21 resultater (0,23910 sekunder)

Vis alle filtre

Mærke

Butik

Pris (EUR)

Nulstil filter

Produkter
Fra
Butikker

Crap - Wendy A. Woloson - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Crap - Wendy A. Woloson - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Crap. We all have it. Filling drawers. Overflowing bins and baskets. Proudly displayed or stuffed in boxes in basements and garages. Big and small. Metal, fabric, and a whole lot of plastic. So much crap. Abundant cheap stuff is about as American as it gets. And, it turns out these seemingly unimportant consumer goods offer unique insights into ourselves--our values and our desires. In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America, Wendy A. Woloson takes seriously the history of objects that are often cynically dismissed: things that are not made to last; things we don't really need; things we often don't even really want. Woloson does not mock these ordinary, everyday possessions, but seeks to understand them as a way to understand aspects of ourselves, socially, culturally, and economically: Why do we--as individuals and as a culture--possess these things? Where do they come from? Why do we want them? And what is the true cost of owing them? Woloson tells the history of crap from the late eighteenth century up through today, exploring the many categories of crappy things, including gadgets, knickknacks, novelty goods, mass-produced collectibles, giftware, and variety store merchandise. As Woloson shows, not all crap is crappy in the same way--decorative bric-a-brac, for instance, is crappy in a different way from, say, advertising giveaways, which are differently crappy from commemorative plates. Taking on the full brilliant and depressing array of crappy material goods, the book explores the overlooked corners of the American market and mindset, revealing the complexity of our relationship with commodity culture over time. By studying crap, rather than finely made material objects, Woloson shows us a new way to truly understand ourselves, our national character, and our collective psyche. For all its problems, and despite its disposability, our crap is us.

DKK 291.00
1

Crap - Wendy A. Woloson - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Crap - Wendy A. Woloson - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Crap. We all have it. Filling drawers. Overflowing bins and baskets. Proudly displayed or stuffed in boxes in basements and garages. Big and small. Metal, fabric, and a whole lot of plastic. So much crap. Abundant cheap stuff is about as American as it gets. And it turns out these seemingly unimportant consumer goods offer unique insights into ourselves—our values and our desires. In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America, Wendy A. Woloson takes seriously the history of objects that are often cynically-made and easy to dismiss: things not made to last; things we don't really need; things we often don't even really want. Woloson does not mock these ordinary, everyday possessions but seeks to understand them as a way to understand aspects of ourselves, socially, culturally, and economically: Why do we—as individuals and as a culture—possess these things? Where do they come from? Why do we want them? And what is the true cost of owning them? Woloson tells the history of crap from the late eighteenth century up through today, exploring its many categories: gadgets, knickknacks, novelty goods, mass-produced collectibles, giftware, variety store merchandise. As Woloson shows, not all crap is crappy in the same way—bric-a-brac is crappy in a different way from, say, advertising giveaways, which are differently crappy from commemorative plates. Taking on the full brilliant and depressing array of crappy material goods, the book explores the overlooked corners of the American market and mindset, revealing the complexity of our relationship with commodity culture over time. By studying crap rather than finely made material objects, Woloson shows us a new way to truly understand ourselves, our national character, and our collective psyche. For all its problems, and despite its disposability, our crap is us.

DKK 191.00
1

From Boom to Bubble - Rachel Weber - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

From Boom to Bubble - Rachel Weber - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

An unprecedented historical, sociological, and geographic look at how property markets change and fail—and how that affects cities. In From Boom to Bubble, Rachel Weber debunks the idea that booms occur only when cities are growing and innovating. Instead, she argues, even in cities experiencing employment and population decline, developers rush to erect new office towers and apartment buildings when they have financial incentives to do so. Focusing on the main causes of overbuilding during the early 2000s, Weber documents the case of Chicago’s “Millennial Boom,” showing that the Loop’s expansion was a response to global and local pressures to produce new assets. An influx of cheap cash, made available through the use of complex financial instruments, helped transform what started as a boom grounded in modest occupant demand into a speculative bubble, where pricing and supply had only tenuous connections to the market. From Boom to Bubble is an innovative look at how property markets change and fail—and how that affects cities.

