The untold story of Wilhelm Reich and the dawn of the sexual revolution. An illuminating, startling, at times bizarre story of sex and science, ecstasy and repression. In the middle of the 20th century, the United States became an adoptive home for dozens of expatriated European thinkers, who saw this rich, young country ripe for sexual liberation. One of the most left-field of them was the Viennese psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, a disciple of Freud's who had broken with the master. Reich's own approach was based on his theories of the orgasm and sexual energy, which he dubbed 'orgone energy'. Instead of the couch, he made use of a tall, slender construction of wood, metal, and steel wool, which he called the orgone box. A highly sexed man himself, Reich thought that a person who sat in the box could elevate their 'orgastic potential' ridding the body of repressive forces, improving sexual potency, and enhancing overall health. After World War Two, Reich's theories caught on among writers and artists, the early adopters of the counter-culture. Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow were amongst those for whom the orgone box represented a yearned-for synthesis of sexual and political liberation, and of physical science and psychology. Meanwhile, Reich himself faced one debacle after another. Albert Einstein heard him out before rebuffing him. The FBI investigated him as a Communist sympathizer: it turned out that they were hunting the wrong man. The federal government banned the orgone box and tagged Reich as a fraud. There were claims of sexual misdeeds, and bouts of Reich's own mental instability. This is the story of the blossoming of the 20th century's sexual revolution, and the unshackling of a repressed society, and sex before science.

A riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of slavery, and named the underground railroad, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, Scott Shane. Flee North tells the story for the first time of an American hero all but lost to history.

Born into slavery, by the 1840s Thomas Smallwood was free, self-educated, and working as a shoemaker a short walk from the U.S. Capitol. He recruited a young white activist, Charles Torrey, and together they began to organize mass escapes from Washington, Baltimore, and surrounding counties to freedom in the north.

They were racing against an implacable enemy: men like Hope Slatter, the region’s leading slave trader, part of a lucrative industry that would tear one million enslaved people from their families and sell them to the brutal cotton and sugar plantations of the deep south.

Men, women, and children in imminent danger of being sold south turned to Smallwood, who risked his own freedom to battle what he called “the most inhuman system that ever blackened the pages of history.” And he documented the escapes in satirical newspaper columns, mocking the slaveholders, the slave traders and the police who worked for them.

At a time when Americans are rediscovering a tragic and cruel history and struggling anew with the legacy of white supremacy, this Flee North -- the first to tell the extraordinary story of Smallwood -- offers complicated heroes, genuine villains, and a powerful narrative set in cities still plagued by shocking racial inequity today.

The Ancient Schools of Gloucester traces the history of education in the City of Gloucester from its origins in the cloister school of St Peter's Abbey about a thousand years ago. Starting in the early Middle Ages, the rivalries between the two Gloucester grammar schools maintained by St Oswald's and Llanthony priories are described. The contributions of the Benedictines, Augustinian canons and founders of the medieval chantries are assessed. The creation of new grammar schools in the reign of Henry VIII at the Crypt and King's is fully documented along with the development of these schools through the pivotal years of the Civil War and into the 18th century. There is a special focus on the career of Maurice Wheeler, Gloucester's most distinguished schoolmaster. As the country began to move towards mass education during the 18th century, the role of other initiatives, such as private schools for girls, Sunday Schools and Sir Thomas Rich's Bluecoat school for apprentice boys, is also covered. Whilst several histories have been published in the past of individual schools, this chronological and fully illustrated study is the first time an author has brought together the early histories of the ancient schools of the City into a single volume, which sets the Gloucester experience in its national context.

By 1955 Sally and John Seymour had both seen a number of countries but practically nothing of their own. As for some years they had lived in a 34-ton Dutch sailing yacht they decided to dispel their ignorance of England by travelling round as much of it as they had time for in this vessel. Sailing Through England is an account of that voyage. Setting out from Portsmouth the Seymours would navigate the rivers and canals of East Anglia, the Midlands and the North, penetrating as far inland as Leeds and Bradford, finally crossing the country by a canal climbing right over the Pennine chain to Liverpool and the Irish Sea. Their account is both a vivid panorama of England's contrasts and a fascinating exploration of a navigational challenge, and along the way a wealth of real-life characters are encountered and brilliantly described on the page, accompanied by Sally Seymour's delightful drawings.

