Cultures of Darkness

New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. FIrst Paperback Edition. Octavo; 609 pp: index; 23 cm Near Fine(-); mild rubbing to corners, slight wrinkle to back corner warp; pages clean and crisp; binding tight. Paperback. ISBN: 9781583670279

Peasants, religious heretics, witches, pirates, runaway slaves, prostitutes and pornographers, frequenters of taverns and fraternal society lodge rooms, revolutionaries, blues and jazz musicians, beats, and contemporary youth gangs--those who defied authority, choosing to live outside the defining cultural dominions of early insurgent and, later, dominant capitalism are what Bryan D. Palmer calls people of the night. These lives of opposition, or otherness, were seen by the powerful as deviant, rejecting authority, and consequently threatening to the established order. Constructing a rich historical tapestry of example and experience spanning eight centuries, Palmer details lives of exclusion and challenge, as the "night travels" of the transgressors clash repeatedly with the powerful conventions of their times." --Publisher