Mexico City’s colorful panaderías (bakeries) have long been vital neighborhood institutions. They were also crucial sites where labor, subsistence, and politics collided. From the 1880s well into the twentieth century, Basque immigrants dominated the bread trade, to the detriment of small Mexican bakers. By taking us inside the panadería, into the heart of bread strikes, and through government halls, Robert Weis reveals why authorities and organized workers supported the so-called Spanish monopoly in ways that countered the promises of law and ideology. He tells the gritty story of how class struggle and the politics of food shaped the state and the market. More than a book about bread, Bakers and Basques places food and labor at the center of the upheavals in Mexican history from independence to the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution.

Widely regarded as the foremost choreographer of contemporary ballet, George Balanchine was, and continues to be, an institution and major inspiration in the world of dance.

Balanchine the Teacher is a technical explanation of the stylistic approaches that he taught in New York City between 1940 and 1960, as recorded by two prominent dancers who studied with him at that time. This phenomenal resource replicates moments in the studio with the influential teacher, vividly and meticulously describing his instructions and corrections for twenty-four classes.

These lessons not only introduce Balanchine’s methods for executing steps but also discuss the organization and development of his classes, shedding light on the aesthetics of his unique and celebrated style of movement. This is an indispensable ballet resource and a must-read for dancers, musicians, researchers, and balletomanes.

Balkan Anschluss tackles the thorny issue of the disappearance of Montenegro as a sovereign state in the course of and as a result of the First World War, a problem with clear contemporary relevance. In particular, Pavlovic investigates the ambiguous and often troubled relationship between two "Serb states," Montenegro and Serbia.

With the transfer of German units to the western front in the spring of 1918, the position of the Central Powers on the Macedonian front worsened. Materiel became scarce and morale among the Bulgarian forces deteriorated. The Entente Command perceived in Macedonia an excellent opportunity to apply additional pressure to the Germans, who were already retreating on the western front. In September, Entente forces undertook an offensive directed primarily at Bulgarian defenses at Dobro Pole. Balkan Breakthrough tells the story of that battle and its consequences. Dobro Pole was the catalyst for the collapse of the Central Powers and the Entente victory in southeastern Europe -- a defeat that helped persuade the German military leadership that the war was lost. While decisive in ending World War I in the region, the battle did not resolve the underlying national issues there.

Compiled in 1582, Ballads of the Lords of New Spain is one of the two principal sources of Nahuatl song, as well as a poetical window into the mindset of the Aztec people some sixty years after the conquest of Mexico. Presented as a cancionero, or anthology, in the mode of New Spain, the ballads show a reordering—but not an abandonment—of classic Aztec values. In the careful reading of John Bierhorst, the ballads reveal in no uncertain terms the pre-conquest Aztec belief in the warrior’s paradise and in the virtue of sacrifice. This volume contains an exact transcription of the thirty-six Nahuatl song texts, accompanied by authoritative English translations. Bierhorst includes all the numerals (which give interpretive clues) in the Nahuatl texts and also differentiates the text from scribal glosses. His translations are thoroughly annotated to help readers understand the imagery and allusions in the texts. The volume also includes a helpful introduction and a larger essay, “On the Translation of Aztec Poetry,” that discusses many relevant historical and literary issues. In Bierhorst’s expert translation and interpretation, Ballads of the Lords of New Spain emerges as a song of resistance by a conquered people and the recollection of a glorious past.

There are many different methods for teaching classical ballet--Bournonville, Vaganova, Cecchetti, and Royal Academy of Dancing being the most widely known. All of these methods are effective tools for presenting the technique and art of ballet. Knowing how to use these tools successfully requires more than being a devotee of the technique; it also requires the mastering of various skills.

In Ballet Pedagogy, Rory Foster aims to share his extensive knowledge of how to teach rather than focus exclusively on what to teach. He argues that it is not enough for a ballet teacher to be well trained in technique, but that he or she must also know how to utilize pedagogical skills.

Designed as both a manual for beginning teachers as well as a reference for experienced instructors, Ballet Pedagogy is appropriate for either followers of a single methodology or for those who have adopted a more eclectic approach to technique. Foster believes that effective teaching skills--proper demonstration, counting, correcting, musicality, anatomical approach, etc.--do not come automatically just because one has trained as a dancer.

In this book, Foster--an expert in multiple ballet methods--covers all areas involving dance, from history to injury prevention, from anatomy and kinesiology to vocabulary and music. He even offers pragmatic advice on the business of starting a dance school. The result is an essential addition to every dance teacher's library.

In 1847, in the third year of Ireland's Great Famine and the thirteenth year of their rent strike against the Crown, hundreds of tenant farmers in Ballykilcline, County Roscommon, were evicted by the Queen's agents and shipped to New York. Mary Lee Dunn tells their story in this meticulously researched book. Using numerous Irish and U.S. sources and with descendants' help, she traces dozens of the evictees to Rutland, Vermont, as railroads and marble quarries transformed the local economy. She follows the immigrants up to 1870 and learns not only what happened to them but also what light American experience and records cast on their Irish “rebellion.” Dunn begins with Ireland's pre-Famine social and political landscape as context for the Ballykilcline strike. The tenants had rented earlier from the Mahons of Strokestown, whose former property now houses Ireland's Famine Museum. In 1847, landlord Denis Mahon evicted and sent nearly a thousand tenants to Quebec, where half died before or just after reaching the Grosse Ile quarantine station. Mahon was gunned down months later. His murder provoked an international controversy involving the Vatican. An early suspect in the case was a man from Ballykilcline. In the United States, many of the immigrants resettled in clusters in several locations, including Vermont, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, and New York. In Vermont they found jobs in the marble quarries, but some of them lost their homes again in quarry labor actions after 1859. Others prospered in their new lives. A number of Ballykilcline families who stopped in Rutland later moved west; one had a son kidnapped by Indians in Minnesota. Readers who have Irish Famine roots will gain a sense of their own “back story” from this account of Ireland and the native Irish, and scholars in the field of immigration studies will find it particularly useful.