Old Is Gold

The essays in this pathbreaking collection consider the significance of varied early American fragmentary genres and practices--from diaries and poetry, to almanacs and commonplace books, to sermons and lists, to Indigenous ruins and other material shards and fragments--often overlooked by critics in a scholarly...

French playwright, novelist, activist, and journalist Louis Sébastien Mercier (1740-1814) passionately captured scenes of social injustice in pre-Revolutionary Paris in his prolific oeuvre but today remains an understudied writer. In this penetrating study--the first in English devoted to Mercier in decades--Michael Mulryan explores his...

The meaning of decadence varies with context, depending on what (or who) is understood to have declined, decayed, or degenerated. These negative meanings are familiar from history (the decline and fall of Rome), sociology (the decay of communities), morality (the degeneration of values), and...

This volume is part of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh critical edition, which brings together all Waugh's published and previously unpublished writings for the first time with comprehensive introductions and annotation, and a full account of each text's manuscript development and textual variants....

This volume is part of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh critical edition, which brings together all Waugh's published and previously unpublished writings for the first time with comprehensive introductions and annotation, and a full account of each text's manuscript development and textual variants....

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism presents a revaluation of the major narratives in the history of terrorism, exploring the emergence and the use of terrorism in world history from antiquity up to the twenty-first century. The essays collected in this handbook...

In bringing biography and celebrity together, the essays in Making Stars interrogate contemporary and current understandings of each. Although biography was not invented in the eighteenth century, the period saw the emergence of works that focus on individuals who are interesting as much, if...

Every time Union armies invaded Southern territory there were unintended consequences. Military campaigns always affected the local population -- devastating farms and towns, making refugees of the inhabitants, undermining slavery. Local conditions in turn altered the course of military events. The social effects of...

This new edition of Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicester is the most comprehensive scholarly edition of any of Leonardo's manuscripts. It contains a high-quality facsimile reproduction of the Codex, a new transcription and translation, accompanied by a paraphrase in modern language and a page-by-page...

Comics and Nation offers a fresh perspective on the role of popular culture in the one-hundred-year history of the Polish state, from its foundation in 1918 to the present. Drawing on dozens of press articles, interviews, and readers' letters, Ewa Stańczyk discusses how journalists,...

In the 1970s and 1980s West Germany was a pioneer in both the use of the new information technologies for population surveillance and the adoption of privacy protection legislation. During this era of cultural change and political polarization, the expansion, bureaucratization, and computerization of...

During the first half of the twentieth century, a group of collectors and creators dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life. At a time when dominant institutions cast doubt on the value or even the idea of Black history, these bibliophiles,...

Contemporary fiction has never been less contemporary. Midcentury writers tended to set their works in their own moment, but for the last several decades critical acclaim and attention have fixated on historical fiction. This shift is particularly dramatic for writers of color. Even as...

In a little-known chapter of World War II, Black people living in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe were subjected to ostracization, forced sterilization, and incarceration in internment and concentration camps. In the absence of public commemoration, African diaspora writers and artists have preserved the...

China's last imperial dynasty governed a vast and culturally diverse territory, encompassing a wide range of local political systems and regional elites. But the Qing empire was built and held together by a single imperial elite: the more than two million members of the...

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States saw both a series of Protestant religious revivals and the dramatic expansion of the marketplace. Although today conservative Protestantism is associated with laissez-faire capitalism, many of the nineteenth-century believers who experienced these transformations...

Writing on the cusp of modern botany and during the heyday of English herbals and garden manuals, Shakespeare references at least 180 plants in his works and makes countless allusions to horticultural and botanical practices. Shakespeare's Botanical Imagination moves plants to the foreground of...

Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States and Saudi Arabia have built a close but often troubled alliance. In this critical history, Victor McFarland reveals the deep ties binding the leaders of the two nations. Connecting foreign relations and domestic politics, McFarland challenges the...

From the 1960s through the 1990s, the most common job for women in the United States was clerical work. Even as college-educated women obtained greater opportunities for career advancement, occupational segregation by gender remained entrenched. How did feminism in corporate America come to represent...

The 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, remains one of Nazi Germany's most significant military campaigns. Executed by Hitler's Wehrmacht army, this event saw troops from all over Europe defeat the Red Army and temporarily colonize large swathes of Eastern Europe,...