How populism is fueled by the demise of the industrial order and the emergence of a new digital society ruled by algorithms In the revolutionary excitement of the 1960s, young people around the world called for a radical shift away from the old industrial order, imagining a future of technological liberation and unfettered prosperity. Industrial society did collapse, and a digital economy has risen to take its place, yet many have been left feeling marginalized and deprived of the possibility of a better life. The Inglorious Years explores the many ways we have been let down by the rising tide of technology, showing how our new interconnectivity is not fulfilling its promise. In this revelatory book, economist Daniel Cohen describes how today's postindustrial society is transforming us all into sequences of data that can be manipulated by algorithms from anywhere on the planet. As yesterday's assembly line was replaced by working online, the leftist protests of the 1960s have given way to angry protests by the populist right. Cohen demonstrates how the digital economy creates the same mix of promises and disappointments as the old industrial order, and how it revives questions about society that are as relevant to us today as they were to the ancients. Brilliant and provocative, The Inglorious Years discusses what the new digital society holds in store for us, and reveals how can we once again regain control of our lives.

In just three months in 1940, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France fell to the Nazis. The German occupation of Western Europe had begun-but a brave few rose up in defiance. National resistance has long been celebrated in remembrances of World War II, depicted as making significant contributions to the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, the so-called army of shadows drew heavily on the support of London and Washington, a fact often forgotten in postwar Europe. The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940-1945 is a sweeping analytical history of the underground anti-Nazi forces during World War II. Examining clandestine organizations in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy, Olivier Wieviorka sheds new light on the factors that shaped the resistance and its place in the grand scheme of Anglo-American military strategy. While national actors played a leading role in fomenting resistance, British and American intelligence services and propaganda as well as financial, material, and logistical support were crucial to its activities and growth. Wieviorka illuminates the policies of governments in exile and resistance actors regarding cooperation with the British and Americans, pointing to the persistence of national self-interest and long-standing historical tensions. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources and bringing together the political, diplomatic, and military dimensions of the conflict, this book is the first account of the resistance on a continental scale and from a trans-European perspective.

In just three months in 1940, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France fell to the Nazis. The German occupation of Western Europe had begun-but a brave few rose up in defiance. National resistance has long been celebrated in remembrances of World War II, depicted as making significant contributions to the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, the so-called army of shadows drew heavily on the support of London and Washington, a fact often forgotten in postwar Europe. The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940-1945 is a sweeping analytical history of the underground anti-Nazi forces during World War II. Examining clandestine organizations in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy, Olivier Wieviorka sheds new light on the factors that shaped the resistance and its place in the grand scheme of Anglo-American military strategy. While national actors played a leading role in fomenting resistance, British and American intelligence services and propaganda as well as financial, material, and logistical support were crucial to its activities and growth. Wieviorka illuminates the policies of governments in exile and resistance actors regarding cooperation with the British and Americans, pointing to the persistence of national self-interest and long-standing historical tensions. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources and bringing together the political, diplomatic, and military dimensions of the conflict, this book is the first account of the resistance on a continental scale and from a trans-European perspective.

In the wake of the Paris, Beirut, and San Bernardino terrorist attacks, fears over 'homegrown terrorism' have surfaced to a degree not seen since September 11, 2001. A sought-after commentator in France and a widely respected international scholar of radical Islam, Farhad Khosrokhavar has spent years studying the path towards radicalization, focusing particularly on the key role of prisons - based on interviews with dozens of Islamic radicals - as incubators of a particular brand of outrage that has yielded so many attacks over the past decade.

Originally published in 1990. This uniquely fascinating study approaches the problem of autobiography from two directions: first assessing theories of the self, consciousness and language developed by both Freud and Derrida; second through the reading of the autobiographical aspects of their writings. The book begins with looking at the issue of making sense of a life by means of representation, through autobiography, within the field of psychological phenomena - screen memories, mourning, obsession, hysteria, transference. Part 1 focuses on Freud's case histories and psychoanalysis being used to make a narrative of behaviour in language. Part two considers Freud's own Interpretation of Dreams and its autobiographical nature. Part 3 examines intellectual movements such as phenomenology, speed act theory and structuralism while Parts 4 and 5 turn to Derrida's use of autobiography as self-criticism and his debt to Freud.

