The Begging Question

Sweden's Social Responses to the Roma Destitute

ERIK HANSSON

Foreword by DON MITCHELL

Begging, thought to be an inherently un-Swedish phenomenon, became a national fixture in the 2010s as homeless Romanian and Bulgarian Roma EU citizens arrived in Sweden seeking economic opportunity. People without shelter were forced to use public spaces as their private space, disturbing aesthetic and normative orders, creating anxiety among Swedish subjects, and resulting in hate crimes and everyday racism. Parallel with Europe’s refugee crisis in the 2010s, the “begging question” peaked. The presence of the media’s so-called EU migrants caused a crisis in Swedish society along political, juridical, moral, and social lines due to the contradiction embodied in the Swedish authorities’ denial of social support to them while simultaneously seeking to maintain the nation’s image as promoting welfare, equality, and anti-racism. In The Begging Question Erik Hansson argues that the material configurations of capitalism and class society are not only racialized but also unconsciously invested with collective anxieties and desires. By focusing on Swedish society’s response to the begging question, Hansson provides insight into the dialectics of racism. He shrewdly deploys Marxian economics and Lacanian psychoanalysis to explain how it became possible to do what once was thought “impossible”: criminalize begging and make fascism politically mainstream, in Sweden. What Hansson reveals is not just an insight into one of the most captivating countries on earth but also a timely glimpse into what it means to be human..

Erik Hansson is a human geographer. He wrote this book during his postdoctoral fellowship at Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He has also been stationed at Uppsala University, University of Gothenburg,and Mid Sweden University.

Who Would You Kill to Save the World?

Claire Colebrook

This book examines post-apocalyptic cinema and the way it uses images from the past and present to depict what it means to preserve “the world,” as well as who is left out of the narrative of rebuilding society. Colebrook redefines “the world” as affluent Western society and “saving the world” as preventing us from becoming the othered them which are viewed in their suffering. Colebrook further challenges the notion that “the world,” built upon foundations of exploitation, is worth saving.

Claire Colebrook (PhD, Edinburgh University, 1993) is a professor of English at Penn State University. She is the author of a number of books, including Deleuze and the Meaning of Life (Continuum, 2010), Gender (Palgrave, 2003), and Irony in the Work of Philosophy (Nebraska, 2003).

March 2023 2023

336372, 107

Disability studies / Anthropology / Environment Rights: World

September 2023

165 pages, Social/Sciences/Media Studies

December 2023

305 pages, History/France

Rights: World

From Near and Far Radical Geographies of "Deep Space Nine" TYLER STOVALL

From Near and Far relates the history of modern France from the French Revolution to the present. Noted historian Tyler Stovall considers how the history of France interacts with both the broader history of the world and the local histories of French communities, examining the impacts of Karl Marx, Ho Chi Minh, Paul Gauguin, and Josephine Baker alongside the rise of haute couture and the contemporary role of hip hop.

From Near and Far focuses on the interactions between France and three other parts of the world: Europe, the United States, and the French colonial empire. Taking this transnational approach to the history of modern France, Stovall shows how the theme of universalism, so central to modern French culture, has manifested itself in different ways over the last few centuries. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of narrative to French history, that historians tell the story of a nation and a people by bringing together a multitude of stories and tales that often go well beyond its boundaries. In telling these stories From Near and Far gives the reader a vision of France both global and local at the same time.

Tyler Stovall (1954–2021) was the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University. He was the author or editor of a number of books, including White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea and coeditor of The Black Populations of France: Histories from Metropole to Colony (Nebraska, 2022).

Making Space

Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon MELISSA K. BYRNES

Melissa K. Byrnes considers the ways that local communities in four French suburbs reacted to the growing presence of North African migrants following the Second World War up to 1974. Making Space details the experiences of French community leaders to establish the wide variety of strategies that developed in the face of rapidly growing populations of North Africans, especially Algerians. In particular, the author investigates the various motivations that brought local actors to involve themselves in debates over migrant rights and welfare, leading to the current tensions in French society and questions about France’s ability—and will—to fulfill the promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all of its citizens.

