By Adrià Cots Fernández & Marie Nougier

In recent years, the historical isolation between the United Nations (UN) drug policy and human rights bodies has eroded significantly, and with accelerating speed. The human rights consequences of drug policies have become an unavoidable – if fractious – topic in global drug policy debates, and human rights bodies routinely monitor the impacts of drug responses. The growing convergence between the UN human rights and drug policy regimes is the result of 15 years of progress across the whole UN environment, with contributions from Geneva, Vienna, and New York-based bodies reinforcing and encouraging one another. Civil society has been a constant and necessary presence, broadening the horizon of what is possible, transmitting key information across the UN system, and consistently advocating for change. Despite some reluctance to engage in drug-related discussions up until the 2010s, the Geneva-based human rights system has become gradually more influential in pushing for this alignment. The first call for convergence between the two regimes came from Geneva, in 2008. Since then, a large number of UN human rights bodies have regarded drug policies to be under their mandate, including the Human Rights Council, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), special mandate procedures, and human rights treaty bodies.

London: International Drug Policy Consortium IDPC, 2022. 33p.

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By Chadwick Hansen

FROM THE PREFACE: “…To begin with, witchcraft actually did exist and was widely practiced in seventeenth-century New England, as it was in Europe at that time (and still is, for that matter, among the unlearned majority of mankind). It worked then as it works now in witchcraft societies like those of the West Indies, through psychogenic rather than occult means, commonly pro- ducing hysterical symptoms as a result of the victim's fear, and sometimes, when fear was succeeded by a profound sense of hopelessness, even producing death. The behavior of the afflicted persons was not fraudulent but pathological. They were hysterics, and in the clinical rather than the popular sense of that term. These people were not merely overexcited; they were mentally ill. Furthermore, they were ill long before any clergyman got to them. The general populace did reach that state of public excitement inaccurately called "mass hysteria," but this was due to the popular fear of witchcraft rather than to the preachings of the clergy…”

NY. Signet. 1969. 323p.

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By William Manchester

FROM THE FOREWORD: “On February 5, 1964, Mrs John F. Kennedy suggested that I write an account of the tragic and historic events in Texas and Washington ten weeks earlier. That is the first breath. The second, which must quickly follow, is that neither Mrs Kennedy nor anyone else is in any way answerable for my subsequent research or this narrative based upon it. My relationships with all the principal figures were entirely professional. I received no financial assistance from the Kennedy family. I was on no government payroll. No one tried to lead me, and I believe every reader, including those who were closest to the late President, will find much here that is new and some, perhaps, that is disturbing. That is my reponsibility. Mrs Kennedy asked me but one question. Before our first taping session she said, 'Are you just going to put down all the facts, who ate what for breakfast and all that, or are you going to put yourself in the book, too?' I replied that I didn't see how I could very well keep myself out of it. 'Good, she said emphatically. And so I am here, weighing evidence and forming judgments. At times you may find my presence exasperating. You may decide in the end that I have been a poor judge. But you may not conclude that I have served as anyone's amanuensis. If you doubt me you may as well stop at the end of this paragraph….”

London. Michael Joseph Ltd. 1967. 776p.

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By William Miller

FROM THE JACKET: “William Miller's A NEW HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES illuminates the American past and future more brilliantly than any book of this generation. He begins with the world before Columbus, when Christendom had a bare foothold in the known world and Islam dominated. H e closes with the present, with the West once again on the defensive, threatened by an alien faith. Between the fifteenth and the middle of the twentieth century, America was discovered and settled, the balance ofpower shifted to the western hemisphere, and the new challenge from the East arose. Seldom in the life of man had such epochal events occurred, and seldom had there been such material and spiritual progress. One of the towering triumphs of this period of world history was the American Revolution. It is difficult to recall any books that develop the background of our Revolution with the depth and comprehensiveness of Mr. Miller's work…”

NY. George Braziller, Inc. 1958. 483p.

