Results by title

An exploration of the political thriller genre and its context in Latin American politics and entertainment.

For the past five decades, a distinctive type of political thriller has been steadily developing in Latin America. Precarious Secrets is a panoramic overview of the genre in the hands of renowned writers and filmmakers from Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil, as well as lesser-known Peruvian, Uruguayan and Paraguayan artists for whom the style has been a vehicle for pungent narratives shot through with menace and conspiracy.

Fabricio Tocco explores the genre’s unique role in Latin American entertainment and activism. Precarious Secrets traces the evolutions of the Latin American political thriller from its emergence in the 1970s, through the silence imposed by dictatorships and the genre’s resurgence after the Cold War. The political thriller has dramatized the region’s turbulent past, through assassinations, coups, mass killings, revolutions and the search of desaparecidos by human rights organizations. In the process, Tocco isolates the Latin American political thriller’s particular grammar of secrecy. In the Hollywood thriller, revealing secrets involves high stakes and transformative consequences. In Latin American political thrillers, by contrast, secrets produce only more precarity—moral ambiguity as unsettling as it is unshakeable.

The recent vast upsurge in social science scholarship on job precarity has generally little to say about earlier forms of this phenomenon. Eloisa Betti’s monograph convincingly demonstrates on the example of Italy that even in the post-war phase of Keynesian stability and welfare state, precarious labor was an underlying feature of economic development. She examines how in this short period exceptional politics of labor stability prevailed. The volume then presents the processes whereby labor precarity regained momentum— under the name of flexibility— in the post-Fordist phase from the early 1980s, taking on new forms in the Craxi and Berlusconi eras.

Multiple actors are addressed in the analysis. The book gives voice to intellectuals, scholars, politicians and trade unionists as they have framed the concept and debates on precarious work from the 1950s onwards. Views of labor law experts, politicians and public servants are investigated in regard to labor regulations. Positions of the very precarians are explored, ranging from rural women, industrial homeworkers and blue-collar workers to physicians, university researchers and trainees, unveiling the emergence of anti-precarity social movements. The continuous role of women’s associations and feminist groups in opposing labor precarity since the 1950s is prominently exposed.

In the many centuries preceding Western contact, a richly diverse and innovative architectural tradition reached maturity in the western Pacific. Prehistoric Architecture in Micronesia, the first modern study of this remarkable work, reveals that there is no such thing as primitive architecture but only primitive means.

This study presents five distinctly different examples of Micronesia's ancient architecture. The sites include the extraordinary stone cities of Leluh and Nan Madol on the islands of Kosrae and Pohnpei, respectively. Other structures include the meeting houses and residences built on hexagonal stone platforms in the Yap Islands, the earth terraces and ornately decorated meeting houses of Palau, and the megalithic columns and capstones of prehistoric houses in the Mariana Islands.

These structures are illustrated by photographs, maps, plans, and other drawings. Many of the basic data come from archaeological investigations of the specific sites. Summaries at the ends of chapters and in the concluding section compare the architectural characteristics of the island groups with each other and with monuments outside Micronesia. One of the most remarkable achievements of any ancient people, the prehistoric architecture of Micronesia is a source of continuing inspiration for persons who search for meaning in the built form of our present-day environment.

LGBT activist and civil rights history from the 1960s to the 2000s has had a huge impact on our social and political landscape in the UK, yet much of this history remains hidden.

Prejudice and Pride: LGBT Activist Stories from Manchester and Beyond explores aspects of LGBT activist history. It covers educational activism, youth work activism, and the history of the LGBT Centre in Manchester.

Through personal stories of activists, heard and recorded by young people from LGBT Youth North West, the book explores the "wibbly wobbly" nature of people's histories. It reveals how they interlink in surprising and creative ways to form the current landscape of both prejudice and pride. Also contains exercises for interpreting and ideas for collecting activist histories within youth work. 

