A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and Esquire From Kliph Nesteroff, "the human encyclopedia of comedy" (VICE), comes the important and underappreciated story of Native Americans and comedy.It was one of the most reliable jokes in Charlie Hill's stand-up routine: "My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York. We had a little real estate problem." In We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, acclaimed comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff focuses on one of comedy's most significant and little-known stories: how, despite having been denied representation in the entertainment industry, Native Americans have influenced and advanced the art form. The account begins in the late 1880s, when Native Americans were forced to tour in wild west shows as an alternative to prison. (One modern comedian said it was as "if a Guantanamo detainee suddenly had to appear on X-Factor.") This is followed by a detailed look at the life and work of seminal figures such as Cherokee humorist Will Rogers and Hill, who in the 1970s was the first Native American comedian to appear The Tonight Show. Also profiled are several contemporary comedians, including Jonny Roberts, a social worker from the Red Lake Nation who drives five hours to the closest comedy club to pursue his stand-up dreams; Kiowa-Apache comic Adrianne Chalepah, who formed the touring group the Native Ladies of Comedy; and the 1491s, a sketch troupe whose satire is smashing stereotypes to critical acclaim. As Ryan Red Corn, the Osage member of the 1491s, says: "The American narrative dictates that Indians are supposed to be sad. It's not really true and it's not indicative of the community experience itself...Laughter and joy is very much a part of Native culture." Featuring dozens of original interviews and the exhaustive research that is Nesteroff's trademark, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem is a powerful tribute to a neglected legacy.

Whittlesea Mere - one of the wonders of Huntingdonshire! The historic county of Huntingdonshire has much to recommend it, and one of its lost treasures is brought back to life in this welcome updated and substantially expanded edition of a study first published in 1987. The Mere was the largest body of inland water in lowland England before its drainage in the 1850s, an action which brought to an end a long, rich and thriving history of fishing, reed-cutting and boating, control of which excited the interest of kings, and was fought over by medieval abbots and monks, 17th century drainers, local communities and rival landowners. Once drained, the Mere continued to influence farming practice, hindered the smooth running of the main railway line to the north and bequeathed to the nation in its surroundings two important nature reserves at Holme Fen and Woodwalton Fen. Now, in the 21st century, recognition of the area's unique ecological and educational potential has seen the creation of a major environmental restoration project, the Great Fen Project.

'I learned something new on every page of this totally essential book' Sathnam Sanghera In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini goes in search of the true roots of gendered oppression, uncovering a complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies and spread across the globe. 'By thinking about gendered inequality as rooted in something unalterable within us, we fail to see it for what it is: something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted.' In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini goes in search of the true roots of gendered oppression, uncovering a complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present. Travelling to the world's earliest known human settlements, analysing the latest research findings in science and archaeology, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic universal theories to show that what patriarchy is and how far it goes back really depends on where you are. Despite the push back against sexism and exploitation in our own time, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash. Saini ends by asking what part we all play - women included - in keeping patriarchal structures alive, and why we need to look beyond the old narratives to understand why it persists in the present.

From the award-winning author of A Splendid Exchange, a fascinating new history of financial and religious mass manias over the past five centuries "We are the apes who tell stories," writes William Bernstein. "And no matter how misleading the narrative, if it is compelling enough it will nearly always trump the facts." As Bernstein shows in his eloquent and persuasive new book, The Delusions of Crowds, throughout human history compelling stories have catalyzed the spread of contagious narratives through susceptible groups--with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay's 19th-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Bernstein engages with mass delusion with the same curiosity and passion, but armed with the latest scientific research that explains the biological, evolutionary, and psychosocial roots of human irrationality. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last 500 years--from the Anabaptist Madness that afflicted the Low Countries in the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that animate ISIS and pervade today's polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles of recent years. Through Bernstein's supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their motivation, invariably "the desire to improve one's well-being in this life or the next." As revealing about human nature as they are historically significant, Bernstein's chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania: for example, belief in dispensationalist End-Times has over decades profoundly affected U.S. Middle East policy. Bernstein observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of mass delusion, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.

