This thoroughly engaging encyclopedia considers the rich diversity of unfamiliar foods eaten around the world. The title They Eat That?: A Cultural Encyclopedia of Weird and Exotic Food from around the World says it all. This fun encyclopedia, organized A-Z, describes and offers cultural context for foodstuffs people eat today that might be described as "weird"-at least to the American palate. Entries also include American regional standards, such as scrapple and chitterlings, that other regions might find distasteful, as well as a few mainstream American foods, like honey, that are equally odd when one considers their derivation. A long narrative entry on insects, for example, discusses the fact that insects are enjoyed as a regular part of the diet in some Asian, South and Central American, and African countries. It then looks at the kinds of insects eaten, where and how they are eaten, cultural uses, nutrition, and preparation. Each of the encyclopedia's 100 entries includes a representative recipe or, for a food already prepared like maggoty cheese, describes how it is eaten. Each entry ends with suggested readings. Approximately 100 entries A representative recipe for each entry Photographs and drawings Suggested readings for each entry Alphabetical and geographical lists of entries A selected bibliography

First published in a Yiddish edition in 1958, Profiles of a Lost World is an incomparable source of information about Eastern Europe before World War II as well as an invaluable touchstone for understanding a rich and complex cultural environment. Hirsz Abramowicz (1881-1960), a prominent Jewish educator, writer, and cultural activist, knew that world and wrote about it, and his writings provide a rare eyewitness account of Jewish life during the first half of the twentieth century.

Abramowicz was a witness to war, revolution, and major cultural transformations in the Jewish world. His essays, written and originally published in Yiddish between 1920 and 1955, document the local history of Lithuanian Jewry in rural and small-town settings, and in the city of Vilna -- the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" -- which was a major center of East European Jewish intellectual and cultural life. They shed important light on the daily life of Jews and the flourishing of modern Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe during the early twentieth century and offer a personal perspective on the rise of Jewish radical politics.

The collection incorporates local history of Lithuanian Jewry, shtetl folklore, observations on rural occupations, Jewish education, and life under German occupation during World War I. It also includes a series of profiles of leading social and intellectual Jewish personalities of the authors day, from traditional scholars to revolutionaries. Together the selections provide a unique blend of social and personal history and a window on a lost world.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

All Year Round is brimming with things to make, activities, stories, poems and songs to share with your family. It is full of well-illustrated ideas for fun and celebration: from Candlemas to Christmas and Midsummer's day to the Winter solstice.Observing the round of festivals is an enjoyable way to bring rhythm into children's lives and provide a series of meaningful landmarks to look forward to. Each festival has a special character of its own: participation can deepen our understanding and love of nature and bring a gift to the whole family. All Year Round invites you to start celebrating now!

This book by renowned anthropologist Harald Haarmann illuminates the acquisition of knowledge, and the meanings underlying forms of knowledge, in a broad temporal scope, ranging from the Neolithic through the modern era. Spiritual knowledge is at the heart of this work, which views myth and religion encoded in Neolithic female figurines and revived in the contemporary "primitive" artwork of artists such as Constantin Brancusi and Henry Moore. Within such a framework, this study employs the knowledge and insights of the relatively new, and very important, interdisciplinary field of archaeomythology, which ties together information from archaeology, DNA studies, mythology, anthropology, classical studies, other ancient language studies, and linguistics. This study does so with a wealth of information in these fields, offering meaningful resolutions to many questions regarding antiquity, and shedding light upon several previously misunderstood phenomena, from the true function of Stonehenge (that its purpose was not astronomical), to the fact that there could not have been a mass movement of agriculturalists from Anatolia to Europe (this is a currently hotly contested issue), to important Eurasian religious beliefs and mythological motifs (with an excellent discussion of shamanism), to systems of writing (with a wonderful discourse upon ancient writing systems), religious expression, and mythology of the exceptionally significant cultures of Old Europe (Neolithic southeastern Europe). The book further discourses upon the legacy of this culture in Minoan and then Greek culture, Old European (pre-Indo-European) lexical items (that is, substrate vocabulary) in Greek, and finally the preservation of Neolithic spirituality in Modern Art. With this interdisciplinary approach, the study demonstrates that all of the subjects of this manuscript are interconnected, in a powerful wholeness. Ancient knowledge, Ancient know-how, Ancient reasoning is an unprecedented study that will appeal across many disciplines, including archaeology, mythology, anthropology, classical studies, ancient language studies, and linguistics. The book also includes many images that will prove helpful to the reader.

Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award 2000. Relationships between dress and the body have existed in European and Anatolian folk cultures well into the twentieth century. Traditional cultures have long held the belief that certain articles of dress could protect the body from harm by warding off the 'evil eye,' bring fertility to new brides, or assure human control of supernatural powers. Ritual fringes, archaic motifs, and colors such as black and red were believed to have powerful, magical effects. This absorbing and interdisciplinary book examines dress in a broad range of folk cultures - from Turkey, Greece, and Slovakia to Norway, Latvia, and Lithuania, to name but a few. Authors reveal the connection between folk dress and ancient myths, cults and rituals, as well as the communicative aspects of folk dress. How is an individual attired in a specific ensemble located within a community? Is the community the gendered one of women, the village of residence, the larger geographical region or the nation? The intriguing connections between dress and the supernatural beliefs of agrarian communities, as well as the reinvention of such beliefs as part of nationalism, are also discussed. This book represents a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the cultural meanings of dress, as well as to material culture, anthropology, folklore, art history, ethnohistory, and linguistics. Nominated for Millia Davenport award

When we look closely at dress in a novel we begin to enrich our sense of the novel's historical and social context. More than this, wealth, class, beauty and moral rectitude can all be coded in fabric. In the modern novel, narratives are increasingly situated within the consciousness of characters, and it is the experience of dress that tells us about the context and the emotional, political and psychological values of the characters. Dressed in Fiction traces the deployment of dress in key fictional texts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from Daniel Defoe's Roxana to George Eliot's Middlemarch and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. Covering a range of topics, from the growth of the middle classes and the association of luxury with vice, to the reasons why wedding dresses rarely ever symbolize happiness, the book presents a unique study of the history of clothing through the most popular and influential literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Untying the Knot collects eighteen previously unpublished essays on the riddle-a genre of discourse found in virtually every human culture. Hasan-Rokem and Shulman have drawn these essays from a variety of cultural perspectives and disciplines; linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and religion and literature scholars consider riddling practices in Hebrew, Finnish, Indian languages, Chinese, and classical Greek. The authors seek to understand the peculiar expressive power of the riddle, and the cultural logic of its particular uses; they scrutinize the riddle's logical structure and linguistic strategies, as well as its affinity to neighboring genres such as enigmas, puzzles, oracular prophecy, proverbs, and dreams. In this way, they begin to answer how riddles relate to the conceptual structures of a particular culture, and how they come to represent a culture's cosmology or cognitive map of the world. More importantly, these essays reveal the human need for symbolic ordering-riddles being one such form of cultural ritual.

Arizona Myths and Legends explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Arizona's history. From strange Grand Canyon deaths, to ghosts at the Hotel Vendome, and the last stagecoach robbery, settle in to learn all the scintillating and unsettling details of the Grand Canyon State's mysterious history.

Lewis Island in Lambertville, New Jersey, is the site of the Lewis Fishery, the last haul seine American shad fishery on the nontidal Delaware River. The Lewis family has fished in the same spot since 1888 and operated the fishery through five generations. The extended Lewis family, its fishery's crew, and the Lambertville community connect with people throughout the region, including environmentalists concerned about the river. It was a Lewis who raised the alarm and helped resurrect a polluted river and its biosphere. While this once exclusively masculine activity is central to the tiny island, today men, women, and children fish, living out a sense of place, belonging, and sustainability. In Another Haul: Narrative Stewardship and Cultural Sustainability at the Lewis Family Fishery, author Charlie Groth highlights the traditional, vernacular, and everyday cultural expressions of the family and crew to understand how community, culture, and the environment intersect. Groth argues there is a system of narrative here that combines verbal activities and everyday activities. On the basis of over two decades of participation and observation, interviews, surveys, and a wide variety of published sources, Groth identifies a phenomenon she calls ""narrative stewardship."" This narrative system, emphasizing place, community, and commitment, in turn, encourages environmental and cultural stewardship, tradition, and community. Intricate and embedded, the system appears invisible, but careful study unpacks and untangles how people, often unconsciously, foster sustainability. Though an ethnography of an occupation, the volume encourages readers to consider what arises as special about all cultures and what needs to be seen and preserved.

The fashion model's hold on popular consciousness is undeniable. How did models emerge as such powerful icons in modern consumer culture? This volume brings together cutting-edge articles on fashion models, examining modelling through race, class and gender, as well as its structure as an aesthetic marketplace within the global fashion economy. Essays include treatments of the history of fashion modelling, exploring how concerns about racial purity and the idealization of light skinned black women shaped the practice of modelling in its early years. Other essays examine how models have come to define femininity through consumer culture. While modelling's global nature is addressed throughout, chapters deal specifically with model markets in Australia and Tokyo, where nationalist concerns colour what is considered a pretty face. It also considers how models glamorize consumption through everyday activities, and neoliberal labour forms via reality TV. With commentaries from industry professionals who experienced the cultural juggernaut of the supermodels, the final essay situates their impact within the rise of brand culture and the globalization of fashion markets since 1990. Accessible and highly engaging, Fashioning Models is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion and related disciplines.

