Based on a series of lectures delivered in 1840, Thomas Carlyle's "On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History" considers how heroes are created and conveys his ideas on the importance of heroic leadership. Carlyle explored a wide range of her...

For sale in CIS only! The cheap mobile phone is arguably the most significant personal communications device in history. In India, where caste hierarchy has reinforced power for generations, the disruptive potential of the mobile phone is even more...

We live in a material world – our homes are filled with things, from electronics to curios and hand-me-downs, that disclose as much about us and our aspirations as they do about current trends. But we are not the first: the early modern period was a...

Looking at cultural appropriation from around the world, this volume uses the field of cultural studies – heavily influenced by both economics and sociology – as a lens through which to view the paradigm of transcultural consumption. The editors pres...

The subject of murder has always held a particular fascination for us. But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizen – a special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart f...

For sale in CIS only! Ironic and humorous, witty and self-deprecatory, "The Afghan Rumour Bazaar" reveals the quotidian absurdities of lives framed against the backdrop of a savage war. Offering daringly new perspectives on a country readers may err...

For sale in CIS only! "Afghanistan in Ink" uses a wide and largely unknown corpus of twentieth century Afghan Dari and Pashto literature to show not only how Afghans have reflected on their modern history, but also how the state has repeatedly sough...

As one of the first American journalists to enter the newly liberated concentration camps in the closing days of the Holocaust, Meyer Levin wished the world to know of the horror he had found. Seizing upon Anne Franks Diary as a poignant voice to tel...

W. E. B. Du Bois has described the African American at the end of the nineteenth century as "two souls in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder". In the United States today, the hyphen between these two souls – A...

We live in a surveillance society. Anyone who uses a credit card, cell phone, or even search engines to navigate the Web is being monitored and assessed – and often in ways that are imperceptible to us. The first general introduction to the growing f...