24 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is as divided as ever. The passengers of the low-budget airlines go east for stag parties, and they go West for work; but the East stays East, and West stays West. Caricatures abound - the Polish plumber in the tabloids, the New Cold War in the broadsheets and the endless search for 'the new Berlin' for hipsters. Against the stereotypes, Agata Pyzik peers behind the curtain to take a look at the secret histories of Eastern Europe (and its tortured relations with the 'West'). Neoliberalism and mass migration, post-punk and the Bowiephile obsession with the Eastern Bloc, Orientalism and 'self-colonization', the emancipatory potentials of Socialist Realism, the possibility of a non-Western idea of modernity and futurism, and the place of Eastern Europe in any current revival of 'the idea of communism' – all are much more complex and surprising than they appear. Poor But Sexy refuses both a dewy-eyed Ostalgia for the 'good old days' and the equally desperate desire to become a 'normal part of Europe', reclaiming instead the idea an Other Europe. , ,

When communism took power in Eastern Europe it remade cities in its own image, transforming everyday life and creating sweeping boulevards and vast, epic housing estates in an emphatic declaration of a noncapitalist idea. The regimes that built them are now dead and long gone, but from Warsaw to Berlin, Moscow to postrevolutionary Kiev, the buildings remain, often populated by people whose lives were scattered by the collapse of communism. Landscapes of Communism is a journey of historical discovery, plunging us into the lost world of socialist architecture. Owen Hatherley, a brilliant, witty, young urban critic shows how power was wielded in these societies by tracing the sharp, sudden zigzags of official communist architectural style: the superstitious despotic rococo of high Stalinism, with its jingoistic memorials, palaces, and secret policemen’s castles; East Germany’s obsession with prefabricated concrete panels; and the metro systems of Moscow and Prague, a spectacular vindication of public space that went further than any avant-garde ever dared. Throughout his journeys across the former Soviet empire, Hatherley asks what, if anything, can be reclaimed from the ruins of Communism—what residue can inform our contemporary ideas of urban life?

"Captivating images of band members on stage, with fans, and in official photos, and detailed images of album covers, disc labels, cassette boxes, and all sorts of memorabilia frame approachable descriptions of specific events and the surrounding history. A complete tour schedule including all of the earliest dates and the dates of 18 official tours is included, as is a bibliography of over 60 album reviews in a wide variety of magazines. All-in-all, this is a visually stunning and worthwhile read. It is both entrancing and heartfelt while at the same time informational, genuine and candid, and the reverence felt for the band by the author is contagious." --Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal "Depeche Mode fans know that Monument is a song on its seminal 1982 album A Broken Frame. It's a fitting title for this encyclopedic yet intimate photo book that covers the band's career, with a special section devoted to fan culture." --Los Angeles Times, Holiday Gift Guide "Featuring more than one thousand objects from Burmeister's archive, Monument is a detailed chronology of the band who--after 100 million album sales--still show no sign of stopping." --Dazed "A bonanza for the serious Depeche Mode lover." --The Current (Minnesota Public Radio) "The massive coffee table book is graphically appealing and well designed, as befits a tribute to a group who were almost as visual at their inception as they were musical." --Shepherd Express "Even if you think you know everything there is to know about Depeche Mode...there is surely something new to learn here." --Philadelphia Gay News "Essential...Monument is everything it aspires to be, an impressive achievement and a fine gift for the Depeche Mode fan in your life." --PopMatters "This book-long love letter from some of the Depeche Mode's diehard fans...This is a meticulous, obsessive compilation of the band's oeuvre and is a must for any DM fan." --Style Zeitgeist, 2017 Gift Guide Depeche Mode: Monument illustrates the amazing synth-pop success story that began in 1981 and is still going strong after 100 million album sales. This book contains information on all of the band's releases from 1981 to 2017, over a thousand images, including never-before-seen photos, concert posters, and album artwork, a special look at fan culture, interviews with stage managers, friends, producers, tour companions, radio hosts, and fans and much more. Along with an unprecedented collection of artifacts presented together for the first time, this coffee table book offers extensive information, background facts, and anecdotes that will cater to both newcomers and die-hard Depeche Mode fans alike." --Delaware County Daily Times, Holiday Gift Guide Depeche Mode: Monument illustrates the amazing success story that began in 1981 and is still going strong after 100 million album sales. This book contains: information on all of the band's releases from 1981 to 2017; over a thousand images, including never-before-seen photos, concert posters, and album artwork; a special look at fan culture; interviews with stage managers, friends, producers, tour companions, radio hosts, and fans; and so much more. The affection that Depeche Mode command year after year from their ever-growing fan base is incredible. No other band possesses such a vital, self-organized fan culture. Along with an unprecedented collection of artifacts presented together for the first time, this volume offers extensive information, background facts, and anecdotes that will cater to both newcomers and die-hard Depeche Mode fans alike.

The sixtieth anniversary edition of Frantz Fanon’s landmark text, now with a new introduction by Cornel West First published in 1961, and reissued in this sixtieth anniversary edition with a powerful new introduction by Cornel West, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterfuland timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle, and a continuing influence on movements from Black Lives Matter to decolonization. A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world. Alongside Cornel West’s introduction, the book features critical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha. This sixtieth anniversary edition of Fanon’s most famous text stands proudly alongside such pillars of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as Edward Said’s Orientalism and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Imagining New Europe provides a comprehensive study of the way in which contemporary writers, filmmakers, and the media have represented the recent phenomenon of Eastern European migration to the UK and Western Europe following the enlargement of the EU in the 21st century, the social and political changes after the fall of communism, and the Brexit vote. Exploring the recurring figures of Eastern Europeans as a new reservoir of cheap labour, the author engages with a wide range of both mainstream and neglected authors, films, and programmes, including Rose Tremain, John Lanchester, Marina Lewycka, Polly Courtney, Dubravka Ugrešić, Kapka Kassabova, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Mike Phillips, It’s a Free World, Gypo, Britain’s Hardest Workers, The Poles are Coming, and Czech Dream. Analyzing the treatment of Eastern Europeans as builders, fruit pickers, nannies, and victims of sex trafficking, and ways of resisting the stereotypes, this is an important intervention into debates about Europe, migration, and postcommunist transition to capitalism, as represented in multiple contemporary cultural texts.

Based on a series of case studies of globally distributed media and their reception in different parts of the world, Imagining the Global reflects on what contemporary global culture can teach us about transnational cultural dynamics in the 21st century. A focused multisited cultural analysis that reflects on the symbiotic relationship between the local, the national, and the global, it also explores how individuals’ consumption of global media shapes their imagination of both faraway places and their own local lives. Chosen for their continuing influence, historical relationships, and different geopolitical positions, the case sites of France, Japan, and the United States provide opportunities to move beyond common dichotomies between East and West, or United States and “the rest.” From a theoretical point of view, Imagining the Global endeavors to answer the question of how one locale can help us understand another locale. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources—several years of fieldwork; extensive participant observation; more than 80 formal interviews with some 160 media consumers (and occasionally producers) in France, Japan, and the United States; and analyses of media in different languages—author Fabienne Darling-Wolf considers how global culture intersects with other significant identity factors, including gender, race, class, and geography. Imagining the Global investigates who gets to participate in and who gets excluded from global media representation, as well as how and why the distinction matters.