An intense literary memoir of love and grief“Our marriage was, from any conventional point of view, wildly implausible; and you, my dear son, are the miraculous product of this beautiful, rather crazy, and all too brief love affair.” When Dylan Riley received the devastating news that his wife, Emanuela, had cancer, he turned to writing to express the anguish and disarray brought by her worsening symptoms and then her passing. Perdita, composed for their t...

A historical look at the emergence of fascism in EuropeDrawing on a Gramscian theoretical perspective and development a systematic comparative approach, The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain and Romania 1870-1945 challenges the received Tocquevillian consensus on authoritarianism by arguing that fascist regimes, just like mass democracies, depended on well-organized, rather than weak and atomized, civil societies. In making this argument the book...

This book examines the history of racial classifications in Puerto Rico censuses, starting with the Spanish censuses and continuing through the US ones. Because Puerto Rican censuses were collected regularly over hundreds of years, they are fascinating “test cases” to see what census categories might have been available and effective in shaping everyday ones. Published twentieth-century censuses have been well studied, but this book also examines unpublished documents in previous centuries...

Short essays of social theory for damaged times, encompassing intellectual history, philosophy and cultureMicroverses comprises over a hundred short essays inviting us to think about society – and social theory – in new ways. Lockdown created the conditions for what Adorno once termed ‘enforced contemplation’. Dylan Riley responded with the tools of his trade, producing an extraordinary trail of notes exploring how critical sociology can speak to this trou...

In a world of vertiginous inequality, escalating ecological disaster, and extraordinary political and economic turbulence generated by a winner-take-all society seemingly designed to concentrate privilege and power in the hands of a very few, the central question that faces social science, and indeed the world, is whether social protest will change anything, or whether elites will continue to lead the planet and its population to disaster.All important topics of contemporary social...

Dylan Riley reconceptualizes the nature and origins of interwar fascism in this remarkable investigation of the connection between civil society and authoritarianism.From the late nineteenth century to World War I, voluntary associations exploded across Europe, especially among rural non-elites. But the development of this "civil society" did not produce liberal democracy in Italy, Spain, and Romania. Instead, Riley finds that it undermined the nascent liberal regimes in these coun...

Now a limited Netflix series starring Zoe Saldaña!This Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller is “a captivating story of love lost and found” (Kirkus Reviews) set in the lush Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hours.It was love at first sight when actress Tembi met professional chef, Saro, on a street in Florence. T...

In November 1916, a young Afro-Brazilian musician named Donga registered sheet music for the song "Pelo telefone" ("On the Telephone") at the National Library in Rio de Janeiro. This apparently simple act—claiming ownership of a musical composition—set in motion a series of events that would shake Brazil's cultural landscape. Before the debut of "Pelo telephone," samba was a somewhat obscure term, but by the late 1920s, the wildly popular song had helped to make it synonymous with Brazilia...

A close-knit family resists the rise of fascism in Mussolini’s Italy in this WW2 historical fiction classic that blends family memoir with fiction—one of the most famous European post-war novels of all time.“A glowing light of Italian literature.” —The New York Times“Life-changingly good.” —ElleAn Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, com...

Combining anthropological methods and theories with political philosophy, Sian Lazar analyzes everyday practices and experiences of citizenship in a satellite city to the Bolivian capital of La Paz: El Alto, where more than three-quarters of the population identify as indigenous Aymara. For several years, El Alto has been at the heart of resistance to neoliberal market reforms, such as the export of natural resources and the privatization of public water systems. In October 2003, protests ...

“A murder mystery, a model of investigative reporting, a celebration of the fierce bonds that hold families together through tragedies…Murder in Matera is a gem.” — San Francisco Chronicle"Tantalizing" — NPR“A thrilling detective story… Stapinski pursues the study of her family’s criminal genealogy with unexpected emotional results.” — Library ...

Asking what it means to be quilombola (descendants of African slaves) in the twenty-first century, Kenny illustrates how heritage and identity do not simply exist, but are continually being constructed to reflect particular historical circumstances. The book includes supplementary exercises that encourage readers to make connections between the case study at hand, their own heritage, and heritage-making efforts in other parts of the world.