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Pop Culture Freaks
by Dustin KiddLove it or hate it, popular culture permeates every aspect of contemporary society. In this accessibly written introduction to the sociology of popular culture, Dustin Kidd provides the tools to think critically about the cultural soup served daily by film, television, music, print media, and the internet. Utilizing each chapter to present core topical and timely examples, Kidd highlights the tension between inclusion and individuality that lies beneath mass media and commercial culture, using this tension as a point of entry to an otherwise expansive topic. He systematically considers several dimensions of identity-race, class, gender, sexuality, disability-to provide a broad overview of the field that encompasses classical and contemporary theory, original data, topical and timely examples, and a strong pedagogical focus on methods. Pop Culture Freaks encourages students to develop further research questions and projects from the material. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are brought to bear in Kidd's examination of the labor force for cultural production, the representations of identity in cultural objects, and the surprising differences in how various audiences consume and use mass culture in their everyday lives.
Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism
by Brooke HarringtonDuring the 1990s, the United States underwent a dramatic transformation: investing in stocks, once the province of a privileged elite, became a mass activity involving more than half of Americans. Pop Finance follows the trajectory of this new market populism via the rise of investment clubs, through which millions of people across the socioeconomic spectrum became investors for the first time. As sociologist Brooke Harrington shows, these new investors pour billions of dollars annually into the U.S. stock market and hold significant positions in some of the nation's largest firms. Drawing upon Harrington's long-term observation of investment clubs, along with in-depth interviews and extensive survey data, Pop Finance is the first book to examine the origins and impact of this mass engagement in investing. One of Harrington's most intriguing findings is that gender-based differences in investing can create a "diversity premium"--groups of men and women together are more profitable than single-sex groups. In examining the sources of this effect, she delves into the interpersonal dynamics that distinguish effective decision-making groups from their dysfunctional counterparts. In addition, Harrington shows that most Americans approach investing not only to make a profit but also to make a statement. In effect, portfolios have become like consumer products, serving both utilitarian and social ends. This ties into the growth of socially responsible investing and shareholder activism--matters relevant not only to social scientists but also to corporate leaders, policymakers, and the millions of Americans planning for retirement.
Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music, and Internet Culture
by Mark James RussellFrom kim chee to kim chic! South Korea came from nowhere in the 1990s to become one of the biggest producers of pop content (movies, music, comic books, TV dramas, online gaming) in Asia--and the West.<P><P> Why? Who's behind it? Mark James Russell tells an exciting tale of rapid growth and wild success marked by an uncanny knack for moving just one step ahead of changing technologies (such as music downloads and Internet comics) that have created new consumer markets around the world. Among the media pioneers profiled in this book is film director Kang Je-gyu, maker of Korea's first blockbuster film Shiri; Lee Su-man, who went from folk singer to computer programmer to creator of Korea's biggest music label; and Nelson Shin, who rose from North Korea to the top of the animation business. Full of fresh analysis, engaging reportage, and insightful insider anecdotes, Pop Goes Korea explores the hallyu (the Korean Wave) hitting the world's shores in the new century.Mark James Russell has been living in Korea since 1996. His articles about Korean and Asian cultures have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, International Herald-Tribune, and many other publications. He is currently the Korea/Japan Bureau Chief for Asian Movie Week magazine.
