From the introduction of woodblock printing in China to the development of copper-plate engraving in Europe, the print medium has been used around the world to circulate knowledge. Ceramic artists across time and cultures have adapted these graphic sources as painted or transfer-printed images applied onto glazed or unglazed surfaces to express political and social issues including propaganda, self-promotion, piety, gender, national and regional identities. Long before photography, printers also included pots in engravings or other two-dimensional techniques which have broadened scholarship and encouraged debate. Pots, Prints and Politics examines how European and Asian ceramics traditionally associated with the domestic sphere have been used by potters to challenge convention and tackle serious issues from the 14th to the 20th century. Using the British Museum's world-renowned ceramics and prints collections as a base, the authors have challenged and interrogated a variety of ceramic objects - from teapots to chamber pots - to discover new meanings that are as relevant today as they were when they were first conceived.

After the fall of the Taliban, instability reigned across Afghanistan. However, in the small town of Istalif, located a little over an hour north of Kabul and not far from Bagram on the Shomali Plain, local politics remained relatively violence-free. Bazaar Politics examines this seemingly paradoxical situation, exploring how the town's local politics maintained peace despite a long, violent history in a country dealing with a growing insurgency. At the heart of this story are the Istalifi potters, skilled craftsmen trained over generations. With workshops organized around extended families and competition between workshops strong, kinship relations become political and subtle negotiations over power and authority underscore most interactions. Starting from this microcosm, Noah Coburn then investigates power and relationships at various levels, from the potters' families; to the local officials, religious figures, and former warlords; and ultimately to the international community and NGO workers. Offering the first long-term on-the-ground study since the arrival of allied forces in 2001, Noah Coburn introduces readers to daily life in Afghanistan through portraits of local residents and stories of his own experiences. He reveals the ways in which the international community has misunderstood the forces driving local conflict and the insurgency, misunderstandings that have ultimately contributed to the political unrest rather than resolved it. Though on first blush the potters of Istalif may seem far removed from international affairs, it is only through understanding politics, power, and culture on the local level that we can then shed new light on Afghanistan's difficult search for peace.

A complete guide, by a noted and experienced potter, to throwing pots.

This book resulted from a desire to understand the role of pamphlets in the political life of that most curious early modern state, the Dutch Republic. The virtues of abundance and occasional liveliness have made "little blue books," as they were called, a favorite historical source-that is why I came to study them in the first place. I But the more I dug into pamphlets for this fact or that, the more questions I had about their 2 contemporary purpose and role. Who wrote pamphlets and why? For whom were they intended? How and by whom were pamphlets brought to press and distributed, and what does this reveal? Why did their number increase so greatly? Who read them? How were pamphlets different from other media? In short, I began to view pamphlets not as repositories of historical facts but as a historical phenomenon in their own right. 3 I have looked for answers to these questions in governmental and church records, private letters, publishing records and related materials about printers, booksellers, and pamphleteers, and of course in pam phlets themselves. Like so many other students of the early press and its products, I discovered only scattered, incomplete images of actual con ditions, such as the readership or popularity of pamphlets. On the other hand, I found much material which reflected what people believed about "little books.