brookstein
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2026
Sink your teeth into a big, bold, and unabashed celebration of a quintessential Wisconsin food.
Wisconsin is famous for its world-class cheeses and its “beer state” moniker. But every Wisconsinite knows that no tailgate party or backyard barbecue is complete without a grill full of sizzling hot brats. Or Polish sausages. Or good ol’ Oscar Mayer wieners. From charcuterie boards to chorizo, sausage is an essential ingredient in the state’s cultural identity. In this lively, comprehensive ode to the link, writer and storyteller Jesse Brookstein embarks on a quest to show why Wisconsin is the sausage maker to the world.
Best of the Wurst traces the long arc of sausage making in the state, starting with First Nations communities who used pemmican as a staple food source. It features subsequent immigrant groups—German, Polish, Italian, Thai, Mexican, and more—who brought their own sausage recipes and traditions, and lands squarely on today’s bustling sausage scene. A final chapter, “The Future of Sausage,” explores emerging trends, tastes, and technologies—offering a peek at what’s next for Wisconsin’s revered food.
Brookstein travels the state to meet the people behind the links and captures the culture, craft, and quirks that make Wisconsin sausages unlike those found anywhere else. Profiles of standout producers are threaded throughout, from household names like Usinger’s and Johnsonville to family-run shops that have fed communities for generations. Brookstein also highlights the professionals shaping the field today, including graduates of UW–Madison’s Master Meat Crafter Program and chefs who feature local sausage in their menus with pride.
Readers will get insights from master butchers, small-town sausage savants, big-name producers, and superfans reflecting on hotly debated topics like seasonings, casings, and the eternal question: “Should you parboil?” And memorable traditions—such as Sheboygan’s double brat on a hard roll, the ceremonial slicing of La Crosse’s Golden Brat, Madison’s world’s largest Brat Fest, and the show-stealing Milwaukee Brewers’ Famous Racing Sausages—showcase the sausage’s indelible mark on the state.
Featuring 150 color photos and packed with humor and an insider’s appreciation for the art of stuffing a perfect link, Best of the Wurst encases these stories, people, and places in a perfect blend of history and heart. Wisconsinites love eating sausages—and now you can enjoy reading about them too.
Best-Laid Plans
The Promises and Pitfalls of the New Deal Greenbelt TownsJulie D. Turner
University of Minnesota Press, 2022
In 1935, under the direction of the Resettlement Administration, the United States government embarked on a New Deal program to construct new suburban towns for the working class. Teams of architects, engineers, and city planners, along with thousands of workers, brought three such communities to life: Greenbelt, Maryland; Greendale, Wisconsin; and Greenhills, Ohio. President Franklin Roosevelt saw this as a way to create jobs. Resettlement Administration head Rexford Tugwell longed to improve the living conditions of the nation’s underclass.
In Best-Laid Plans, Julie Turner identifies where the Greenbelt Towns succeeded and where they failed. The program suffered under the burden of too many competing goals: maximum job creation at minimal cost, exquisite town planning that would provide modest residences for low-income families, progressive innovation that would serve to honor and reinforce traditional American values. Yet the Greenbelt program succeeded in one respect—providing new homes in well-planned communities that continue to welcome residents.
Town planning and suburbanization did not follow the blueprint of the Greenbelt model and instead took a turn toward the suburban sprawl we know today. The Greenbelt towns may represent an unrealistic dream, but they show an imagined way of American life that continues to appeal and hints at what might have been possible.
Betrayal of the Spirit
My Life behind the Headlines of the Hare Krishna MovementNori J. Muster
University of Illinois Press, 1996
Combining behind-the-scenes coverage of an often besieged religious group with a personal account of one woman's struggle to find meaning in it, Betrayal of the Spirit takes readers to the center of life in the Hare Krishna movement.
Nori J. Muster joined the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)--the Hare Krishnas--in 1978, shortly after the death of the movement's spiritual master, and worked for ten years as a public relations secretary and editor of the organization's newspaper, the ISKCON World Review. In this candid and critical account, Muster follows the inner workings of the movement and the Hare Krishnas' progressive decline.
Combining personal reminiscences, published articles, and internal documents, Betrayal of the Spirit details the scandals that beset the Krishnas--drug dealing, weapons stockpiling, deceptive fundraising, child abuse, and murder within ISKCON–as well as the dynamics of schisms that forced some 95 percent of the group's original members to leave. In the midst of this institutional disarray, Muster continued her personal search for truth and religious meaning as an ISKCON member until, disillusioned at last with the movement's internal divisions, she quit her job and left the organization.
In a new preface to the paperback edition, Muster discusses the personal circumstances that led her to ISKCON and kept her there as the movement's image worsened. She also talks about "the darkest secret"–child abuse in the ISKCON parochial schools--that was covered up by the public relations office where she worked.
Bette Davis Black and White
Julia A. Stern
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Bette Davis was not only one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, but also one of its most outspoken advocates on matters of race. In Bette Davis Black and White, Julia A. Stern explores this largely untold facet of Davis’s brilliant career.
Bette Davis Black and White analyzes four of Davis’s best-known pictures—Jezebel (1938), The Little Foxes (1941), In This Our Life (1942), and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)—against the history of American race relations. Stern also weaves in memories of her own experiences as a young viewer, coming into racial consciousness watching Davis’s films on television in an all-white suburb of Chicago.
