"The Republic of Color" delves deep into the history of color science in the United States to unearth its origins and examine the scope of its influence on the industrial transformation of turn-of-the-century America.   For a nation in the grip of pr...

In this book, Sumanta Banerjee analyzes the development of the folk culture of Calcutta's urban poor following the establishment of the British colonial system in Bengal. Consisting primarily of traditional artisans who migrated from neighboring vill...

"Nations need identities. These are created from perceptions of how societies have evolved. In this, history plays a central role. Insisting on reliable history is therefore crucial to more than just a pedagogic cause. Delicate relationships between...

In the twenty-first century piracy has regained a central place in Western culture, thanks to a surprising combination of Johnny Depp and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise as well as the dramatic rise of modern-day piracy around Somalia and th...

Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-twentieth century through Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception", after which the word "psychedelic" was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: the earliest Andean c...

The Victorians invented mass entertainment. As the nineteenth century's growing industrialized class acquired the funds and the free time to pursue leisure activities, their desires were satiated by determined entrepreneurs building new venues for po...

When it was published in 2015, Andrew Hartman's history of the culture wars was widely praised for its compelling and even-handed account of the way they developed and came to define American politics as the twentieth century drew to its close. Recei...

The leaders that are remembered by history both define the world they live in and change that world forever. Whether their leadership is inspirational, innovative, decisive or ultimately destructive, we have a lot to learn from the lives and achievem...

Literature has, from the start of the nineteenth century, cast the suburbs as dull, vulgar, and unimaginative margins where, by definition, nothing important takes place. Sarah Bilston argues that such attitudes were forged to undermine the cultural...

Not too long ago, it might have seemed impossible that cannabis would step out of the shadows into the mainstream. But now, as legalization sweeps the globe, a new weed culture is evolving with its own set of rules – and thousands of new devotees eag...