Since it was first published in 2006, Riches, Rivals and Radicals has been the go-to text for introductory museum studies courses. It is also of great value to professionals as well as museum lovers who want to learn the stories behind how and why these institutions have evolved since the day the first mastodon bones, royal portraits and botanical specimens entered their halls. For this third edition, Marjorie Schwarzer has mined new resources, previously unavailable archives and contemporary trends to provide a fresh look at the challenges and innovations that have shaped museums in the United States. Schwarzer argues that museums are fundamentally optimistic institutions. They build and preserve some of the nation’s most extraordinary architecture. They showcase the beauty and promise of new scientific discoveries, historical breakthroughs and artistic creation. They provide places of inspiration and repose. At the same time, museums have succeeded in exposing some of the nation’s most painful legacies – racism, inequity, violence – as they strive to be places for healing and reckoning. This too, one could argue, is an act of optimism, for it expresses the hope that museum visitors will gain empathy and understanding from the evidence of others’ struggles. Schwarzer shows us how museums are rooted in a contentious history tied to social, technological and economic trends and ultimately changing ideas of what it means to be a citizen. Along the way we meet some notorious and eccentric characters including business tycoons, architects, collectors, designers, politicians, political activists and progressive educators, all of whom have exerted their influence on what is a complex yet nonetheless enduring institution. Major additions since the last edition include material on digital curation, emergent exhibitions about civil rights, immersive museum environments, continuing efforts to diversify the field, how museums' role in our increasingly digital society, and a new foreword by American Alliance of Museums President and CEO Laura L. Lott. Museums new to this edition include the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, the third edition of this accessible, award-winning book brings the reader up to date on the stories behind the people and events that have transformed America’s museums from their beginnings into today’s vibrant cultural institutions.

Dr Jean Uayan comprehensively weaves the story of six Protestant Chinese churches in the Philippines into the local history of their individual settings in this important study. Uncovering new insight and historical information from extensive primary and secondary sources, Uayan presents a rich and previously unacknowledged heritage and support from four American mission organisations during the US occupation from 1898–1946. The seeds sown amongst Chinese communities across the Philippines resulted in indigenous churches that took differing journeys to full independence and now are also bearing fruit in missionary activity in South Fujian, China. This book is an important contribution towards a global church history acknowledging the work of the Holy Spirit establishing and building up the church of Jesus Christ among the nations.

John Masefield’s ‘dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, butting through the Channel in the mad March days’ has become a ship type of universal appeal, both for its simple, functional beauty and its faithful toil before the advent of universal road haulage. In this new book a collection of more than 300 photographs has been drawn together to tell the story of the development of the steam and diesel coasters, which originated mainly in the UK and the Netherlands. The term ‘coaster’ embraces a huge range of types including the steam colliers, the puffers, packets, steam flats and lighters mainly designed for inland seas, then the ubiquitous steam coaster itself, built in large numbers for use around British shores but also further afield in every corner of the world. Coastal tankers and other specialist types like chemical and cement carriers also evolved. As well as the details of the ships themselves, the book covers cargo handling and stowing, machinery, the coastal trades, the owners and builders and, not least, the crews and their jobs and their lives at sea. A hugely evocative and illuminating book to delight and inform ship enthusiasts everywhere.