DKK 368.00
1

The Last Mixtape - Seth Long - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

The Last Mixtape - Seth Long - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

A reflection on the evolution of physical media into metaphor, through the history of music curation. Obsolescence makes the heart grow fonder, at least in the case of the mixtape. Not all technologies are so lucky. Some (say, wax cylinders) fade almost completely from cultural memory. A lucky few pass into metaphor: we still “hang up” our smartphones, “cut” film, and “patch” computer code. As digital streaming completes the obsolescence of physical media, what will become of the humble cassette? In The Last Mixtape, Seth Long offers a microhistory of music curation, anchored by the cassette, from which he explores the meanings of obsolescence, ownership, nostalgia, and the speed of cultural change. A moving meditation on our relationship with music, memory, and curation in the digital century, Long ultimately calls for a return to the media ecology represented by the mixtape: a world in which media is cheap and abundant but tactile and meaningfully engaged.

DKK 262.00
1

The Last Mixtape - Seth Long - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

The Last Mixtape - Seth Long - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

A reflection on the evolution of physical media into metaphor, through the history of music curation. Obsolescence makes the heart grow fonder, at least in the case of the mixtape. Not all technologies are so lucky. Some (say, wax cylinders) fade almost completely from cultural memory. A lucky few pass into metaphor: we still “hang up” our smartphones, “cut” film, and “patch” computer code. As digital streaming completes the obsolescence of physical media, what will become of the humble cassette? In The Last Mixtape, Seth Long offers a microhistory of music curation, anchored by the cassette, from which he explores the meanings of obsolescence, ownership, nostalgia, and the speed of cultural change. A moving meditation on our relationship with music, memory, and curation in the digital century, Long ultimately calls for a return to the media ecology represented by the mixtape: a world in which media is cheap and abundant but tactile and meaningfully engaged.

DKK 1093.00
1

Backpack Ambassadors - Richard Ivan Jobs - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Backpack Ambassadors - Richard Ivan Jobs - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Even today, in an era of cheap travel and constant connection, the image of young people backpacking across Europe remains seductively romantic. In Backpack Ambassadors, Richard Ivan Jobs tells the story of backpacking in Europe in its heyday, the decades after World War II, revealing that these footloose young people were doing more than just exploring for themselves. Rather, with each step, each border crossing, each friendship, they were quietly helping knit the continent together. From the Berlin Wall to the beaches of Spain, the Spanish Steps in Rome to the Pudding Shop in Istanbul, Jobs tells the stories of backpackers whose personal desire for freedom of movement brought the people and places of Europe into ever-closer contact. As greater and greater numbers of young people trekked around the continent, and a truly international youth culture began to emerge, the result was a Europe that, even in the midst of Cold War tensions, found its people more and more connected, their lives more and more integrated. Drawing on archival work in eight countries and five languages, and featuring trenchant commentary on the relevance of this period for contemporary concerns about borders and migration, Backpack Ambassadors brilliantly recreates a movement that was far more influential and important than its footsore travelers could ever have realized.

DKK 368.00
1

The Lofts of SoHo - Aaron Shkuda - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

The Lofts of SoHo - Aaron Shkuda - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

