A history of Palestinian women of the 20th century told through aspects of popular heritage, focusing on traditional dresses but also including textiles and rug weaving, rural and urban customs, cuisine, and festivities.

This globe-spanning history of sewing and embroidery, culture and protest, is “an astonishing feat . . . richly textured and moving” (The Sunday Times, UK). In 1970s Argentina, mothers marched in headscarves embroidered with the names of their “disappeared” children. In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the universal beauty and power of sewing.

Study with reference to Gujarat State, India.

Concepts of identity are complex and changing, and in this book Katherine Hoffman examines images of individuals and families from ancient Egypt to the presentmore than two thirds of the book covers the twentieth century. Through a comprehensive study of paintings, sculpture, photography, film, television, and other media, Hoffman provides eye-open

In the small town of Opportunity, four mismatched people discover the unexpected power of kindness.

Common Threads: A Cultural History of Clothing in American Catholicism