Although posterity has generally known Bernardin de Saint-Pierre for his bestselling Paul et Virginie, his output was encyclopaedic. Using new sources, this monograph explores the many facets of a celebrity writer in the Ancien Regime, the Revolution and the early nineteenth century. Bernardin attracted a readership to whom, irrespective of age, gender or social situation, he became a guide to living. He was nominated by Louis XVI to manage the Jardin des plantes, by Revolutionary bodies to teach at the Ecole normale and to membership of the Institut. He deplored unquestioning adherence to Newtonian ideas, materialistic atheism and human misdeeds in what could be considered proto-ecological terms. He bemoaned analytical, reductionist approaches: his philosophy placed human beings at the centre of the universe and stressed the interconnectedness of cosmic harmony. Bernardin learned enormously from travel to Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean. He attacked slavery, championed a national education system and advocated justice for authors. Fresh information and interpretation show that he belonged to neither the philosophe or anti-philosophe camp. A reformist, he envisioned a regenerated France as a nation of liberty offering asylum for refugees. This study demonstrates the range of thought and expression of an incontournable polymath in an age of transformation.

Digitizing Enlightenment explores how a set of inter-related digital projects are transforming our vision of the Enlightenment. The featured projects are some of the best known, well-funded and longest established research initiatives in the emerging area of 'digital humanities', a field that has, particularly since 2010, been attracting a rising tide of interest from professional academics, the media, funding councils, and the general public worldwide. Advocates and practitioners of the digital humanities argue that computational methods can fundamentally transform our ability to answer some of the 'big questions' that drive humanities research, allowing us to see patterns and relationships that were hitherto hard to discern, and to pinpoint, visualise, and analyse relevant data in efficient and powerful new ways. In the book's opening section, leading scholars outline their own projects' institutional and intellectual histories, the techniques and methodologies they specifically developed, the sometimes-painful lessons learned in the process, future trajectories for their research, and how their findings are revising previous understandings. A second section features chapters from early career scholars working at the intersection of digital methods and Enlightenment studies, an intellectual space largely forged by the projects featured in part one. Highlighting current and future research methods and directions for digital eighteenth-century studies, the book offers a monument to the current state of digital work, an overview of current findings, and a vision statement for future research. Featuring contributions from Keith Michael Baker, Elizabeth Andrews Bond, Robert M. Bond, Simon Burrows, Catherine Nicole Coleman, Melanie Conroy, Charles Cooney, Nicholas Cronk, Dan Edelstein, Chloe Summers Edmondson, the late Richard Frautschi, Clovis Gladstone, Howard Hotson, Angus Martin, Katherine McDonough, Alicia C. Montoya, Robert Morrissey, Laure Philip, Jeffrey S. Ravel, Glenn Roe, and Sean Takats.

This multidisciplinary book consists of 31 chapters covering aspects such as history, sociology, demography, law, economics, environmental studies, politics and public administration - presented in a style that is accessible to both scholars and the general public.;The book provides depth and breadth to the field of politics and society generally, while increasing our knowledge of Botswana in particular. The editors are lecturers at the University of Botswana.

Understanding the relationships between humans and animals is essential to a full understanding of both our present and our shared past. Across the humanities and social sciences, researchers have embraced the 'animal turn,' a multispecies approach to scholarship, with historians at the forefront of new research in human-animal studies that blends traditional research methods with interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks that decenter humans in historical narratives. These exciting approaches come with core methodological challenges for scholars seeking to better understand the past from non-anthropocentric perspectives.Whether in a large public archive, a small private collection, or the oral histories of living memories, stories of animals are mediated by the humans who have inscribed the records and organized archival collections. In oral histories, the place of animals in the past are further refracted by the frailty of human memory and recollection. Only traces remain for researchers to read and interpret. Bringing together seventeen original essays by a leading group of international scholars, Traces of the Animal Past showcases the innovative methods historians use to unearth and explain how animals fit into our collective histories. Situating the historian within the narrative, bringing transparency to methodological processes, and reflecting on the processes and procedures of current research, this book presents new approaches and new directions for a maturing field of historical inquiry.

This book examines the role of artists in Egypt during the 2011 revolution, when street art from graffiti to political murals became ubiquitous facets of revolutionary spaces. Through interviews, personal testimonies, and accounts of the lived experience of 25 street artists, the book explores the meaning of art in revolutionary political contexts, specifically by focusing on artistic production during 'liminal' moments as the events of the Egyptian revolution unfolded. The author privileges the perspective of the actors themselves to examine the ways that artists reacted to events and conceived of their art as means to further the goals of the revolution. Based on fieldwork conducted in the years since 2011, the book provides a narrative of Egyptian artists' participation in and representations of the revolution, from hopeful beginnings to the subsequent crackdown and election of al-Sisi.

Between the age of St. Augustine and the sixteenth century reformations magic continued to be both a matter of popular practice and of learned inquiry. This volume deals with its use in such contexts as healing and divination and as an aspect of the knowledge of nature's occult virtues and secrets.