Tracing the interwoven traditions of modern welfare states in Europe over five centuries, Thomas McStay Adams explores social welfare from Portugal, France, and Italy to Britain, Belgium and Germany. He shows that the provision of assistance to those in need has faced recognizably similar challenges from the 16th century through to the present: how to allocate aid equitably (and with dignity); how to give support without undermining autonomy (and motivation); and how to balance private and public spheres of action and responsibility. Across two authoritative volumes, Adams reveals how social welfare administrators, critics, and improvers have engaged in a constant exchange of models and experience locally and across Europe. The narrative begins with the founding of the Casa da Misericordia of Lisbon in 1498, a model replicated throughout Portugal and its empire, and ends with the relaunch of a social agenda for the European Union at the meeting of the Council of Europe in Lisbon in 2000. Volume 1, which focuses on the period from 1500 to 1700, discusses the concepts of 'welfare' and 'tradition'. It looks at how 16th-century humanists joined with merchants and lawyers to renew traditional charity in distinctly modern forms, and how the discipline of religious reform affected the exercise of political authority and the promotion of economic productivity. Volume 2 examines 18th-century bienfaisance which secularized a Christian humanist notion of beneficence, producing new and sharply contested assertions of social citizenship. It goes on to consider how national struggles to establish comprehensive welfare states since the second half of the 19th century built on the power of the vote as politicians, pushed by activists and advised by experts, appealed to a growing class of industrial workers. Lastly, it looks at how 20th-century welfare states addressed aspirations for social citizenship while the institutional framework for European economic cooperation came to fruition

In 1604, when Frenchmen landed on Saint Croix Island, they were far from the first people to walk along its shores. For thousands of years, Etchemins--whose descendants were members of the Wabanaki Confederacy-- had lived, loved and labored in Down East Maine. Bound together with neighboring people, all of whom relied heavily on canoes for transportation, trade and survival, each group still maintained its own unique cultures and customs. After the French arrived, they faced unspeakable hardships, from "the Great Dying," when disease killed up to 90 percent of coastal populations, to centuries of discrimination. They never abandoned Ketakamigwa, their homeland. In this book, anthropologist William Haviland relates the history of hardship and survival endured by the natives of the Down East coast and how they have maintained their way of life over the past four hundred years.

In August 1993, Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl was killed in Cape Town by a group of black teenagers incited by an upsurge in 'anti-white' sloganeering. She died just a few metres away from Sindiwe Magona's house. One of the boys held responsible for the killing was her neighbour's son. Mother To Mother takes the form of an epistle to Amy Biehl's mother.

Sindiwe Magona imagines how easily it might have been her own son caught up in the violence of that day. She writes about their lives in a colonised society that not only allowed, but also perpetuated violence against women and impoverished black South Africans.

The result is not an apology for murder, but an exquisitely written exploration of the lives of ordinary people in the apartheid years.

'I was riveted by Sweat and its extraordinary tale of the ups and downs of exercise over millennia' Jane Fonda 'Does what all good history books should do: take the past and make it vastly more human' The Times _________________________ From the author of Insomniac City 'who can tackle just about any subject in book form, and make you glad he did' (San Francisco Chronicle): a cultural, scientific, literary, and personal history of exercise Exercise is our modern obsession, and we have the fancy workout gear and fads to prove it. Exercise - a form of physical activity distinct from sports, play, or athletics - was an ancient obsession, too, but as a chapter in human history, it's been largely overlooked. In Sweat, Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats, and downward-dogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise, chronicling how they have evolved over time, and dissecting the dynamics of human movement. Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, Susan B. Anthony, Jack LaLanne, and Jane Fonda, among many others, make appearances in Sweat, but chief among the historical figures is Girolamo Mercuriale, a Renaissance-era Italian physician who aimed singlehandedly to revive the ancient Greek "art of exercising" through his 1569 book De arte gymnastica. In the pages of Sweat, Mercuriale and his illustrated treatise are vividly brought back to life. asHayes ties his own personal experience to the cultural and scientific history of exercise, from ancient times to the present day, he gives us a new way to understand its place in our lives in the 21st century.

Things happen in Beaumont Street, but what? To Whom? What really goes on behind the elegant facades of the Ashmolean Museum and the Randolph Hotel? You'd be surprised. Could that really happen in the Playhouse? In this book, it does. A group of Oxford writers have let their imaginations roam through the past, present and even the future to produce a collection of short stories, all based in Beaumont Street. The result is an entertaining read, just as enjoyable to those who know Oxford well as it will be to its many visitors. But be warned: once you have read this book you'll never see Beaumont Street the same way again. All profits from the publications of this book are being donated to the Ashmolean Museum

