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Her Right Foot
Par Dave Eggers. 2017
If you had to name a statue, any statue, odds are good you'd mention the Statue of Liberty. Have you…
seen her?She's in New York. She's holding a torch. And she's taking one step forward. But why?In this fascinating, fun take on nonfiction, uniquely American in its frank tone and honest look at the literal foundation of our country, Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris investigate a seemingly small trait of America's most emblematic statue. What they find is about more than history, more than art. What they find in the Statue of Liberty's right foot is the powerful message of acceptance that is essential to an entire country's creation. Can you believe that? Plus, this is the fixed format version, which looks almost identical to the print edition.A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States
Par Reiko Hillyer. 2024
Throughout the twentieth century, even the harshest prison systems in the United States were rather porous. Incarcerated people were regularly…
released from prison for Christmas holidays; the wives of incarcerated men could visit for seventy-two hours relatively unsupervised; and governors routinely commuted the sentences of people convicted of murder. By the 1990s, these practices had become rarer as politicians and the media—in contrast to corrections officials—described the public as potential victims who required constant protection against the threat of violence. In A Wall Is Just a Wall Reiko Hillyer focuses on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits to examine the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to transcend prison boundaries. Illuminating prisoners’ lived experiences as they suffered, critiqued, survived, and resisted changing penal practices, she shows that the current impermeability of the prison is a recent, uneven, and contested phenomenon. By tracking the “thickening” of prison walls, Hillyer historicizes changing ideas of risk, the growing bipartisan acceptance of permanent exile and fixing the convicted at the moment of their crime as a form of punishment, and prisoners’ efforts to resist.Washington on Foot, Sixth Edition Revised and Expanded
Par William Bonstra, Judith Meany. 2024
An essential walking tour guide to one of the most walkable and historic cities in the US, perfect for first-time…
visitors and longtime residents alikeThis updated 6th edition of the perennial favorite Washington on Foot features 24 user-friendly maps, including new content on the Wharf, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, H Street NE, and the Brookland/Catholic University neighborhood. With architectural illustrations and fascinating information on the city's history and culture, Washington on Foot makes touring DC (and its neighboring Old Town Alexandria and Takoma Park) easy, entertaining, and educational. The book guides readers on how to best appreciate all the city has to offer, from familiar monuments and museums to hidden gems and lesser-known historic sites and neighborhoods. Some exciting stops include: The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception US Botanic Garden Dumbarton Oaks National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Friendship Firehouse Mexican Cultural Institute Old Georgetown Incinerator U Street NW There's no better way to experience the history and culture of the nation's capital than to walk through it and catch details you might miss otherwise. Washington on Foot highlights those details, large and small, to make for an unbeatable DC experience.This book describes the formation, transnational activities, and inner workings of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in exile. Made…
possible thanks to an in-depth examination of previously unutilised correspondence relating to the OUN, this title examines the organization during the first five years of its existence (1929–1934). In contrast to other available sources, such as the press or propaganda materials, the letters more faithfully present actual plans, motivations, and goals of the nationalists. The analysis not only uncovers unknown facts, but also reveals reactions, opinions, and emotions of individual activists. The book explores the structure and mechanisms of the OUN émigré networks by depicting tactics, decision making processes, and the efficiency of activities, as well as contacts and relations within the OUN and with the outside world. The international activity of the OUN is examined through the cooperation with individual countries, including Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, and Germany, but also with lobbying efforts in Great Britain, France, Italy, and North America, where émigré activists of the OUN or their contacts were based. Finally, the book investigates the OUN policy towards activists operating on the area of the Second Polish Republic. This text will be of interest to scholars of Ukrainian history, nationalism, comparative fascism, and transnationalism.A fascinating examination of what &“the pursuit of happiness&” meant to our nation&’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined…
their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.The Declaration of Independence identified &“the pursuit of happiness&” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives. By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles. The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration&’s famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.The Search for Reagan: The Appealing Intellectual Conservatism of Ronald Reagan
Par Craig Shirley. 2024
Never before has anyone explored the mind, soul, and heart of Ronald Reagan. The Search for Reagan explores the challenges…
