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Boxing expert and American culture critic Gerald Early, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and director of the African and African American Studies department, edits this ultimate guide to one of the world’s most interesting and controversial sports. The Companion offers more than two dozen engaging and informative essays about the social impact and historical importance of the sport of boxing. While the book covers luminaries of the sport such as Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and more, it also tells the lesser known stories of boxing. There are essays on women in boxing, boxing and literature, boxing in Hollywood films, and boxing and opera. You can also get a comprehensive chronology of the sport, listing all of the important events and personalities.

Long before corn was king, the women of Cahokia’s mysterious Mississippian mound-building culture were using their knowledge of domesticated and wild food crops to feed the thousands of Native Americans who flocked to what was then North America’s largest city, suggests a new book by a paleoethnobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Feeding Cahokia” sets the record straight on America’s first farmers while offering a roadmap for rediscovering the highly nutritious native foods they once cultivated, including a North American cousin of quinoa.

Why Hebrew, here and now? What is its value for contemporary Americans? In “What We Talk about When We Talk about Hebrew (and What It Means to Americans)” scholars, writers, and translators tackle a series of urgent questions that arise from the changing status of Hebrew in the United States. To what extent is that […]

The first authoritative collection of drawings by legendary modern architect Lina Bo Bardi Lina Bo Bardi (1914–92) was one of the most prolific and visionary architects of the twentieth century. Raised in Italy under Mussolini’s Fascist regime and emigrating to Brazil after World War II, she championed the power of architecture and design to embrace […]

The work-family conflict that mothers experience today is a national crisis. Women struggle to balance breadwinning with the bulk of parenting, and stress is constant. Social policies don’t help. Of all Western industrialized countries, the United States ranks dead last for supportive work-family policies: No federal paid parental leave. The highest gender wage gap. No […]

Written by area educators, this book is a series of stories on their efforts to modernize education in the St. Louis region. The book’s lead chapter, “Experiencing Real Science,” reveals how the innovative mySci curriculum, developed by the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University in St. Louis,  is transforming science education in local schools.

Food studies, once trendy, has settled into the public arena. In the academy, scholarship on food and literary culture constitutes a growing river within literary and cultural studies, but writing on African American food and dining remains a tributary. Recipes for Respect bridges this gap, illuminating the role of foodways in African American culture as […]

Diva Nation explores the constructed nature of female iconicity in Japan. From ancient goddesses and queens to modern singers and writers, this edited volume critically reconsiders the female icon, tracing how she has been offered up for emulation, debate or censure. The research in this book culminates from curiosity over the insistent presence of Japanese […]

West of downtown St. Louis sits an 1851 town house that bears no obvious relationship to the monumental architecture, trendy condominiums, and sports stadia of its surroundings. Originally the residence of a fur-trade tycoon and now the Campbell House Museum, the house has been subject to energetic preservation and heritage work for some 130 years. […]

Presented from both a research and a practice perspective while discussing the best available research, this book provides the basis for planning and implementing physical activity programs that work and can build healthier communities. This hands-on text incorporates learning objectives, real-world examples, case studies, and bulleted lists whenever possible so that the content can be […]