A social and cultural history of public health in Mexico during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The book offers a fresh take on the history of medicine and public health by shifting away from the history of epidemic disease and heroic accounts of medical men and toward looking at public health in a broader social framework. It shows how new public health policies were instrumental in the 'modernisation' of Mexico. Adds to a small, but fast-growing body of literature, on the history of public health in Latin America and other developing areas of the world.

Public monuments to significant individuals or to political concepts are all too familiar. But the notions underlying them are not so obvious. Sergiusz Michalski traces the history of the public monument from the 1870s, when erecting them became an artistic, political and social pre-occupation, to today when the distinction between public monuments and public sculpture is increasingly blurred. The author shows how, in its golden age – up until 1914 – the public monument served the purpose of both education and legitimization. The French Third Republic, for example, envisaged the monument as a symbol of bourgeois meritocracy. In more recent decades, the public monument has been charged with the task of commemorating and symbolizing one of humankind's most terrible catastrophes - the Holocaust. Today, although the artistic failure of countless European war memorials has signaled the beginning of the demise of the public monument in the West, it continues to flourish elsewhere, commemorating despotic leaders from Kim Il Sung to Saddam Hussein.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an internationally respected scientist and explorer whose meticulous approach to scientific observation greatly influenced later research. He travelled the world, once staying at the White House as a guest of Thomas Jefferson, and is commemorated in the many species and places which bear his name. This two volume work, published in French in 1810 as Vue des Cordillères, and in this English translation in 1814, was one of the many publications that resulted from Humboldt's expedition to Latin America in 1799-1804. It describes geographical features such as volcanoes and waterfalls, and aspects of the indigenous cultures including architecture, sculpture, art, languages and writing systems, religions, costumes and artefacts. This approachable, closely observed travelogue vividly recounts a huge variety of impressions and experiences, and reveals Humboldt's boundless curiosity as well as his scientific and cultural knowledge.

Mexican Poetry has flourished during the last thirty years, and this ambitious multi-lingual anthology surveys the vibrant and eclectic work of poets born after 1950. The poetry of this new generation reflects a wealth of backgrounds, regions, styles, and especially influences -- including traditional and inventive narrative, formalism, lyrics, suites, and experimental verse. This is also the first generation of Mexican poets to hold in common an international perspective. Unlike anthologies offering only one or two poems by each author, Reversible Monuments affords its poets space enough to present larger-than-usual selections, allowing readers to more fully realize the individual voices. The translations, by both distinguished translators and brilliant new practitioners, are concise and transparent, and most are published here for the first time. In addition, several indigenous poets who write in Zapotec, Tzeltal, and Mazatec are presented tri-lingually. Book jacket.

Monuments around the world have become the focus of intense and sustained discussions, activism, vandalism, and removal. Since the convulsive events of 2015 and 2017, during which white supremacists committed violence in the shadow of Confederate symbols, and the 2020 nationwide protests against racism and police brutality, protesters and politicians in the United States have removed Confederate monuments, as well as monuments to historical figures like Christopher Columbus and Dr. J. Marion Sims, questioning their legitimacy as present-day heroes that their place in the public sphere reinforces. The essays included in this anthology offer guidelines and case studies tailored for students and teachers to demonstrate how monuments can be used to deepen civic and historical engagement and social dialogue. Essays analyze specific controversies throughout North America with various outcomes as well as examples of monuments that convey outdated or unwelcome value systems without prompting debate.