and controversies in Reagan&’s life and how he successfully dealt with each, depicting a man who was never as conservative as some conservatives wanted him to be, but rather as conservative as he was comfortable being—a man who wanted to win on his own terms and integrity.Ronald Reagan was a singularly unique man and conservative who championed a wildly successful revolution—leading to more freedom and less government for the American people and to the fall of communism, while boosting American morale, which had been his three big goals. He was the first president in many years who believed optimism from the Oval Office had a direct bearing on the affairs of the nation. As a consequence, he left office more popular than when he entered with a whopping 73 percent approval. He is beloved even today as his presidential library is visited far more than any other presidential library, by more than five million people each year. He understood that American conservatism was based upon the individual and not the group. He is still regarded as one of the most admired men in America. The range of Reagan scholarship by virtue of books sold about him continues to grow. In his presidency, he solved the mystery of high inflation that had bedeviled his predecessor, high interest rates, and high gas prices. He created over twenty million new jobs, and the number of American millionares grew from 4,414 to 34,944. He quite literally changed our world for the better and is considered by most historians to be one of our four greatest presidents, along with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration
Par Harold Holzer. 2024
From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln&’s grappling with the politics of immigration against the…
backdrop of the Civil War.In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation&’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America&’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry.Abraham Lincoln&’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln&’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln&’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, &“The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln&’s leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the &‘nation might live.&’&” An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln's life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging
Par Lauren Markham. 2024
&“This stunning meditation on nostalgia, heritage, and compassion asks us to dismantle the stories we&’ve been told—and told ourselves—in order…
to naturalize the forms of injustice we&’ve come to understand as order.&” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams When and how did migration become a crime? Why does ancient Greece remain so important to the West&’s idea of itself? How does nostalgia fuel the exclusion and demonization of migrants today? In 2021, Lauren Markham went to Greece, in search of her own Greek heritage and to cover the aftermath of a fire that burned down the largest refugee camp in Europe. Almost no one had wanted the camp—not activists, not the country&’s growing neo-fascist movement, not even the government. But almost immediately, on scant evidence, six young Afghan refugees were arrested for the crime. Markham soon saw that she was tracing a broader narrative, rooted not only in centuries of global history but also in myth. A mesmerizing, trailblazing synthesis of reporting, history, memoir, and essay, A Map of Future Ruins helps us see that the stories we tell about migration don&’t just explain what happened. They are oracles: they predict the future.Beginning in the fall of 1914, every French soldier on the Western Front received a daily ration of wine from…
the army. At first it was a modest quarter litre, but by 1917 it had increased to the equivalent of a full bottle each day. The wine ration was intended to sustain morale in the trenches, making the men more willing to endure suffering and boredom. The army also supplied soldiers with doses of distilled alcohol just before attacks to increase their ferocity and fearlessness. This strategic distribution of alcohol was a defining feature of French soldiers’ experiences of the war and amounted to an experimental policy of intoxicating soldiers for military ends.A Thirst for Wine and War explores the French army’s emotional and behavioural conditioning of soldiers through the distribution of a mind-altering drug that was later hailed as one of the army’s “fathers of victory.” The daily wine ration arose from an unexpected set of factors including the demoralization of trench warfare, the wine industry’s fear of losing its main consumers, and medical consensus about the benefits of wine drinking. The army’s related practice of distributing distilled alcohol to embolden soldiers was a double-edged sword, as the men might become unruly. The army implemented regulations and surveillance networks to curb men’s drinking behind the lines, in an attempt to ensure they only drank when it was useful to the war effort. When morale collapsed in spring 1917, the army lost control of this precarious system as drunken soldiers mutinied in the thousands. Discipline was restored only when the army regained command of soldiers’ alcohol consumption.Drawing on a range of archives, personal narratives, and trench journals, A Thirst for Wine and War shows how the French army’s intoxication of its soldiers constituted a unique exercise of biopower deployed on a mass scale.Lost Fatherland: Europeans between Empire and Nation-States, 1867-1939
Par Iryna Vushko. 2024
How the demise of the Habsburg Empire, postwar sovereignty, and new diplomatic frontiers shaped the nature of citizenship, identity, and…
belonging across Europe This book is a collective portrait of twenty-one key statesmen who came of age during the Habsburg Empire. They include the cofounder of Austro-Marxism and the Austrian republic&’s first foreign minister, the cofounder of the European Union after the Second World War, the founder of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and Mussolini&’s ambassador to Vienna. Some survived the First World War and the resulting geographical divisions in their homelands, and some went on to serve in politics and governments throughout Europe. Taken together, the stories of these men offer readers a window on broad issues of European history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—chiefly, how an imperial heritage, a shared vision of statehood and nationalism, and a commitment to peaceful conflict resolution helped establish enduring loyalty and unity despite the geographical fault lines resulting from the war. As Iryna Vushko explains, their stories also offer an increasingly nuanced understanding of the achievements and failures of the Habsburg Empire.For two Americans in Saigon in 1963, the personal and the political combine to spark the drama of a lifetime…
