Owning the Masters provides the first in-depth history of sound recording copyright. It is this form of intellectual property that underpins the workings of the recording industry. Rather than being focused on the manufacture of goods, this industry is centred on the creation, exploitation and protection of rights. The development and control of these rights has not been straightforward. This book explores the lobbying activities of record companies: the principal creators, owners and defenders of sound recording copyright. It addresses the counter-activity of recording artists, in particular those who have fought against the legislative and contractual practices of record companies to claim these master rights for themselves. In addition, this book looks at the activities of the listening public, large numbers of whom have been labelled 'pirates' for trespassing on these rights. The public has played its own part in shaping copyright legislation. This is an essential subject for an understanding of the economic, artistic and political value of recorded sound.

In this biography, Lee Morgan tells the story of Henry Thrale, a successful but flawed and troubled businessman and Member of Parliament who was at the center of the life of the most famous man of letters of the eighteenth century, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Thrale was also married to an exceptionally talented diarist and, perhaps, the most brilliant society leader of the period, Hester Salusbury Thrale, later Mrs. Gabriel Piozzi. In chronicling both the domestic life and the career of Thrale, Dr. Johnson's "Own Dear Master" also affords an interesting glimpse of eighteenth-century business, political, and social life of the age of Johnson as it was played out by some of the principal figures of the day.

From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and gone so far as to challenge the very premises of the system by creating institutions of democratic self-management aimed at controlling production without bosses. With specific examples drawn from every corner of the globe and every period of modern history, this pathbreaking volume comprehensively traces this often underappreciated historical tradition. Ripe with lessons drawn from historical and contemporary struggles for workers’ control, Ours to Master and to Own is essential reading for those struggling to create a new world from the ashes of the old. Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and edits WorkingUSA. Dario Azzellini is a writer, documentary director, and political scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz.

This volume is a reprint of Ralph Davis' seminal 1962 book, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The aim was to examine the economic reasons for the growth of British shipping before the arrival of modern technology, with a particular attention on overseas trade. The study can roughly be divided into two halves. The first is an in-depth exploration the roles within the shipping industry, from shipbuilders and shipowners to seamen and masters, from an economic perspective. The second is a chapter-by-chapter review of British overseas trade with Northern Europe, Southern Europe, the Mediterranean, East India, and America and the West Indies. The final two chapters diverge from the main sections, and focus on the interplay between government, war, and shipping. Davis attaches no extra significance to any particular nation or role, and offers an even-handed approach to maritime history still considered rare in the present day. Costs, profits, voyage estimates, ship-prices, and earnings all come under close and equal scrutiny as Davis seeks to understand the trades and developments in shipping during the period. To conclude, he places the study into a broader historical context and discovers that shipping played a measured but crucial role in the development of industrialisation and English economic development. This edition includes an introduction by the series editor; Davis' introduction and preface; seventeen analytical chapters; a concluding chapter; two appendices concerning shipping statistics and sources; and a comprehensive index.

Greek-owned shipping has been at the top of the world fleet for the last twenty years. Winner of the 1997 Runciman Award, this richly sourced study traces the development of the Greek tramp fleet from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Gelina Harlaftis argues that the success of Greek-owned shipping in recent years has been a result not of a number of entrepreneurs using flags of convenience in the 1940s, but of networks and organisational structures which date back to the nineteenth century. This study provides the most comprehensive history of development of modern Greek shipping ever published. It is illustrated with numerous maps and photographs, and includes extensive tables of primary data.

An Irish woman and her children sold into Caribbean slavery by Cromwell's regime. A TV series on the history of slavery. A historian working on the series finds the woman's story conveyed to him through the crucifying randomness of night. As the chronicling of her life becomes progressively more compelling to him, his reason seems held ransom by the dark. Against the background of the world history of slavery being presented, his marriage is in polite meltdown. He ignores the apparent parallels between his family life and the slave woman's till they accelerate to a collision point on the Island of Barbados. "We can all have irrational thoughts or behave irrationally at times. But so long as you know you're being irrational you are not yet insane". His colleague's advice works well in the daylight, he thought, but not when, at the fading of the light, his visitor's narrative again claims ownership of him.