A groundbreaking look at the transformation of SoHo. American cities entered a new phase when, beginning in the 1950s, artists and developers looked upon a decaying industrial zone in Lower Manhattan and saw, not blight, but opportunity: cheap rents, lax regulation, and wide open spaces. Thus, SoHo was born. From 1960 to 1980, residents transformed the industrial neighborhood into an artist district, creating the conditions under which it evolved into an upper-income, gentrified area. Introducing the idea—still potent in city planning today—that art could be harnessed to drive municipal prosperity, SoHo was the forerunner of gentrified districts in cities nationwide, spawning the notion of the creative class. In The Lofts of SoHo, Aaron Shkuda studies the transition of the district from industrial space to artists’ enclave to affluent residential area, focusing on the legacy of urban renewal in and around SoHo and the growth of artist-led redevelopment. Shkuda explores conflicts between residents and property owners and analyzes the city’s embrace of the once-illegal loft conversion as an urban development strategy. As Shkuda explains, artists eventually lost control of SoHo’s development, but over several decades they nonetheless forced scholars, policymakers, and the general public to take them seriously as critical actors in the twentieth-century American city.

DKK 335.00
1

Backpack Ambassadors - Richard Ivan Jobs - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Backpack Ambassadors - Richard Ivan Jobs - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Even today, in an era of cheap travel and constant connection, the image of young people backpacking across Europe remains seductively romantic. In Backpack Ambassadors, Richard Ivan Jobs tells the story of backpacking in Europe in its heyday, the decades after World War II, revealing that these footloose young people were doing more than just exploring for themselves. Rather, with each step, each border crossing, each friendship, they were quietly helping knit the continent together. From the Berlin Wall to the beaches of Spain, the Spanish Steps in Rome to the Pudding Shop in Istanbul, Jobs tells the stories of backpackers whose personal desire for freedom of movement brought the people and places of Europe into ever-closer contact. As greater and greater numbers of young people trekked around the continent, and a truly international youth culture began to emerge, the result was a Europe that, even in the midst of Cold War tensions, found its people more and more connected, their lives more and more integrated. Drawing on archival work in eight countries and five languages, and featuring trenchant commentary on the relevance of this period for contemporary concerns about borders and migration, Backpack Ambassadors brilliantly recreates a movement that was far more influential and important than its footsore travelers could ever have realized.

DKK 1098.00
1

The Lofts of SoHo - Aaron Shkuda - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

The Lofts of SoHo - Aaron Shkuda - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

American cities entered a new phase when, beginning in the 1950s, artists and developers looked upon a decaying industrial zone in Lower Manhattan and saw, not blight, but opportunity: cheap rents, lax regulation, and wide open spaces. Thus, SoHo was born. From 1960 to 1980, residents transformed the industrial neighborhood into an artist district, creating the conditions under which it evolved into an upper-income, gentrified area. Introducing the idea—still potent in city planning today—that art could be harnessed to drive municipal prosperity, SoHo was the forerunner of gentrified districts in cities nationwide, spawning the notion of the creative class. In The Lofts of SoHo, Aaron Shkuda studies the transition of the district from industrial space to artists’ enclave to affluent residential area, focusing on the legacy of urban renewal in and around SoHo and the growth of artist-led redevelopment. Shkuda explores conflicts between residents and property owners and analyzes the city’s embrace of the once-illegal loft conversion as an urban development strategy. As Shkuda explains, artists eventually lost control of SoHo’s development, but over several decades they nonetheless forced scholars, policymakers, and the general public to take them seriously as critical actors in the twentieth-century American city.

DKK 465.00
1

Shoddy - Hanna Rose Shell - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Shoddy - Hanna Rose Shell - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