A clear and lively account of the machinery, innovation and personalities that have shaped the industry that provides the all-essential daily bread. Indispensible for anyone with an interest in industrial history. There is a wealth of literature on the traditional flour milling industry, much of it concerned with the charms of rural settings and ancient crafts, whereas the history of the dramatic changes in milling methods from the 1870s onwards has been somewhat neglected. Written by Glyn Jones, engineer and lecturer in technology, `The Millers' sets out to redress the balance and tells the story of the transformation of the flour milling industry by men of vision with enterprise and engineering skill, from the first experiments with roller mills before 1880 to the sleek, automated flour mills operating at the end of the twentieth century. It is a story of technological endeavour and industrial success. The innovations were revolutionary, with roller mills, purifiers and a variety of sifting and sorting machines replacing millstones and crude sieving equipment. Change was propelled by an increasing demand for white bread, and whiter flour could be produced by roller milling of hard foreign wheats, whereas traditional millstone methods were not suitable for the production of large quantities of branless flour. Henry Simon, who became the pioneering leader of the new field of milling engineering, installed his first roller plant in Manchester in 1878; by 1887 mills on the Simon system could produce enough flour to meet the requirements of 11 million people. The mass production of flour for our daily bread began in earnest. From 1904, the most forceful innovator among British millers was Joseph Rank, who commissioned Henry Simon Ltd to supply new plants at the main ports of Hull, London, Cardiff and Liverpool. The roles played by the other leading millers, many of which are still household names, are also included in this account. Despite the hugely impressive and far-reaching technological advances made by British millers and milling engineers, they have not received the credit they deserve. In truth, they replaced the traditional, basic form of the industry rapidly and effectively, and their inventions transformed milling in Britain and further afield. `The Millers' describes, in a clear and lively way, not only the changes in machinery and processing and the effects on the traditional industry, but the personalities who shaped the trade and the companies they ran, and the myths and legends which have surrounded them. Modern mills, rooted in British innovation and enterprise, are impressive in appearance and striking inside, with machinery that looks smart and is automatically controlled, processing wheat for a range of attractive foods and for the still essential daily bread.

For most of recorded history, women have been sidelined, if not silenced, by men who named the built environment after themselves. Now is the time to look unflinchingly at Scotland's heritage and bring those women who have been ignored to light. Can you imagine a different Scotland, a Scotland where women are commemorated in statues and streets and buildings - even in the hills and valleys? This is a guidebook to that alternative nation, where the cave on Staffa is named after Malvina rather than Fingal, and Arthur's Seat isn't Arthur's, it belongs to St Triduana. You arrive into Dundee at Slessor Station and the Victorian monument on Stirling's Abbey Hill interprets national identity through the women who ran hospitals during the First World War. The West Highland Way ends at Fort Mary. The Old Lady of Hoy is a prominent Orkney landmark. And the plinths in central Glasgow proudly display statues of the suffragettes who fought until they won. In this guide, streets, buildings, statues and monuments are dedicated to real women, telling their often unknown stories.

Founded in 1915 by the musicologist William Gillies Whittaker, the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Bach Choir is one of the oldest Bach choirs in the United Kingdom. This book celebrates the centenary of the choir with a multi-author account of the choir's contributions to musical life and the many personalities who made that possible. It contains almost 200 illustrations, many of them not previously seen.

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Shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year Award 2019

'Easily the most important book to be published this century. I find it hard to take any young activist seriously who hasn't at least familarised themselves with Zuboff's central ideas.' - Zadie Smith, The Guardian

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control us.

The heady optimism of the Internet's early days is gone. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have deepened inequality and stoked divisions. Tech companies gather our information online and sell it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. Profits now depend not only on predicting our behaviour but modifying it too. How will this fusion of capitalism and the digital shape our values and define our future?

Shoshana Zuboff shows that we are at a crossroads. We still have the power to decide what kind of world we want to live in, and what we decide now will shape the rest of the century. Our choices: allow technology to enrich the few and impoverish the many, or harness it and distribute its benefits.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a deeply-reasoned examination of the threat of unprecedented power free from democratic oversight. As it explores this new capitalism's impact on society, politics, business, and technology, it exposes the struggles that will decide both the next chapter of capitalism and the meaning of information civilization. Most critically, it shows how we can protect ourselves and our communities and ensure we are the masters of the digital rather than its slaves.

Leon and his twin Norman were born in August 1929, the youngest of four children born to Mary and Mark Levy, immigrants from Lithuania. His father died when Leon was six; to heroic degree, his mother carried the family – financially, practically and emotionally – in her widowhood. Leon was an intensely bookish boy but left school aged sixteen to help makes ends meet through a series of jobs. Deeply affected by the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust, Leon was radicalised in the Hashomer Hatza’ir, a left-wing Zionist youth movement. He was seventeen when he joined the Communist Party and became a committed young activist.

In 1953, at the age of twenty-four, Leon became a full-time trade unionist. ‘It was a defining moment in my life story,’ he writes. ‘It gave practical form to my political beliefs; it also determined the shape and scope of my life. It transpired that I would spend the next six decades and more working in trade unions, industrial relations and mediation.’

