Amy Stanley

A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman in Edo – now known as Tokyo – and a portrait of a great city on the brink of momentous changeThe daughter o

*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography**Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award**Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography*A "captivating" (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo--the city that would become Tokyo--and a portrait of a city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West.The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother's. But after three divorces--and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family's approval--she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak.With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry's fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history,

A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo―the city that would become Tokyo―and a portrait of a great

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2020, a vivid work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman in Edo - now known as Tokyo - and a portrait of a great city on the brink of momentous change'Compelling... Deeply absorbing' GuardianThe daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in 1804 in a village in Japan's snow country and was expected to lead a life much like her mother's. Instead - after three divorces and with a temperament much too strong-willed for her family's approval - she ran away to follow her own path in Edo, the city we now call Tokyo.Stranger in the Shogun's City is a rare, captivating portrait of one woman as she endeavours to recreate herself and her life, and provides a window into the drama and excitement of Japan at a pivotal moment in history. 'Marvellous... Stanley builds up a picture of Tsuneno's world, immersing us in an experience akin to time travel' TLS* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography 2020

In the era of slave emancipation no ideal of freedom had greater power than that of contract. The antislavery claim was that the negation of chattel status lay in the contracts of wage labor and marriage. Signifying self-ownership, volition, and reciprocal exchange among formally equal individuals, contract became the dominant metaphor for social relations and the very symbol of freedom. This 1999 book explores how a generation of American thinkers and reformers - abolitionists, former slaves, feminists, labor advocates, jurists, moralists, and social scientists - drew on contract to condemn the evils of chattel slavery as well as to measure the virtues of free society. Their arguments over the meaning of slavery and freedom were grounded in changing circumstances of labor and home life on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. At the heart of these arguments lay the problem of defining which realms of self and social existence could be rendered market commodities and which could not.

"At last, a study that goes far beyond the urban-centered discourse with which we are already familiar to place the trafficking of women in a solid historical and comparative context. Through a carefu

It's Personal is about the personal side of planting a new church and the impact that launching a new ministry has on church planters and their families. Brian and Amy Bloye---a husband and wife team