Yesterday

First U.S. publication. In spare, elegant prose, this modern novella recounts a troubled young villager's flight to the comfortable anonymity of a city — a respite that's shattered by the appearance of his boyhood love, along with husband and child. "Many of Kristof's stark vignettes, reported in unflinching detail . . . have a cool, disturbing power — part documentary-like, part surreal — that is fierce and distinctive." — Kirkus Reviews.

First U.S. publication. In spare, elegant prose, this modern novella recounts a troubled young villager's flight to the comfortable anonymity of a city — a respite that's shattered by the appearance of his boyhood love, along with husband and child. "Many of Kristof's stark vignettes, reported in unflinching detail . . . have a cool, disturbing power — part documentary-like, part surreal — that is fierce and distinctive." — Kirkus Reviews.

A sweeping reassessment of our longing for the past, from the rise of “retro” to the rhetoric of Brexit and Trump. Nostalgia has a bad reputation. Its critics dismiss it as mere sentimentality or, worse, a dangerous yearning for an imagined age of purity. And nostalgia is routinely blamed for trivializing the past and obscuring its ugly sides. In Yesterday , Tobias Becker offers a more nuanced and sympathetic view. Surveying the successive waves of nostalgia that swept the United States and Europe after the Second World War, he shows that longing for the past is more complex and sometimes more beneficial than it seems. The current meaning of “nostalgia” is surprisingly recent: until the 1960s, it usually just meant homesickness, in keeping with the original Greek word. Linking popular culture to postwar politics in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, Becker explains the shift in meaning. He also responds to arguments against nostalgia, showing its critics as often shortsighted in their own ways as they defend an idea of progress no less naïve than the wistfulness they denounce. All too often, nostalgia itself is criticized, as if its merit did not depend on which specific past one longs for. Taking its title from one of the most popular songs of all time, and grounded in extensive research, Yesterday offers a rigorous and entertaining perspective on divisive issues in culture and politics. Whether we are revisiting, reviving, reliving, reenacting, or regressing, and whether these activities find expression in politics, music, fashion, or family history, nostalgia is inevitable. It is also powerful, not only serving to define the past but also orienting us toward the future we will create.

A sweeping reassessment of our longing for the past, from the rise of “retro” to the rhetoric of Brexit and Trump. Nostalgia has a bad reputation. Its critics dismiss it as mere sentimentality or, worse, a dangerous yearning for an imagined age of purity. And nostalgia is routinely blamed for trivializing the past and obscuring its ugly sides. In Yesterday , Tobias Becker offers a more nuanced and sympathetic view. Surveying the successive waves of nostalgia that swept the United States and Europe after the Second World War, he shows that longing for the past is more complex and sometimes more beneficial than it seems. The current meaning of “nostalgia” is surprisingly recent: until the 1960s, it usually just meant homesickness, in keeping with the original Greek word. Linking popular culture to postwar politics in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, Becker explains the shift in meaning. He also responds to arguments against nostalgia, showing its critics as often shortsighted in their own ways as they defend an idea of progress no less naïve than the wistfulness they denounce. All too often, nostalgia itself is criticized, as if its merit did not depend on which specific past one longs for. Taking its title from one of the most popular songs of all time, and grounded in extensive research, Yesterday offers a rigorous and entertaining perspective on divisive issues in culture and politics. Whether we are revisiting, reviving, reliving, reenacting, or regressing, and whether these activities find expression in politics, music, fashion, or family history, nostalgia is inevitable. It is also powerful, not only serving to define the past but also orienting us toward the future we will create.

The first major account of this transformative period in the history of Great Britain Between 1990 and 2020, the United Kingdom experienced tension between unparalleled social change and a pragmatic political culture which sought continuity, compromise and gradualism. Thatcher’s legacy was slowly digested, Blair’s ‘New Labour’ thoroughly scrutinized and the decision was made after forty-seven years to leave the European Union. The UK’s long-established major institutions—monarchy, parliament and the union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—were sorely tested. Yesterday provides the first fully documented history of this pivotal time in Great Britain. Was the UK in decline? Brian Harrison points to Britain’s unsuccessful adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and its relative economic decline, underfunded hospitals, sink schools, over-filled prisons and terrorism of both Irish and Islamic varieties. Yet there were successes. Harrison shows how the UK’s participatory institutions outmanoeuvred terrorism and precariously surmounted regional, intergenerational, ethnic and social-class tensions. This vibrant, creative society saw major improvements in time, place and recruitment for work, as well as growth and innovation in conservation, digitization, tourism, consumerism, sport and the arts. Some changes were revolutionary: in family life and relations between the generations, and in the ever-changing electronic media. And if religious observance was in decline, immigrants were introducing new faiths and even a revived religious fervour while attitudes to health and death were changing fast. A panoramic and wide-ranging analysis by a scholar at the height of his powers, Yesterday paints an evocative, richly textured portrait of a people who were shedding their complacency and insularity and bracing themselves to face a very different but promising future.

The first major account of this transformative period in the history of Great Britain Between 1990 and 2020, the United Kingdom experienced tension between unparalleled social change and a pragmatic political culture which sought continuity, compromise and gradualism. Thatcher’s legacy was slowly digested, Blair’s ‘New Labour’ thoroughly scrutinized and the decision was made after forty-seven years to leave the European Union. The UK’s long-established major institutions—monarchy, parliament and the union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—were sorely tested. Yesterday provides the first fully documented history of this pivotal time in Great Britain. Was the UK in decline? Brian Harrison points to Britain’s unsuccessful adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and its relative economic decline, underfunded hospitals, sink schools, over-filled prisons and terrorism of both Irish and Islamic varieties. Yet there were successes. Harrison shows how the UK’s participatory institutions outmanoeuvred terrorism and precariously surmounted regional, intergenerational, ethnic and social-class tensions. This vibrant, creative society saw major improvements in time, place and recruitment for work, as well as growth and innovation in conservation, digitization, tourism, consumerism, sport and the arts. Some changes were revolutionary: in family life and relations between the generations, and in the ever-changing electronic media. And if religious observance was in decline, immigrants were introducing new faiths and even a revived religious fervour while attitudes to health and death were changing fast. A panoramic and wide-ranging analysis by a scholar at the height of his powers, Yesterday paints an evocative, richly textured portrait of a people who were shedding their complacency and insularity and bracing themselves to face a very different but promising future.