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Harem Histories is an interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring the harem as it was imagined, represented, and experienced in Middle Eastern and North African societies, and by visitors to those societies. One theme that threads through the collection is the intimate interrelatedness of West and East evident in encounters within and around the harem, whether in the elite socializing of precolonial Tunis or the popular historical novels published in Istanbul and Cairo from the late nineteenth century onward. Several of the contributors focus on European culture as a repository of harem representations, but most of them tackle indigenous representations of home spaces and their significance for how the bodies of men and women, and girls and boys, were distributed in social space, from early Islamic Mecca to early-twentieth-century Cairo.

Contributors. Asma Afsaruddin, Orit Bashkin, Marilyn Booth, Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Julia Clancy-Smith, Joan DelPlato, Jateen Lad, Nancy Micklewright, Yaseen Noorani, Leslie Peirce, Irvin Cemil Schick, A. Holly Schissler, Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh

Heath Robinson (1872–1944) is Britain’s “Gadget King”—master of the art of creating madcap contraptions that made use of ropes, weights, and pulleys to perform relatively simple tasks. Although he trained as a painter and also worked as a book illustrator, Robinson developed his forte with drawings of gadgets that parodied the absurdities of modern life. A true cartoonist, Robinson had a way of getting at the heart of the matter while simultaneously satirizing it mercilessly. He became a household name in Britain, and his popularity continues today.

The cartoons in Heath Robinson: How to be a Perfect Husband provide sage advice for how to succeed in almost all aspects of married life—and, of course, it often features a complicated Robinsonian gadget. The perfect husband, for example, will take advantage of two simple attachments to the garden roller to tend the lawn and entertain the baby simultaneously. Likewise, he can peel onions with no fear of tears using a mirror and construct a cost-effective vacuum cleaner using items found around the house. Most importantly, he will devise a device to help him climb the stairs silently after a late night out with the boys.

A gently satirical collection, this book make a perfect gift for anyone looking to have a laugh at our complicated and increasingly mechanical modern life.
 

Many parents who have experienced the death of a child struggle with painful and at times overwhelming marital problems. Grieving can create great marital distance, and it can magnify those problems that existed before the child's death. Grieving parents often fear that divorce is a real possibility. This book can help.

Based on intensive interviews of 29 couples who experienced the death of a child, this book offers perspectives and advice on common marital problems experienced by bereaved parents. Each couple's problems are unique, but often the problems are connected to couple communication, sexuality, parenting of other children, the use of alcohol and drugs, blaming, and differences in such areas as whether to have another child, how to grieve, how to talk about the child who died, whether to go outside the marriage for support, and  what to do with things and spaces that were the child's.

Although the book deals with pain and marital distress, it offers a message of hope. Grieving parents can and  do get through the hard times, based on respect for  differences, mutual understanding, and  shared history.

Half a million Hong Kong residents fled their homeland during the thirteen years before Hong Kong's reversion to China in 1997. Nearly half of those returned within the next several years. Filled with detailed, first-hand stories of nine Hong Kong families over nearly two decades, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers is a multifaceted yet intimate look at the forces behind Hong Kong families' successful, and failed, efforts at migration and settlement. 

Defining migration as a process, not a single act of leaving, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers provides an antidote to ethnocentric and simplistic theories by uncovering migration stories as they relate to social structures and social capital. The authors meld survey analysis, personal biography, and sociology and compare multiple families in order to give voice to the interplay of gender, age, and diverse family roles as motivating factors in migration.

“Do not march into the drawing-room and, having inspected it, say, “What a nice room, but —” “Do not look at your son steadfastly and then turn to his wife and tell her he is getting thin.” “When you wax eloquently on the way to keep soup hot, you are merely asking him to shout on the house tops that he prefers cold soup to mothers-in-law.” These are just a few of the words of wisdom on offer in How to be a Good Mother-in-Law, the latest in a series of delightful advice books that also includes How to be a Good Husband and How to be a Good Wife. While the station of mother-in-law is not one celebrated for its sympathy and is the subject of no shortage of off-color jokes, this slim guide shows that it is possible to achieve accord—even friendship—with the man or woman your son or daughter has chosen to marry.

           
Originally published in the 1930s, How to be a Good Mother-in-Law offers advice that ranges from the amusingly old-fashioned to the surprisingly still relevant today. Among the topics discussed are how not to behave on your son or daughter’s wedding day, how to visit the couple in their new home, how to interact with the grandchildren, and what degree of independence should be granted to married sons. For mothers-in-law considering living with the married couple, a chapter presents suggestions for how to negotiate this famously fraught situation. In another chapter called “Are They as Bad as They are Painted?,” the book reproduces a selection of tabloid tragedies, including the story of a mother-in-law that surprised a hapless couple by accompanying them on their honeymoon.

Whether you’re a new mother-in-law, a veteran to this much-maligned role, or a long-suffering spouse whose partner’s parent seems impossible to please—the pithy advice on-hand in How to be a Good Mother-in-Law will be warmly welcomed.

To keep children clean is something that should never be attempted. It cannot be done.
 
The mere provision of the vegetable is not sufficient; it must be actually eaten.
 
If there is room enough for somersaults, the child can be satisfied.
 
These are just a few of the words of wisdom on offer in How to be a Good Parent, the latest in a series of delightful advice books from the Bodleian Library that also includes How to be a Good Husband and How to be a Good Wife. As developmental psychology began to show promise, beleaguered parents were drawn to the nascent discipline with the sorts of questions that will be familiar to any parent: How does one tell a toddler “no” without triggering a tantrum? Are there circumstances in which it’s acceptable to extract good behavior with bribery?
           
How to be a Good Parent brings together bits from the best of advice books of the 1920s and ’30s, taking readers through all the challenges involved in raising a child. Among the topics discussed are good—and bad—behavior, how to dress one’s dear son or darling daughter, mealtime, and the dreaded morning and bedtime routines. A section on taking medicine offers sage advice: “Gargling is a useful accomplishment” (while perhaps not appropriate for the dinner table). In a section on playtime, parents tasked with planning their child’s birthday will warmly welcome the book’s advice to “let the children give their own parties!”

By turns humorously old-fashioned and timeless, How to be a Good Parent is a charmingly illustrated guide to what any parent can tell you is the world's most difficult job.