Edited by Stephen Vlastos (NHC Fellow, 1996–97) This collection of essays challenges the notion that Japan's present cultural identity is the simple legacy of Japan's premodern and insular past. Building on the pathbreaking historical analysis of British traditions, The Invention of Tradition, sixteen American and Japanese scholars examine "age-old" Japanese cultural practices, ranging from judo to … Continued
By Ellen Stroud (NHC Fellow, 2009–10) The once denuded northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry have together brought about a return of northeastern forests. Although historians and … Continued
By Isidore Okpewho (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) Using stories he collected from narrators from the old West African kingdom of Benin, the author shows how the present mirrors the past in both folklore and political reality, suggesting that African states fail to create a level playing field for the plural identities within their borders, leaving marginalized … Continued
By James C. McCann (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) For more than two thousand years, Ethiopia’s ox-plow agricultural system was the most efficient and innovative in Africa, but has been afflicted in the recent past by a series of crises: famine, declining productivity, and losses in biodiversity. James C. McCann analyzes the last two hundred years of … Continued
Edited by John F. Richards (NHC Fellow, 1979–80; 2000–01)
By Robert A. Ferguson (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) Reading the Early Republic focuses attention on the forgotten dynamism of thought in the founding era. In every case, the documents, novels, pamphlets, sermons, journals, and slave narratives of the early American nation are richer and more intricate than modern readers have perceived. Rebellion, slavery, and treason—the mingled stories … Continued
By Joanna Woods-Marsden (NHC Fellow, 1995–96) The autonomous self-portrait, a central mode of expression in Western art, was a Renaissance invention. This book explores for the first time the genesis and early development of this important genre as it took place in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Joanna Woods-Marsden examines a series of … Continued
By Louise McReynolds (NHC Fellow, 1995–96; 1999–00) An athlete becomes a movie star; a waiter rises to manage a chain of nightclubs; a movie scenarist takes to writing restaurant reviews. Intrepid women hunt bears, drive in automobile races, and fly, first in balloons and then in airplanes. Sensational crimes jump from city streets onto the … Continued
By Jack P. Greene (NHC Fellow, 1986–87; 1987–88; 2009–10) and John Norris The two tracts presented here were written in an effort to attract immigrants to the American colonies during the earliest days of settlement. They provide systematic contemporary discussion of the nature and conditions of South Carolina during its early years of English settlement
By Stephen J. Pyne (NHC Fellow, 1979–80; 2002–03) "Painting, architecture, politics, even gardening and golf—all have their critics and commentators," observes Stephen Pyne. "Fire does not." Aside from news reports on fire disasters, most writing about fire appears in government reports and scientific papers—and in journalism that has more in common with the sports page than … Continued