Pop Icons and Business Legends: History of Commerce and Heritage of Culture
by Hank MooreA unique and fresh perspective on how to achieve business success based on the careers of modern history&’s greatest pop figures. Stroll through the past and discover the fusion of pop culture and business. From Walt Disney to Bill Gates, from Burt Bacharach to Howard Hughes, from Steven Spielberg to John D. Rockefeller, and from Col. Harland Sanders to Steve Jobs, this is the comprehensive study of pop icons, historical innovations, and business pioneers. In Pop Icons and Business Legends, legendary business advisor and former presidential speech writer Hank Moore embraces the past as a roadmap to the future. This is history, cultural enlightenment, and business innovation, all rolled in one, plus a dynamic panorama of non-profit and humanitarian contributions to society. &“How can one person with so much insight into cultural history and nostalgia be such a visionary of business and organizations? Hank Moore is one of the few who understands the connection.&” —Dick Clark, TV icon &“Hank Moore's Business Tree™ is the most original business model of the last 50 years.&” —Peter Drucker, business visionary
Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media
by Rosemary PenningtonIn the West, Islam and Muslim life have been imagined as existing in an opposing state to popular culture—a frozen faith unable to engage with the dynamic way popular culture shifts over time, its followers reduced to tropes of terrorism and enemies of the state. Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media traces narratives found in contemporary American comic books, scripted and reality television, fashion magazines, comedy routines, and movies to understand how they reveal nuanced Muslim identities to American audiences, even as their accessibility obscures their diversity. Rosemary Pennington argues that even as American Muslims have become more visible in popular media and created space for themselves in everything from magazines to prime-time television to social media, this move toward "being seen" can reinforce fixed ideas of what it means to be Muslim. Pennington reveals how portrayals of Muslims in American popular media fall into a "trap of visibility," where moving beyond negative tropes can cause creators and audiences to unintentionally amplify those same stereotypes. To truly understand where American narratives of who Muslims are come from, we must engage with popular media while also considering who is allowed to be seen there—and why.
Pop Modernism: Noise and the Reinvention of the Everyday
by Juan A. SuárezPop Modernism examines the popular roots of modernism in the United States. Drawing on a wide range of materials, including experimental movies, pop songs, photographs, and well-known poems and paintings, Juan A. Suárez reveals that experimental art in the early twentieth century was centrally concerned with the reinvention of everyday life. Suárez demonstrates how modernist writers and artists reworked pop images and sounds, old-fashioned and factory-made objects, city spaces, and the languages and styles of queer and ethnic “others.” Along the way, he reinterprets many of modernism’s major figures and argues for the centrality of relatively marginal ones, such as Vachel Lindsay, Charles Henri Ford, Helen Levitt, and James Agee. As Suárez shows, what’s at stake is not just an antiquarian impulse to rescue forgotten past moments and works, but a desire to establish an archaeology of our present art, culture, and activism.
Pop Music: Technology and Creativity - Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution (Ashgate Popular And Folk Music Ser.)
by Timothy WarnerThis title was first published in 2003.This highly original and accessible book draws on the author’s personal experience as a musician, producer and teacher of popular music to discuss the ways in which audio technology and musical creativity in pop music are inextricably bound together. This relationship, the book argues, is exemplified by the work of Trevor Horn, who is widely acknowledged as the most important, innovative and successful British pop record producer of the early 1980s. In the first part of the book, Timothy Warner presents a definition of pop as distinct from rock music, and goes on to consider the ways technological developments, such as the transition from analogue to digital, transform working practices and, as a result, impact on the creative process of producing pop.
The Pop Music Idol and the Spirit of Charisma: Reality Television Talent Shows in the Digital Economy of Hope (Pop Music, Culture and Identity)
by T. CvetkovskiThis book makes a case for the synergetic union between reality TV and the music industry. It delves into technological change in popular music, and the role of music reality TV and social media in the pop production process. It challenges the current scholarship which does not adequately distinguish the economic significance of these developments.
Pop Music Production: Manufactured Pop and BoyBands of the 1990s (ISSN)
by Phil HardingPop Music Production delves into academic depths around the culture, the business, the songwriting, and most importantly, the pop music production process. Phil Harding balances autobiographical discussion of events and relationships with academic analysis to offer poignant points on the value of pure popular music, particularly in relation to BoyBands and how creative pop production and songwriting teams function.Included here are practical resources, such as recording studio equipment lists, producer business deal examples and a 12-step mixing technique, where Harding expands upon previously released material to explain how ‘Stay Another Day’ by East 17 changed his approach to mixing forever. However, it is important to note that Harding almost downplays his involvement in his career. At no point is he center stage; he humbly discusses his position within the greater scheme of events. Pop Music Production offers cutting-edge analysis of a genre rarely afforded academic attention.This book is aimed at lecturers and students in the subject fields of Music Production, Audio Engineering, Music Technology, Popular Songwriting Studies and Popular Music Culture. It is suitable for all levels of study from FE students through to PhD researchers. Pop Music Production is also designed as a follow-up to Harding’s first book PWL from the Factory Floor (2010, Cherry Red Books), a memoir of his time working with 1980s pop production and songwriting powerhouse, Stock Aitken Waterman, at PWL Studios.