You know shoddy: an adjective meaning cheap and likely poorly made. But did you know that before it became a popular descriptor, shoddy was first coined as a noun? In the early nineteenth century, shoddy was the name given to a new textile material made from reclaimed wool. Shoddy was, in fact, one of the earliest forms of industrial recycling as old rags and fabric clippings were ground into "devil's dust" and respun to be used in the making of suits, army uniforms, carpet lining, mattress stuffing, and more. In Shoddy, Hanna Rose Shell takes readers on a vivid ride beginning in West Yorkshire's Heavy Woollen District and its "shoddy towns," and traveling to the United States, the third world, and waste dumps, textile labs, and rag shredding factories, in order to unravel the threads of this story and its long history. Since the time of its first appearance, shoddy had become both pervasive and politically and culturally controversial on multiple levels. The use of the term "virgin" wool--still noticeable today in the labels on our sweaters--thus emerged as an effort by the wool industry to counter shoddy's appeal: to make shoddy seem shoddy. Public health experts, with encouragement from the wool industry, worried about sanitation and disease--how could old clothes be disinfected? As well, the idea of wearing someone else's old clothes so close to your own skin was discomforting in and of itself. Could you sleep peacefully knowing that your mattress was stuffed with dead soldiers' overcoats? Over time, shoddy the noun was increasingly used as an adjective that, according to Shell, captured a host of personal, ethical, commercial, and societal failings. Introducing us to many richly drawn characters along the way, Shell reveals an interwoven tale of industrial espionage, political infighting, scientific inquiry, ethnic prejudices, and war profiteering. By exploring a variety of sources from political and literary texts to fabric samples and old military uniforms, antique and art photographs and political cartoons, medical textbooks, and legal cases, Shell unspools the history of shoddy to uncover the surprising journey that individual strands of recycled wool - and more recently a whole range of synthetic fibers from nylon to Kevlar - may take over the course of several lifetimes. Not only in your garments and blankets, but under your rug, in your mattress pads, the peculiar confetti-like stuffing in your mailing envelopes, even the insulation in your walls. The resulting fabric is at once rich and sumptuous, and cheap and tawdry--and likely connected to something you are wearing right now. After reading, you will never use the word shoddy or think about your clothes, or even the world around you, the same way again.

DKK 262.00
1

Fast, Easy, and In Cash - Jason Antrosio - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Fast, Easy, and In Cash - Jason Antrosio - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Artisan has recently become a buzzword in the developed world, used for items like cheese, wine, and baskets, as corporations succeed at branding their cheap, mass-produced products with the popular appeal of small-batch, handmade goods. The unforgiving realities of the artisan economy, however, never left the global south, and anthropologists have worried over the fate of these craftspeople as global capitalism has again remade their cultural and economic territory. Yet artisans are proving to be surprisingly vital players in contemporary capitalism, as they interlock innovation and tradition to create effective new forms of entrepreneurship. Based on seven years of extensive research in Colombia and Ecuador, veteran ethnographers Jason Antrosio and Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld's Fast, Easy, and In Cash explores how small-scale production and global capitalism are not directly opposed, but are rather essential partners in economic development. Antrosio and Colloredo-Mansfeld demonstrate how artisan trades arrive and flourish in modern Latin American communities. In uncertain economic environments, small manufacturers have adapted to excel at home-based production, product design, technological efficiency, and high-risk investments. Illuminating this process are vivid case studies from Ecuador and Colombia: peasant farmers in Tuquerres, Otavalo weavers, Tigua painters, and the t-shirt industry of Atuntaqui. Fast, Easy, and In Cash exposes how these ambitious artisans, far from being holdovers from the past, are crucial for capitalist innovation in their communities and provide indispensable lessons in how we should understand and cultivate local economies in this era of globalization.

DKK 951.00
1

Fast, Easy, and In Cash - Jason Antrosio - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Fast, Easy, and In Cash - Jason Antrosio - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Artisan has recently become a buzzword in the developed world, used for items like cheese, wine, and baskets, as corporations succeed at branding their cheap, mass-produced products with the popular appeal of small-batch, handmade goods. The unforgiving realities of the artisan economy, however, never left the global south, and anthropologists have worried over the fate of these craftspeople as global capitalism has again remade their cultural and economic territory. Yet artisans are proving to be surprisingly vital players in contemporary capitalism, as they interlock innovation and tradition to create effective new forms of entrepreneurship. Based on seven years of extensive research in Colombia and Ecuador, veteran ethnographers Jason Antrosio and Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld's Fast, Easy, and In Cash explores how small-scale production and global capitalism are not directly opposed, but are rather essential partners in economic development. Antrosio and Colloredo-Mansfeld demonstrate how artisan trades arrive and flourish in modern Latin American communities. In uncertain economic environments, small manufacturers have adapted to excel at home-based production, product design, technological efficiency, and high-risk investments. Illuminating this process are vivid case studies from Ecuador and Colombia: peasant farmers in Tuquerres, Otavalo weavers, Tigua painters, and the t-shirt industry of Atuntaqui. Fast, Easy, and In Cash exposes how these ambitious artisans, far from being holdovers from the past, are crucial for capitalist innovation in their communities and provide indispensable lessons in how we should understand and cultivate local economies in this era of globalization.

