This origin story of stand-up comedy in the United States begins with eighteenth-century Black signifyin’ performances by working-class immigrants and African Americans in northern marketplaces and those enslaved on southern plantations. These earliest comedic performance traditions spawned blackface minstrelsy, the first distinctly American form of comedy. The lineage of white performers appropriating Black performance tropes as well as Black and Asian performers being forced to perform in ways that satisfied racist white imaginings of the Other connects comedic entertainment to the racial caste system of the Antebellum era to contemporary protests – on stage and off – against racial injustice today. From blackface minstrelsy to vaudeville, to comedians hustling in the Borscht Belt and Chitlin Circuit and in dive bars on the east and west coasts, to the 1980s comedy boom and arena comedy today, this chapter traces the history of stand-up comedy from the early Republic to the twenty-first century.

Although there may be little evidence that Schoenberg regularly frequented Vienna’s mythic coffeehouses, this is perhaps understandable given his famous work ethic. This chapter reveals the centrality of café life to his circle of radical modernists, offering evidence of some surprising characteristics of the composer’s early professional and personal life, as well as the distinctive social differences between certain Vienna cafés and their habitués.

In the first decade of independence, the weekly magazine Bichitra (est. 1972) presented itself as the arbiter of a new Bangladesh. Benedict Anderson's ‘imagined community’ through print publication was refracted through the geographic particularism of Bangladesh, which underwent three transformations in the twentieth century – the 1905 partition of Bengal province (reversed in 1911); the 1947 partition of British India, which renamed East Bengal as East Pakistan; and, finally, the 1971 Liberation War that birthed Bangladesh. In the British Indian era, Saogat (est. 1918) had promoted a ‘Bengali Muslim’ voice, and in the lead-up to partition, the feminist magazine Begum (est. 1946) was for a ‘new woman for the new nation’ in East Bengal's new identity as East Pakistan. With the end of the Pakistan era, Bichitra was founded in 1972 by the Bangladesh government. Over the next three decades, the magazine shaped popular attitudes towards governance, gender, culture, diversity, sexuality and more.

On 28 September 1973, Bichitra published a haunting cover with a photograph by Shamsul Islam – three passengers, two women and a young boy, descending airplane stairs. The cover headline was ‘Ora Fire Elo’ (They Have Returned), while the inside story carried a second headline of ‘Ora Ashche’ (They Are Coming). In its second year of publication, Bichitra's mandate for a new imagined community of Bangladesh had belatedly extended to the Bengalis who had been stranded in Pakistan at the end of the 1971 war – the ‘Prisoners of Pakistan’ that Ilyas Ahmad Chattha has written about in this book, breaking five decades of uneasy silence and discomfort.

This chapter explores the governance mechanisms necessary for transitioning to a circular economy in liveable cities, using the city of Vienna as a case study. The chapter presents the concept of the ‘butterfly potential’, drawing parallels between the transformation of a city and the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. It emphasises the importance of circular economy principles – reducing waste, reusing materials, and regenerating natural systems – as key components of creating a sustainable, resilient city. Vienna’s approach, highlighted through its Smart City Climate Strategy and the DoTank Circular City Vienna 2020–2030 programme, illustrates how a city can lead the way in circular innovation. The chapter discusses the governance strategies employed by Vienna, focusing on cross-sectoral collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and the integration of circular principles into urban development policies. Additionally, the chapter introduces the Quadruple Helix model, emphasising the need for academia, industry, government, and civil society to work together in fostering circular city systems. By showcasing the transformative potential of circular governance frameworks, the chapter argues that cities like Vienna can serve as models for achieving urban resilience and sustainability through innovative governance, policy coherence, and active public participation, ultimately enabling cities to thrive within planetary boundaries.

This concise and interpretative book digs under the surface events of the Wars of the Roses to explore the underlying dynamics of a typical civil war. Beginning with a demonstration of why the well-worn storylines of the Wars are so misleading, it moves on to expose the pressure for reform that animated the conflict and helped to shape its outcomes. It continues by looking at the logics of division and the reasons why the Wars, once started, were so hard to resolve. It concludes by returning to debates long discussed by historians: the role of the economy in the conflict, and the interaction between English affairs and the politics of the British Isles and the near continent. Throughout, a central concern is to emphasise the fluidity and uncertainty of these civil wars: once authority broke down, anything could happen.

