Wolfgang Schivelbusch tells the story of the development of artificial light in the nineteenth century. Not simply a history of a technology, Disenchanted Night reveals the ways that the technology of artificial illumination helped forge modern consciousness. In his strikingly illustrated and lively narrative, Schivelbusch discusses a range of subjects including the political symbolism of streetlamps, the rise of nightlife and the shopwindow, and the importance of the salon in bourgeois culture.

Wolfgang Schivelbusch tells the story of the development of artificial light in the nineteenth century. Not simply a history of a technology, Disenchanted Night reveals the ways that the technology of artificial illumination helped forge modern consciousness. In his strikingly illustrated and lively narrative, Schivelbusch discusses a range of subjects including the political symbolism of streetlamps, the rise of nightlife and the shopwindow, and the importance of the salon in bourgeois culture.

Rhiow seems a perfectly ordinary New York City cat. Or so her humans think--but she is much more than she appears. With her partners Saash and Urruah, she collaborates with human wizards, protecting the earth from dark forces and helping to maintain the network of magical gateways between different realities.

She hates her family. He's hiding behind his teenage sex life. They form a band as an escape. On tour, can they start over....or will all secrets come out on the open road? Carla Bucchio never cared about things like boyfriends and SATs. If she did, maybe life at 20 would be more exciting than developing photos on Long Island. When she chooses the guitar over a social life, it only makes sense because no one talks to her anyway. Music may be Pete Albrecht's life but what good is his talent if he has no one to share it with? When he's not getting bitched about coffee at work, he's getting nagged about college by his girlfriend. What would they say if they really knew about him? At the outset of the new millennium where boy bands and backup dancers have saturated pop culture, the two college dropouts start a rock band. Despite his girlfriend's manipulations and her mother's drunken disapproval, they form a secret connection through the music. Before heading out on their cross-country tour, tragedy turns the world upside down forcing them to decide if the band is just a teenage dream or their gateway to freedom...and to each other? Slanted and Disenchanted is the provocative first book in Lisa Czarina Michaud's coming-of-age Disenchanted series. Told with wry humor with nostalgic 90's undertones, it's High Fidelity meets Moxie that explores sexual tension in friendships, the confusion of adulting, the love and chaos of family....and the soundtracks that get us through it all. Readers of Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu, Girl by Blake Nelson, and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan will fall for Slanted and Disenchanted! Jump on tour today!

A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

From a world-renowned cultural historian, an original look at the hidden commonalities among Fascism, Nazism, and the New Deal Today Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal is regarded as the democratic ideal, the positive American response to an economic crisis that propelled Germany and Italy toward Fascism. Yet in the 1930s, shocking as it may seem, these regimes were hardly considered antithetical. Now, Wolfgang Schivelbusch investigates the shared elements of these three "new deals" to offer a striking explanation for the popularity of Europe's totalitarian systems. Returning to the Depression, Schivelbusch traces the emergence of a new type of state: bolstered by mass propaganda, led by a charismatic figure, and projecting stability and power. He uncovers stunning similarities among the three regimes: the symbolic importance of gigantic public works programs like the TVA dams and the German autobahn, which not only put people back to work but embodied the state's authority; the seductive persuasiveness of Roosevelt's fireside chats and Mussolini's radio talks; the vogue for monumental architecture stamped on Washington, as on Berlin; and the omnipresent banners enlisting citizens as loyal followers of the state. Far from equating Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini or minimizing their acute differences, Schivelbusch proposes that the populist and paternalist qualities common to their states hold the key to the puzzling allegiance once granted to Europe's most tyrannical regimes.

“An engaging love story with strong, believable characters. I can’t wait to read the sequels!” —Mary Balogh “Prepare to fall in love.” —Julia Quinn Presenting the winner of the Avon FanLit contest, the immensely talented Tessa Dare! Tessa’s first Avon historical romance, A Night to Surrender, is a love story to remember—kicking off her wonderfully inventive Spindle Cove series, set in England’s Regency Era in a small seaside resort town that caters specifically to ladies “of good breeding and delicate constitution.” Fans of Lisa Kleypas, Christina Dodd, and Liz Carlyle will delight in the passionate chaos that ensues when a dashing British officer, under orders, “invades” this community of strong-willed “spinsters,” only to discover he’s met his match in Miss Susannah Finch!