Pop Out: Queer Warhol
by Jonathan Flatley Jennifer Doyle José Esteban MuñozAndy Warhol was queer in more ways than one. A fabulous queen, a fan of prurience and pornography, a great admirer of the male body, he was well known as such to the gay audiences who enjoyed his films, the police who censored them, the gallery owners who refused to show his male nudes, and the artists who shied from his swishiness, not to mention all the characters who populated the Factory. Yet even though Warhol became the star of postmodernism, avant-garde, and pop culture, this collection of essays is the first to explore, analyze, appreciate, and celebrate the role of Warhol's queerness in the making and reception of his film and art. Ranging widely in approach and discipline, Pop Out demonstrates that to ignore Warhol's queerness is to miss what is most valuable, interesting, sexy, and political about his life and work.Written from the perspectives of art history, critical race theory, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, cinema studies, and social and literary theory, these essays consider Warhol in various contexts and within the history of the communities in which he figured. The homoerotic subjects, gay audiences, and queer contexts that fuel a certain fascination with Warhol are discussed, as well as Batman, Basquiat, and Valerie Solanas. Taken together, the essays in this collection depict Warhol's career as a practical social reflection on a wide range of institutions and discourses, including those, from the art world to mass culture, that have almost succeeded in sanitizing his work and his image.Contributors. Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flatley, Marcie Frank, David E. James, Mandy Merck, Michael Moon, José Esteban Muñoz, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Brian Selsky, Sasha Torres, Simon Watney, Thomas Waugh
Pop Science: Serious Answers to Deep Questions Posed in Songs
by James BallA Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist uses data, facts, and science to deliver hilarious, fascinating answers to some of the most famous questions in pop music history. “Is there life on Mars? Where have all the flowers gone? Pop songs can pose excellent questions and James Ball has given them the answers they deserve.”—The Times (UK) Some of the most famous questions of our time have come to us in pop songs. “What is love?” “How soon is now?” “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” But do you know the answers? Breaking down lyrics from Bob Dylan, Queen, Rihanna, the Ting Tings, Billy Joel, and a variety of other genre- and decade-spanning artists with colorful graphs and Venn diagrams,Pop Science reveals the exact points where lowbrow pop culture and the highest science and philosophy meet. By revealing the economic status of doggies in windows, what war is good for, and what becomes of the brokenhearted, James Ball uncovers what we have always known—that pop music is the key to life itself.
Pop-Up Civics in 21st Century America: Understanding the Political Potential of Placemaking (Routledge Research in American Politics and Governance)
by Ryan SalzmanHow people associate and engage in politics in the 21st century is notably different from similar behaviors in the 20th century. Ryan Salzman examines the political potential of placemaking, an increasingly popular set of behaviors that were unfamiliar to the American public until the last two decades. Placemaking exemplifies a shift that is occurring in the way Americans participate in their political system, and it appears that that participation is increasingly effective in the context of American democracy. Informed by interviews, surveys, and material review, Salzman compares the process of placemaking to traditional political and associational behaviors, providing evidence that placemaking has tremendous political potential. Placemaking is an innovative set of behaviors, largely understood to influence economic and community development. From painting crosswalks to community gardens, Americans are engaging in their communities with real political and civic consequences. This text expands our understanding of placemaking, updating the way we think about civic and political engagement in the 21st century. Pop-Up Civics in 21st Century America: Understanding the Political Potential of Placemaking will be of interest to those who study and research political behavior, civil society, arts and politics, social movements, and urban public policy.
