Romance! Danger! Animals! Picture Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in a Tarzan picture. “Martin and Osa Johnson thrilled American audiences of the ‘20s and ‘30s with their remarkable movies of faraway places, exotic peoples and the dramatic spectacle of wildlife… [they] seemed to embody glamour, daring and the all-American ideal of self-reliance.” Their travelogs—such as Simba, Congorilla and Borneo—humanized the wonders of the world. The “handsome pair from Kansas” even sparked a dance craze, the Congorilla. They were a special pair of footloose pioneers, except for that little imperialist/racist baggage thing they carried with them: “The high point of laughs was when the pygmies ate soap, blew up a balloon that burst, and tried to light cigars. And how those brown midgets go into their dance…” GR

Publisher: Rutgers University
Hardback: 313 pages
Illustrated

“Volume 1 concentrates on the crucial period between 1785 and 1850, which saw both the Romantic and Racist to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and the consolidation of northern expansion into other continents… Bernal makes meaningful links between a wide range of areas and disciplines—drama, poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of “modern scholarship.”

Publisher: Rutgers University
Paperback: 575 pages

“Volume 2 is concerned with the archeological and documentary evidence for contacts between Egypt and the Levant on the one hand, and the Aegean on the other, during the Bronze Age from c. 3400 BC to c. 1100 BC. These approaches are supplemented by information from the later Greek myths, legends, religious cults and language. The author concludes that contact between the two regions was far more extensive and influential than is generally believed.”

Publisher: Rutgers University
Paperback: 575 pages

“As intrinsic to the identity of the United States as New England villages, national parks, and leafy suburbs, ghettos nevertheless remain unique in their social and physical isolation from the nation’s mainstream. Semiruined, discarded, and dangerous, ghettos are rarely visited by outsiders. The New American Ghetto provides an exploration, spanning over nearly two decades, of ghettos in New York, Newark, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and smaller cities. Camilo José Vergara chronicles, through photographs and text, the profound transformations experienced by these places since the riots of the 1960s. He provides direct observations of urban landscapes and interiors, from residential areas and institutions to vacant lots and abandoned factories. He takes successive photographs of the same places, tracking change over time, changes that have made the conditions of today’s ghettos very different from those of an earlier era. Vergara’s interviews with residents and historical research contribute to his unique view of the nature and meaning of the inner city. Termed ‘a photographic forecast of the demise of urban America,’ The New American Ghetto brings to light a world of forgotten ruin and struggling reconstruction.”

Publisher: Rutgers University
Hardback: 235 pages
Illustrated

Chronicles handicapped stereotyping from the “Obsessive Avenger” Quasimodo, to the “Oedipal remasculinizing” of Luke Skywalker after he loses his sword hand to Darth Vader, to Scent of a Woman, in which Al Pacino wants to kill himself because he’s blind. From Hollywood’s Golden Age: Freaks repulsed ‘30s sensibilities (the cast was barred from eating in the MGM commissary), and the studio extended this prejudice to the publicity, calling the Tod Browning film a “thrillingly gruesome tale” and referring to its performers as “creatures of the abyss,” “strange shadows,” “nightmare shapes in the dark” and “grim pranks of nature—living in a world apart.” Even the sympathetic Browning was not immune—he took liberties with the original magazine article on which Freaks was based and tagged on the film’s famous midnight revenge/Chicken Lady. Gabba-gabba-hey. GR

Publisher: Rutgers University
Paperback: 385 pages
Illustrated