"A major contribution to the study of global events in times of global media. Owning the Olympics tests the possibilities and limits of the concept of 'media events' by analyzing the mega-event of the information age: the Beijing Olympics. . . . A good read from cover to cover." —Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Asian/Middle Eastern Cultures & Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University From the moment they were announced, the Beijing Games were a major media event and the focus of intense scrutiny and speculation. In contrast to earlier such events, however, the Beijing Games are also unfolding in a newly volatile global media environment that is no longer monopolized by broadcast media. The dramatic expansion of media outlets and the growth of mobile communications technology have changed the nature of media events, making it significantly more difficult to regulate them or control their meaning. This volatility is reflected in the multiple, well-publicized controversies characterizing the run-up to Beijing 2008. According to many Western commentators, the People's Republic of China seized the Olympics as an opportunity to reinvent itself as the "New China"---a global leader in economics, technology, and environmental issues, with an improving human-rights record. But China's maneuverings have also been hotly contested by diverse global voices, including prominent human-rights advocates, all seeking to displace the official story of the Games. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from Chinese studies, human rights, media studies, law, and other fields, Owning the Olympics reveals how multiple entities---including the Chinese Communist Party itself---seek to influence and control the narratives through which the Beijing Games will be understood. digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.

The Archaeology of Inequality explores the different aspects of social boundaries and articulation by comparing several interdisciplinary approaches for the analysis of the archaeological data, as well as actual case studies from the Prehistory to the Classical world. The book explores slavery, gender, ethnicity and economy as intersecting areas of study within the larger framework of inequality and exemplifies to what degree archaeologists can identify and analyze different patterns of inequality.

Where do our images about early hominids come from? In this fascinating in-depth study, David Van Reybrouck demonstrates how input from ethnography and primatology has deeply influenced our visions about the past from the 19th century to this day - often far beyond the available evidence. Victorian scholars were keen to look at contemporary Australian and Tasmanian aboriginals to understand the enigmatic Neanderthal fossils. Likewise, today's primatologists debate to what extent bonobos, baboons or chimps may be regarded as stand-ins for early human ancestors. The belief that the contemporary world provides 'living links' still goes strong. Such primate models, Van Reybrouck argues, continue the highly problematic 'comparative method' of the Victorian times. He goes on to show how the field of ethnoarchaeology has succeeded in circumventing the major pitfalls of such analogical reasoning.A truly interdisciplinary study, this work shows how scholars working in different fields can effectively improve their methods for interpreting the deep past by understanding the historical challenges of adjacent disciplines.Overviewing two centuries of intellectual debate in fields as diverse as archaeology, ethnography and primatology, Van Reybrouck's book is one long plea for trying to understand the past on its own terms, rather than as facile projections from the present.David Van Reybrouck (Bruges, 1971) was trained as an archaeologist at the universities of Leuven, Cambridge and Leiden. Before becoming a highly successful literary author (The Plague, Mission, Congo...), he worked as a historian of ideas. For more than twelve years, he was co-editor of Archaeological Dialogues. In 2011-12, he held the prestigious Cleveringa Chair at the University of Leiden.

Quarrying and all other branches of surface mining rather than diminishing in importance have become of more and more consequence economically, industrially and particularly with the depletion of high-grade deep-mined mineral reserves. Low-grade minerals require low cost extraction and this in many cases necessitates very expensive mechanized equipment with the cost of individual units running into millions of pounds in the case of large scale operations with high productivity. There has been, and there still is, a tendency for the smaller single quarries to be amalgamated into groups with large financial resources and therefore with the ability to purchase these expensive machines so necessary to make operations viable. This in turn requires wider administrative and technical knowledge in executives of these groups and as these often handle a wide range of products from widely differing systems of working, this technical knowledge should embrace the exploitation of many different types of deposits. There is, at present, a great dearth throughout the world of such qualified executives as is apparent from advertisements of vacancies in the technical press. It would appear that these industries offer an attractive career to the widely qualified and experienced technologist in these fields. This book deals with methods of working in the surface extractive indus tries, quarry management and power supply-but does not deal with related ancillary processes except where these affect quarrying operations.

The Spanish Craze is the compelling story of the centuries-long U.S. fascination with the history, literature, art, culture, and architecture of Spain. Richard L. Kagan offers a stunningly revisionist understanding of the origins of hispanidad in America, tracing its origins from the early republic to the New Deal. As Spanish power and influence waned in the Atlantic World by the eighteenth century, her rivals created the “Black Legend,” which promoted an image of Spain as a dead and lost civilization rife with innate cruelty and cultural and religious backwardness. The Black Legend and its ambivalences influenced Americans throughout the nineteenth century, reaching a high pitch in the Spanish-American War of 1898. However, the Black Legend retreated soon thereafter, and Spanish culture and heritage became attractive to Americans for its perceived authenticity and antimodernism. Although the Spanish craze infected regions where the Spanish New World presence was most felt—California, the American Southwest, Texas, and Florida—there were also early, quite serious flare-ups of the craze in Chicago, New York, and New England. Kagan revisits early interest in Hispanism among elites such as the Boston book dealer Obadiah Rich, a specialist in the early history of the Americas, and the writers Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He also considers later enthusiasts such as Angeleno Charles Lummis and the many writers, artists, and architects of the modern Spanish Colonial Revival in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Spain’s political and cultural elites understood that the promotion of Spanish culture in the United States and the Western Hemisphere in general would help overcome imperial defeats while uniting Spaniards and those of Spanish descent into a singular raza whose shared characteristics and interests transcended national boundaries. With elegant prose and verve, The Spanish Craze spans centuries and provides a captivating glimpse into distinct facets of Hispanism in monuments, buildings, and private homes; the visual, performing, and cinematic arts; and the literature, travel journals, and letters of its enthusiasts in the United States.