Between about 1830 and the outbreak of the First World War, print culture, reading, and writing transformed cultural life in Western Europe in many significant ways. Book production and consumption increased dramatically, and practices such as letter- and diary-writing were widespread. This study demonstrates the importance of the nineteenth century in French cultural change and illustrates the changing priorities and concerns of l'histoire du livre since the 1970s. From the 1830s on, book production experienced an industrial revolution which led to the emergence of a mass literary culture by the close of the century. At the same time, the western world acquired mass literacy. New categories of readers became part of the reading public while western society also learned to write. Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France examines how the concerns of historians have shifted from a search for statistical sources to more qualitative assessments of readers' responses. Martyn Lyons argues that autobiographical sources are vitally important to this investigation and he considers examples of the intimate and everyday writings of ordinary people. Featuring original and intriguing insights as well as references to material hitherto inaccessible to English readers, this study presents a form of 'history from below' with emphasis on the individual reader and writer, and his or her experiences and perceptions.

Mary Ellen Mark fell in love with the Indian circus in 1969, during her first trip to India. As she watched a huge hippopotamus walk around the ring with its mouth wide open, wearing a pink tutu, she was struck by the beauty and innocence of the show. She returned to India many times, and in 1989 and 1990 she devoted six months to photographing eighteen circuses, following them around the continent by train, plane, van, and auto-rickshaw. Secretive, highly competitive, and each a closed, self-sufficient society, the circuses embody what Mark calls "a poetry and a craziness that are still uncorrupted, and honest, and pure." Beautifully printed in tritone, this remarkable collection of photographs captures the texture of circus life outside of the ring - exhausting, humorous, poignant, and often bizarre - as well as the affection and devotion that the performers have for each other and their animals. Indian Circus is documentary photography at its finest. The photographs are not only compelling portraits of the performers, but also eloquent and poetic narratives about life in the Indian circus.

Bound in publisher's original wrappers with the front cover stamped in red and gilt and the spine stamped in red. Minor waters stains to the bottom edge. Minor browning to endpapers and to the top and fore edges. Richard A. Falk's copy with his name in ink on the front free endpaper, otherwise internally clean and bright.

The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone , first published in 1979, is one of Matt Cohen's four novels that came to be known as the Salem quartet--stories set in the fictional town of Salem in eastern Ontario, somewhere north of Kingston in the rugged farmland and forest of the Canadian Shield. These are the novels that first brought Matt Cohen to national attention. The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone , a story about the pleasure of love that comes late in life, centres on the lives of two time-worn characters whose pursuit of happiness is strangely rewarded. With The Disinherited , another of the Salem novels, this is considered among the author's best works.

A seventeen-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl leaves her home in New York for the summer to film a television show in California.

This book takes the argument first set out in Lineage Organization in South-Eastern China a step further. It incorporates some of Professor Freedman's field data (gathered in the Hong Kong New Territories in 1963) and draws on a wide variety of written sources. As in his first book on the subject, the author seeks to analyse certain crucial institutions of Chinese society within the framework of contemporary anthropological theory.

Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story is a memoir of coming-of-age and struggling to leave the USSR. Shrayer chronicles the triumphs and humiliations of a Soviet childhood and expresses the dreams and fears of a Jewish family that never gave up its hopes for a better life. Narrated in the tradition of Tolstoy’s confessional trilogy and Nabokov’s autobiography, this is a searing account of the KGB’s persecution of refuseniks, a poet’s rebellion against totalitarian culture, and Soviet fantasies of the West during the Cold War. Shrayer’s remembrances are set against a rich backdrop of politics, travel, and ethnic conflict on the brink of the Soviet empire’s collapse. His story offers generous doses of humor and tenderness, counterbalanced with longing and violence. Leaving Russia is a love story in which a young Jew’s love is unrequited and his heart is forever broken by his homeland.

Highly regarded for her deft and humorous portrayals of the dark side of modern living, Maxine Chernoff’s latest collection is a droll, poetic field guide to the endearing and troubling aspects of human behavior. Chernoff fans will relish the sixteen new stories, and new readers will discover a wonderful assemblage of Chernoff’s likeable and contemplative characters. Chernoff continues to establish herself as a master of the short story genre with this excellent collection.

Relates in rhyme the famous Dutch scientist's penchant for viewing things with a microscope, through which he made remarkable observations.

Every work on Jewish thought and law since the twelfth century bears the imprint of Maimonides. A. N. Whitehead's famous dictum that the entire European philosophical tradition 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato' could equally characterize Maimonides' place in the Jewish tradition. The critical studies in this volume explore how Orthodox rabbis of different orientations--Shlomo Aviner, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Joseph Kafih, Abraham Isaac Kook, Aaron Kotler, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Elhanan Wasserman--have read and provided footnotes to Maimonides in the long twentieth century. How well did they really understand Maimonides? And where do their arguments fit in the mainstream debates about him and his works? Each of the seven core chapters examines a particular approach. Some rabbis have tried to liberate themselves from the influence of his ideas. Others have sought to build on those ideas or expand them in ways which Maimonides himself did not pursue, and which he may well not have agreed with. Still others advance patently non-Maimonidean positions, while attributing them to none other than Maimonides. Above all, the essays published here demonstrate that his legacy remains vibrantly alive today.

Finding Words explores the subtle beauty and stark challenges of family, the complexities of adult friendships, the struggle to center a life on what is meaningful and nourishing, and the holiness to be found in ordinary moments. Moving and accessible, Finding Words is a great gift for friends and family. In addition to being one of those cherished "night table books," it is ideal as a book club selection and also provides thoughtful content for a unique and powerful adult education program. Acclaimed poet and award-winning playwright, Feld is author of the beloved memoir, A Spiritual Life (SUNY Press, revised 2007); her poetry has been featured in numerous anthologies and in several new groundbreaking prayer books. As educator and scholar-in-residence, she has helped clergy and communities across North America use poetry as a powerful means of spiritual expression and has pioneered the field of writing as a spiritual practice.

A biography of Conan Doyle, best known for his creation of Sherlock Holmes. However, he was more than a populist writer and a symbol of triumphalism of Edwardian England. He was also an ambitious man of letters, a searcher for political and theological truth, and a leader and shaper of opinion.

In this innovative study, Michel Wieviorka applies interventionist sociology to a comparative analysis of Italian, Peruvian, Basque, and Middle Eastern terrorist groups. Through staged confrontations between terrorists and their targets, and extensive interviews with both parties, he throws new light on the terrorists and their relationships both to the movements they represent and the social institutions they attempt to destroy. Wieviorka demonstrates that the truly terrorist actor has become alienated both from the collective movement and society. The actor turns to the blind violence when he finds himself cut off from the very ideology which legitimates his actions. Pure terrorism, Wieviorka concludes, is more than simply a break between those who use it and those it targets; it is also a relationship—between the individual and the collective he represents—which has been rendered unrealistic or artificial. Thus, terrorist violence should be understood not as the desperate act of a faltering movement but as a substitute for a movement which has fallen away from the ideology in which it was forged. For the revelations it offers on the roots and motivations of terrorism, for its innovative methods, and for its useful comparative analysis of terrorist groups in recent history, The Making of Terrorism will be an important resource across many disciplines for anyone interested in terrorism or political violence.

Everything in the book has been written by women out of their own experiences in the Movement; some pieces have already appeared in Women's Liberation publication, others have been written specially for this book.