Pop with Gods, Shakespeare, and AI: Popular Film, (Musical) Theatre, and TV Drama
by Iris H. TuanApplying the theories of Popular Culture, Visual Culture, Performance Studies, (Post)Feminism, and Film Studies, this interdisciplinary and well-crafted book leads you to the fascinating and intriguing world of popular film, (musical) theatre, and TV drama. It explores the classical and contemporary cases of the literature works, both Eastern and Western, adapted, represented and transformed into the interesting artistic medium in films, performances, TV dramas, musicals, and AI robot theatre/films. ‘Iris Tuan’s book is wide ranging in scope and diversity, examining theatre, music, film and television productions from both Western and Asian countries. Tuan also surveys an extensive range of critical and theoretical perspectives, especially from performance studies and popular cultural studies, to offer context for her descriptions of the many different works. Some of her examples are well-known (Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Disney’s The Lion King) while others little known outside their place of origin (such as the Hakka Theatre of Taiwan) -- all are approached by the author with enthusiasm.’ —Susan Bennett, Professor of English, University of Calgary, Canada ‘Tuan takes us through multiple examples of contemporary popular performance in theatre/film/TV ranging from "high" art sources (Shakespeare or Journey to the West in films, Hirata's robotic theatre experiments) to "low" (Taiwanese TV soap operas Hakka Theatre: Roseki and Story of Yangxi Palace, Korean film Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds). The reader moves at a speed-dating pace through contemporary culture production and interpretive theories, encountering significant works, controversies (i. e., yellow face), and conundrums selected from China, Korea, Japan and the U. S. and filtered through a Taiwanese female gaze.’ —Kathy Foley, Professor of Theatre Arts, University of California Santa Cruz, USA
Po'pay: Leader of the First American Revolution
by Theodore S. Jojola Robert Mirabal Alfonso Ortiz Simon J. Ortiz Joseph H. Suina Joe S. Sando Herman AgoyoPo'pay led the Pueblo revolt of 1680, which ousted the Spanish from New Mexico until 1692. In conjunction with the 2005 placing of a statue of the leader in the US Capitol's National Statuary Hall, a historian and tribal leader from New Mexico Pueblos present the first book on this leader and his legacy from a Pueblo perspective. It includes a foreword by New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, a chronology, images of the statue, and commemorative statements. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Pope Francis: Journeys of a Peacemaker (Peacemakers)
by Mario I. AguilarThis volume is about Pope Francis, the diplomat. In his eight years of pontificate, Pope Francis as a peacemaker has propagated the ideas of human and divine cooperation to build a global human fraternity through his journeys outside the Vatican. This book discusses his endeavours to connect and develop a common peaceful international order between countries, faith communities, and even antagonistic communities through a peaceful journey of human beings. The book analyses his speeches, and meetings as a diplomat of peace, including his visits to Cuba and the United States, and his mediations for peace in Colombia, Myanmar, Kenya, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Jerusalem, the Central African Republic, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. It discusses the role of Pope Francis as mediator in different circumstances through his own writings, letters, and Vatican documents; his encounters with world leaders; as well as his contributions to a universal understanding on inter-faith dialogue, climate change and the environment, and human migration and the refugee crisis. The volume also sheds light on his ideas on a post-pandemic just social order, as summarised in his 2020 encyclical. A definitive work on the diplomacy and the travels of Pope Francis, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of religious studies, peace and conflict studies, ethics and philosophy, and political science and international relations. It will be of great interest to the general reader as well.
Pope Francis: Money, Masons and Occultism in the Decline of the Catholic Church
by Brad Olsen Leo ZagamiPope Francis: The Last Pope? reveals the possible reasons for the choice of historical abdication of Benedict XVI and traces the process that led to the election of Cardinal Bergoglio: the Pope who many have prophesized will be the last and will bring the Catholic Church to its end. The book details the history of this prophecy, which was hidden away in the Vatican for hundreds of years and predicts that the reign of the last Pope will herald the beginning of "great apostasy" followed by "great tribulation." It also explores the recent scandals in the Catholic Church and addresses questions including What pressures decreed the end of the pontificate of Benedict XVI? What powers have an interest for the Church to end? and What is the relationship between the Vatican and the New World Order? Perfect for anyone interested in prophecies about the end times, Pope Francis: The Last Pope reveals the truth about what numerology says about the last Pope and the darkness that may follow him, as well as fascinating investigations into the gay lobby, Freemasonry, and the Jesuit agenda in the Vatican and how it relates to the first Borgia Pope, the legend of the White Pope and the Black Pope, and how Benedict's resignation may fulfill an ancient prophecy.
