Editor’s Note: The following books have been published by the U-M Press.
Alice Freeman Palmer: The Evolution of a New Woman by Ruth Bordin, research affiliate, Bentley Library. In this first biography of Alice Freeman Palmer (1855–1902), educator, president of Wellesley College, and first dean at the University of Chicago, Bordin illuminates a fundamental period of transition in the history of educated, middle-class American women. Bordin draws upon the rich and previously untapped resource of Palmer’s personal correspondence, providing a compelling story not only of this unique woman’s life but of women’s higher education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Multilateral Trading System: Analysis and Options for Change edited by Robert M. Stern, professor of economics and public policy. This is the latest volume in the U-M Press’ Studies in International Trade Policy series. The Multilateral Trading System deals with issues of central importance in the global trading system, providing an analytical approach to most of the major items on the agenda of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations.
Indian Block-Printed Cotton Fragments in the Kelsey Museum, The University of Michigan by Ruth Barnes, research cataloguer, Department of Eastern Art, Ashmolean Museum, England. The Kelsey Museum houses a rare and unusually varied collection of medieval Indian textile fragments, published for the first time in this volume. This volume offers a catalog and extensive illustrations of the more than 50 pieces examined. In addition, the author provides an introduction, placing the fragments in their historical and archaeological context, a redefinition of the kinds of textiles that should be grouped in this category, a discussion of the geographical sites commonly connected with such fragments, and an appendix that offers the first detailed technical analysis of the dyes, fibers, and mordants that textiles such as these display.
Forged Under the Sun/Forjada bajo el sol: The Life of Marma Elena Lucas, edited and with an introduction by Fran Leeper Buss, oral historian and writer, ordained minister, and community organizer. “Despite the limited education this child of migrant workers received, Lucas always kept diaries and wrote poems, songs, and plays. Oral historian Buss worked with Lucas to blend these earlier documents with excerpts from their hours of interviews into a narrative that illuminates a remarkable American life. Buss supplies a helpful introduction, and then lets Lucas speak for herself.”—Booklist
Flowers in the Dustbin: Culture, Anarchy, and Postwar England by Neil Neh-ring, associate professor of English, University of Texas at Austin. In Flowers in the Dustbin, Nehring calls for cultural anarchism—a creative resistance to the mass media’s ever-present and all-powerful “don’t worry, be happy; listen to our pop music, buy our beer” mentality. To combat this contemporary authoritarianism, Nehring delves into the volatile relations between literature, rock music, and youth subcultures in postwar England. Bertolt Brecht, Sid Vicious, Teddy Boys—they all find their way into this exhilarating investigation. Their anarchy, Nehring suggests, should be ours.
