This book introduces the fast-developing field of book history. James Raven, a leading historian of the book, offers a fresh and accessible guide to the global study of the production, dissemination and reception of written and printed texts across all societies and in all ages. Students, teachers, researchers and general readers will benefit from the book s investigation of the subject s origins, scope and future direction. Based on original research and a wide range of sources, What is the History of the Book? shows how book history crosses disciplinary boundaries and intersects with literary, historical, communications, media, library and conservation studies. Raven uses examples from around the world to explore different traditions in bibliography, palaeography and manuscript studies. He analyses book history s growing global ambition and demonstrates how the study of reading practises opens up new horizons in social history and the history of knowledge. He shows how book history is contributing to debates about intellectual and popular culture, colonialism and the communication of ideas. The first global, accessible introduction to the field of book history from ancient to modern times, What is the History of the Book? is essential reading for all those interested in one of society s most important cultural artefacts.

For anyone interested in the history and effects of the introduction of so-called "Modern Mathematics" (or "Mathematique Moderne," or "New Mathematics," etc.) this book, by Dirk De Bock and Geert Vanpaemel, is essential reading. The two authors are experienced and highly qualified Belgian scholars and the book looks carefully at events relating to school mathematics for the period from the end of World War II to 2010. Initially the book focuses on events which helped to define the modern mathematics revolution in Belgium before and during the 1960s. The book does much more than that, however, for it traces the influence of these events on national and international debates during the early phases of the reform. By providing readers with translations into English of relevant sections of key Continental documents outlining the major ideas of leading Continental scholars who contributed to the "Mathematique Moderne" movement, this book makes available to a wide readership, the theoretical, social, and political backdrops of Continental new mathematics reforms. In particular, the book focuses on the contributions made by Belgians such as Paul Libois, Willy Servais, Frederique Lenger, and Georges Papy. The influence of modern mathematics fell away rapidly in the 1970s, however, and the authors trace the rise and fall, from that time into the 21st century, of a number of other approaches to school mathematics-in Belgium, in other Western European nations, and in North America. In summary, this is an outstanding, landmark publication displaying the fruits of deep scholarship and careful research based on extensive analyses of primary sources.

"Como resultado positivo de esos primeros ocho anos de trujillismo, es de justicia consignar que el estado dominicano, por primera vez desde su fundacion, en 1844, logro trazar una frontera confiable con Haiti. El trazado de esa frontera fue violento, pero mucho menos violento que lo que lo pintan los enemigos de los dominicanos en nuestro pais y en el extranjero. El concepto de Estado implica, necesariamente, la capacidad de administrar la violencia para preservar o promover la soberania. Y eso fue sencillamente lo que acontecio en la frontera entre los estados haitiano y dominicano en 1937. Un pueblo aplastado por un tirano egolatra se beneficio del instinto nacionalista de esa bestia politica. Ni mas, ni menos." pag. 50

"Seeing the Insane" is a richly detailed cultural history of madness and art in the Western world, showing how the portrayal of stereotypes has both reflected and shaped the perception and treatment of the mentally disturbed. Covering the Middle Ages through the end of the nineteenth century, Sander L. Gilman explores the depictions of mental illness as seen in manuscripts, sculptures, lithographs, and photography. With artistic renderings and medical illustrations side-by-side, this volume includes over 250 visual displays of the mentally ill. These images capture society's reliance on visual motifs to assign concrete qualities to abstract ailments in an attempt to understand the marginalized. Gilman's collection of images demonstrates how society has relegated the mentally ill to a state of "otherness" and portrays how society's perceived realities concerning the insane have morphed and evolved over centuries.

Sander L. Gilman, PhD, is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A respected educator, he has served as Old Dominion Visiting Professor of English at Princeton; Northrop Frye Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto; Mellon Visiting Professor of Humanities at Tulane University; Goldwin Smith Professor of Humane Studies at Cornell University; and Professor of the History of Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College. He has written and edited several books including "The Face of Madness" and "Sexuality: An Illustrated History."

""Seeing the Insane" is a visual history of the stereotypes that have shaped the perception of the mentally ill from medieval through modern times. The result is nearly as heartbreaking as a visual history of the Holocaust. In picture after picture, the book portrays centuries of intolerance for deviance, mindless cruelty, unthinking prejudice, and self-righteous abuse of the weak and ill."

-"American Journal of Psychiatry"

"As extraordinary in concept as it is in its execution. . . . This remarkable book helps laymen as well as specialists to see the insane, but it does far more. When we study the past, we understand the present. When we see the conventional stereotype images of insanity, we find they still color our concepts of madness. Through these pictures of the insane, we see all humanity. We look, not through a glass darkly, but through a multiplicity of media, brightly."

-"Antiquarian Bookman"

This book describes southern womanhood and liberal northern education.From the end of Reconstruction and into the New South era, more than one thousand white southern women attended one of the Seven Sister colleges: Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, and Barnard. Joan Marie Johnson looks at how such educations - in the North, at some of the country's best schools - influenced southern women to challenge their traditional gender roles and become active in woman suffrage and other social reforms of the Progressive Era South.Attending one of the Seven Sister colleges, Johnson argues, could transform a southern woman indoctrinated in notions of domesticity and dependence into someone with newfound confidence and leadership skills. Many southern students at northern schools imported the values they imbibed at college, returning home to found schools of their own, women's clubs, and woman suffrage associations. At the same time, during college and after graduation, southern women maintained a complicated relationship to home, nurturing their regional identity and remaining loyal to the Confederacy.Johnson explores why students sought a classical, liberal arts education, how they prepared for entrance examinations, and how they felt as southerners on northern campuses. She draws on personal writings, information gleaned from college publications and records, and data on the women's decisions about marriage, work, children, and other life-altering concerns.In their time, the women studied in this book would eventually make up a disproportionately high percentage of the elite southern female leadership. This collective biography highlights their important role in forging new roles for women, especially in social reform, education, and suffrage.