Winifred Cooper’s birth as a middle-class expatriate followed parental decisions to embark on challenging mobile employment and adventure. However, the chapter shows how expatriate opportunities worked for young girls in unique, gendered ways. The expatriate social mobility argument here takes a more complex turn, charting a growing girl’s ability to exploit frequent travel and greater freedoms of privileged life abroad. Her education and social life shifted frequently between sites in Georgia, London and Tehran, and later Ahwaz, fostering a degree of maturity and linguistic ability. Her engagement with local politics and multicultural friends in Georgia, her work as a telegraphist, her popularity as a multilingual and fashionable ‘young lady’ at the Persian court and among Tehran expatriates, and management of successive hopeful suitors, underline the potential of expatriation to enable women’s independence and cosmopolitanism. Told mostly through a diary and letters, it ends with a compelling account of Winifred and Edgar’s early love story and a fashionable expatriate wedding in Tehran. It moves from two unknown English men, prospering in overseas service, to a complex dynamic of how expatriate identity could be exploited by the next generation and contribute to an unconventional, cosmopolitan marriage.

From a phenomenological point of view, ELDVs, DRSEs, and NDEs show many similarities. The terms ELDVs, DRSEs, and NDEs have been used interchangeably in a large spectrum of contexts involving medicine, psychology, neurosciences, philosophy, theology, metaphysics, and paranormal and mystical accounts.

Identifying the populations and regions most vulnerable to climate change, this chapter features voices including Nakeeyat Dramani Sam from Ghana, highlighting the disproportionate impacts on young people and marginalised groups. Understanding ‘vulnerability’ is the key to addressing climate change. Jevanic Henry from Saint Lucia discusses rising sea levels and frequent hurricanes threatening coastal communities. The chapter emphasises the need for targeted adaptation strategies and global support to build resilience among low-income countries, small island developing states (SIDS), and Indigenous Peoples, and local communities (IPLCs). Isaac Nemuta, a Maasai pastoralist from Kenya, shares how prolonged droughts are decimating livestock. The chapter discusses the unique challenges faced by vulnerable groups, including limited resources, inadequate infrastructure, and political marginalisation. Calls for increased international aid, robust policy measures, and tailored climate resilience plans are emphasised, with examples like the Climate Prosperity Plans from Bangladesh and the Philippines. Empowering local communities through education, sustainable practices, and inclusive governance is crucial.

When the separation was announced, Patna was named as the capital of Bihar and Orissa (see Map 5.1). The new province was hailed by Biharis as a deliverance from obscurity into a “flourishing new life.” While the Bengali papers complained, The Beharee jubilantly began to call Calcutta a “Provincial town” in the “mofassil.” One advertisement exulted, “Who Says Behar is Backward? Perfumes are made in Behar.” To many, Patna was the obvious choice for a capital. For others, though, it was not too late to make a last-minute pitch on behalf of another city. The separation offered many opportunities to maneuver for power and to try to rearrange spatial politics within the new province.

Skirmishes also broke out over the details of the province's boundaries. Linguistic, historical, and ethnographic claims were made to demonstrate the natural belonging of this or that territory to one province or the other. Bihari and Bengali papers warred over the fate of various districts. The interests and opinions of the adivasi (aboriginal) inhabitants of these territories were never brought up, except when, for example, the Amrita Bazar Patrika expressed its dismay at the inclusion of Manbhum in Chota Nagpur, when “the latter is inhabited mainly by half-savage Sonthals, while a large portion of Manbhum is the abode of civilized Bengali-speaking people.”

Expatriate success stories did not always run smoothly; this chapter shows how Edgar Wilson’s class transformation was beset by anxiety around real and imagined tensions with elite management figures in London and Persia. It also charts a delayed pre-war honeymoon trip to England through Russia. But work stresses on Wilson’s career extended to his marriage, forcing long periods of reluctant separation and hazardous risks to the family in southern Persia during World War One. It elucidates a key stage in the progression of the Wilsons’ social mobility under expatriate conditions, charting events impacting Middle East shipping during the war and after, told through Edgar and Winfred’s correspondence and diaries, including sexually explicit love letters, and a perilous family trek on mules across Persian mountains. For Winifred, the experience of childbirth in Tehran early in the marriage and in England, her experience of stepmothering without Edgar, marked a steep learning curve, influencing the marriage for years ahead. Spousal correspondence is a highlight of this chapter, with intimate insights into marriage and its cosmopolitan growth under the influence of expatriation and marital sexuality.

Raymond Moody’s book Life after Life (1975, latest version 2015) introduced the term “near-death experience.” into modern and widely circulated English-language literature.Right from the beginning, the term NDE was closely linked to the belief in an afterlife. The academic career of Moody and the perception of Moody’s book in the USA show that reported near-death experiences may have expressed personal truth, but without persuasive attempts to explain NDEs scientifically.