Popes and Bankers: A Cultural History of Credit and Debt, from Aristotle to AIG
by Jack CashillAMIDST THE WRECKAGE OF FINANCIAL RUIN, PEOPLE ARE LEFT PUZZLING ABOUT HOW IT HAPPENED. WHERE DID ALL THE PROBLEMS BEGIN?For the answer, Jack Cashill, a journalist as shrewd as he is seasoned, looks past the headlines and deep into pages of history and comes back with the goods. From Plato to payday loans, from Aristotle to AIG, from Shakespeare to the Salomon Brothers, from the Medici to Bernie Madoff--in Popes and Bankers Jack Cashill unfurls a fascinating story of credit and debt, usury and "the sordid love of gain."With a dizzying cast of characters, including church officials, gutter loan sharks, and even the Knights Templar, Cashill traces the creative tension between "pious restraint" and "economic ambition" through the annals of human history and illuminates both the dark corners of our past and the dusty corners of our billfolds.
The Pope's Bookbinder
by David Mason"Entertaining, moving, informative, intelligently hopeful: I know of few other books like this one to warm the cockles of a booklover's heart." -Alberto Manguel"For anyone who loves books too well-who lusts after them, lives in them, mainlines them-David Mason's memoir will be a fix from heaven. Heartful, cantankerous, droll, his tales of honour and obsession in the trade gratify the very book-love they portray. An irresistible read." -Dennis Lee"An atmospheric, informative memoir by a Canadian seller of used and rare books ... Gossipy, rambling and enchanting, alive with Mason's love for books of every variety."-Kirkus ReviewsFrom his drug-hazy, book-happy years near the Beat Hotel in Paris and throughout his career as antiquarian book dealer, David Mason brings us a storied life. He discovers his love of literature in a bathtub at age eleven, thumbing through stacks of lurid Signet paperbacks. At fifteen he's expelled from school. For the next decade and a half, he will work odd jobs, buck all authority, buy books more often than food, and float around Europe. He'll help gild a volume in white morocco for Pope John XXIII. And then, at the age of 30, after returning home to Canada and apprenticing with Joseph Patrick Books, David Mason will find his calling.Over the course of what is now a legendary international career, Mason shows unerring instincts for the logic of the trade. He makes good money from Canadian editions, both legitimate and pirated (turns out Canadian piracies so incensed Mark Twain that he moved to Montreal for six months to gain copyright protection). He outfoxes the cousins of L.M. Montgomery at auction and blackmails the head of the Royal Ontario Museum. He excoriates the bureaucratic pettiness that obstructs public acquisitions, he trumpets the ingenuity of collectors and scouts, and in archives around the world he appraises history in its unsifted and most moving forms. Above all, however, David Mason boldly campaigns for what he feels is the moral duty of the antiquarian trade: to preserve the history and traditions of all nations, and to assert without compromise that such histories have value. Sly, sparkling, and endearingly gruff, The Pope's Bookbinder is an engrossing memoir by a giant in the book trade-whose infectious enthusiasm, human insight, commercial shrewdness, and deadpan humour will delight bibliophiles for decades to come.
Popes, Church, and Jews in the Middle Ages: Confrontation and Response (Variorum Collected Studies #876)
by Kenneth StowThe theme uniting the essays reprinted here is the attitude of the medieval Church, and in particular the papacy, toward the Jewish population of Western Europe. Papal consistency, sometimes sorely tried, in observing the canons and the principles announced by St Paul - that Jews were to be a permanent, if disturbing, part of Christian life - helped balance the anxiety felt by members of the Church. Clerics especially feared what they called Jewish pollution. These themes are the focus of the studies in the first part of this volume. Those in the second part explore aspects of Jewish society and family life, as both were shaped by medieval realities.
