In this companion volume to Deity and Domination, David Nicholls broadens his examination of the relationship between religion and politics. Focusing on the images and concepts of God and the state predominant in eighteenth-century discourse, he shows how these were interrelated and reflect the language of the wider cultural contexts.
Nicholls argues that the way a community pictures God will inevitably reflect (and also affect) its general understanding of authority, whether it be in state, in family or in other social institutions. Much language about God, for example, has a...

From the end of the nineteenth century a national musical consciousness gradually emerged in the United States as composers began to turn away from the European conventions on which their music had been modeled. It was in this period of change that experimentalism was born and America subsequently became, as it still is, a major source of new musical ideas for European musicians. David Nicholls considers the most influential figures in the development of American experimentalism, including Charles Ives, Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford, Henry Cowell and the young John Cage. He analyzes the music...

The Cambridge History of American Music is the first study of music in the United States to be written by a team of scholars. The volume begins with a survey of the music of Native Americans and then explores the historical and cultural events of musical life for the period up to 1900. Other contributors then examine the growth of popular music, including film and stage music, jazz, rock, and immigrant, folk, and regional music. The volume also includes chapters on twentieth-century art music, including the experimental, serial, and tonal traditions.

Since its original publication in 1930, Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources has become recognized as one of the few seminal technical studies to be written by a twentieth-century composer. In 1971, Virgil Thomson hailed it as "a classic." For this new edition, David Nicholls has provided an explanatory essay and annotations to Cowell's text. The essay traces the sources for the book and attempts to place Cowell's theories in the broader context of musical modernism.

Since its original publication in 1930, Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources has become recognized as one of the few seminal technical studies to be written by a twentieth-century composer. In 1971, Virgil Thomson hailed it as "a classic." For this new edition, David Nicholls has provided an explanatory essay and annotations to Cowell's text. The essay traces the sources for the book and attempts to place Cowell's theories in the broader context of musical modernism.

"Rich in subject matter and eminently readable, this book is also a fine work of scholarship. The more than 1,200 footnotes are models of clarity and relevance; the bibliography and index seem scrupulously accurate. . . While each generation must rewrite its own history, as Nicholls remarks, no book on Haiti for a long time to come will properly be able to ignore the analysis he here provides." --Ethnic and Racial Studies "Step by step, Nicholls] guides us through the various historical time periods of Haitian political and national development, illuminating each one of them by a cogent and...