Before it spread into a tragic war that defined a generation, the conflict in Vietnam smoldered as a guerrilla insurgency and a diplomatic nightmare. Into this volatile country stepped Frederick &“Fritz&” Nolting, the US ambassador, and his second-in-command, William &“Bill&” Trueheart, immortalized in David Halberstam&’s landmark work The Best and the Brightest and accidental players in a pivotal juncture in modern US history.Diplomats at War is a personal memoir by former Washington Post reporter Charles Trueheart—Bill&’s son and Nolting&’s godson—who grew up amid the events that traumatized two families and an entire nation. The book embeds the reader at the US embassy and dissects the fateful rift between Nolting and Trueheart over their divergent assessments of the South Vietnamese regime under Ngo Dinh Diem, who would ultimately be assassinated in a coup backed by the United States. Charles Trueheart retells the story of the United States&’ headlong plunge into war from an entirely new vantage point—that of a son piecing together how his father and godfather participated in, and were deeply damaged by, this historic flashpoint. Their critical rupture, which also destroyed their close friendship, served as a dramatic preface to the United States&’ disastrous involvement in the Vietnam conflict.Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen
Par Rory Muir. 2024
What happened when Jane Austen&’s heroines and heroes were finally wed? Marriage is at the centre of Jane Austen&’s…
novels. The pursuit of husbands and wives, advantageous matches, and, of course, love itself, motivate her characters and continue to fascinate readers today. But what were love and marriage like in reality for ladies and gentlemen in Regency England? Rory Muir uncovers the excitements and disappointments of courtship and the pains and pleasures of marriage, drawing on fascinating first-hand accounts as well as novels of the period. From the glamour of the ballroom to the pressures of careers, children, managing money, and difficult in-laws, love and marriage came in many guises: some wed happily, some dared to elope, and other relationships ended with acrimony, adultery, domestic abuse, or divorce. Muir illuminates the position of both men and women in marriage, as well as those spinsters and bachelors who chose not to marry at all. This is a richly textured account of how love and marriage felt for people at the time—revealing their unspoken assumptions, fears, pleasures, and delights.How to Steal a Presidential Election
Par Lawrence Lessig, Matthew Seligman. 2024
From two distinguished experts on election law, an alarming look at how the American presidency could be stolen—by entirely legal…
means Even in the fast and loose world of the Trump White House, the idea that a couple thousand disorganized protestors storming the U.S. Capitol might actually prevent a presidential succession was farfetched. Yet perfectly legal ways of overturning election results actually do exist, and they would allow a political party to install its own candidate in place of the true winner. Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman work through every option available for subverting a presumptively legitimate result—from vice-presidential intervention to election decertification and beyond. While many strategies would never pass constitutional muster, Lessig and Seligman explain how some might. They expose correctable weaknesses in the system, including one that could be corrected only by the Supreme Court. Any strategy aimed at hacking a presidential election is a threat to democracy. This book is a clarion call to shore up the insecure system for electing the president before American democracy is forever compromised.A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity
Par Tyesha Maddox. 2024
A Home Away from Home examines the significance of Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations to the immigrant…
experience, particularly their implications for the formation of a Pan-Caribbean American identity and Black diasporic politics.At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City exploded with the establishment of mutual aid societies and benevolent associations. Caribbean immigrants, especially women, eager to find their place in a bustling new world, created these organizations, including the West Indian Benevolent Association of New York City, founded in 1884. They served as forums for discussions on Caribbean American affairs, hosted cultural activities, and provided newly arrived immigrants with various forms of support, including job and housing assistance, rotating lines of credit, help in the naturalization process, and its most popular function—sickness and burial assistance. In examining the number of these organizations, their membership, and the functions they served, Tyesha Maddox argues that mutual aid societies not only fostered a collective West Indian ethnic identity among immigrants from specific islands, but also strengthened kinship networks with those back home in the Caribbean. Especially important to these processes were Caribbean women such as Elizabeth Hendrickson, co-founder of the American West Indian Ladies’ Aid Society in 1915 and the Harlem Tenants’ League in 1928.Immigrant involvement in mutual aid societies also strengthened the belief that their own fate was closely intertwined with the social, economic, and political welfare of the Black international community. A Home Away from Home demonstrates how Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in many ways became proto-Pan-Africanist organizations.A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper's Daughter
Par Catherine Meeks. 2024
Catherine Meeks shares the wisdom she has garnered over the journey of her life, from her father&’s sharecropping fields to…