Why society’s expectation of economic growth is no longer realistic Economic growth—and the hope of better things to come—is the religion of the modern world. Yet its prospects have become bleak, with crashes following booms in an endless cycle. In the United States, eighty percent of the population has seen no increase in purchasing power over the last thirty years and the situation is not much better elsewhere. The Infinite Desire for Growth spotlights the obsession with wanting more, and the global tensions that have arisen as a result. Daniel Cohen provides a whirlwind tour of the history of economic growth, from the early days of civilization to modern times, underscoring what is so unsettling today. He examines how a future less dependent on material gain might be considered, and how, in a culture of competition, individual desires might be better attuned to the greater needs of society.

This wide-ranging work confronts the complex question of nationalism in France in its various permutations--myths, obsessions, possibilities, and dangers. French nationalism has always been a double-edged sword, from its beginnings in the French Revolution through the two Napoleonic empires, Boulangism, the Dreyfus affair, the fascist groups of the 1930's, Marshal Petain's National Revolution during World War II, and its latest contemporary incarnation in Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front.
The author distinguishes between an "open" nationalism, based on the revolutionary values of liberty and equality for all, and "closed" nationalism, which is xenophobic--and, more particularly, antisemitic. He studies not only governments and political figures--Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, Marshal Petain, and General de Gaulle--but also the myths associated with nationalism. These myths are captured in newspaper articles (the charity bazaar fire of 1897), in literature (Huysmans, Celine), and in the writings of insurgents (Edouard Drumont, Jules Guerin). The author pays particular attention to French "national socialism," which wanted to transcend the categories of left and right in order to unite workers and owners under the banner of a providential leader, but which inevitably scapegoated the Jews. In tracing the history of closed nationalism and its need for a providential man, the author also sheds new light on the relation between socialism and fascism in France, most recently brought to the fore by the Mitterand government in the 1980's.
In the process of analyzing nationalism in France, the author draws on areas of study ranging from French anti-Americanism and Zeev Sternhell's history of "unconscious" fascism in France to the mythical use of Joan of Arc in the service of antisemitism.

In Europe today, staunchly nationalist parties such as France's National Front and the Austrian Freedom Party are identified as far-right movements, though supporters seldom embrace that label. More often, "far right" is pejorative, used by liberals to tar these groups with the taint of Fascism, Nazism, and other discredited ideologies. Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg's critical look at the far right throughout Europe-from the United Kingdom to France, Germany, Poland, Italy, and elsewhere-reveals a prehistory and politics more complex than the stereotypes suggest and warns of the challenges these movements pose to the EU's liberal-democratic order. The European far right represents a confluence of many ideologies: nationalism, socialism, anti-Semitism, authoritarianism. In the first half of the twentieth century, the radical far right achieved its apotheosis in the regimes of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. But these movements have evolved significantly since 1945, as Far-Right Politics in Europe makes clear. The 1980s marked a turning point in political fortunes, as national-populist parties began winning seats in European parliaments. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the United States, a new wave has unfurled, one that is explicitly anti-immigrant and Islamophobic in outlook. Though Europe's far-right parties differ in important respects, they are motivated by a common sense of mission: to save their homelands from what they view as the corrosive effects of multiculturalism and globalization by creating a closed-off, ethnically homogeneous society. Members of these movements are increasingly determined to gain power through legitimate electoral means. In democracies across Europe, they are succeeding.

On Christmas Eve 1951, Santa Claus was hanged and then publicly burned outside of the Cathedral of Dijon in France. That same decade, ethnologists began to study the indigenous cultures of central New Guinea, and found men and women affectionately consuming the flesh of the ones they loved. "Everyone calls what is not their own custom barbarism," said Montaigne. In these essays, Claude Levi-Strauss shows us behavior that is bizarre, shocking, and even revolting to outsiders but consistent with a people's culture and context. These essays relate meat eating to cannibalism, female circumcision to medically assisted reproduction, and mythic thought to scientific thought. They explore practices of incest and patriarchy, nature worship versus man-made material obsessions, the perceived threat of art in various cultures, and the innovations and limitations of secular thought. Levi-Strauss measures the short distance between "complex" and "primitive" societies and finds a shared madness in the ways we enact myth, ritual, and custom. Yet he also locates a pure and persistent ethics that connects the center of Western civilization to far-flung societies and forces a reckoning with outmoded ideas of morality and reason.