Davis’s egalitarian politics and unique collaborations with her Black costars offer Stern a window into midcentury American racial fantasy and the efforts of Black performers to disrupt it. This book incorporates testimony from Davis’s Black contemporaries, including James Baldwin and C. L. R. James, as well as the African American fans who penned letters to Warner Brothers praising Davis’s work. A unique combination of history, star study, and memoir, Bette Davis Black and White allows us to contemplate cross-racial spectatorship in new ways.
Better Bankers, Better Banks
Promoting Good Business through Contractual CommitmentClaire A. Hill and Richard W. Painter
University of Chicago Press, 2015
In Better Bankers, Better Banks, Claire A. Hill and Richard W. Painter look back at the history of banking and show how the current culture of bad behavior—dramatized by the corrupt, cocaine-snorting bankers of The Wolf of Wall Street—came to be. In the early 1980s, banks went from partnerships whose partners had personal liability to corporations whose managers had no such liability and could take risks with other people’s money. A major reason bankers remain resistant to change, Hill and Painter argue, is that while banks have been faced with large fines, penalties, and legal fees—which have exceeded one hundred billion dollars since the onset of the crisis—the banks (which really means the banks’shareholders) have paid them, not the bankers themselves. The problem also extends well beyond the pursuit of profit to the issue of how success is defined within the banking industry, where highly paid bankers clamor for status and clients may regard as inevitable bankers who prioritize their own self-interest. While many solutions have been proposed, Hill and Painter show that a successful transformation of banker behavior must begin with the bankers themselves. Bankers must be personally liable from their own assets for some portion of the bank’s losses from excessive risk-taking and illegal behavior. This would instill a culture that discourages such behavior and in turn influence the sorts of behavior society celebrates or condemns.
Despite many sensible proposals seeking to reign in excessive risk-taking, the continuing trajectory of scandals suggests that we’re far from ready to avert the next crisis. Better Bankers, Better Banks is a refreshing call for bankers to return to the idea that theirs is a noble profession.
Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps
Black Women's Activism in Rural Arkansas, 1914-1965Cherisse Jones-Branch
University of Arkansas Press, 2021
The first major study to consider Black women’s activism in rural Arkansas, Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps foregrounds activists’ quest to improve Black communities through language and foodways as well as politics and community organizing. In reexamining these efforts, Cherisse Jones-Branch lifts many important figures out of obscurity, positioning them squarely within Arkansas’s agrarian history.
The Black women activists highlighted here include home demonstration agents employed by the Arkansas Agricultural Cooperative Extension Service and Jeanes Supervising Industrial Teachers, all of whom possessed an acute understanding of the difficulties that African Americans faced in rural spaces. Examining these activists through a historical lens, Jones-Branch reveals how educated, middle-class Black women worked with their less-educated rural sisters to create all-female spaces where they confronted economic, educational, public health, political, and theological concerns free from white regulation and interference.
Centered on the period between 1914 and 1965, Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps brings long-overdue attention to an important chapter in Arkansas history, spotlighting a group of Black women activists who uplifted their communities while subverting the formidable structures of white supremacy.
Betting on Ideas
Wars, Invention, InflationReuven Brenner
University of Chicago Press, 1986
Betting on Macau
Casino Capitalism and China's Consumer RevolutionTim Simpson
University of Minnesota Press, 2023
A comprehensive look into how Macau’s recent decades of gambling-related growth produced one of the wealthiest territories on the planet
Betting on Macau delves into the radical transformation of what was formerly the last remaining European territory in Asia, returned to the People’s Republic of China in 1999 after nearly half a millennium of Portuguese rule. Examining the unprecedented scale of its development and its key role in China’s economic revolution, Tim Simpson follows Macau’s emergence from historical obscurity to become the most profitable casino gaming locale in the world.
Identified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and renowned for its unique blend of Chinese and Portuguese colonial-era architecture, contemporary Macau has metamorphosed into a surreal, hypermodern urban landscape augmented by massive casino megaresorts, including two of the world’s largest buildings. Simpson situates Macau’s origins as a strategic trading port and its ensuing history alongside the emergence of the global capitalist system, charting the massive influx of foreign investment, construction, and tourism in the past two decades that helped generate the territory’s enormous wealth.
Presented through a cross section of postcolonial studies and social theory with extensive insight into the global gambling industry, Betting on Macau uncovers the various roots of the territory’s lucrative casino capitalism. In turn, its trenchant analysis provides a distinctive view into China’s broader project of urbanization, its post-Mao economic reforms, and the continued rise of its consumer culture.
Betty Friedan and the Making of "The Feminine Mystique"
The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern FeminismDaniel Horowitz
University of Massachusetts Press, 1998
Ever since the 1963 publication of her landmark book, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan has insisted that her commitment to women's rights grew out of her experiences as an alienated suburban housewife. Yet as Daniel Horowitz persuasively demonstrates in this illuminating and provocative biography, the roots of Friedan's feminism run much deeper than she has led us to believe. Drawing on an impressive body of new research—including Friedan's own papers—Horowitz traces the development of Friedan's feminist outlook from her childhood in Peoria, Illinois, through her wartime years at Smith College and Berkeley, to her decade-long career as a writer for two of the period's most radical labor journals, the Federated Press and the United Electrical Workers' UE News. He further shows that even after she married and began to raise a family, Friedan continued during the 1950s to write and work on behalf of a wide range of progressive social causes. By resituating Friedan within a broader cultural context, and by offering a fresh reading of The Feminine Mystique against that background, Horowitz not only overturns conventional ideas about “second wave” feminism but also reveals long submerged links to its past.
Between Banat
Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab ArchivesMejdulene Bernard Shomali
Duke University Press, 2023