Since 1997, the war in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has taken more than 6 million lives and shapes the daily existence of the nation's residents. While the DRC is often portrayed in international media as an unproductive failed state, the Congolese have turned increasingly to art-making to express their experience to external eyes. Author Cherie Rivers Ndaliko argues that cultural activism and the enthusiasm to produce art exists in Congo as a remedy for the social ills of war and as a way to communicate a positive vision of the country. Ndaliko introduces a memorable cast of artists, activists, and ordinary people from the North-Kivu province, whose artistic and cultural interventions are routinely excluded from global debates that prioritize economics, politics, and development as the basis of policy decision about Congo. Rivers also shows how art has been mobilized by external humanitarian and charitable organizations, becoming the vehicle through which to inflict new kinds of imperial domination. Written by a scholar and activist in the center of the current public policy debate, Necessary Noise examines the uneasy balance of accomplishing change through art against the unsteady background of civil war. At the heart of this book is the Yole!Africa cultural center, which is the oldest independent cultural center in the east of Congo. Established in the aftermath of volcano Nyiragongo's 2002 eruption and sustained through a series of armed conflicts, the cultural activities organized by Yole!Africa have shaped a generation of Congolese youth into socially and politically engaged citizens. By juxtaposing intimate ethnographic, aesthetic, and theoretical analyses of this thriving local initiative with case studies that expose the often destructive underbelly of charitable action, Necessary Noise introduces into heated international debates on aid and sustainable development a compelling case for the necessity of arts and culture in negotiating sustained peace. Through vivid descriptions of a community of young people transforming their lives through art, Ndaliko humanizes a dire humanitarian disaster. In so doing, she invites readers to reflect on the urgent choices we must navigate as globally responsible citizens. The only study of music or film culture in the east of Congo, Necessary Noise raises an impassioned and vibrantly interdisciplinary voice that speaks to the theory and practice of socially engaged scholarship.

Over the last decade, the theatre and opera of the French Revolution have been the subject of intense scholarly reassessment, both in terms of the relationship between theatrical works and politics or ideology in this period and on the question of longer-scale structures of continuity or rupture in aesthetics. Staging the French Revolution: Cultural Politics and the Paris Opera, 1789-1794 moves these discussions boldly forward, focusing on the Paris Opera (Academie Royale de Musique) in the cultural and political context of the early French Revolution. Both institutional history and cultural study, this is the first ever full-scale study of the Revolution and lyric theatre. The book concentrates on three aspects of how a royally-protected theatre negotiates the transition to national theatre: the external dimension, such as questions of ownership and governance and the institution's relationship with State institutions and popular assemblies; the internal management, finances, selection and preparation of works; and the cultural and aesthetic study of the works themselves and of their reception.
In Staging the French Revolution, author Mark Darlow offers an unprecedented view of the material context of opera production, combining in-depth archival research with a study of the works themselves. He argues that a mixture of popular and State interventions created a repressive system in which cultural institutions retained agency, compelling individuals to follow and contribute to a shifting culture. Theatre thereby emerged as a locus for competing discourses on patriotism, society, the role of the arts in the Republic, and the articulation of the Revolution's relation with the 'Old Regime', and is thus an essential key to the understanding of public opinion and publicity at this crucial historical moment. Combining recent approaches to institutions, sociability, and authors' rights with cultural studies of opera, Staging the French Revolution takes a historically grounded and methodologically innovative cross-disciplinary approach to opera and persuasively re-evaluates the long-standing, but rather sterile, concept of propaganda."

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the main thoroughfare between New York City and the state capitol in Albany was called the Albany Post Road. It saw a host of interesting events and colorful characters, such as Samuel Morse, who lived in Poughkeepsie, and Franklin Roosevelt of Hyde Park. Revolutionary War spies marched this path, and Underground Railroad safe-houses in towns like Rhinebeck and Fishkill sheltered slaves seeking freedom in Canada. Anti-rent wars rocked Columbia County, and Frank Teal's Dutchess County murder remains unsolved. With illustrations by Tatiana Rhinevault, local historian Carney Rhinevault presents these and other stories from the Albany Post Road in New York's mid-Hudson Valley.