The Pope's Dilemma
by Jacques KornbergPope Pius XII presided over the Catholic Church during one of the most challenging moments in its history. Elected in early 1939, Pius XII spoke out against war and destruction, but his refusal to condemn Nazi Germany and its allies for mass atrocities and genocide remains controversial almost seventy years after the end of the Second World War.Scholars have blamed Pius's inaction on anti-communism, antisemitism, a special emotional bond with Germany, or a preference for fascist authoritarianism. Delving deep into Catholic theology and ecclesiology, Jacques Kornberg argues instead that what drove Pius XII was the belief that his highest priority must be to preserve the authority of the Church and the access to salvation that it provided.In The Pope's Dilemma, Kornberg uses the examples of Pius XII's immediate predecessors Benedict XV and the Armenian genocide and Pius XI and Fascist Italy, as well as case studies of Pius XII's wartime policies towards five Catholic countries (Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), to demonstrate the consistency with which Pius XII and the Vatican avoided confronting the perpetrators of atrocities and strove to keep Catholics within the Church. By this measure, Pius XII did not betray, but fulfilled his papal role.A meticulous and careful analysis of the career of the twentieth century's most controversial pope, The Pope's Dilemma is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the Catholic Church's wartime legacy.
Poplorica
by Martin J. Smith Patrick J KrigerPop culture meets pop reference in this irreverent tour of twenty unlikely events, innovations, and individuals that forever changed how we live today--the food we eat, the places we live, the love we make, the fads we follow, the clothes we wear, the products we buy, and much more. Veteran journalists Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger make the offbeat their beat, revealing the odd, surprising, and amusing origins of inexplicable cultural phenomena. From slam dunks to rock 'n' roll punks, permanent press to pantyhose, black velvet painting to point-click culture, high-tech diapers to low-brow entertainment-they cover sports, business, music, media, film, fashion, and science, and explain a lot about why life today is so weird:-If homeowners hate yardwork, why do most suburban homes have lawns?-In the best-fed country on earth, how did thin become "in"?-When did the "convenience" of convenience food become more important than the food?-Was the sexual revolution really sparked by the disastrous honeymoon of a science geek?-Why are today's multimillion-dollar design and marketing plans for cars based on the biggest failure in automotive history?-How did the invention of air conditioning radically rebalance political power and affect the paths of presidents?The untold, unexpected, sometimes unholy stories are here, providing instant inside knowledge and richly entertaining insights into how and why we live as we do.
Popobawa: Tanzanian Talk, Global Misreadings
by Katrina Daly ThompsonSince the 1960s, people on the islands off the coast of Tanzania have talked about being attacked by a mysterious creature called Popobawa, a shapeshifter often described as having an enormous penis. Popobawa’s recurring attacks have become a popular subject for stories, conversation, gossip, and humor that has spread far beyond East Africa. Katrina Daly Thompson shows that talk about Popobawa becomes a tool that Swahili speakers use for various creative purposes such as subverting gender segregation, advertising homosexuality, or discussing female sexuality. By situating Popobawa discourse within the social and cultural world of the Swahili Coast as well as the wider world of global popular culture, Thompson demonstrates that uses of this legend are more diverse and complex than previously thought and provides insight into how women and men communicate in a place where taboo, prohibition, and restraint remain powerful cultural forces.
Poppies, Politics, and Power: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy
by James Tharin BradfordHistorians have long neglected Afghanistan's broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power, James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state.In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providing a global history of opium within the borders of Afghanistan, Bradford demonstrates that the country's drug trade and the government's position on that trade were shaped by the global illegal market and international efforts to suppress it. By weaving together this global history of the drug trade and drug policy with the formation of the Afghan state and issues within Afghan political culture, Bradford completely recasts the current Afghan, and global, drug trade.
The Poppy: A Cultural History from Ancient Egypt to Flanders Fields to Afghanistan
by Nicholas J. SaundersIn the aftermath of the horrific trench warfare of the First World War, the poppy - sprouting across the killing fields of France and Belgium, then immortalized in John McCrae's moving poem - became a worldwide icon. Yet the poppy has a longer history: as the tell-tale sign of human cultivation of the land, of the ravages of war, and of the desire to escape the earthly realm through Romantic opium dreams or the grim reality of morphine drips. This is a story spanning 3,000 summers, from the Ancient Egyptian fights over prized medicinal potions to the addicted veterans turning home from the American Civil War, from the British political machinations during the Opium Wars with China to the struggle to end Afghanistan's tribal narcotics trade. Through it all, there is the transformative poppy.Now, Nicholas J. Saunders shares the definitive history of this ever-enduring symbolic flower.