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The U.S. infant mortality rate is among the highest in the industrialized world, and Black babies are far more likely than white babies to die in their first year of life. Maternal mortality rates are also very high. Though the infant mortality rate overall has improved over the past century with public health interventions, racial disparities have not. Racism, poverty, lack of access to health care, and other causes of death have been identified, but not yet adequately addressed. The tragedy is twofold: it is undoubtedly tragic that babies die in their first year of life, and it is both tragic and unacceptable that most of these deaths are preventable. Despite the urgency of the problem, there has been little public discussion of infant loss. The question this book takes up is not why babies die; we already have many answers to this question. It is, rather, who cares that babies, mostly but not only Black and Native American babies, are dying before their first birthdays? More importantly, what are we willing to do about it? This book tracks social and cultural dimensions of infant death through 58 alphabetical entries, from Absence to ZIP Code. It centers women’s loss and grief, while also drawing attention to dimensions of infant death not often examined. It is simultaneously a sociological study of infant death, an archive of loss and grief, and a clarion call for social change.

Taking readers on a journey through the colorful history of advertising, this book showcases one of the most important and extensive collections of printed ephemera in the world to uncover rarely-seen examples of ads, posters, and handbills. How did the advertisers of the past sell electric corsets, carbolic smoke balls, or the first televisions? Which celebrities endorsed which products? How did innovations in printing techniques and design play a part in the evolution of advertising? What can these items tell us about class, transport, war, and even the royal family?

Richly illustrated with over one hundred images from the Bodleian Library’s John Johnson Collection, Vintage Advertising: An A to Z takes a fresh look at historical advertising through a series of thematic and chronological juxtapositions, with topics arranged alphabetically from Art to Zeitgeist to provide striking, often unexpected, insights into changing culture, politics, and technology. Topics include new fashion trends such as patterned hosiery and the advertisement of new medical treatments, tonics, and devices. These advertisements shed new light on social issues such as the changing roles of women and the rising middle class. Highlighting how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century advertisements often capture the spirit of their age, each page is a rich repository of information, a new piece of the jigsaw puzzle of the past.

Western Water A to Z is the first ever field guide to Western water. Reinventing this twentieth-century genre for a twenty-first-century audience, Robert R. Crifasi answers questions about rivers, water projects, the culture of water, the ecosystems water projects have created or destroyed, and the reliance of cities, farms, and industries on this critical resource.
 
Organized as a collection of terms, the book addresses the most salient water issues and provides helpful background information regarding their origins and implications. Photographs serve a vital role in the cultural dialogue on water and stand as an equal partner to the text. Each subject is covered in about one page and is accompanied by one or two striking images from famous photographers like Margaret Bourke-White, Carleton E. Watkins, Arthur Rothstein, William Henry Jackson, and Dorothea Lang as well as Crifasi’s own work. Water often finds itself at the center of our cultural discourse in art, cinema, and literature, which play essential roles in shaping our understanding and experience of Western water. Crifasi also engages personalities that are nearly synonymous with Western water—John Wesley Powell, Elwood Mead, and Floyd Dominy, among others—to show how their lives intertwined with and often influenced the course of water development across the region.
 
Travelers, adventurers, students, and anyone interested in water will find Western Water A to Z a handy and entertaining reference guide.