Teasing out the history of a place celebrated for timelessness where the waters have cleaned the slate of countless paddle strokes requires a sure and attentive hand. Stephen Wilbers's account reaches back to the glaciers that first carved out the Boundary Waters and the pioneers who discovered them. He does so without losing the personal relationship built through a lifetime of pilgrimages (anchored by almost three decades of trips with his father). This story captures the untold broader narrative of the region as well as a thousand different details sure to be recognized by fellow pilgrims, like the grinding rhythm of a long portage or the loon call that slips into that last moment before sleep.

In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells a story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics.
Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema--Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger--Hollywood Left and Right reveals how the film industry's engagement in politics has been longer, deeper, and more varied than most people would imagine. As shown in alternating chapters, the Left and the Right each gained ascendancy in Tinseltown at different times. From Chaplin, whose movies almost always displayed his leftist convictions, to Schwarzenegger's nearly seamless transition from action blockbusters to the California governor's mansion, Steven J. Ross traces the intersection of Hollywood and political activism from the early twentieth century to the present.
Hollywood Left and Right challenges the commonly held belief that Hollywood has always been a bastion of liberalism. The real story, as Ross shows in this passionate and entertaining work, is far more complicated. First, Hollywood has a longer history of conservatism than liberalism. Second, and most surprising, while the Hollywood Left was usually more vocal and visible, the Right had a greater impact on American political life, capturing a senate seat (Murphy), a governorship (Schwarzenegger), and the ultimate achievement, the Presidency (Reagan).

At the heart of Fishtown is the final resting place of generations of Kensington and Fishtown residents. Founded prior to 1748, Palmer Cemetery is one of the oldest in Philadelphia. Interred here, and in Hanover Street and West Street Burial Grounds are soldiers from every war fought by colonists and then Americans, from the French and Indian War until Desert Storm. The fishing families that built the neighborhood, victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793 and the ancestors of the Shibe family are also buried in these plots. Kenneth W. Milano walks the cemetery paths and reveals the secrets the stones keep with Palmer Cemetery and the Historic Burial Grounds of Kensington and Fishtown.

It can be said of South Asia what has long been said of its great epic poem, the Mahabharata: "there is nothing in it that cannot be found elsewhere in the world and nothing in the world that cannot be found there." South Asia's historic trans-regional connections to the wider world include the trade between its most ancient civilization with Sumer and central Asia, the diffusion beyond its shores of three of the world's major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), its cultural encounters with the Greeks, Islam, European imperialism, the spread of it cuisine (from crystalized sugar to "curry"), and its architecture (including the world's most recognized building, the Taj Mahal). While these connections have insured that South Asia has always loomed large in the consideration of the world's collective past, its societies are currently undergoing a transformation that may enable them to rival the United States and China as the world's largest economy. This study employs accessible language and an engaging narrative to provide insight into how world historical processes, from changes in environment to the movement of peoples and ideas, have shaped and continue to shape the history of South Asia and its place in the wider world.

Historian Mike Cox has been writing about Texas history for four decades, sharing tales that have been overlooked or forgotten through the years. Travel to El Paso during the "Big Blow" of 1895, brave the frontier with Elizabeth Russell Baker, and stare down the infamous killer known as Old Three Toe. From frontier stories and ghost towns to famous folks and accounts of everyday life, this collection of West Texas Tales has it all.

From the shooting of a Secret Service agent in the wilds near Hesperus to the "grave misfortune" of Kid Adams, a not-so-successful highwayman, these tales from the lofty heights of the San Juans are packed with mystery, pathos, and fascinating historical details. Mined from the frontier newspapers of Ouray, San Juan, and La Plata counties, these stories tell of range wars, desperadoes and cattle rustlers, lynchings, ill-tempered ranchers with trigger-fingers, and women fed up with their husbands. There are famous and infamous newsmen, wild stagecoach rides, scapegoats, and stolen lands. Carol Turner's Notorious San Juans offers a rowdy ride through the region's not-so-quiet history.