A comrade in the trade union movement nicknamed Leon, TsabaTsaba – which means “here, there and everywhere”. Anyone who reads Leon’s account of his years as a full-time unionist will agree that the soubriquet was well earned. (Alongside trade union work, Leon was also committed to the remarkable Discussion Club, which he co-founded and ran throughout the 1950s; he was also secretary of the South African Peace Council from 1951 to 1961.) In the mid-1950s, he was part of a small group of progressive trade unionists who pushed for the formation of the first non-racial trade union federation in South Africa. These aspirations were realised in March 1955 with the launch of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). Later that year Leon was elected president and remained in that position for nine years. SACTU linked day-to-day concerns of workers with support for national liberation and the abolition of apartheid and was one of the five organisations which formed the Congress Alliance. As SACTU leader, Leon served on the committee that directed the activities of the Alliance; he was present at Kliptown when the Freedom Charter was adopted – and as SACTU president was one of the five original signatories of the Freedom Charter.

Political activism of this order came at a high price. Leon Levy was served with banning orders and arrested several times; he was Accused No 4 of the 156 people arrested and charged with treason, and from November 1958 was one of the final 30 (and with Helen Joseph one of only two whites) who faced charges until the trial was finally dismissed in March 1961. He was detained for five months during the 1960 State of Emergency. In May 1963 he was the first person to be detained under the notorious General Laws Amendment Act, known as the 90-day Act. Unable to continue his work he chose to go into exile in the United Kingdom. There, he studied politics, economics and industrial relations at Oxford – and then applied what he had learned in a series of positions in industrial relations. After 1994, he was determined to make the skills and knowledge that he had acquired available to a democratic South Africa – and he and his wife Lorna returned to the country of their birth in 1997. In a remarkable final phase of his career, Leon took office shortly after his 70th birthday as a full-time commissioner for the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration – and spent the next 19 years in this capacity.

This insightful portrait of Winston Churchill delves beyond well-known political moments, incorporating perspectives from various individuals who encountered him throughout his life.

From Bletchley Park codebreakers and Hollywood stars such as Charlie Chaplin, through writers as varied as H. G. Wells and P. G. Wodehouse, to the likes of Harold Wilson, Mahatma Gandhi and Queen Elizabeth II, these lesser-known interactions reveal glimpses of the man behind the legend.

We meet Churchill the exuberant schoolboy thug with an early mania for bull-dogs, and Churchill the elder statesman shedding a tear in the House of Commons smoking room. Other incidents include a young journalist rudely dismissing a call from Churchill as a prank, and a visiting Dwight D. Eisenhower dreaming of being strangled, only to awake entangled in Churchill’s borrowed nightshirt.

The book showcases the profound transformations during Churchill’s lifetime, which ran from Benjamin Disraeli’s premiership to the release of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Route 66’, and the shift from steam to atomic power. Examining controversial aspects of his legacy, this multifaceted portrait challenges preconceived notions, inviting readers to reconsider the complexities of Churchill.

Did St. Mary Magdalene, one of Christianity's most enigmatic figures, really visit Provence, as a local tradition claims? Joseph Berenger's famous paper, which is here published in English for the first time, learnedly evaluates the pertinent literary and archaeological evidence which was available to the author in 1925. This volume also includes an English translation of the 1893 study by Louis Duchesne, a fierce critic of the tradition, which partly inspired Berenger's article. Despite their age, these two papers still form a useful starting-point for anyone interested in attempting an objective assessment of this intriguing tradition.

Black women have been balancing the competing demands of work and home since before women even won the right to vote. But black voices are barely acknowledged in the mainstream "mommy wars" dialogue. Lonnae O'Neal Parker is determined to change that, in this uncommonly smart, highly acclaimed, and often witty examination--part memoir, part reportage--of how today's black women meet the challenges of marriage, motherhood, and work.

From long before the first Spring Grove House was built the two Cedars, which eventually stood to the south of it, were in place. Legend has it that they were sent by the Duke of Marlborough to the Duke of Northumberland who planted them to mark the boundaries of his Syon House estate. One remains to the South East of the house, close to the new theatre block. The other larger and more majestic tree stood close to the SW corner dominating the house and the memories of those who visited it. Pollarded close to the ground by heavy chains, there were four magnificent arms that gave tremendous cover. Beneath this tree Sir Joseph Banks and Captain Cook are said to have planned their voyage to Australia. During the 1950 Christmas holiday there was a heavy fall of snow and, shortly before the school reassembled, the tree collapsed. Almost 60 years later to the day, in December 2010, the L.T.Brown Memorial Lebanon Cedar, funded by past pupils at the Spring Grove Schools, was planted at the SE corner of the house which is now part of West Thames College. It is hoped the tree will link the house of the 19th and 20th Centuries and its schools to the college of the 21st. "A t Isleworth we occupied a building that had been the home of Alfred Pears and, before him, Sir Joseph Banks. The atmosphere of a 'home' persisted during our period of occupation and staff and pupils worked together like members of one large family. The red brick house, set in its well-kept grounds, always seemed to be a friendly place but a school is more than just a building. The Spring Grovian virtues of happiness and friendliness continue to flourish as of old." - An unattributed view of a senior pupil in the "Spring Grovian" magazine in 1960.