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Medieval gardens; cookshops; spices; ale, beer, wine and spirits; the food of peasants, labourers, townspeople, the wealthy, the poor and the country gentleman; fish, meat and game; the feeding of infants, children; dairy products; vitamins, proteins, fat and fibre; the adulteration of food; the four bottle man; bread; poaching; tea, coffee and chocolate; food in schools and institutions; sugar and sweetmeats; root crops; the agricultural revolution; the importance of 'white meats', the vegetari...

A brilliant book which studies the psychological conditions which made possible the development of capitalist civilization. The book analyzes the connection between the spread of Calvinism and a new attitude toward the pursuit of wealth in post-Reformation Europe and England, and attitude which permitted, encouraged-even sanctified-the human quest for prosperity.

Since 2014, over 80 people have been killed in the United States of America by Right-wing terrorists. In 2016 Donald Trump was elected President of the United States and received substantial support from White nationalists. This book explains the increase in violent White nationalism and Trump's ascendancy in the context of the backlash against the presidency of Barack Obama. It demonstrates how there is a dynamic relationship between the Republican Party, various Right-wing populist movements...

"The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were remarkably successful in capturing the public imagination and identifying the need for a new kind of politics. But they have since floundered. Why did this happen? Was the Occupy movement stifled by misconceptions of political power? What kind of political theory do we need to advance a new politics? How can we realistically challenge the power of the 1%?"--Back cover.

In this book, Kalyan Sanyal reviews the traditional notion of capitalism and propounds an original theory of capitalist development in the post-colonial context. In order to substantiate his theory, concepts such as primitive accumulation, governmentality and post-colonial capitalist formation are discussed in detail. Analyzing critical questions from a third world perspective such as: Will the integration into the global capitalist network bring to the third world new economic opportunities? W...

From environmental degradation and changing relations with the Soviet bloc, to nuclear war and population growth, Allan Mazur tackles world social problems on a global level. The book covers objectivity and bias, the agrarian/urban transformation, industrialization in Europe and America, the superpowers, war, inequality, population and technology, resources and the environment. Prospects for the future are examined in the last chapter.

If we are serious about finding a different way to run the post-credit crunch society, we must start by introducing alternatives to undergraduates. Kieran Allen begins the task with an accessible and comprehensive look at the ideas of Karl Marx. Dispensing with the dryness of traditional explanations of Marx, Allen shows how Marx's ideas apply to modern society. The first section briefly outlines Marx's life and the development of his work, then goes on to clearly explain his key theories, in...

The Corpse Walker introduces us to regular men and women at the bottom of Chinese society, most of whom have been battered by life but have managed to retain their dignity: a professional mourner, a human trafficker, a public toilet manager, a leper, a grave robber, and a Falung Gong practitioner, among others. By asking challenging questions with respect and empathy, Liao Yiwu managed to get his subjects to talk openly and sometimes hilariously about their lives, desires, and vulnerabilities, c...

The possibility of violence beneath a thin veneer of civil society is a fact of daily life for twenty-first-century Guatemalans, from field laborers to the president of the country. Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala explores the causes and consequences of governmental failure by focusing on life in two K'iche' Maya communities in the country's western highlands. The contributors to this volume, who lived among the villagers for some time, include both undergraduate students and distinguishe...

The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins’s claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient. Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education’s promises of upward mobility. An unacknowledged spiral of the ri...

It's time to radically alter the way we perceive the world. It's time to get real. Multinational oil corporations trumpet their green credentials. Shadowy billionaires orchestrate 'grassroots' political movements. Public-spending cuts target the poor, but supposedly 'give power to the people'. To Eliane Glaser, these are all signs of the maddeningly surreal gap between appearance and reality in modern life. We are living in a looking-glass world in which reality is spun and c...

The German Left and the Weimar Republic illuminates the history of the political left by presenting a wide range of documents on various aspects of socialist and communist activity in Germany. Separate chapters deal with the policy of Social Democracy and the attempts of the Communist Party to overthrow the Weimar Republic. Later chapters discuss social issues, in particular questions of gender and sexuality. The book concludes with a presentation of documents on various groups of socialist and...

This is the first study of the British Women's Liberation Movement's relationship with class politics. It explores the meaning of class to women's liberationists' identities and activism, both nationally and regionally, using a previously neglected feminist cluster in North East England as a case study. Stevenson demonstrates that British feminism was shaped fundamentally by its relationship to, synthesis with, and rejection of class politics. Through these processes, feminists recognised how p...

Where are the Right Places, those exclusive locations where the privileged live and play? You may be in for a surprise. For as Stephen Birmingham shows, in the same witty, penetrating style that characterized his other studies of the elite, the Right Places could be just about anywhere, from exclusive chalets in Sun Valley, Idaho to the traditionally swank estates of Fairfield County, Connecticut, to the nascent avant-garde art scene in Kansas City, Missouri. Birmingham goes to great lengths...

This definitive biography depicts one Victorian woman's struggle to stay afloat in a rising tide of prurient scandalmongering and snobbery. Could it be that this woman's character and circumstances informed Oscar Wilde's social comedies? She was the daughter of a leading Conservative Oxford don, vilified as an arrogant fortune-hunter. Her liaison dangereuse with a Duke resulted in ostracism by Queen Victoria's cronies, as well as protracted, widely publicised legal disputes with his family. One...

A portrait of 18th century England, from its princes to its paupers, from its metropolis to its smallest hamlet. The topics covered include - diet, housing, prisons, rural festivals, bordellos, plays, paintings, and work and wages.

This book is a twist on the current discourse around 'inclusivity' and 'widening participation'. Higher education is welcoming students from diverse educational, social, and economic backgrounds, and yet it predominantly employs middle-class academics. Conceptually, there appears, on at least these grounds alone, to be a cultural and class mismatch. This work discusses empirical interviews with tenured academics from a working-class heritage employed in one UK university. Interviewees talk candi...