From the late nineteenth century onward, men and women throughout the Middle East discussed, debated, and negotiated the roles of young girls and women in producing modern nations. In Palestine, girls' education was pivotal to discussions about motherhood. Their education was seen as having the potential to transform the family so that it could meet both modern and nationalist expectations.

Ela Greenberg offers the first study to examine the education of Muslim girls in Palestine from the end of the Ottoman administration through the British colonial rule. Relying upon extensive archival sources, official reports, the Palestinian Arabic press, and interviews, she describes the changes that took place in girls' education during this time. Greenberg describes how local Muslims, often portrayed as indifferent to girls' education, actually responded to the inadequacies of existing government education by sending their daughters to missionary schools despite religious tensions, or by creating their own private nationalist institutions.

Greenberg shows that members of all socioeconomic classes understood the triad of girls' education, modernity, and the nationalist struggle, as educated girls would become the "mothers of tomorrow" who would raise nationalist and modern children. While this was the aim of the various schools in Palestine, not all educated Muslim girls followed this path, as some used their education, even if it was elementary at best, to become teachers, nurses, and activists in women's organizations.

From ale romantics to hopheads, the Pacific Northwest is a haven for beer lovers. Considered a mecca for beer enthusiasts, the Northwest earned its reputation from a group of emerging brewers in the 1980s who established a demand for craft beer throughout and beyond the region. Brewing guru Fred Eckhardt, the Grateful Dead–loving McMenamin brothers, the effervescent Art Larrance, the determined Widmer brothers, and entrepreneurial pub owner Don Younger were among the open-minded, vibrant crew who founded a microbrewery industry that became a model for a new era. 

“For those intimately involved or those who merely had a barstool view of the microbrewing revolution, the first decade of the movement was an intoxicating passage from anonymity to celebrity,” writes Tom Gauntt in the introduction. Present at the Fermentation celebrates the rich history of beermaking and those who transformed the business in the Pacific Northwest. Through press coverage of the time, interviews, oral histories, and personal memory, Gauntt offers an engaging history of one of Oregon’s signature industries. 

With more than 9,700 craft brewers now operating in the US, there remains a passion for craft brewing and pride in creating the perfect ale in this evolving market. So, pour a pint and learn how Pacific Northwest microbreweries persevered through risk, hard work, foibles, and a lot of luck to create award-winning beer, connect with their communities, and build thriving businesses.

Examining how former prisons became tourist destinations and what that means for past, present, and future carceral spaces

Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. War on Drugs and tougher crime policies drove incarceration rates to unprecedented levels, leading to severe prison overcrowding and a surge in prison construction. As new facilities opened, many older prisons, some dating to the nineteenth century, were closed and abandoned. Communities faced difficult decisions about their future. Demolition was expensive, and adaptive reuse was often constrained by the distinctive architecture of confinement.

One response, often inspired by the success of institutions such as Alcatraz Island and Eastern State Penitentiary, has been to preserve former prisons as historic sites and tourist attractions, welcoming visitors and using tours and exhibits to shape public understanding of incarceration. Today former prisons operating as such exist in every region of the United States. For many visitors, these sites provide a primary point of contact with the history and realities of imprisonment.

 Yet transforming places of confinement into destinations for tourism and heritage raises important questions. How should these sites interpret difficult histories? For whom? What responsibilities do they have to the formerly incarcerated, previous staff, and affected communities? How can they balance education, commemoration, entertainment, and economic development?

Preserving Punishment offers the first sustained historical study of prison museums in the United States. Examining how these institutions preserve, interpret, and present the history of incarceration, C. Morgan Grefe and Megan Cullen Tewell highlight the role of preservationists and public historians in shaping narratives, addressing ethical challenges, and fostering critical engagement with America's past and present systems of punishment. Grounded in local and regional contexts, they argue that historic prison sites are uniquely positioned to encourage informed public conversations about incarceration, memory, and criminal justice.