In the summer of 1781, during the seventh year of the Revolutionary War, the allied American and French armies of Generals Washington and Rochambeau were encamped at Dobbs Ferry, Ardsley, Hartsdale, Edgemont and White Plains. Washington chose lower Westchester for encampment because of its proximity to the British forces which controlled Manhattan, and which Washington intended to attack.On August 14 Washington and Rochambeau received a communication from French Admiral de Grasse, who suggested a joint sea and land campaign against General Cornwallis's British troops in Virginia. Washington risked all on this march. Its success depended on precise timing and coordination of multiple naval and land movements including those of Generals Washington, Rochambeau and Lafayette, and of French Admirals de Grasse and Barras. Success also required the utmost secrecy, and an elaborate deception was prepared by Washington in order to convince the British that Manhattan remained the target of the allied armies. Two months later, at Yorktown, Virginia, Cornwallis surrendered his entire army to the American and French forces.

Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of the best-known works of American literature. But what other myths lie hidden behind the landscape of New York's Hudson Valley? Imps cause mischief on the Hudson River; a white lady haunts Raven Rock; Major Andre's ghost seeks redemption; and real headless hessians search for their severed skulls. Local folklorist Jonathan Kruk tells these and other tales of the lore of the Hudson Valley the stories that have created an atmosphere of mystery that helped inspire Irving's legend.

The Oceanfront's Cottage Line, the music halls of Seaside Park, and dunes so large they dwarfed the old Cape Henry lighthouse are a memory. Gone too are many of the city's iconic landmarks and open spaces, lost to flood, fire, storm and the relentless onslaught of post-World War II development. With a deft hand and rare vintage images, historian Amy Waters Yarsinske recalls a time when the likes of Chuck Berry and Ray Charles played beneath the sizzling lights of the Dome and locals shagged the night away at the Peppermint Beach Club. Join Yarsinske as she takes one final stroll through a Virginia Beach lost to time.

Famous for being a city of broad shoulders, Chicago has also developed an international reputation for split sides and slapped knees. Watch the "Chicago Style of Comedy" evolve from nineteenth-century vaudeville, through the rebellious comics of the 50's, and into the improvisation and sketch that ushered in a new millennium. Drawing on material both hilarious and profound, Chicago Comedy: A Fairly Serious History touches on what makes Chicago different from other cities and how that difference produced some of the greatest minds comedy will ever know: Amos and Andy, Jack Benny, Lenny Bruce, Del Close, John Belushi, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert and so many, many more.

Before Roger Williams set foot in the New World, the Narragansett farmed corn and squash, hunted beaver and deer, and harvested clams and oysters throughout what would become Rhode Island. They also obtained wealth in the form of wampum, a carved shell that was used as currency along the eastern coast. As tensions with the English rose, the Narragansett leaders fought to maintain autonomy. While the elder Sachem Canonicus lived long enough to welcome both Verrazzano and Williams, his nephew Miatonomo was executed for his attempts to preserve their way of life and circumvent English control. Historian Robert A. Geake explores the captivating story of these Native Rhode Islanders as he chronicles a history of the Narragansett from their early European encounters to the tribes return to sovereignty in the 20th Century.

Family Money explores the histories of formerly enslaved women who tried to claim inheritances left to them by deceased owners, the household traumas of mixed-race slaves, post-Emancipation calls for reparations, and the economic fallout from anti-miscegenation marriage laws. Authors ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frank Webb, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Chesnutt, to Lydia Maria Child recognized that intimate interracial relationships took myriad forms, often simultaneously-sexual, marital, coercive, familial, pleasurable, and painful. Their fiction confirms that the consequences of these relationships for nineteenth-century Americans meant thinking about more than the legal structure of racial identity. Who could count as family (and when), who could own property (and when), and how racial difference was imagined (and why) were emphatically bound together. Demonstrating that notions of race were entwined with economics well beyond the direct issue of slavery, Family Money reveals interracial sexuality to be a volatile mixture of emotion, economics, and law that had dramatic, long-term financial consequences.