Synopses & Reviews
This book examines the connection between print and culture in the nineteenth century, identifying a neglected and important body of Victorian criticism.
Subjugated Knowledges explores the relations of certain forms of nineteenth-century printed texts to their modes of production and to each other, in their own time period and in ours.
Brake claims that there is a high degree of interdependence among literature, history, and journalism. She investigates the ways in which space is designated male or female as well as the way authorship is constructed in various forms of biography, including in such diverse forms as obituaries and dictionaries.
The book moves from a general mapping of the relations between literature and journalism and their respective formations to studies of individual textssuch as Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Woman's World, and the Dictionary of National Biography and of relations between (the construction of) authorship and publishing history.
The volume is comprised of three sections: Literature and Journalism, Gendered Space, and Biography and Authorship. The first section contains chapters on such diverse issues as the professionalization of critics, cultural formation of journals, new journalism, press censorship, and decadence. The second section discusses women's magazines of the 1880s and 90s, while the third examines debates in the press about biography.
Review
Review
“Admirable, rigorous. De Waal [is] a wise and patient reporter.”-The New York Review of Books,
Review
“Never have all the twists and turns, sad carnage, and bullheadedness on all sides been better described-or, indeed, better explained . . . Offers a deeper and more compelling account of the conflict than anyone before.”-Foreign Affairs ,
Review
“This book is a major milestone in the Western scholarship on Karabakh.”-Armenian Freedom Network ,
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“This book is helpful because in order to craft a final resolution to the conflict, one must understand what events transpired in the first place. De Waal's book significantly contributes to this purpose and establishes itself as one of the standard works for understanding this conflict.”-Parameters ,
Synopsis
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2003
Black Garden is the definitive study of how Armenia and Azerbaijan, two southern Soviet republics, got sucked into a conflict that helped bring them to independence, bringing to an end the Soviet Union, and plaguing a region of great strategic importance. It cuts between a careful reconstruction of the history of Nagorny Karabakh conflict since 1988 and on-the-spot reporting on its convoluted aftermath.
Part contemporary history, part travel book, part political analysis, the book is based on six months traveling through the south Caucasus, more than 120 original interviews in the region, Moscow, and Washington, and unique primary sources, such as Politburo archives.
The historical chapters trace how the conflict lay unresolved in the Soviet era; how Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders exacerbated it; how the Politiburo failed to cope with the crisis; how the war began and ended; how the international community failed to sort out the conflict.
What emerges is a complex and subtle portrait of a beautiful and fascinating region, blighted by historical prejudice and conflict.
About the Author
Thomas de Waal is a writer specializing in Russia and the Caucasus. He has reported for, amongst others, the BBC World Service, the Moscow Times, and the Times of London and is co-author of Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (NYU Press). He is currently Caucasus Editor for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London.