Picture a familiar scene: long lines of shoppers waiting to check out at the grocery store, carts filled to the brim with the week’s food. While many might wonder what is in each cart, Andrew Warnes implores us to consider the symbolism of the cart itself. In his inventive new book, Warnes examines how the everyday shopping cart is connected to a complex web of food production and consumption that has spread from the United States throughout the world. Today, shopping carts represent choic...

Barbecue is a word that means different things to different people. It can be a verb or a noun. It can be pulled pork or beef ribs. And, especially in the American South, it can cause intense debate and stir regional pride. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that the roots of this food tradition are often misunderstood.In Savage Barbecue, Andrew Warnes traces what he calls America's first food through early transatlantic literature and culture. Building on the work of schola...

Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) is one of the most violent and revolutionary works in the American canon. Controversial and compelling, its account of crime and racism remain the source of profound disagreement both within African-American culture and throughout the world.This guide to Wright's provocative novel offers:an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of Native Sona critical history, surveying the many interp...

The sixteen essays in The Larder argue that the study of food does not simply help us understand more about what we eat and the foodways we embrace. The methods and strategies herein help scholars use food and foodways as lenses to examine human experience. The resulting conversations provoke a deeper understanding of our overlapping, historically situated, and evolving cultures and societies.The Larder presents some of the most influential scholars in the discipl...

American Tantalus argues that modern US fictions often grow preoccupied by tantalisation. This keyword might seem commonplace; thesauruses, certainly, often lump it in with tease and torment in their general inventories of desire. Such lists, however, mislead. Just as most US dictionaries have in fact long recognised tantalise's origins in The Odyssey, so they have defined it as the unique desire we feel for objects that (like the fruit and water once cruelly placed befor...

The collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009 after years of rampant money printing is an alarming example of what lies in store for countries that print money to pay national debts, bail out banks and enrich political elites.When Money Destroys Nations tells the gripping story of the disintegration of the once-thriving Zimbabwean economy and the inspiring and tragic accounts of how ordinary people survived in turbulent circumstances. Philip Haslam and Russell Lamberti give a straigh...

Critical Approaches to the Films of M. Night Shyamalan represents the first serious academic engagement with auteur director M. Night Shyamalan and his work. The essays, including contributions from established film scholars David Sterritt, Murray Pomerance, Emmanuel Burdeau, R. Barton Palmer, Matt Hills, and Katherine Fowkes, explore the Hollywood blockbusters from The Sixth Sense to The Happening in terms of their themes, aesthetics, and marketing. Taken together, the collection recogniz...

Religion, Theology and Stranger Things*: Studies from the Upside Down on Evil, Ethics, Horror, and Hope* brings interdisciplinary analysis to the teeming spiritual side of the hit television series. With chapters from social scientists, historians, theologians, and Biblical scholars, the volume addresses the many different theological, religious, and supernatural themes present in the fictional world of Hawkins, Indiana. From spiritualism to secularism, Mormon gender norms to mons...

Why is an old farmhouse slowly crumbling away in the middle of the African bush veld? What became of its owner who went fishing one hot and sunny afternoon, and why do the people who live nearby now refuse to set foot on the farm?Those who travel on foot along the stony paths of the Zululand countryside, who sit and rest beneath the thorn trees or spend time with its rivers and streams, need to be constantly alert for what they may encounter in nature. Most days, life is pleasant a...

Recent years have witnessed an increase in the frequency of currency and balance of payments crises in developing countries. More important, the crises have become more virulent, have caused widespread disruption to other developing countries, and have even had repercussions on advanced economies. To predict crises, their causes must be clearly understood. Two competing strands of theories are reviewed in this paper. The first focuses on the consequences of such policies as excessive credit g...

Black Mirror, Netflix’s dystopian anthology, probes what it means to be human in a technological world. While the show raises interesting, if not disturbing, questions, it refrains from giving answers, putting the onus on viewers to continue the conversation. Accordingly, Theology and Black Mirror engages questions and prominent themes in the show with resources from the Christian tradition, including the academic disciplines of biblical studies, theology, philosophy, and ethics.

Who Would Win? meets Animorphs in the first book in Maddy Mara's new adventure series! Perfect for young readers who love fast-paced action.Max is...a shark? He doesn't know how he became one, but that strange older boy with the amulet must have something to do with it. Now, Max is swimming around in the body of an apex predator. Danger is everywhere. Even a great white shark must watch out for other animals-and humans with bad intentions. Max needs to find a way t...