In this book, Emmanuel Alloa offers a handrail for venturing into the complexities of the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61). Through a comprehensive analysis of the three main phases of Merleau-Ponty's thinking and a thorough knowledge of his many unpublished manuscripts, the author traces how Merleau-Ponty's philosophy evolved and exposes the remarkable coherence that structures it from within. Alloa teases out the continuity of a motive that traverses the entire oeuvre as a common thread. Merleau-Ponty struggled incessantly against any kind of ideology of transparency, whether of the world, of the self, of knowledge, or of the self's relation to others. Already translated into several languages, Alloa's innovative reading of this crucially important thinker shows why the issues Merleau-Ponty raised are, more than ever, those of our time.

Why society's expectation of economic growth is no longer realistic Economic growth--and the hope of better things to come-is the religion of the modern world. Yet its prospects have become bleak, with crashes following booms in an endless cycle. In the United States, eighty percent of the population has seen no increase in purchasing power over the last thirty years and the situation is not much better elsewhere. The Infinite Desire for Growth spotlights the obsession with wanting more, and the global tensions that have arisen as a result. Amid finite resources, increasing populations, environmental degradation, and political unrest, the quest for new social and individual goals has never been so critical. Leading economist Daniel Cohen provides a whirlwind tour of the history of economic growth, from the early days of civilization to modern times, underscoring what is so unsettling today. The new digital economy is establishing a "zero-cost" production model, inexpensive software is taking over basic tasks, and years of exploiting the natural world have begun to backfire with deadly consequences. Working hard no longer guarantees social inclusion or income. Drawing on economics, anthropology, and psychology, and thinkers ranging from Rousseau to Keynes and Easterlin, Cohen examines how a future less dependent on material gain might be considered and, how, in a culture of competition, individual desires might be better attuned to the greater needs of society. At a time when wanting what we haven't got has become an obsession, The Infinite Desire for Growth explores the ways we might reinvent, for the twenty-first century, the old ideal of social progress.

This book examines the development of France's male and female homosexual communities and its gay liberation movements after 1968. The book focuses on the construction of social institutions, treating gay activist organizations and their relation to post-1968 French feminism, gay ghettos in French cities, the gay press, the impact of AIDS on political identity, and the renewed militancy of the 1990s. While acknowledging the influence of America's gay liberation movement on the French situation, the author emphasizes the differences arising from the fact that homosexuality has not historically been criminalized in France as it has been in the United States.
The book is divided into four parts. Part I, "The Revolution of Desire (1968-79)," which examines the activism of the early post-1968 gay liberation movement, is preceded by a historical summary that traces French cultural, political, and social attitudes toward homosexuality. It also explores the relations between the movements for gay and women's liberation in their various incarnations. Part II, "The Time of Socialization (1979-84)" describes the development of gay ghettos and the dissemination of gay institutions (media, countercultural venues, bars, baths, and the like). The pivotal year is 1981, which saw the advent of Francois Mitterrand's government, with its pro-gay policies, as well as the first tracking of AIDS in the United States.
Part III, "End of the Carefree Life (1981-89)," deals with initial reactions in France to the AIDS epidemic, reactions that included the realization of its ubiquity, first with the death of Michel Foucault in 1984, and then with the media spectacle of Rock Hudson's death in 1985. The author describes the French government's response to the epidemic, the role of French medical researchers in searching for the causes of the infection, and the development of Aides (meaning helpers), a social, medical, and political-action group dedicated to raising public and personal awareness of AIDS. Part IV, "The Time of Contradictions (1989-96)," focuses on the changing social institutions of homosexuality in the 1990s: the development of ACT-UP, based on the American model, in France; the campaign to promote safer sex; the integration of seropositive individuals into the homosexual community; and the acceptance of homosexuality almost as a given. The book concludes with a thoughtful epilogue on the integration of minority communities into French society.

