Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700

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James R. Shortridge

"By the beginning of the twentieth century, photography had become accessible to average Americans as a means of documenting their lives. Although most people did not yet own cameras, they flocked to commercial photographers for affordable portraits that became the family heirlooms we gape at in wonder today. One of the most accomplished of these photographers was Joseph Judd Pennell of Junction City, Kansas.". "Our Town on the Plains reproduces more than one hundred of Pennell's best photographs to open up a window on the past. Taken from 1893 to 1922, these wonderfully crisp images depict a cross section of life in Junction City and nearby Fort Riley: people posing with studio props or in front of their homes, group shots of schools and clubs, commissioned photographs of buildings and businesses, public events like parades and unveilings, and ordinary people at work on their farms and in their shops."--BOOK JACKET.

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Richard Seaford

This is an exciting and entirely new synthesis, combining anthropology, political and social history, and the close reading of central Greek texts, to account for two of the most significant features of Homeric epic and Athenian tragedy: the representation of ritual and of codes of reciprocity. Both genres are pervaded by these features, yet each treats them in very different ways. In this book, Dr Seaford shows that these differences cannot be accounted for in merely literary terms, but require a historical explanation. Homer is a product of the city state at an earlier historical stage than is tragedy. It is the growth of the city-state and its concomitant developments - in particular of law and of money, as well as in the practice of ritual - that provide a key to the crystallization of the Homeric narrative tradition, to the specificity of tragedy, and to certain features of the thought of the period. In the case of reciprocity, again whether the positive reciprocity associated with gift exchange or the hostile reciprocity of revenge - the systematic distinctions between Homer and tragedy can be explained only from a historical perspective. In its characteristic movement tragedy reflects and confirms the transition from one kind of society towards another: from a network of reciprocal relations, characteristic of societies where the state is weak or absent, to the organization of citizens around a single centre or series of centres - the institutions and cults of the city-state. Challenging, thoroughly lucid, and at times controversial, this lively, original yet accessible work is the first to attempt to understand the development of early Greek literature from the perspective of state formation. It should make enlivening and important reading for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the history or the literature of classical Greece. All Greek is translated.

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Ira Berlin

A leading historian offers a sweeping new account of the African American experience over four centuries Four great migrations defined the history of black people in America: the violent removal of Africans to the east coast of North America known as the Middle Passage; the relocation of one million slaves to the interior of the antebellum South; the movement of more than six million blacks to the industrial cities of the north and west a century later; and since the late 1960s, the arrival of black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. These epic migra¡tions have made and remade African American life.Ira Berlin's magisterial new account of these passages evokes both the terrible price and the moving triumphs of a people forcibly and then willingly migrating to America. In effect, Berlin rewrites the master narrative of African America, challenging the traditional presentation of a linear path of progress. He finds instead a dynamic of change in which eras of deep rootedness alternate with eras of massive move¡ment, tradition giving way to innovation. The culture of black America is constantly evolving, affected by (and affecting) places as far away from one another as Biloxi, Chicago, Kingston, and Lagos. Certain to gar¡ner widespread media attention, The Making of African America is a bold new account of a long and crucial chapter of American history.

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Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr

"This collection of 14 essays explores drama from around the world that depicts the United States and Americans. From eighteenth century German dramas about Native Americans to the theaters of contemporary Japan, Mexico, Ireland, and others, there are conflicting representations of Americans. Sometimes flattering, often critical, and occasionally insulting, these views highlight perceptions of America abroad"--Provided by publisher.