DKK 274.00
1

From Boom to Bubble - Rachel Weber - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

From Boom to Bubble - Rachel Weber - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

During the Great Recession, the housing bubble took much of the blame for bringing the American economy to its knees, but commercial real estate also experienced its own boom-and-bust in the same time period. In Chicago, for example, law firms and corporate headquarters abandoned their historic downtown office buildings for the millions of brand-new square feet that were built elsewhere in the central business district. What causes construction booms like this, and why do they so often leave a glut of vacant space and economic distress in their wake? In From Boom to Bubble, Rachel Weber debunks the idea that booms occur only when cities are growing and innovating. Instead, she argues, even in cities experiencing employment and population decline, developers rush to erect new office towers and apartment buildings when they have financial incentives to do so. Focusing on the main causes of overbuilding during the early 2000s, Weber documents the case of Chicago's "Millennial Boom," showing that the Loop's expansion was a response to global and local pressures to produce new assets. An influx of cheap cash, made available through the use of complex financial instruments, helped transform what started as a boom grounded in modest occupant demand into a speculative bubble, where pricing and supply had only tenuous connections to the market. Innovative and compelling, From Boom to Bubble is an unprecedented historical, sociological, and geographic look at how property markets change and fail-and how that affects cities.

DKK 465.00
1

Law and the Economy in Colonial India - Tirthankar Roy - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Law and the Economy in Colonial India - Tirthankar Roy - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Since the economic reforms of the 1990s, India's economy has grown rapidly. To sustain growth and foreign investment over the long run requires a well-developed legal infrastructure for conducting business, including cheap and reliable contract enforcement and secure property rights. But it's widely acknowledged that India's legal infrastructure is in urgent need of reform, plagued by problems, including slow enforcement of contracts and land laws that differ from state to state. How has this situation arisen, and what can boost business confidence and encourage long-run economic growth? Tirthankar Roy and Anand V. Swamy trace the beginnings of the current Indian legal system to the years of British colonial rule. They show how India inherited an elaborate legal system from the British colonial administration, which incorporated elements from both British Common Law and indigenous institutions. In the case of property law, especially as it applied to agricultural land, indigenous laws and local political expediency were more influential in law-making than concepts borrowed from European legal theory. Conversely, with commercial law, there was considerable borrowing from Europe. In all cases, the British struggled with limited capacity to enforce their laws and an insufficient knowledge of the enormous diversity and differentiation within Indian society. A disorderly body of laws, not conducive to production and trade, evolved over time. Roy and Swamy's careful analysis not only sheds new light on the development of legal institutions in India, but also offers insights for India and other emerging countries through a look at what fosters the types of institutions that are key to economic growth.

