For sale in CIS only! The career of Louise Bennett ("Miss Lou") is an essential component in any reckoning of Jamaican culture. This book offers a brief account of her life (1919-2006): a story of challenges and blessings, of a journey towards natio...

Bred to provide human companionship, dogs eclipse all other species when it comes to reading the body language of people. Dog owners hunger for a complete rapport with their pets; in the dog the fantasy of empathetic resonance finds its ideal. But cr...

For sale in CIS only! Miami, or "Sweet Water" in the Creek Indian language, is one of the newest cities in the United States. While northern Florida was fought over by European powers and finally taken by the Americans as part of the slave-worked pl...

In the twelfth century, the Catholic Church attempted a thoroughgoing reform of marriage and sexual behavior aimed at eradicating sexual desire from Christian lives. Seeking a refuge from the very serious condemnations of the Church and relying on a...

How did an animal product that spoils easily, carries disease, and causes digestive trouble for many of its consumers become a near-universal symbol of modern nutrition? In the first cultural history of milk, historian Deborah Valenze traces the ritu...

America's global cultural impact is largely seen as one-sided, with critics claiming that it has undermined other countries' languages and traditions. But contrary to popular belief, the cultural relationship between the United States and the world h...

In the past few decades, thousands of new memorials to executed witches, victims of terrorism, and dead astronauts, along with those that pay tribute to civil rights, organ donors, and the end of Communism have dotted the American landscape. Equally...

In the late medieval era, pain could be a symbol of holiness, disease, sin, or truth. It could be encouragement to lead a moral life, a punishment for wrong doing, or a method of healing. Exploring the varied depictions and descriptions of pain – fro...

In "Medicine Show", inner conflict is wonderfully realized in the clash of down-home plain speech and European high culture utterances. Freely translating and adapting Catullus (Latin), Villon (Middle French), Corbiere (French), Hikmet (Turkish), and...

It is often assumed that natural philosophy was the forerunner of early modern natural sciences. But where did these sciences' systematic observation and experimentation get their starts? In "Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe", the labor...