A fearless female champion for justice and humanity Today, the term 'concentration camp' is synonymous with the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Nevertheless, concentration camps were not a Nazi innovation, for the British created them during the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In an attempt to apply pressure on men serving with Boer forces to capitulate, the British extensively burned Boer homesteads and farms, slaughtered their livestock, dispossessed families of their property and forcibly incarcerated women and children in concentration camps. Emily Hobhouse, a British woman born before her time, was a welfare campaigner, feminist and an activist for women's suffrage. She was aware of the social injustice of the camps, and of the terrible conditions in them which resulted in widespread deprivation, hunger and death from disease among the inmates. Hobhouse made it her mission to bring these outrages to public awareness and worked tirelessly for improved conditions in the camps and, ultimately, for their abolition. She was the bane of the British authorities and an abiding heroine to the South African people. In this, her own book on the subject, she exposes a little known imperial scandal. It was originally published at the time of the war, under the title 'The Brunt of the War and Where it Fell'. This Leonaur edition has been enhanced by the inclusion of many illustrations and photographs which were not included when the book was first published. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

As media environments and communication practices evolve over time, so do theoretical concepts. This book analyzes some of the most well-known and fiercely discussed concepts of the digital age from a historical perspective, showing how many of them have pre-digital roots and how they have changed and still are constantly changing in the digital era. Written by leading authors in media and communication studies, the chapters historicize 16 concepts that have become central in the digital media literature, focusing on three main areas. The first part, Technologies and Connections, historicises concepts like network, media convergence, multimedia, interactivity and artificial intelligence. The second one is related to Agency and Politics and explores global governance, datafication, fake news, echo chambers, digital media activism. The last one, Users and Practices, is finally devoted to telepresence, digital loneliness, amateurism, user generated content, fandom and authenticity. The book aims to shed light on how concepts emerge and are co-shaped, circulated, used and reappropriated in different contexts. It argues for the need for a conceptual media and communication history that will reveal new developments without concealing continuities and it demonstrates how the analogue/digital dichotomy is often a misleading one.

‘We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed’ Martin Luther King In an era where the liberties we often take for granted are under threat, Letters To Change the World is a collection of inspiring letters offering reminders from history that standing up for and voicing our personal and political beliefs is not merely a crucial right but a duty if we want to change the world. Edited by Travis Elborough, the collection includes George Orwell's warning on totalitarianism, Martin Luther King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail', Albert Camus on the reasons to fight a war, Bertrand Russell on peace, Emmeline Pankhurst rallying her suffragettes, Nelson Mandela's letter to his children from prison and Time's Up on the abuse of power.

For the first time, the 92-metre frieze of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, one of the largest historical narratives in marble, has been made the subject of a book. The pictorial narrative of the Boer pioneers who conquered South Africa’s interior during the 'Great Trek' (1835-52) represents a crucial period of South Africa’s past. Conceptualising the frieze both reflected on and contributed to the country’s socio-political debates in the 1930s and 1940s when it was made. The book considers the active role the Monument played in the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and the development of apartheid, as well as its place in post-apartheid heritage. The frieze is unique in that it provides rare evidence of the complex processes followed in creating a major monument. Based on unpublished documents, drawings and models, these processes are unfolded step by step, from the earliest discussions of the purpose and content of the frieze, through all the stages of its design, to its shipping to post-war Italy to be copied into marble from Monte Altissimo, up to its final installation in the Monument. The book examines how visual representation transforms historical memory in what it chooses to recount, and the forms in which it is depicted. The second volume expands on the first, by investigating each of the twenty-seven scenes of the frieze in depth, providing new insights into not only the frieze, but also South Africa’s history. François van Schalkwyk of African Minds, co-publisher with De Gruyter writes: From Memory to Marble is an open access monograph in the true sense of the word. Both volumes of the digital version of the book are available in full and free of charge from the date of publication. This approach to publishing democratises access to the latest scholarly publications across the globe. At the same time, a book such as From Memory to Marble, with its unique and exquisite photographs of the frieze as well as its wealth of reproduced archival materials, demands reception of a more traditional kind, that is, on the printed page. For this reason, the book is likewise available in print as two separate volumes. The printed and digital books should not be seen as separate incarnations; each brings its own advantages, working together to extend the reach and utility of From Memory to Marble to a range of interested readers.

The famous tend to become slotted into cliche. This has been the fate of Emily Hobhouse, an Englishwoman by turns reviled and revered for her controversial humanitarian role in the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War. These spirited, on-the-spot letters selected by herself span not only her well-known work in the camps, but her forceful and imaginative role in the ruined former republics after the war. They rescue the woman from the myth. And what a woman She is seen against an unforgettable backdrop of war-time civilian experience. While the letters are eminently readable in themselves -- one comes to regret that Miss Hobhouse destroyed the only novel she ever wrote -- they ring with persistent historical parallels that will not escape the politically aware contemporary reader. The letters are liberally annotated and the notes and appendices constitute a treasure trove of quotations, anecdote and sidelight: a browser's delight. There is a generous photographic section, highlighting various phases of Emily Hobhouse's life and her South African years.