DKK 465.00
1

Price of Prestige - Lilach Gilady - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Price of Prestige - Lilach Gilady - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

If wars are costly and risky to both sides, why do they occur? Why engage in an arms race when it's clear that increasing one's own defense expenditures will only trigger a similar reaction by the other side, leaving both countries just as insecure and considerably poorer? Just as people buy expensive things precisely because they are more expensive, because they offer the possibility of improved social status or prestige, so too do countries, argues Lilach Gilady. In The Price of Prestige, Gilady shows how many seemingly wasteful government expenditures that appear to contradict the laws of demand actually follow the pattern for what are known as Veblen goods, or positional goods for which demand increases alongside price, even when cheaper substitutes are readily available. From flashy space programs to costly weapons systems a country does not need and cannot maintain to foreign aid programs that offer little benefit to recipients, these conspicuous and strategically timed expenditures are intended to instill awe in the observer through their wasteful might. And underestimating the important social role of excess has serious policy implications. Increasing the cost of war, for example, may not always be an effective tool for preventing it, Gilady argues, nor does decreasing the cost of weapons and other technologies of war necessarily increase the potential for conflict, as shown by the case of a cheap fighter plane whose price tag drove consumers away. In today's changing world, where there are high levels of uncertainty about the distribution of power, Gilady also offers a valuable way to predict which countries are most likely to be concerned about their position and therefore adopt costly, excessive policies.

DKK 397.00
1

Street Players - Kinohi Nishikawa - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Street Players - Kinohi Nishikawa - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

The uncontested center of the black pulp fiction universe for more than four decades was the Los Angeles publisher Holloway House. From the late 1960s until it closed in 2008, Holloway House specialized in cheap paperbacks with page-turning narratives featuring black protagonists in crime stories, conspiracy thrillers, prison novels, and Westerns. From Iceberg Slim’s Pimp to Donald Goines’s Never Die Alone, the thread that tied all of these books together—and made them distinct from the majority of American pulp—was an unfailing veneration of black masculinity. Zeroing in on Holloway House, Street Players explores how this world of black pulp fiction was produced, received, and recreated over time and across different communities of readers. Kinohi Nishikawa contends that black pulp fiction was built on white readers’ fears of the feminization of society—and the appeal of black masculinity as a way to counter it. In essence, it was the original form of blaxploitation: a strategy of mass-marketing race to suit the reactionary fantasies of a white audience. But while chauvinism and misogyny remained troubling yet constitutive aspects of this literature, from 1973 onward, Holloway House moved away from publishing sleaze for a white audience to publishing solely for black readers. The standard account of this literary phenomenon is based almost entirely on where this literature ended up: in the hands of black, male, working-class readers. When it closed, Holloway House was synonymous with genre fiction written by black authors for black readers—a field of cultural production that Nishikawa terms the black literary underground. But as Street Players demonstrates, this cultural authenticity had to be created, promoted, and in some cases made up, and there is a story of exploitation at the heart of black pulp fiction’s origins that cannot be ignored.

DKK 895.00
1

Street Players - Kinohi Nishikawa - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Street Players - Kinohi Nishikawa - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

The uncontested center of the black pulp fiction universe for more than four decades was the Los Angeles publisher Holloway House. From the late 1960s until it closed in 2008, Holloway House specialized in cheap paperbacks with page-turning narratives featuring black protagonists in crime stories, conspiracy thrillers, prison novels, and Westerns. From Iceberg Slim’s Pimp to Donald Goines’s Never Die Alone, the thread that tied all of these books together—and made them distinct from the majority of American pulp—was an unfailing veneration of black masculinity. Zeroing in on Holloway House, Street Players explores how this world of black pulp fiction was produced, received, and recreated over time and across different communities of readers. Kinohi Nishikawa contends that black pulp fiction was built on white readers’ fears of the feminization of society—and the appeal of black masculinity as a way to counter it. In essence, it was the original form of blaxploitation: a strategy of mass-marketing race to suit the reactionary fantasies of a white audience. But while chauvinism and misogyny remained troubling yet constitutive aspects of this literature, from 1973 onward, Holloway House moved away from publishing sleaze for a white audience to publishing solely for black readers. The standard account of this literary phenomenon is based almost entirely on where this literature ended up: in the hands of black, male, working-class readers. When it closed, Holloway House was synonymous with genre fiction written by black authors for black readers—a field of cultural production that Nishikawa terms the black literary underground. But as Street Players demonstrates, this cultural authenticity had to be created, promoted, and in some cases made up, and there is a story of exploitation at the heart of black pulp fiction’s origins that cannot be ignored.

