But while the nature of memory is a constant, the nature of history has changed radically over the past forty years, for good but also for ill. In The Purpose of the Past, historian Gordon S. Wood examines the sea change in the field through considerations of some of its most important historians and their works. His book serves as both a history of American history-neither wholly a celebration nor a critique-and an argument for its ongoing necessity. These are both the best of times and the worst of times for American history. New currents of thought have brought refreshing and vitally necessary changes to the discipline, expanding its compass to include previously underexamined and undervalued groups and subjects. At the same time, however, strains of extreme, even nihilistic, relativism have assaulted the relevance, even the legitimacy, of the historian's work. The divide between the work of academic and popular historians has widened into a chasm, separating some of the field's most important new ideas from what would give them much greater impact: any kind of real audience. But The Purpose of the Past is not another crotchety elegy for what history once was but sadly now isn't; it is also a celebration of what, at its best, it is, and a powerful argument for its ongoing necessity. Along the way The Purpose of the Past offers wonderful insight into what great historians do, and how they can stumble, and what strains of thought have dominated the marketplace of ideas in historical scholarship. A master historian's commanding assessment of his field, The Purpose of the Past will enlarge the capacity to appreciate history of anyone who reads it

    Some of the cruelest deeds of Japan's war in Asia did not occur on the battlefield, but in quiet, antiseptic medical wards in obscure parts of the continent. Far from front lines and prying eyes, Japanese doctors and their assistants subjected human guinea pigs to gruesome medical experiments. In the first part of Unit 731: Testimony author Hal Gold draws upon a painstakingly accumulated reservoir of sources to construct a portrait of the Imperial Japanese Army's most notorious medical unit, giving an overview of its history and detailing its most shocking activities. The second half of the book consists almost entirely of the worlds of former unit members themselves, taken from remarks they made at a traveling Unit 731 exhibition held around Japan in 1994–95. These people recount their vivid first–hand memories of what it was like to cut open pregnant women as they lay awake on the vivisection table, inject plague germs into healthy farmers, and carry buckets of fresh blood and organs through corridors to their appropriate destinations. Unit 731: Testimony represents an essential addition to the growing body of literature on the still unfolding story of one of the most infamous "military" outfits in modern history. By showing how the ethics of normal men and women, and even an entire profession, can be warped by the fire of war, this important book offers a window on a time of human madness, in the hope that such days will never come again.

    The event remains one of mankind’s greatest achievements and was witnessed by the largest worldwide television audience in history. In the years since, millions more have had their Earth-centric perspective unalterably changed by the iconic photograph of Aldrin standing on the surface of the moon, the blackness of space behind him and his fellow explorer and the Eagle reflected in his visor. Describing the alien world he was walking upon, he uttered the words “magnificent desolation.” And as the astronauts later sat in the Eagle, waiting to begin their journey back home, knowing that they were doomed unless every system and part on board worked flawlessly, it was Aldrin who responded to Mission Control’s clearance to take off with the quip, “Roger. Understand. We’re number one on the runway.”The flight of Apollo 11 made Aldrin one of the most famous persons on our planet, yet few people know the rest of this true American hero’s story. In Magnificent Desolation, Aldrin not only gives us a harrowing first-person account of the lunar landing that came within seconds of failure and the ultimate insider’s view of life as one of the superstars of America’s space program, he also opens up with remarkable candor about his more personal trials–and eventual triumphs–back on Earth. From the glory of being part of the mission that fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon before the decade was out, Aldrin returned home to an Air Force career stripped of purpose or direction, other than as a public relations tool that NASA put to relentless use in a seemingly nonstop world tour. The twin demons of depression and alcoholism emerged–the first of which Aldrin confronted early and publicly, and the second of which he met with denial until it nearly killed him. He burned through two marriages, his Air Force career came to an inglorious end, and he found himself selling cars for a living when he wasn’t drunkenly wrecking them. Redemption came when he finally embraced sobriety, gained the love of a woman, Lois, who would become the great joy of his life, and dedicated himself to being a tireless advocate for the future of space exploration–not only as a scientific endeavor but also as a thriving commercial enterprise.These days Buzz Aldrin is enjoying life with an enthusiasm that reminds us how far it is possible for a person to travel, literally and figuratively. As an adventure story, a searing memoir of self-destruction and self-renewal, and as a visionary rallying cry to once again set our course for Mars and beyond, Magnificent Desolation is the thoroughly human story of a genuine hero.

    To critics, it was either "a degrading, senseless misuse of film and time" or "an intelligent, absorbing and deeply disturbing horror film." However it was an immediate hit with audiences. Banned and celebrated, showcased at the Cannes film festival and included in the New York MoMA's collection, it has now come to be recognized widely as one of the greatest horror movies of all time.A six-foot-four poet fresh out of grad school with limited acting experience, Gunnar Hansen played the masked, chain-saw-wielding Leatherface. His terrifying portrayal and the inventive work of the cast and crew would give the film the authentic power of nightmare, even while the gritty, grueling, and often dangerous independent production would test everyone involved, and lay the foundations for myths surrounding the film that endure even today.Critically-acclaimed author Hansen here tells the real story of the making of the film, its release, and reception, offering unknown behind-the-scenes details, a harrowingly entertaining account of the adventures of low-budget filmmaking, illuminating insights on the film's enduring and influential place in the horror genre and our culture, and a thoughtful meditation on why we love to be scared in the first place.