Melissa K. Byrnes (PhD, Georgetown University, 2008) is an associate professor of modern European and world history at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

January 2024

250 pages

History/Europe/France

Rights: World

The First Atomic Bomb

The Trinity Site in New Mexico JANET FARRELL BRODIE

On July 16, 1945, just weeks before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought about the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II, the United States unleashed the world’s first atomic bomb at the Trinity testing site located in the remote Tularosa Valley in south-central New Mexico. Immensely more powerful than any weapon the world had seen, the bomb’s effects on the surrounding and downwind communities of plants, animals, birds, and humans have lasted decades. In The First Atomic Bomb Janet Farrell Brodie explores the history of the Trinity test and those whose contributions have rarely, if ever, been discussed—the men and women who constructed, served, and witnessed the first test—as well as the downwinders who suffered the consequences of the radiation. Concentrating on these ordinary people, laborers, ranchers, and Indigenous peoples who lived in the region and participated in the testing, Brodie corrects the lack of coverage in existing scholarship on the essential details and everyday experiences of this globally significant event. The First Atomic Bomb also covers the environmental preservation of the Trinity test site and compares it with the wide range of atomic sites now preserved independently or as part of the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Although the Trinity site became a significant node for testing the new weapons of the postwar United States, it is known today as an officially designated national historic landmark. Brodie presents a timely, important, and innovative study of an explosion that carries special historical weight in American memory.

Janet Farrell Brodie is a professor emerita of history at Claremont Graduate University. She has published articles on atomic secrecy in multiple venues, including the Journal of Social History and the Journal of Diplomatic History and in the edited volume Inevitably Toxic: Historical Perspectives on Contamination, Exposure, and Expertise.

Galloping Gourmet Eating and Drinking with Buffalo Bill STEVE FRIESEN

In this entertaining narrative Steve Friesen explores the role of eating and drinking in Buffalo Bill's life, his related experiences and enterprises, and the many meals he had with other celebrities of his day. One is struck by the variety and abundance of foods in all of those meals, from formal banquets he attended to the daily diet of performers in his show.

He lived at a time when there was a burgeoning of food options, many of which had been available only on a limited basis. His era was the dawn of a bountiful consumption that continued into the 20th century. A wide range of foods, and large quantities of them, previously available only to royalty and aristocracy, were now accessible to America's and Europe's middle and upper classes. One newspaper reporter observed that "Colonel Cody displays no more care about anything than the proper feeding of horse and man." His concern for those who worked for him was greater than many bosses of his time and certainly extended to providing fine food, and plenty of it, to them. He also became a "missionary" for western foods in the United States and for American cookery in general as the show traveled overseas.

June 20232023

316,

American History / Western History / World War II

Rights: World

December 2023

180 pages, History/Food

December 2023

285 pages

World War I/ Sports

Rights: World

The Gas and Flame Men

Baseball and the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I JIM LEEKE

The Chemical Warfare Service was launched by the U.S. Army within months of Germany's drastic poison gas attack at Ypres in 1915. Among those who served in what would become known as the Hellfire Battalion were chemists and other scientists, architects, and elite athletes—including some of the most famous names in baseball.

The Gas and Flame Men tells how chemical warfare changed the course of World War I— and the future of war in general. It also had lasting effects on baseball, with players such as Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson suffering lung injuries that changed how they played the game.

Brand Antarctica

December 2023

History/Polar Regions

Rights: World

How Global Consumer Culture Shapes Our Perceptions of the Ice Continent HANNE ELLIOT FØNSS NIELSEN

In Brand Antarctica, Hanne Elliot Fønss Nielsen analyses advertisements and related cultural products in order to identify common framings that have emerged in representations of Antarctica from the late nineteenth century to the present. By providing a historical, social, cultural, and geographic context for understanding the ways the south has been used to sell products, stories, experiences and ideas, Nielsen argues that Antarctica has been “for sale” in various ways ever since the first human interactions with the continent, and that the commercial and advertising history of Antarctica plays an important role in framing how Antarctica is conceptualized today.

