This comprehensive, beautiful book delves deep into the complex but fascinating story of our relationship with colour throughout human history. Colour is fundamental to our experience and understanding of the world. It crosses continents and cultures, disciplines and decades. It is used to convey information and knowledge, to evoke mood, and to inspire emotion. This book explores the history of our understanding of colour, from the ancient world to the present, from Aristotle to Albers. Interspersed in the historical story are numerous thematic essays that look at how colour has been used across a wide range of disciplines and fields: in food, music, language and many others.   The illustrations are drawn from the Royal College of Art’s renowned Colour Reference Library which spans six centuries of works and nearly 2,000 titles, from a Gothic manuscript on the composition of the rainbow to hand-painted Enlightenment works on colour theory and vibrant 20th-century colour charts, including many fascinating examples not  seen in other books. Delving far and wide in this fascinating and varied subject, this book will help readers find new layers of meaning and complexity in their everyday experiences and teach them to look closer at our colourful lives.

The shocking, untold story of how African independence was strangled at birth by America’s systematic interference. Accra, 1958. Africa’s liberation leaders have gathered for a conference, full of strength, purpose and vision. Newly independent Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Congo’s Patrice Lumumba strike up a close partnership. Everything seems possible. But, within a few years, both men will have been targeted by the CIA, and their dream of true African autonomy undermined. The United States, watching the Europeans withdraw from Africa, was determined to take control. Pan-Africanism was inspiring African Americans fighting for civil rights; the threat of Soviet influence over new African governments loomed; and the idea of an atomic reactor in black hands was unacceptable. The conclusion was simple: the US had to ‘recapture’ Africa, in the shadows, by any means necessary. Renowned historian Susan Williams dives into the archives, revealing new, shocking details of America’s covert programme in Africa. The CIA crawled over the continent, poisoning the hopes of 1958 with secret agents and informants; surreptitious UN lobbying; cultural infiltration and bribery; assassinations and coups. As the colonisers moved out, the Americans swept in—with bitter consequences that reverberate in Africa to this day.

a Call Them the Happy Yearsa recounts at first hand the first 40 years of the life of Barbara Everard in her own words, augmented, now in this second edition, with her elder son, Martina s boyhood memories of some of those years. From a privileged early childhood as a daughter of a wealthy Sussex farming family, Barbara grew up through the depression desperate to become an artist, an ambition that she achieved with award-winning success as one of the worlda s foremost botanical artists. But this followed some years of colonial life in Malaya and the horrors of war both in Singapore and England, described in graphic detail as is her husband, Raya s story as a Japanese PoW on the infamous Siam railway.

David Fathers presents a unique and richly illustrated guide to the London section of the Thames Path, newly updated to reflect the city's ever-changing landscape. The iconic path, which stretches from the lost floodplains of Richmond all the way  to the Thames Barrier, is a panoramic 40-mile walk through 2000 years of London's history. From the old docks and wharves that primed the Industrial Revolution, through the heart of British Government, Monarchy and Church to the City of London that took its very existence from the river. From the site of the Putney Debates at St Mary's Church to Wren's mighty baroque cathedral of St Paul's. From the great Victorian engineering works of Sir Joseph Bazalgette and his attempts to clean up a polluted London and the river to the Thames Barrier seeking to protect huge parts of London from rising sea levels. From London Bridge, site of the oldest crossing point, to the Millennium Bridge, the Thames' newest crossing.  This book explains the panorama we see today, what came before and how the changes came about. Each double page shows the distance covered so you can plan your own tour of the river.

Many were filled with hopes as high as Mahjoub's stars as they crossed the Indian Ocean, making their way from India to Durban in southern Africa in the late 1800s. Yet, realising the dream of a better life and returning home triumphant was not to be for many. Thousands returned with less than they had started out with, only to find that home was no longer the place they had left. The travellers, too, had changed irrevocably: caste had been transgressed, relatives had died and spaces for reintegration had closed up as colonialism tightened its grip. Home for these wandering exiles was no more. Inside Indian Indenture is a timely and monumental work that makes a significant contribution to understanding South African history. It tells the story of the many beginnings and multiple journeys that made up the indentured experience. The authors seek to trespass directly into the lives of the indentured themselves. They explore the terrain of the everyday, focusing on religious and cultural expressions, leisure activities, power relations on the plantations and the weapons of resistance and forms of collaboration that were developed in relation to their Natal's colonial government and its coercive paternalism. Fascinating accounts brimming with desire, skulduggery and tender mercies, as much as with oppression and exploitation, show that the indentured were as much agents as they were victims and silent witnesses. To read this book is to enter their world, to meet real people in all their complexity as they danced along the uncertain edge between improvisation and resignation. The title substantially revises the contours of South African Indian historiography and starts to weave these themes into the mainstream of southern African studies. It also makes the South African experience available to scholars of comparative work on indenture.

This is the updated and substantially expanded second edition of Christopher Ballantine's classic Marabi Nights, which offers a fascinating view of the triumphs and tragedies of South Africa's marabi-jazz tradition. Based on conversations with legendary figures in the world of music - as well as a perceptive reading of music, the socio-political history, and social meanings - this book is one of sensitive and impassioned curatorship. New chapters extend the book's in-depth account of the birth and development of South African urban-black popular music. They include a powerful story about gender relations and music in the context of forced migrant labor in the 1950s, a critical study of the legendary Manhattan Brothers that uniquely positions their music and words in relation to the apartheid system, and an account of the musical, political, and commercial strategies of the local record industry. A new afterword looks critically at the place of jazz and popular music in South Africa since the end of apartheid, and argues for the continued relevance of the robust, questioning spirit of the marabi tradition. The book includes an illustrative CD of historic sound recordings that the author has unearthed and saved from oblivion.

In this book, the Bush administration's war in Iraq is assessed using an interdisciplinary approach and historical analysis that will help readers better understand the results of the U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine from 2003 to the present. Contesting History: The Bush Counterinsurgency Legacy in Iraq uses a comparative analysis of history to assess the Bush administration's actions in Iraq, focusing specifically on the policy of counterinsurgency. Insurgency exists within an extended timeframe and exhibits a global reach, argues comparative warfare expert Matthew J. Flynn. Therefore, understanding this phenomenon is best realized through an examination of guerrilla conflicts around the world over time; this book provides that approach. The work analyzes U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine during the Iraq War from 2003 to the present, and offers relevant historical comparisons to conflicts dating back to the mid-19th century, in which a nation enjoyed marked military superiority over their enemy. In doing so, it encourages readers to link the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the broad context of the utilization of counterinsurgency operations to achieve policy objectives. Ultimately, the book illustrates how the tactical "military" success of the U.S. surge in Iraq still nets a strategic failure.