New York is the city that never sleeps. This luminous book peels back the cover of darkness over the city as it hums along in the night, revealing a hidden world populated by the thousands of women and men who work and live the nightshift. Written with beauty and grace, Nightshift NYC weaves together cultural critique, vivid reportage, and arresting photographs to trace the inverted logic of the city at night. Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman spent a year interviewing and shadowing fry cooks and coffee jockeys, train conductors, cab hacks, and dozens of others who keep the city running when the sun goes down. Investigating familiar places such diners and delis, they explore some less familiar ones as well—taking us on a walking tour of homelessness in Manhattan, onto a fishing boat out of Brooklyn, and into other little-known corners of the night. Traveling past the threshold of voyeurism into the lives of real people, they depict a social space entirely apart—one that is highly structured and inherently subversive. Together, these stories open a compelling view on contemporary urban life and, along the way, reveal the soul of the city itself.

The night represents almost universally a special, liminal or "out of the ordinary" temporal zone with its own meanings, possibilities and dangers, and political, cultural, religious and social implications. Only in the modern era was the night systematically "colonised" and nocturnal activity "normalised," in terms of (industrial) labour and production processes. Although the globalised 24/7 economy is usually seen as the outcome of capitalist modernisation, development and expansion starting in the late nineteenth century, other consecutive and more recent political and economic systems adopted perpetual production systems as well, extending work into the night and forcing workers to work the "night shift," normalising it as part of an alternative non-capitalist modernity. This volume draws attention to the extended work hours and night shift work, which have remained underexplored in the history of labour and the social science literature. By describing and comparing various political and economic "regimes," it argues that, from the viewpoint of global labour history, night labour and the spread of 24/7 production and services should not be seen, only and exclusively, as an epiphenomenon of capitalist production, but rather as one of the outcomes of industrial modernity.

Night and Darkness in Ancient Mesoamerica is the first volume to explicitly incorporate how nocturnal aspects of the natural world were imbued with deep cultural meanings and expressed by different peoples from various time periods in Mexico and Central America. Material culture, iconography, epigraphy, art history, ethnohistory, ethnographies, and anthropological theory are deftly used to illuminate dimensions of darkness and the night that are often neglected in reconstructions of the past. The anthropological study of night and darkness enriches and strengthens the understanding of human behavior, power, economy, and the supernatural. In eleven case studies featuring the residents of Teotihuacan, the Classic period Maya, inhabitants of Rio Ulúa, and the Aztecs, the authors challenge archaeologists to consider the influence of the ignored dimension of the night and the role and expression of darkness on ancient behavior. Chapters examine the significance of eclipses, burials, tombs, and natural phenomena considered to be portals to the underworld; animals hunted at twilight; the use and ritual meaning of blindfolds; night-blooming plants; nocturnal foodways; fuel sources and lighting technology; and other connected practices. Night and Darkness in Ancient Mesoamerica expands the scope of published research and media on the archaeology of the night. The book will be of interest to those who study the humanistic, anthropological, and archaeological aspects of the Aztec, Maya, Teotihuacanos, and southeastern Mesoamericans, as well as sensory archaeology, art history, material culture studies, anthropological archaeology, paleonutrition, socioeconomics, sociopolitics, epigraphy, mortuary studies, volcanology, and paleoethnobotany. Contributors: Jeremy Coltman, Christine Dixon, Rachel Egan, Kirby Farah, Carolyn Freiwald, Nancy Gonlin, Julia Hendon, Cecelia Klein, Jeanne Lopiparo, Brian McKee, Jan Marie Olson, David M. Reed, Payson Sheets, Venicia Slotten, Michael Thomason, Randolph Widmer, W. Scott Zeleznik

"The Big Bang is dead and astrophysicist Adam Frank explains how our experience of time will change as a result"--

As the magazine of the Texas Exes, The Alcalde has united alumni and friends of The University of Texas at Austin for nearly 100 years. The Alcalde serves as an intellectual crossroads where UT's luminaries - artists, engineers, executives, musicians, attorneys, journalists, lawmakers, and professors among them - meet bimonthly to exchange ideas. Its pages also offer a place for Texas Exes to swap stories and share memories of Austin and their alma mater. The magazine's unique name is Spanish for "mayor" or "chief magistrate"; the nickname of the governor who signed UT into existence was "The Old Alcalde."