Hanne Elliot Fønss Nielsen is a senior lecturer of Antarctic law and governance at the University of Tasmania..

Almost Somewhere

Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail

SUZANNE ROBERTS

Suzanne Roberts and two friends make a remarkable Sierra Nevada journey testing the limits of physical endurance and friendship. Candid and funny and, finally, wise, Almost Somewhere is not just the whimsical coming-of-age story of a young woman ill-prepared for a month in the mountains but also the reflection of a distinctly feminine view of nature. This updated edition includes original photographs from the trip and a new afterword where Roberts revisits the trail 29 years later, finding much has changed and reflecting on how the original trip still influences her today.

Suzanne Roberts is the author of Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties (Nebraska, 2022), Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel (Nebraska 2020), and four collections of poetry.

Of Love and War

Pacific Brides of World War II

ANGELA WANHALLA

Angela Wanhalla details the intimate relationships forged during wartime between women and U.S. servicemen stationed in the South Pacific, traces the fate of wartime marriages, and addresses consequences for the women and children left behind. Paying particular attention to the experiences of women in New Zealand and in the island Pacific—including Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, and the Cook Islands—Of Love and War aims to illuminate the impact of global war on these women, their families, and on Pacific societies.

October 20232023

288 pages

Nature/Memoir

Rights: World x China

December 2023

278 pages

World War II/ Women

Rights: World

October 2023

205 pages

Social Science/Refugees

Rights: World

Molyvos

A Greek Village's Heroic Response to the Global Refugee Crisis

JOHN WEBB

With no assistance from NGOs, who were very late to this crisis, ordinary residents of Molyvos—restaurant owners, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, and parents—rescued thousands of the refugees, offered them dry clothes and shoes, hot food, shelter, and counseling about where they could travel next in their search for safety and asylum. With the chaotic conditions that impelled these migrations deteriorating, the ranks of the refugees swelled to huge numbers, and the volunteer corps in Molyvos expanded their capacity to help them. Inevitably, as the tourist industry suffered, a backlash began against the migrants and the locals who were helping them, leading to discord in the community. Molyvos chronicles the work of Melinda McRostie and her small group of friends in the harbor of Molyvos and Eric and Philippa Kempson on the beach at Eftalou as they organized and carried out the only refugee relief effort that existed on the north coast between 2014 and 2015, when NGOs began to arrive

John Webb devoted eighteen years in Spring Valley to migrants and refugees—first Haitians, then Vietnamese and Cambodians, and finally Central Americans, all trying to escape starvation and death at home.

Forget I Told You This HILARY ZAID

September 2023

304 pages

Fiction

Rights: World English

Amy Black, a queer single mother and aspiring artist in love with calligraphy, dreams of a coveted artist’s residency at the world’s largest social media company, Q. One ink-black October night, when the power is out in the Oakland hills and her elderly parents and differently abled brother Michael are sheltering in her house, a stranger asks Amy to hand scribe a love letter for him. When the stranger suddenly disappears, Amy’s search for the letter's recipient leads her straight to Q and the most beautiful, illuminated manuscript she has ever seen, the Codex Argentus, hidden away in Q’s Library of Books That Don’t Exist—and to a group of data privacy vigilantes who want Amy to burn Q to the ground. Westworld + Wonka + Portrait of a Lady On Fire, Forget I Told You This is a witty and touching novel about the desire to be seen by those who matter and the desire to remain anonymous in a world in which our every move is surveilled.

Hilary Zaid is the author of Paper White (Bywater, 2018). Long-listed for the 2019 Northern California Independent Booksellers' Award for Fiction, Paper White was a Foreword Indies silver medalist and the winner of the Independent Publishers' Book Awards (IPPY) in LGBT+ Fiction. Zaid's short fiction has appeared in print and online venues including Ecotone, Day One, The Southwest Review, The Utne Reader, among others. She is a 52-year-old queer/genderqueer writer who lives in Oakland with her wife and sons.