Originally published in 1990. This uniquely fascinating study approaches the problem of autobiography from two directions: first assessing theories of the self, consciousness and language developed by both Freud and Derrida; second through the reading of the autobiographical aspects of their writings. The book begins with looking at the issue of making sense of a life by means of representation, through autobiography, within the field of psychological phenomena - screen memories, mourning, obsession, hysteria, transference. Part 1 focuses on Freud's case histories and psychoanalysis being used to make a narrative of behaviour in language. Part two considers Freud's own Interpretation of Dreams and its autobiographical nature. Part 3 examines intellectual movements such as phenomenology, speed act theory and structuralism while Parts 4 and 5 turn to Derrida's use of autobiography as self-criticism and his debt to Freud.

Working simultaneously on two levels, Saladin represents the best kind of biography-a portrait of a man who is said to have made an age, and the most complete account we have to date of an age that made the man. Unlike biographies that focus on Saladin's military exploits, especially the recapturing of Jerusalem from European Crusaders in 1187, Edde's narrative draws on an incredible array of contemporary sources to develop the fullest picture possible of a ruler shaped profoundly by the complex Arabian political environment in which he rose to prominence. The result is a unique view of the Crusades from an Arab perspective. Saladin became a legend in his own time, venerated by friend and foe alike as a paragon of justice, chivalry, and generosity. Arab politicians ever since have sought to claim his mantle as a justification for their own exercise of power. But Saladin's world-historical status as the ideal Muslim ruler owes its longevity to a tacit agreement among contemporaries and later chroniclers about the set of virtues Saladin possessed-virtues that can now be tested against a rich tapestry of historical research. This tension between the mythical image of Saladin, layered over centuries and deployed in service of specific moral and political objectives, and the verifiable facts of his life available to a judicious modern historian is what sustains Anne-Marie Edde's erudite biography, published to acclaim in France in 2008 and offered here in smooth, readable English translation.

"This book translates three of Stora's published works into one concise, scholarly, and welcome survey.... Accessible to the nonspecialist.... Highly recommended for all levels." —Choice Foreword by William B. Quandt A particularly vicious and bloody civil war has racked Algeria for a decade. Amnesty International notes that since 1992, in a population of 28 million, 80,000 people have been reported killed, and the actual total is almost certainly higher. This terrible war overshadows Algeria's long and complex history and its prominence on the world economic stage—second in size among African nations, Algeria has the longest Mediterranean coastline and contains the world's fifth-largest natural gas reserves. Algeria, 1830-2000 is a comprehensive narrative history of the country. Benjamin Stora, widely recognized as the leading expert on Algeria, presents the story of this turbulent area from the start of formal French colonialism in the early nineteenth century, through the prolonged war for independence in the latter 1950s, to the internal strife of the present day. This book adapts and updates three short volumes published originally in French by La Découverte. For this English edition, Stora has written a new introductory chapter on Algeria's colonial period (1830-1954) and has revised the final section to bring the volume up to date.

"Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and will not go out." As Charles de Gaulle ended his radio address to the French nation in June 1940, listeners must have felt a surge of patriotism tinged with uncertainty. Who would keep the flame burning through dark years of occupation? At what cost? Olivier Wieviorka presents a comprehensive history of the French Resistance, synthesizing its social, political, and military aspects to offer fresh insights into its operation. Detailing the Resistance from the inside out, he reveals not one organization but many interlocking groups often at odds over goals, methods, and leadership. He debunks lingering myths, including the idea that the Resistance sprang up in response to the exhortations of de Gaulle's Free French government-in-exile. The Resistance was homegrown, arising from the soil of French civil society. Resisters had to improvise in the fight against the Nazis and the collaborationist Vichy regime. They had no blueprint to follow, but resisters from all walks of life and across the political spectrum formed networks, organizing activities from printing newspapers to rescuing downed airmen to sabotage. Although the Resistance was never strong enough to fight the Germans openly, it provided the Allies invaluable intelligence, sowed havoc behind enemy lines on D-Day, and played a key role in Paris's liberation. Wieviorka shatters the conventional image of a united resistance with no interest in political power. But setting the record straight does not tarnish the legacy of its fighters, who braved Nazism without blinking.