This book captures the hidden labour of migrant nightworkers in 24/7 London. It argues that late capitalism normalises nightwork, yet refuses to recognise the associated problems, from lack of decent working conditions to the seizure of the workers’ private time for self-development, family and social life. The book shows how the articulation of nightworkers’ subjectivities and socialities happens at the intersection between migration, precarity and nightwork, and traces how each of these dimensions magnifies the lived experience of the others. It further reveals that any possibilities for cooperation or solidarity in the workplace between migrant nightworkers become fragile and secondary to their survival of the nightshift. It also elucidates the mechanisms that hinder cohesion between vulnerable groups placed temporally and socially on a different par to the mainstream societies. As such, this book is an excellent resource for labour regulators, experts and student researchers in migration, work and gender. The book offers a deeply empathic and engaging portrayal of the production of disciplined and exploitable manual labor in permanent nightshift cities. It cogently unpacks the experiences of embodied precarity through the largely unseen micro-practices of workplaces that entrap migrant laborers. The nightnographic component adds an original dimension to the inquiry. Violetta Zentai, Central European University

Once known for slum-like conditions in its immigrant and working-class neighborhoods, New York City's downtown now features luxury housing, chic boutiques and hotels, and, most notably, a vibrant nightlife culture. While a burgeoning bar scene can be viewed as a positive sign of urban transformation, tensions lurk beneath, reflecting the social conflicts within postindustrial cities. Upscaling Downtown examines the perspectives and actions of disparate social groups who have been affected by or played a role in the nightlife of the Lower East Side, East Village, and Bowery. Using the social world of bars as windows into understanding urban development, Richard Ocejo argues that the gentrifying neighborhoods of postindustrial cities are increasingly influenced by upscale commercial projects, causing significant conflicts for the people involved. Ocejo explores what community institutions, such as neighborhood bars, gain or lose amid gentrification. He considers why residents continue unsuccessfully to protest the arrival of new bars, how new bar owners produce a nightlife culture that attracts visitors rather than locals, and how government actors, including elected officials and the police, regulate and encourage nightlife culture. By focusing on commercial newcomers and the residents who protest local changes, Ocejo illustrates the contested and dynamic process of neighborhood growth. Delving into the social ecosystem of one emblematic section of Manhattan, Upscaling Downtown sheds fresh light on the tensions and consequences of urban progress.

North America’s most beloved regions are artfully celebrated in our board book series, which is designed to soothe children before bedtime while instilling an early appreciation for the continent’s natural and cultural wonders. This board book celebrates the unique New York City borough of Brooklyn with rhythmic language that guides children through the passage of both a single day and the four seasons. A multicultural group of people visit Brooklyn’s attractions while saluting the iconic aspects of each place, including Coney Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, Prospect Park, the Prospect Park Zoo, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the New York Transit Museum, the Brooklyn Nets, the New York Islanders, the Brooklyn Public Library, and much more.

An intimate portrait of the Big Apple As a child growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line, ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood. Decades later, his love for exploring the city was as strong as ever. Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs—an astonishing 6,000 miles. His journey took him to every corner of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Helmreich spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers from every part of the globe and all walks of life. He finds that to be a New Yorker is to struggle to understand the place and to make a life that is as highly local as it is dynamically cosmopolitan. Truly unforgettable, The New York Nobody Knows will forever change how you view the world's greatest city.

It is the anthropologist’s fate to always be between things: countries, languages, cultures, even realities. But rather than lament this, anthropologist Paul Stoller here celebrates the creative power of the between, showing how it can transform us, changing our conceptions of who we are, what we know, and how we live in the world. Beginning with his early days with the Peace Corps in Africa and culminating with a recent bout with cancer, The Power of the Between is an evocative account of the circuitous path Stoller’s life has taken, offering a fascinating depiction of how a career is shaped over decades of reading and research. Stoller imparts his accumulated wisdom not through grandiose pronouncements but by drawing on his gift for storytelling. Tales of his apprenticeship to a sorcerer in Niger, his studies with Claude Lévi-Strauss in Paris, and his friendships with West African street vendors in New York City accompany philosophical reflections on love, memory, power, courage, health, and illness. Graced with Stoller’s trademark humor and narrative elegance, The Power of the Between is both the story of a distinguished career and a profound meditation on coming to terms with the impermanence of all things.