Explores the relations between photo-journalism and history, investigating how photographs shape both, what we remember and how we remember. This book provides insight into how photographs, generate a sense of national community, and reinforce prevailing social, cultural, and political values.

Traces the simultaneous crafting of political power, the codification of a historical record, and the unfolding of cultural change

Publisher Description

This monograph is a wide-ranging and sophisticated analysis of representations in text and image of the English past between 1830 and 1870. It consists of a series of inter-related case-studies of illustrated history books, ranging from editions of David Humes History of England to W. H. Ainsworths The Tower of London (1840). It contributes to present debates on nationalism, highlighting the complex and variable nature of cultural constructions of identity. Simultaneously, if offers an overall interpretation of historiographical change in early and mid-Victorian Britain, focusing in particular on the transition from picturesque reconstructions of the English past to the scientific approaches of the professional historian. Genuinely interdisciplinary, Picturing the Past presents new perspectives on traditional studies of Victorian historiography, literature, and illustration. It explores relationships between text and image, author, illustrator, and publisher, in the production of illustrated historical texts, often drawing on neglected material in publishers archives. The tendency to analyse text and image, fiction and non-fiction, popular and elite publications in isolation from each other is challenged in the interests of a more complex and nuanced portrait of the middle-class Victorian historical consciousness.

The Art of Suicide is a history of the visual representation of suicide from the ancient world to its decriminalization in the 20th century. After looking at instances of voluntary death in ancient Greece, Ron Brown discusses the contrast between the extraordinary absence of such events in early Christianity and the proliferation of images of biblical suicides in the late medieval era. He emphasizes how differing attitudes to suicide in the early modern world slowly merged, and pays particular attention to the one-time chasm between so-called heroic suicide and self-destruction as a "crying crime". Brown tracks the changes surrounding the perception of suicide into the pivotal Romantic era, with its notions of the "man of feeling", ready to hurl himself into the abyss over a woman or an unfinishable poem. After the First World War, the meaning of death and attitudes towards suicide changed radically, and in time this led to its decriminalization. The 20th century in fact witnessed a growing ambivalence towards suicidal acts, which today are widely regarded either as expressions of a death-wish or as cries for help. Brown concludes with Warhol's picture of Marilyn Monroe and the videos taken by the notorious Dr Kevorkian.

Archaeological discoveries have shed light on the lives and beliefs of ordinary ancient Egyptians. Using photographs, illustrations, archaeology information boxes, and "How Do We Know?" boxes--which provide evidence for the information given--"Ancient Egypt" re-creates daily life in remarkable and well-founded detail.

A full-color, lavishly illustrated introduction to the world of Final Fantasy VII Remake, presenting information on characters, settings, gameplay, and more! With its captivating characters, striking visual design, and intense gameplay, Final Fantasy VII set a new standard for the RPG genre and became one of the top video game releases of all time. Now, with Final Fantasy VII Remake, players return to Midgar in a stunning new rendition of a timeless classic. This World Preview volume offers both new players and longtime fans essential information on characters, settings, gameplay, and more, as well as introductory comments from producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Tetsuya Nomura.

This survey of British historical films of the 1930s and 1940s offers an account of the attitudes of official bodies, film-makers and audiences to the costume film. Archive records unearthed by Sue Harper reveal the extent to which government agencies and institutions attempted to influence the cinematic representation of history. This book goes on to contrast the work of a range of key producers and charts the vagaries of audience response.

Based on sources from rare book libraries in Russia and around the world, Picturing the Page offers a vivid exploration of illustrated children’s literature and reading under Lenin and Stalin – a period when mass publishing for children and universal public education became available for the first time in Russia. By analysing the illustrations in fairy tales, classic "adult" literature reformatted for children, and war-time picture books, Megan Swift elucidates the vital and multifaceted function of illustrated children’s literature in repurposing the past. Picturing the Page demonstrates that while the texts of the past remained fixed, illustrations could slip between the pages to mediate and annotate that past, as well as connect with anti-religious, patriotic, and other campaigns that were central to Soviet children’s culture after the 1917 Revolution.

This annotated resource by veteran children's book reviewer Isaacs surveys the best 250 nonfiction/informational titles for ages 3 through 10, helping librarians make informed collection development and purchasing decisions.