DKK 285.00
1

Taking Leave, Taking Liberties - Aaron Hiltner - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Taking Leave, Taking Liberties - Aaron Hiltner - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

American soldiers overseas during World War II were famously said to be "overpaid, oversexed, and over here." But the assaults, rapes, and other brutal acts didn't only happen elsewhere, far away from a home front depicted as safe and unscathed by the "good war." To the contrary, millions of American and Allied troops regularly poured into ports like New York and Los Angeles while on leave. Euphemistically called "friendly invasions," these crowds of men then forced civilians to contend with the same kinds of crime and sexual assault unfolding in places like Britain, France, and Australia. With unsettling clarity, Aaron Hiltner reveals what American troops really did on the home front. While GIs are imagined to have spent much of the war in Europe or the Pacific, before the run-up to D-day in the spring of 1944 as many as 75% of soldiers were stationed in US port cities, including more than three million who moved through New York City. In these cities, largely uncontrolled soldiers sought and found alcohol and sex, and the civilians living there--women in particular--were not safe from the violence fomented by these de facto occupying armies. Troops brought their pocketbooks and demand for "dangerous fun" to both red-light districts and city centers, creating a new geography of vice that challenged local police, politicians, and civilians. Military authorities, focused above all else on the war effort, invoked written and unwritten legal codes to grant troops near immunity to civil policing and prosecution. The dangerous reality of the life on the home front was well known at the time--even if it has been subsequently buried it beneath nostalgia for the "greatest generation." Drawing on previously unseen military archival records, Hiltner recovers a mostly forgotten chapter of WWII history, demonstrating that the war's ill effects were felt all over--including by those supposedly safe back home.

DKK 243.00
1

The Last House on the Block - Sharon Cornelissen - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

The Last House on the Block - Sharon Cornelissen - Bog - The University of Chicago Press - Plusbog.dk

Gentrification is not inevitable, reveals Sharon Cornelissen, in this surprising, close look at the Detroit neighborhood of Brightmoor and the harsh reality of depopulation and urban decline. In the minds of many, Detroit is undergoing a renaissance thanks to gentrifying urbanites who’ve been drawn to the city with the promise of cheap housing and thriving culture. But what happens when gentrification attempts to come to one of the most depopulated neighborhoods in the country—a place where every other property in the neighborhood was a vacant lot and every third house stood empty? To find out, Sharon Cornelissen moved to the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit for three years and became the owner of a $7,000 house. The Last House on the Block takes us to Brightmoor to meet Cornelissen’s fellow residents. She introduces us to the long-time residents of the neighborhood who reveal their struggles to keep a home while keeping violence, tall grass, and yes—gentrification—at bay. We also meet the eclectic white newcomers of Brightmoor and learn about their real estate bargains, urban farms, and how they became the unlikely defenders of urban desolation. Where oldtimers take pride in neatly mowed lawns and hope for a return to residential density, newcomers love the open space and aim to buy more empty lots to raise chickens and goats. It is a story of gentrification, but not at all in the usual sense: it is a case of failed gentrification. We often think about gentrification as an unstoppable force—once the first white newcomers with yoga mats enter an often brown or Black community, the coffee shops and restaurants follow. But in Brightmoor, the dreams of white newcomers met the harsh reality of decade-long decline. Nearly a decade after Cornelissen’s fieldwork began, Brightmoor is even emptier than it was when she started. Today, depopulation remains more common than gentrification in poor communities. Cornelissen’s story offers deep insights into what it is like to live in a declining neighborhood, and through the example of Brightmoor, Cornelissen reveals why depopulation continues and helps us imagine a more inclusive and equitable city turnaround.

DKK 245.00
1