How populism is fueled by the demise of the industrial order and the emergence of a new digital society ruled by algorithms In the revolutionary excitement of the 1960s, young people around the world called for a radical shift away from the old industrial order, imagining a future of technological liberation and unfettered prosperity. Industrial society did collapse, and a digital economy has risen to take its place, yet many have been left feeling marginalized and deprived of the possibility of a better life. The Inglorious Years explores the many ways we have been let down by the rising tide of technology, showing how our new interconnectivity is not fulfilling its promise. In this revelatory book, economist Daniel Cohen describes how today's postindustrial society is transforming us all into sequences of data that can be manipulated by algorithms from anywhere on the planet. As yesterday's assembly line was replaced by working online, the leftist protests of the 1960s have given way to angry protests by the populist right. Cohen demonstrates how the digital economy creates the same mix of promises and disappointments as the old industrial order, and how it revives questions about society that are as relevant to us today as they were to the ancients. Brilliant and provocative, The Inglorious Years discusses what the new digital society holds in store for us, and reveals how can we once again regain control of our lives.

On Christmas Eve 1951, Santa Claus was hanged and then publicly burned outside of the Cathedral of Dijon in France. That same decade, ethnologists began to study the indigenous cultures of central New Guinea, and found men and women affectionately consuming the flesh of the ones they loved. "Everyone calls what is not their own custom barbarism," said Montaigne. In these essays, Claude Levi-Strauss shows us behavior that is bizarre, shocking, and even revolting to outsiders but consistent with a people's culture and context. These essays relate meat eating to cannibalism, female circumcision to medically assisted reproduction, and mythic thought to scientific thought. They explore practices of incest and patriarchy, nature worship versus man-made material obsessions, the perceived threat of art in various cultures, and the innovations and limitations of secular thought. Levi-Strauss measures the short distance between "complex" and "primitive" societies and finds a shared madness in the ways we enact myth, ritual, and custom. Yet he also locates a pure and persistent ethics that connects the center of Western civilization to far-flung societies and forces a reckoning with outmoded ideas of morality and reason.

This book examines the development of France’s male and female homosexual communities and its gay liberation movements after 1968. The book focuses on the construction of social institutions, treating gay activist organizations and their relation to post-1968 French feminism, gay ghettos in French cities, the gay press, the impact of AIDS on political identity, and the renewed militancy of the 1990s. While acknowledging the influence of America’s gay liberation movement on the French situation, the author emphasizes the differences arising from the fact that homosexuality has not historically been criminalized in France as it has been in the United States. The book is divided into four parts. Part I, “The Revolution of Desire (1968-79),� which examines the activism of the early post-1968 gay liberation movement, is preceded by a historical summary that traces French cultural, political, and social attitudes toward homosexuality. It also explores the relations between the movements for gay and women’s liberation in their various incarnations. Part II, “The Time of Socialization (1979-84)� describes the development of gay ghettos and the dissemination of gay institutions (media, countercultural venues, bars, baths, and the like). The pivotal year is 1981, which saw the advent of François Mitterrand’s government, with its pro-gay policies, as well as the first tracking of AIDS in the United States. Part III, “End of the Carefree Life (1981-89),� deals with initial reactions in France to the AIDS epidemic, reactions that included the realization of its ubiquity, first with the death of Michel Foucault in 1984, and then with the media spectacle of Rock Hudson’s death in 1985. The author describes the French government’s response to the epidemic, the role of French medical researchers in searching for the causes of the infection, and the development of Aides (meaning helpers), a social, medical, and political-action group dedicated to raising public and personal awareness of AIDS. Part IV, “The Time of Contradictions (1989-96),� focuses on the changing social institutions of homosexuality in the 1990s: the development of ACT-UP, based on the American model, in France; the campaign to promote safer sex; the integration of seropositive individuals into the homosexual community; and the acceptance of homosexuality almost as a given. The book concludes with a thoughtful epilogue on the integration of minority communities into French society.

Slavery may no longer exist as a legal institution, but we still find many forms of non-freedom in contemporary societies. It is a troubling paradox, and one this book addresses by considering a period in which the definition of slavery and freedom proved considerably flexible. Between more familiar forms of slavery those of antiquity and of the Americas the institution as it was practiced and theorized in the Byzantine Mediterranean was of a different nature.