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By James Wilson

FROM THE COVER: “"The Earth Shall Weep is a very different history of Native America. James Wilson has written a fresh and lively account of Native American relations with Europeans and settlers. By placing Native American ideas of the world at the forefront and using native testimony and writings as well as conventional history, Wilson avoids the sense of tragic victimhood and academic ponderousness that so much of the writing on the subject is mired in. Taking us through the very diverse experiences ofNative Americans in New England, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Southwest, the Great Plains, and the Far West, the book is a wonderfully sympathetic introduction to native predicaments from the first encounters to the casinos." -Colin Samson, director of Native American Studies, University ofEssex

NY. Grove Press. 1998. 489p.

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By Walter R. Borneman

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “England and France had been at war since--well, it seemed like forever. For more than three centuries, Europe had known far more years of warfare than of peace. But no matter what the con- flict, or how causes and alliances changed, one pairing remained constant: England and France were always on opposite sides just as surely as they sat on opposite sides of the English Channel. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, this cross-Channel feud began to take on major global dimensions, as it became evident that far more than the mastery of Europe was at stake. The colonies that half a dozen nations had established in the New World were flourishing. By 1733, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic coast. But this territory was minuscule compared with French outposts and settlements that embraced half a continent--from the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, westward across the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico…”

NY. Harper. 2006. 407p.

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By Bruce Lancaster and J. H. Plumb

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “We had our American revolution nearly two centuries ago, and the years have done something to it. The legends remain, and the statues and the grassy earthworks and the great body of tradition, but a good deal of the reality has been filtered out. When we look back we see Washington crossing the Delaware on a cold winter night, or kneeling in prayer in the snow of Valley Forge; we see the Minuteman, or the lanky Virginia rifleman pictur- esquein fringed buckskin; but somehow it all seems to be out of a pageant, and neither Washington nor the men who followed him quite come alive for us. This is a pity, because the central reality in this great act that brought a nation to its birth was the living, aspiring, struggling people who were immediately involved in it. Aromantic haze has settled down over the whole affair….”

NY. Dell. 1958. 384p.

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By Kenneth C. Davis

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “Back in the early 1960s, when I was growing up, there was a silly pop song called What Did Washington Say When He Crossed the Delaware? Sung to a tarantella beat, the answer was something like "Martha, Martha, there'll be no pizza tonight." Of course, these lyrics were absurd; everybody knew Washington only ate cherry pie. On that December night in 1776, George may have told himself that if this raid on an enemy camp in Trenton, New Jersey, didn't work, he might be ordering a last meal before the British strung him up. But as the general rallied his ragged, barefoot troops across the icy Delaware, one of his actual com- ments was far more amusing than those lyrics. Stepping into his boat, Washington--the plainspoken frontiersman, not the marbleized demigod--nudged 280-pound General Henry "Ox" Knox with the tip of his boot and said, "Shift that fat ass, Harry. But slowly, or you'll swamp the damned boat.”

According to A. J. Langguth's fascinating history of the Revolution, Patriots, that is how Knox himself reported the story after the war. I certainly never heard that version of the crossing when I was in school. And that's too bad….”

NY. Avon. 1995. 489p.

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By Howard Zinn

from chapter 1: “ Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

They . . . brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bels. They willingly traded everything they owned. . . . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out ofignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. ... They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want…”

NY. Harper Collins. 1999. 732p.

By Nancy Shields Kollmann

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Russians from all ranks of society were bound together by a culture of honor. Here one of the foremost scholars of early modern Russia explores the intricate and highly stylized codes that made up this culture. Nancy Shields Kollmann describes how these codes were manipulated to construct identity and enforce social norms—and also to defend against insults, to pursue vendettas, and to unsettle communities. She offers evidence for a new view of the relationship of state and society in the Russian empire, and her richly comparative approach enhances knowledge of statebuilding in premodern Europe. By presenting Muscovite state and society in the context of medieval and early modern Europe, she exposes similarities that blur long-standing distinctions between Russian and European history.

Through the prism of honor, Kollmann examines the interaction of the Russian state and its people in regulating social relations and defining an individual's rank. She finds vital information in a collection of transcripts of legal suits brought by elites and peasants alike to avenge insult to honor. The cases make clear the conservative role honor played in society as well as the ability of men and women to employ this body of ideas to address their relations with one another and with the state. Kollmann demonstrates that the grand princes—and later the tsars—tolerated a surprising degree of local autonomy throughout their rapidly expanding realm. Her work marks a stark contrast with traditional Russian historiography, which exaggerates the power of the state and downplays the volition of society.

Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 1999. 311p.

Edited by: Kate Ekama , Lisa Hellman and Matthias van Rossum

The study of slavery and coerced labour is increasingly conducted from a global perspective, and yet a dual Eurocentric bias remains: slavery primarily brings to mind the images of Atlantic chattel slavery, and most studies continue to be based – either outright or implicitly – on a model of northern European wage labour. This book constitutes an attempt to re-centre that story to Asia. With studies spanning the western Indian Ocean and the steppes of Central Asia to the islands of South East Asia and Japan, and ranging from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, this book tracks coercion in diverse forms, tracing both similarities and differences – as well as connections – between systems of coercion, from early sales regulations to post-abolition labour contracts. Deep empirical case studies, as well as comparisons between the chapters, all show that while coercion was entrenched in a number of societies, it was so in different and shifting ways. This book thus not only shows the history of slavery and coercion in Asia as a connected story, but also lays the groundwork for global studies of a phenomenon as varying, manifold and contested as coercion.

Bonn: De Gruyter, 2022. 228p.

Edited by Erika Serfontein, Charl C. Wolhuter and Shantha Naidoo

The objective of this book is to highlight the need and value of imbuing the dynamic intersections between education, human rights and diversity with perspectives from the Global South. The chapters approach key intellectual conundrums of the day from a Global South perspective to reflect a credible scholarly footprint in Africa and in the SADC region. This is deemed timely considering that the field is deeply embedded in western, Eurocentric and overall Global North dominance. This book will provide a Southern perspective on education and human rights in diversity by unpacking each of the following key areas in the intersection between education, human rights and diversity from a Southern perspective: comparative international perspectives, citizenship education, human rights literacies, human rights education pedagogy, learner discipline in schools, aggression and bullying in schools, addressing human trafficking by means of human rights education, social justice, and the decolonisation of human rights and human rights education.

Cape Town, South Africa: AOSIS Books, 2022. 318p.

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Edited by Sean Wilentz

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “No president of the United Stales-and probably no figure in all of American history-is as widely revered as Abraham Lincoln. For several decades, scholars and the general public alike have uniformly ranked Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt as the three greatest presidents, and Lincoln almost always heads the list. The number of biographies and commentaries written in the United States about Lincoln is exceeded only by those written about Jesus Christ. As emancipator, commander-in-chief, orator, and martyr, Lincoln-or the image of Lincoln- stands for the nation's highest values. Yet as historians know, this is not the whole story. Before he was murdered, Lincoln was the butt of ridicule and worse from all across the political spectrum-in the North as well as the South. Since then, scholars have continually disagreed, sometimes sharply, about whether Lincoln truly earned the accolades he has received--and, if he did, what has made him so deserving.

NY. Palgrave. 2009. 266p.

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By Joseph J. Ellis

FROM THE PREFACE: “No Event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution. On the inevitability side, it is true there were voices back then urging prospective patriots to regard American independence as an early version of manifest destiny. Tom Paine, for example, claimed that it was simply a matter of common sense that an island couldnot rule a continent. And Thomas Jefferson's lyrical rendering of the reasons for the entire revolutionaryenterprise emphasized the self-evident character of the principles at stake. Several other prominent American revolutionaries also talked as if they were actors in a historical drama whose script had already been written by the gods. In his old age, John Adams recalled his youthful intimations of the providential forces at work….”

NY. Vintage. 2002. 307p.

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By Joseph J. Ellis

FROM THE PREFACE: “My own relationship with George Washington began early. I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, and attended St. Mary's grade school, about eight miles down Mount Vernon Boulevard from the estate where the great man once walked the earth. Because my school was so prox- imate to Mount Vernon, my teachers-all nuns--forced us to make frequent pilgrimages to the historic site where the spirit of America's greatest secular saint resided. Back then the tour was less historically informed than it is now. I don't recall slavery being mentioned at all. I do recall being told that the story of Washington's wooden teeth was a myth--my first encounter with the notion that you could not always trust what you read in history books. I remember this clearly because the high point of the tour was Washington's dentures, which were encased in glass and looked to me like a really gross instrument of torture made of metal and bone. The only other thing I remember is the majestic view of the Potomac from the piazza on the east side of the mansion….”

