The Familiar Past surveys material culture from 1500 to the present day. Fourteen case studies, grouped under related topics, include discussion of issues such as: * the origins of modernity in urban contexts * the historical anthropology of food * the social and spatial construction of country houses * the social history of a workhouse site * changes in memorial forms and inscriptions * the archaeological treatment of gardens. The Familiar Past has been structured as a teaching text and will be useful to students of history and archaeology.

The Chinese-speaking Muslims have for centuries been an inseperable but anomalous part of Chinese society--Sinophone yet incomprehensible, local yet outsiders, normal but different. Long regarded by the Chinese government as prone to violence, they have challenged fundamental Chinese conceptiosn of Self and Other and denied the totally transforming power of Chinese civilization by tenaciously maintaining connectios with Central and West Asia as well as some cultural differences from their non-Muslim neighbors. Familiar Strangers narrates a history of the Muslims of northwest China, at the intersection of the frontiers of the Mongolian-Manchu, Tibetan, Turkic, and Chinese cultural regions. Based on primary and secondary sources in a variety of languages, Familiar Strangers examines the nature of ethnicity and periphery, the role of religion and ethnicity in personal and collective decisions in violent times, and the complexity of belonging to two cultures at once. Concerning itself with a frontier very distant from the core areas of Chinese culture and very strange to most Chinese, it explores the influence of language, religion, and place on Sino-Muslim identity.

The Familiar Past surveys material culture from 1500 to the present day. Fourteen case studies, grouped under related topics, include discussion of issues such as: * the origins of modernity in urban contexts * the historical anthropology of food * the social and spatial construction of country houses * the social history of a workhouse site * changes in memorial forms and inscriptions * the archaeological treatment of gardens. The Familiar Past has been structured as a teaching text and will be useful to students of history and archaeology.

“Historical accuracy and human understanding require coming down from the high ground and seeing people in all their complexity. Serena Zabin’s rich and highly enjoyable book does just that.”—Kathleen DuVal, Wall Street Journal A dramatic, untold “people’s history” of the storied event that helped trigger the American Revolution. The story of the Boston Massacre—when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death—is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political. Professor Serena Zabin draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. And she reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies. We see these families jostling with Bostonians for living space, finding common cause in the search for a lost child, trading barbs, and sharing baptisms. Becoming, in other words, neighbors. When soldiers shot unarmed citizens in the street, it was these intensely human, now broken bonds that fueled what quickly became a bitterly fought American Revolution. Serena Zabin’s The Boston Massacre delivers an indelible new slant on iconic American Revolutionary history.