    But it has long been the subject of intense scrutiny by both prison administrators and reformers—as well as a source of fascination and anxiety for the American public. Historically, sex behind bars has evoked radically different responses from professionals and the public alike. In Criminal Intimacy, Regina Kunzel tracks these varying interpretations and reveals their foundational influence on modern thinking about sexuality and identity. Historians have held the fusion of sexual desire and identity to be the defining marker of sexual modernity, but sex behind bars, often involving otherwise heterosexual prisoners, calls those assumptions into question. By exploring the sexual lives of prisoners and the sexual culture of prisons over the past two centuries—along with the impact of a range of issues, including race, class, and gender; sexual violence; prisoners’ rights activism; and the HIV epidemic—Kunzel discovers a world whose surprising plurality and mutability reveals the fissures and fault lines beneath modern sexuality itself. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including physicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, correctional administrators, journalists, and prisoners themselves—as well as depictions of prison life in popular culture—Kunzel argues for the importance of the prison to the history of sexuality and for the centrality of ideas about sex and sexuality to the modern prison. In the process, she deepens and complicates our understanding of sexuality in America.

    Broch's characters—an apathetic man who can barely remember his own name (Broch mostly refers to him as A.); a high-school teacher and his lover who return from the brink of a suicide pact to carry on a dishonest relationship; Zerline, the lady's maid who enslaves her mistresses, prostitutes the young country girl Melitta to gentleman A., and metes out her own justice against the "empty wickedness" of her betters—are trapped in their indifference, prisoners of a sort of "wakeful somnolence." These men and women may mention the "imbecile Hitler," yet they prefer a nap or sexual encounter to any social action. In Broch's mind this kind of ethical perversity and political apathy paved the way for Nazism.Broch believed that writing can purify, and by revealing Germany's underlying guilt he hoped to purge indifference from his own and future generations. In The Guiltless, Broch captures how apathy and ennui?very human failings—evolve into something dehumanizing and dangerous.About the Translator:Ralph Manheim translated Hourglass by Danilo Kis and numerous works by Gunter Grass, including The Tin Drum. He has edited and translated novels and plays by Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Hesse, and Erich Maria Remarque.

    From Gillian Beer's reading of Virginia Woolf, Rachel Bowlby's cultural history of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Francis Mulhern's study of Leaviste's 'English ethics'; to Doris Sommer's study of the 'magical realism' of Latin American fiction and Sneja Gunew's analysis of Australian writing, Nation and Narration is a celebration of the fact that English is no longer an English national consciousness, which is not nationalist, but is the only thing that will give us an international dimension.

    This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire generation of anthropologists what their field is ultimately about.

    Fisher searches for the traces of these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carré, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others.

    Vanborough possessed the wife he desired, to grace the head of his table and to push his fortunes in the world--the Legislature of Great Britain being the humble servant of his treachery, and the respectable accomplice of his crime.

    She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches. In negotiating their beliefs about the devil's powers, both women and men embedded womanhood in the discourse of depravity.Puritan ministers insisted that women and men were equal in the sight of God, with both sexes equally capable of cleaving to Christ or to the devil. Nevertheless, Reis explains, womanhood and evil were inextricably linked in the minds and hearts of seventeenth-century New England Puritans. Women and men feared hell equally but Puritan culture encouraged women to believe it was their vile natures that would take them there rather than the particular sins they might have committed.Following the Salem witchcraft trials, Reis argues, Puritans' understanding of sin and the devil changed. Ministers and laity conceived of a Satan who tempted sinners and presided physically over hell, rather than one who possessed souls in the living world. Women and men became increasingly confident of their redemption, although women more than men continued to imagine themselves as essentially corrupt, even after the Great Awakening.

    Successfully defended in 1969 as Deleuze's main thesis toward his Doctorat d'Etat at the Sorbonne, the work has been central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx, towards Nietzsche and Freud. The text follows the development of two central concepts, those of pure difference and complex repetition. It shows how the two concepts are related - difference implying divergence and decentering, and repetition implying displacement and disguising. In its explication the work moves deftly between Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Althusser, and Nietzsche to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics. Difference and Repetition has become essential to the work of literary critics and philosophers alike, and this translation his been long awaited.

    While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its Scream franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties.On Anxiety takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is responsible. Putting anxiety on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness? Drawing on vivid examples from films such as the X Files and Cyrano de Bergerac, drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it. Erudite and compelling, On Anxiety is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today.

    Morris’s ambition is truly monumental: to help rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’s work in the founding of the discipline. Calling into question the prevailing narrative of how sociology developed, Morris, a major scholar of social movements, probes the way in which the history of the discipline has traditionally given credit to Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, who worked with the conservative black leader Booker T. Washington to render Du Bois invisible. Morris uncovers the seminal theoretical work of Du Bois in developing a “scientific” sociology through a variety of methodologies and examines how the leading scholars of the day disparaged and ignored Du Bois’s work.The Scholar Denied is based on extensive, rigorous primary source research; the book is the result of a decade of research, writing, and revision. In exposing the economic and political factors that marginalized the contributions of Du Bois and enabled Park and his colleagues to be recognized as the “fathers” of the discipline, Morris delivers a wholly new narrative of American intellectual and social history that places one of America’s key intellectuals, W. E. B. Du Bois, at its center.The Scholar Denied is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, racial inequality, and the academy. In challenging our understanding of the past, the book promises to engender debate and discussion.

    Merry Wiesner has updated and expanded her prize-winning study; she has added new sections on topics such as sexuality, masculinity, the impact of colonialism, and women's role as consumers. Other themes investigated include the female life cycle, literacy, women's economic role, artistic creation, female piety--and witchcraft--and the relationship between gender and power. Accessible, engrossing, and lively, this book will be of central importance for those interested in gender history, early modern Europe, and comparative history.