NY. Vintage. 2005. 354p.

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By Joseph J. Ellis

FROM THE PREFACE: “ The idea for this book first came to me while listening to twenty-eight middle school boys recite the Gettysburg Address from memory in front of their classmates and proud parents. My son Scott was teaching science at the Greenwood School in Putney, Vermont, and had invited me to judge the annual oratorical contest. Idon't remember exactly when it happened, but at some point during the strenuous if repetitious effort to get Lincoln's words right, it dawned on me that the first clause in the first sentence of Lincoln's famous speech was historically incorrect. Lincoln began as follows: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this Continent a new Nation." No, not really. In 1776 thirteen American colonies declared themselves independent states that came together temporarily to win the war, then would go their separate ways…”

NY. Vintage. 2016. 305p.

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By John Winthrop

FROM THE PREFACE: “The Puritans of New England are not in good repute today. Authors and critics who aspire to any degree of sophistication take care to repudiate them. Liberals and conservatives alike find it advantageous to label the meas- ures they oppose as Puritan. Whatever is wrong with the American mind is attributed to its Puritan ancestry, and anything that escapes these assaults is smothered under a homespun mantle of quaintness by lovers of the antique. Seventeenth-century Massachusetts has thus become in retrospect a preposterous land of witches and witch hunters, of kill-joys in tall-crowned hats, whose main occu- pation was to prevent each other from having any fun and whose sole virtue lay in their furniture.”

NY. Little, Brown and Company .1958.233p.

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By Joseph E. Persico

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “ThIs sook was writen in quest of an answer. What was it chat led Americans-dairy farmers from Wisconsin and dirt farmers from Georgia, New York urchins and Richmond patricians, shop- keepers and shoemakers--to gather at a small town in Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 and slaughter each other in fearful numbers? Do the historic roots of the Civil War provide a satisfying answer as to what motivated the ordinary soldier at Gettysburg, or on the other battlefields of that conflict? Was it slavery? Abolition? States' rights? The Union? These reasons may have sufficed for politicians and the power classes, both North and South. Perhaps for the profes- sional soldier, once he determined his loyalty to state or nation, no further motive was necessary. Battle was his craft. But what of more than three million citizen-soldiers, the over- whelming number of whom voluntarily answered the call to arms? What would induce young men today, from, say, New Jersey and California, to battle each other to such bloody effect? There is a lingering unbelievability about this American fratricide…”

NY. Da Capo Press. 1988. 284p.

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By Murray Morgan

FROM THE FOREWORD: “My first memories of childhood are of vacations spent on the Olympic Peninsula. I remember standing knee-deep in the icy water of theLilliwaup. The salmon were running,and the great fish bumped my legs as they charged at the falls. There were Indians, real Indians, with dip nets and spears, and an Indian woman, brown as a teddy bear, speared a salmon and handed it to me, and I wrestled it ashore. I remember to a beach resort on a lagoon somewhere along the canal. They were logging the east shore in those days, and there was a show on the bank across from the re sort. The logs were dragged to a flume, which shot them over the cliff and into the canal. We would sit for hours watching the great brown logs appear on the flume, leap into space, and disappear in a white splash that had rainbows in it if the sun was right; then bob up, whale-big, as the thundering crash rolled across the water. You couldn't have planned it better for kids. So this is a love story. I have been in love with the Olympics for as long as I can remember…”

Seattle. University of Washington Press. 1955. 284p.

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By David McCullough

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “Half a century ago this year, Simon & Schuster published my first effort as an author, a book that, I am proud to say, has never gone out of print and that Simon & Schuster, still my publisher, has honored with this anniversary edition. When I think of the circumstances by which the book came to be so long ago, I cannot help but feel more than ever a sense of genuine amazement. The year was 1961. Aset of old photographs lay spread out on a large table before me in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, and I stopped to look. They were, I was told, taken by a photographer who managed to climb over the mountains of western Pennsylvania down into what remained of Johnstown within a day or so after the terrible flood of 1889 hit that city…”

NY. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. 1968. 300p.