On October 15, 1983, a young mother of six was murdered while walking across her village of Huitzilan de Serdán, Mexico, with her infant son and one of her daughters. This woman, Victoria Bonilla, was among more than one hundred villagers who perished in violence that broke out soon after the Mexican army chopped down a cornfield that had been planted on an unused cattle pasture by forty Nahuat villagers. In this anthropological account, based on years of fieldwork in Huitzilan, James M. Taggart turns to Victoria's husband, Nacho Angel Hernández, to try to understand how a community based on respect and cooperation descended into horrific violence and fratricide. When the army chopped down the cornfield at Talcuaco, the war that broke out resulted in the complete breakdown of the social and moral order of the community. At its heart, this is a tragic love story, chronicling Nacho's feelings for Victoria spanning their courtship, marriage, family life, and her death. Nacho delivered his testimonio to the author in Nahuat, making it one of the few autobiographical love stories told in an Amerindian language, and a very rare account of love among the indigenous people of Mesoamerica. There is almost nothing in the literature on how a man develops and changes his feelings for his wife over his lifetime. This study contributes to the anthropology of emotion by focusing on how the Nahuat attempt to express love through language and ritual.

In the late nineteenth century one man changed Oxford forever. T. G. Jackson built the Examination Schools, the Bridge of Sighs, worked at a dozen colleges, and restored a score of other Oxford icons. He also built for many of the major public schools, for the University of Cambridge, and at the Inns of Court. A friend of William Morris, he was a pioneering member of the arts and crafts moment. A distinguished historian, he also restored dozens of houses and churches - and ensured the survival of Winchester Cathedral. As an architectural theorist he was a leader of the generation that rejected the Gothic Revival and sought to develop a new and modern style of building. Drawing on extensive archival work, and illustrated with a hundred images, this is the first in-depth analysis of Jackson's career ever written. It sheds light on a little-known architect and reveals that his buildings, his books, and his work as an arts and craftsman were not just important in their own right, they were also part of a wider social change. Jackson was the architect of choice for a particular group of people, for the 'intellectual aristocracy' of late Victorian England. His buildings were a means by which they could articulate their identity and demonstrate their distinctiveness. They reformed the universities and the schools whilst he refashioned their image. Essential reading for anyone interested in Victorian architecture and nineteenth-century society, this book will also be of interest to all those who know and love Oxford or Cambridge.

Natalie had to live most of her life under her mothers controlling and influence, except for a brief term at the University which was full of new experiences. She now lives through a tepid marriage with her husband Pet in an upscale suburban neighborhood on a round, boring street. All that comes to an end when Victoria moves in to the neighborhood. Victoria is a beautiful, sophisticated and a wealthy mother of two who is now in a relationship with a jealous and protective man, once her best friend. Victoria’s presence starts shaking up Natalie’s suburban flat-linings and really stirs up foreign feelings in side her. Gradually her fleeting crush develops into something much deeper and more profound, which leads the two women to abandon everything they have come to know and accept for a love and passion so strong that it will change them both to the core.

Faced with the possibility of death, the most unexpected anecdotes of life return to visit Javier in the form of memories and dreamlike hallucinationsexistential crises, frustrated love stories, family encounters, and friendships. Everything is mixed together to weave a story that narrates the stay of the protagonist in a hospital in Mexico City while he fights to overcome pneumonia. In each chapter, the love that one lives from different namesMaria, Josefina, Lorena, and Victoriaand bodies keeps Javiers memory in a limbo of painkillers and exhaustion by his illness, seeking to hold once again the hand that returns the wish to live. In the end, only the wet grass will suffice to flood, with lucidity and life, the body reflected in the external window of that hospital that harbored his dreams.