"Spanning virtually the entire twentieth century and as timely as the outbreak of the 2011 ‘January Revolution,’ this work has much to say about where Egypt has been, who Egyptians are and, ultimately, where they may take their country." --Joel Gordon, author of Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation "A truly extraordinary accomplishment that is thought provoking, creative, and inspiring. Belli is the first in Middle Eastern studies to examine the cultural history of twentieth-century Egypt through the interactions between education and remembrance. Her revised theoretical approach is applicable not only to Middle Eastern societies and cultures, but to others worldwide." --Israel Gershoni, Tel Aviv University "An interesting history of memory that is diverse, dynamic, and disparate. Makes an outstanding contribution to our understandings of Egyptian national identity and memory." --Nancy L. Stockdale, University of North Texas Examining history not as it was recorded, but as it is remembered, An Incurable Past contextualizes the classist and deeply disappointing post-Nasserist period that has inspired today’s Egyptian revolutionaries. Public performances, songs, stories, oral histories, and everyday speech reveal not just the history of mid-twentieth-century Egypt, but also the ways in which ordinary people experience and remember the past. Constructing a ground-breaking theoretical framework, Mériam Belli demonstrates the fragility of the "collectivity" and the urgent need to replace the current method for studying collective memory with a new approach she defines as "historical utterances." Contextual and relational, these links between intimate and public historical narratives are an integral part of a society’s dialogue about its past, present, and future. Three major vernacular expressions constitute the historical utterances that illuminate the Nasserite experience and its present. The first is universal schooling and education. The second is anti-colonial struggle, as exemplified by Port Said’s effigy burning festival. The third is the public’s responses to the "miraculous millenarian" apparition of the Virgin Mary. Using an extensive array of sources, ranging from official archives and press reportage to fiction, public rituals, and oral interviews, Belli’s findings penetrate issues of class, religion, and social and political activism. She shows that personal testimonies and public representations allow us a deep understanding of Egypt’s construction of the modern in its many sociocultural layers. Mériam N. Belli is associate professor of history at the University of Iowa.

At the turn from our bedroom into the hallway, there is an old, full-length mirror in a wooden frame. I can't help but catch a glimpse of myself as I pass. Turning fully toward the glass, I consider what I see. This reflected version of myself, wet, shaking, rumpled, pinched, and slightly stooped, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face. I would ask the obvious question, "What are you smiling about?" but I already know the answer: "It just gets better from here." There are many words to describe Michael J. Fox: Actor. Husband. Father. Activist. But readers of Always Looking Up will soon add another to the list: Optimist. Michael writes about the hard-won perspective that helped him see challenges as opportunities. Instead of building walls around himself, he developed a personal policy of engagement and discovery: an emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual outlook that has served him throughout his struggle with Parkinson's disease. Michael's exit from a very demanding, very public arena offered him the time--and the inspiration--to open up new doors leading to unexpected places. One door even led him to the center of his own family, the greatest destination of all. The last ten years, which is really the stuff of this book, began with such a loss: my retirement from Spin City. I found myself struggling with a strange new dynamic: the shifting of public and private personas. I had been Mike the actor, then Mike the actor with PD. Now was I just Mike with PD Parkinson's had consumed my career and, in a sense, had become my career. But where did all of this leave Me? I had to build a new life when I was already pretty happy with the old one. Always Looking Up shares the critical themes of Michael's life: work, politics, faith, and family. The book is a journey of self-discovery and reinvention, and a testament to the consolations that protect him from the ravages of Parkinson's. With humor and wit Michael describes how he became a happier, more satisfied person by recognizing the gifts of everyday life.

Proust is the twentieth century's Dante, presenting us with a unique, unsettling picture of ourselves as jealous lovers and unmitigated snobs, frittering our lives away, with only the hope of art as a possible salvation.

On Shedding an Obsolete Past provides a much-needed and comprehensive critique of recent US national security policies in both the Trump and Biden administrations. These policy decisions have produced a series of costly disappointments and outright failures that have destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands around the world and cost US taxpayers astronomical sums of money. Bacevich provides urgent and critical insights into how these failures occurred and what needs to be done to prevent similar failures in the future. He reminds us that, by understanding the past, we can alter our current trajectory and transform the world for the better.

The past remains essential - and inescapable. A quarter-century after the publication of his classic account of man's attitudes to his past, David Lowenthal revisits how we celebrate, expunge, contest and domesticate the past to serve present needs. He shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt as well as heard and read about. Empathy, re-enactment, memory and commemoration overwhelm traditional history. A unified past once certified by experts and reliant on written texts has become a fragmented, contested history forged by us all. New insights into history and memory, bias and objectivity, artefacts and monuments, identity and authenticity, and remorse and contrition, make this book once again the essential guide to the past that we inherit, reshape and bequeath to the future.

Terminal illness and the pain and anguish it brings are experiences that have touched millions of people in the past and continue to shape our experience of the present. Hospital machines that artificially support life and monitor vital signs beg the question: Is there not anything that medical science can offer as solace? Incurable and Intolerable looks at the history of incurable illness from a variety of perspectives, including those of doctors, patients, families, religious counsel, and policy makers. This compellingly documented and well-written history illuminates the physical, emotional, social, and existential consequences of chronic disease and terminal illness, and offers an original look at the world of palliative medicine, politics, religion, and charity. Revealing the ways in which history can shed new light on contemporary thinking, Jason Szabo encourages a more careful scrutiny of today's attitudes, policies, and practices surrounding "imminent death" and its effects on society.