Looking at the Byzantine concept of slavery within the context of law, the labor market, medieval politics, and religion, Youval Rotman illustrates how these contexts both reshaped and sustained the slave market. By focusing on a period of great change, his historical analysis brings a new perspective to concepts of slavery and freedom. In this period, when Byzantium had to come to terms with the rising power of the Islamic state, and to fight numerous wars over territory and economic interests, Rotman traces a shift in the cultural perception of slaves as individuals: they began to be seen as human beings instead of private property. His book analyzes slavery as a historical process against the background of the political, social, and religious transformation of the Mediterranean world, and demonstrates the flexible and adaptable character of this institution.

Arguing against the use of the term slavery for any extreme form of social dependency, Rotman shows instead that slavery and freedom are unrelated concepts. His work offers a radical new understanding of the geopolitical and religious dynamics that have defined and redefined slavery and freedom, in the past and in our own time.

This new biography of Francis Jeanson follows the existential philosopher and political activist from his birth in 1922 to his participation in a government "cultural action" program in the late 1960s and '70s. As a young man, Jeanson escaped German-occupied France and joined the Resistance army in Africa. After the war, he pursued a career in France as a writer, philosopher (he was the "chosen disciple" of Jean-Paul Sartre), and editor at the Editions du Seuil. During the French-Algerian War, Jeanson founded the Jeanson Network, which collected and transported funds to support the Algerian side in the conflict. He and members of his network were tried and convicted of breaching the security of the state, but Jeanson was eventually reintegrated into French society. His participation in that historical moment and in controversies both philosophical and political that continue to rage today make for a compelling and pertinent read.

This major work follows the reshaping of Franco-Jewish identity from legal emancipation after the French revolution through the creation in 1860 of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the first international Jewish organization devoted to the struggle for Jewish rights throughout the world.

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, this intellectual biography of Colette -- the final volume of Julia Kristeva's trilogy "Female Genius" -- will be considered a major breakthrough in understanding one of the great creative minds of the twentieth century.

Colette (1873-1954) was a prolific novelist who celebrated sexual pleasure and invented a language for it at a time when women writers were inhibited about dealing with the topic. Female sexuality in a male-dominated world and the joys and pains of love served as her main themes, and her novels -- "Cheri, La Chatte, " and "Gigi, " among them -- blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction long before autobiographical novels became commonplace. She married three times, had male and female lovers, and for a time supported herself as a mime, dancing semi-nude in music halls throughout France. When she died, she received the first state funeral the French Republic had ever given a woman.

Colette's writing was inspired by entertainers, courtesans, an aristocratic Parisian lesbian subculture, and "fin de si?cle" gay aesthetes. She admired those who lived on the sexual edge and was accused of moral corruption in intellectual matters -- she published in pro-Vichy, anti-Semitic journals during the Occupation, even as she fought to keep her Jewish third husband from deportation. Kristeva deftly examines Colette's controversial life and work and considers two of her most important influences, Honor? de Balzac and Marcel Proust. In a multifaceted approach, Kristeva considers Colette's use of metaphor, the characters in her novels, and the development of her writing within the context of her life. Paying particular attention to the language the French writer used to "say the unsayable and name the unnameable," Kristeva offers an elegant and sophisticated critique of Colette's psychological conflicts, particularly her sexual relationships and how these conflicts are both recorded in and resolved through the act of writing.

Appealing to Freudian and Lacanian concepts such as the Oedipus complex, perversion, the symbolic, and melancholy, Kristeva opens Colette's oeuvre to psychoanalytic interpretation. The impression that remains is of a woman intent on experiencing the world's pleasures -- its "jouissance" -- in a melding with the world's flesh.

A beautifully illustrated look at the vogue for night landscapes amid the social, political, and technological changes of modern America The turn of the 20th century witnessed a surge in the creation and popularity of nocturnes and night landscapes in American art. In this original and thought-provoking book, Helene Valance investigates why artists and viewers of the era were so captivated by the night. Nocturne examines works by artists such as James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Frederic Remington, Edward Steichen, and Henry Ossawa Tanner through the lens of the scientific developments and social issues that dominated the period. Valance argues that the success of the genre is connected to the resonance between the night and the many forces that affected the era, including technological advances that expanded the realm of the visible, such as electric lighting and photography; Jim Crow-era race relations; America's closing frontier and imperialism abroad; and growing anxiety about identity and social values amid rapid urbanization. This absorbing study features 150 illustrations encompassing paintings, photographs, prints, scientific illustration, advertising, and popular media to explore the predilection for night imagery as a sign of the times.