World History

Showing 65–68 of 68 results

  • Japan at War  cover

    Japan at War

    An Oral History
    Haruko Taya Cook
    $23.99

    A “deeply moving book” (Studs Terkel) and the first ever oral history to document the experience of ordinary Japanese people during World War II

    “Hereafter no one will be able to think, write, or teach about the Pacific War without reference to [the Cooks’] work.” —Marius B. Jansen, Emeritus Professor of Japanese History, Princeton University

    This pathbreaking work of oral history by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook was the first book ever to capture the experience of ordinary Japanese people during the war and remains the classic work on the subject.

    In a sweeping panorama, Japan at War takes us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese home front during the inhuman raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, offering glimpses of how the twentieth century’s most deadly conflict affected the lives of the Japanese population. The book “seeks out the true feelings of the wartime generation [and] illuminates the contradictions between the official views of the war and living testimony” (Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan).

    For decades, American and Japanese readers have turned to Japan at War for a candid portrait of the Japanese experience during World War II in all its complexity. Featuring essays that contextualize the oral histories of each tumultuous period covered, Japan at War is appropriate both as an introduction to those war-ravaged decades and as a riveting reference for those studying the war in the Pacific.

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  • Caribbean Slave Society and Economy  cover

    Caribbean Slave Society and Economy

    A Student Reader
    Hilary Beckles
    $40.00

    Because the institution of slavery has exerted such momentous force in shaping the socioeconomic and political history of the Caribbean, much of the region’s historical writing has focused on slavery. Caribbean Slave Society and Economy brings together into one volume the main themes of the recent research on slavery, and explores the patterns and forms of socioeconomic life and activity that molded the region’s heterogeneous slave societies.


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  • Customs in Common  cover

    Customs in Common

    Studies in Traditional Popular Culture
    E. P. Thompson
    $22.99 – $24.95

    The “meticulously researched, elegantly argued and deeply humane” sequel to the landmark volume of social history, The Making of the English Working Class (The New York Times Book Review).
     
    This remarkable study investigates the gradual disappearance of a range of cultural customs against the backdrop of the great upheavals of the eighteenth century. As villagers were subjected to a legal system increasingly hostile to custom, they tried both to resist and to preserve tradition, becoming, as E. P. Thompson explains, “rebellious, but rebellious in defense of custom.” Although some historians have written of riotous peasants of England and Wales as if they were mainly a problem for magistrates and governments, for Thompson it is the rulers, landowners, and governments who were a problem for the people, whose exuberant culture preceded the formation of working-class institutions and consciousness.
     
    Essential reading for all those intrigued by English history, Customs in Common has a special relevance today, as traditional economies are being replaced by market economies throughout the world. The rich scholarship and depth of insight in Thompson’s work offer many clues to understanding contemporary changes around the globe.
     
    “[This] long-awaited collection . . . is a signal contribution . . . [from] the person most responsible for inspiring the revival of American labor history during the past thirty years.” —The Nation
     
    “This book signals the return to historical writing of one of the most eloquent, powerful and independent voices of our time. At his best he is capable of a passionate, sardonic eloquence which is unequalled.” —The Observer

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    Power and Culture

    Essays on the American Working Class
    Herbert George Gutman
    $15.95

    Essays on the lives of workers, the formation of class during the Gilded Age, and the lives of African American enslaved people and freedmen

    Finally available in paperback, Power and Culture is the last work by America’s most influential labor and social historian, the late Herbert Gutman. Edited and introduced by Gutman’s colleague Ira Berlin, the book includes original, unpublished essays from throughout Gutman’s career and important but unavailable works from journals and periodicals, as well as an extended interview with Gutman and a comprehensive bibliography of his works.

    Power and Culture features essays on the lives of workers and the formation of class during the “Gilded Age” of American corporations, and on the lives of African American enslaved people and freedmen—the studies for which Gutman became famous. But it also shows the range of his thought on such subjects as Roots and popular historical awareness. With Berlin’s critical and biographical introduction, Power and Culture is an important reappraisal of a major scholar.

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Showing 65–68 of 68 results