Encyclopedia of North American Wild Flowers

Beautifully illustrated with an extensive collection of superb photographs, this is a comprehensive guide to the most common and best-loved wild flowers found across North America. Easy to use, fun to read and very informative, this work is the perfect reference to North America's diversity of wild plants.

Everything but the Coffee casts a fresh eye on the world's most famous coffee company, looking beyond baristas, movie cameos, and Paul McCartney CDs to understand what Starbucks can tell us about America. Bryant Simon visited hundreds of Starbucks around the world to ask, Why did Starbucks take hold so quickly with consumers? What did it seem to provide over and above a decent cup of coffee? Why at the moment of Starbucks' profit-generating peak did the company lose its way, leaving observers baffled about how it might regain its customers and its cultural significance?

Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia

From the wicked witch of children's stories to Halloween and present-day Wiccan groups, witches and witchcraft still fascinate observers of Western culture. Witches were believed to affect climatological catastrophes, put spells on their neighbours and cavort with the devil. In early modern Europe and the Americas, witches and witch-hunting were an integral part of everyday life, touching major events such as the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, as well as politics, law, medicine and culture.

The origins of jazz were in the barrelhouses of New Orleans and the speakeasies of Chicago. By the nineteen fifties, a musical renaissance transformed jazz into a high art form. Paul Lopes shows how the rise of a jazz art world was a unique movement--a socially diverse community of musicians, critics, collectors, producers, and enthusiasts that struggled in various ways against cultural orthodoxy in America. This accessible, interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, cultural studies, American studies, African-American studies, and jazz studies.