Americans began the twentieth century standing in Europe's sartorial shadow, yet ended by outfitting the world in blue jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. How did this come about? What changes in American culture were reflected in fashion? What role did popular culture play? This important overview of American fashion in the twentieth century considers how Americans went from imitating British and French fashion to developing their own sense of style. It examines such influences on dress as class, jazz and hip hop, war, the space race, movies, television and sports. Further, the book shows how gender, psychology, advertising, public policy, shifting family values, the American design movement and expertise in mass production profoundly influenced an American style that has been exported across the globe. From New York City's Bohemians to Hollywood's stars, Twentieth-Century American Fashion reveals the continuing importance of clothing to American identity and individual experience.

The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (1834 - 1924) was an English hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar. His folkloric studies resulted in The Book of Werewolves, one of the most frequently cited studies of lycanthropy.

A pioneer in the strange art and ambiguous science of zo phagy-that is, of studying animals by eating them-British natural historian FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND (1826-1880) was a wildly popular speaker and writer of the Victorian era. In his classic four-volume Curiosities of Natural History, published between 1857 and 1872, he shared his love of creatures exotic and mysterious with readers who devoured his charming and erudite essays much in the same way he devoured his animal subjects. "If there is one person that I would have expected to have captured a sea serpent in the 19th century for the sole purpose of eating it, it would be Frank Buckland," writes cryptozoologist Loren Coleman in his new introduction to Buckland's series. One of the founding grandfathers of cryptozoology, the discipline that investigates animal mysteries, Buckland was not "a wild-eyed 'true believer' in anything strange," insists Coleman, but brought, instead, "a skeptical, open-minded approach" to his work. Indeed, here, in the "third series" of Curiosities of Natural History, Buckland's erudition is clear in his animated discussions of, among many other things, a monster lobster, a zoological auction, traps for wild monkeys, the sensation of camel-riding, and determining the temperature of a porpoise's breath. This new edition, a replica of the 1888 "Popular Edition," is part of Cosimo's Loren Coleman Presents series. LOREN COLEMAN is author of numerous books of cryptozoology, including Bigfoot : The True Story of Apes in America and Mothman and Other Curious Encounters.

Each episode included in this book explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Texas's history. From rumors of Jean Lafitte's buried treasures to the hanging of Chipita Rodriguez and the love story of Frenchy McCormick, Texas Myths and Legends makes history fun and pulls back the curtain on some of the state's most fascinating and compelling stories.

This book examines the clothing worn by African Americans in the southern United States during the thirty years before the American Civil War. Drawing on a wide range of sources, most notably oral narratives recorded in the 1930s, this rich account shows that African Americans demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the role clothing played in demarcating age, sex, status, work, recreation, as well as special secular and sacred events. Testimonies offer proof of African Americans' vast technical skills in producing cloth and clothing, which served both as a fundamental reflection of the peoples' Afrocentric craftsmanship and aesthetic sensibilities, and as a reaction to their particular place in American society. Previous work on clothing in this period has tended to focus on white viewpoints, and as a consequence the dress worn by the enslaved has generally been seen as a static standard imposed by white overlords. This excellent study departs from conventional interpretations to show that the clothing of the enslaved changed over time, served multiple functions and represented customs and attitudes which evolved distinctly from within African American communities. In short, it represents a vital contribution to African American studies, as well as to dress and textile history, and cultural and folklore studies.

Dress and fashion are powerful visual means of communicating ideology, whether political, social or religious. From the communist values of equality, simplicity and solidarity exemplified in the Mao suit to the myriad of fashion protests of feminists such as French revolutionary women's demand to wear trousers, dress can symbolize ideological orthodoxy as well as revolt. With contributions from a wide range of international scholars, this book presents the first scholarly analysis of dress and ideology through accessible case studies. Chapters are organized thematically and explore dress in relation to topics including nation, identity, religion, politics and utopias, across an impressive chronological reach from antiquity to the present day. Dress & Ideology will appeal to students and scholars of fashion, history, sociology, cultural studies, politics and gender studies.

From the rise of the Fashion Cafe to the phenomenon of the supermodel, from "House of Style" to "Unzipped," the world of fashion has taken center stage in contemporary culture, for better or for worse. In turn, although the idea of fashion has been in circulation since time immemorial, not until recently has its profound and variegated effects-on economic activity, on social and sexual mores, and on aesthetic and psychological formulations-been fully considered.

With delicacy and wit, Fashion: An Introduction investigates the different sides of recent debates over the production, marketing, and consumption of fashion. Drawing on economics, art, psychology, commerce, history, and the everyday, Joanne Finkelstein considers fashion in its various guises-as body decoration and costume, as a language and a form of display, as an expression of sexuality and as part of the urban experience. In so doing, she has given us the perfect introduction to fashion's social, economic, and aesthetic impact on the way we think and act."