the academy and beyond. Today, Catherine Meeks is a national leader of racial healing and an esteemed retired professor of African American studies. But being a Black woman in America can be difficult. Join Meeks as she describes the adventures and adversity she encountered on her path to becoming an empowered voice for change. Growing up in Arkansas under the terror of Jim Crow, Meeks learned firsthand about injustice and the desperation it causes. But with the support of her family, she moved to LA to study at Pepperdine. When a Black teenager was killed by a campus security guard, Meeks awakened to her prophetic voice, and a local women&’s group gave her hope that racial reconciliation was possible. She later led a group of students to West Africa, where she met her husband. Yet her years-long battle with rheumatoid arthritis severed their relationship, leaving her a single mother. Meanwhile, she worked tirelessly at Mercer University to expand the African American studies program, all while earning her MSW and PhD. Quilting together these memories—bitter and sweet, traumatic and triumphant—Meeks shares her hard-earned wisdom: Learn how to discern the Creator&’s work. Listen to the voice saying &“yes&” to opportunity. Become a wounded healer. Know when to practice silence and when to speak out. Readers will leave the pages of A Quilted Life enriched by Meeks&’s unique perspective and insight.The Essential Writings of Robert A. Hill
Par Adam Ewing. 2024
Collected for the first time, the foundational contributions of a scholar and activist who shaped the study of Garveyism and…
pan-Africanism This volume brings together Robert A. Hill’s most important writings for the first time, highlighting his intellectual contributions to the history of pan-Africanism. A pioneering scholar and activist, a groundbreaking builder of pan-African archives, and the editor of the multivolume Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Hill remains underacknowledged for his influence on the field. This collection is a long-overdue testament to his legacy. Adam Ewing showcases Hill’s groundbreaking writings on Garveyism, the pan-African, anticolonial movement that spread across the globe following World War I. Hill’s essays trace Marcus Garvey’s evolving thought and illuminate the resonance of the movement in the Caribbean and its diaspora, in the United States, and across sub-Saharan Africa. The volume also includes Hill’s writings on diverse aspects of pan-Africanism, including the impostor figure in diaspora history, Cyril Briggs’s African Blood Brotherhood, the Rastafarian movement, the fiction of George Schuyler, George Beckford and the Abeng collective in Jamaica, the theories of Walter Rodney, the life and thought of C.L.R. James, and the music of Bob Marley. This volume not only demonstrates Hill’s intellectual praxis and its roots in his academic influences and personal experiences but also reveals the breadth, diversity, complexity, and centrality of the pan-African tradition in African diasporic politics and thought. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence
Par Lauren Benton. 2024
A sweeping account of how small wars shaped global order in the age of empiresImperial conquest and colonization depended on…
pervasive raiding, slaving, and plunder. European empires amassed global power by asserting a right to use unilateral force at their discretion. They Called It Peace is a panoramic history of how these routines of violence remapped the contours of empire and reordered the world from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries.In an account spanning from Asia to the Americas, Lauren Benton shows how imperial violence redefined the very nature of war and peace. Instead of preparing lasting peace, fragile truces ensured an easy return to war. Serial conflicts and armed interventions projected a de facto state of perpetual war across the globe. Benton describes how seemingly limited war sparked atrocities, from sudden massacres to long campaigns of dispossession and extermination. She brings vividly to life a world in which warmongers portrayed themselves as peacemakers and Europeans imagined &“small&” violence as essential to imperial rule and global order.Holding vital lessons for us today, They Called It Peace reveals how the imperial violence of the past has made perpetual war and the threat of atrocity endemic features of the international order.&“No journalist knows more about toxic chemicals in the workplace than Jim Morris. The Cancer Factory is the crowning achievement of his…
estimable career spent walking fence lines, factory floors, and doctor&’s offices.&”—Dan Fagin, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Toms River&“The Cancer Factory could not come at a better time, as we reckon with how our bodies pay the price for our nation&’s toxic history and as today&’s workers fight not for only their rights but for their very lives.… A powerful and essential read.&”—Anna Clark, author of The Poisoned CityThe story of a group of Goodyear Tire and Rubber workers fatally exposed to toxic chemicals, the lawyer who sought justice on their behalf, and the shameful lack of protection our society affords all workersWorking at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company chemical plant in Niagara Falls, New York, was considered a good job. It was the kind of industrial manufacturing job that allowed blue-collar workers to thrive in the latter half of the 20th century—that allowed them to buy their own home, and maybe a small boat for the lake.But it was also the kind of job that exposed you to toxic chemicals and offered little to no protection from them, either in the way of protective gear or adequate ventilation. Eventually, it was a job that gave you bladder cancer.The Cancer Factory tells the story of the workers who experienced one of the nation&’s worst, and best-documented, outbreaks of work-related cancer, and the lawyer who has represented the bladder-cancer victims at the plant for more than 30 years. Goodyear, and its chemical supplier, DuPont, knew that two of the chemicals used in the plant had been shown to cause cancer, but made little effort to protect the plant&’s workers until the cluster of cancer cases—and deaths—was undeniable.In doing so it tells a broader story of corporate malfeasance and governmental neglect. Workers have only weak protections from exposure to toxic substances in America, and regulatory breaches contribute to an estimated 95,000 deaths from occupational illness each year. Based on 4 decades of reporting and delving deeply into the scientific literature about toxic substances and health risks, the arcana of worker regulations, and reality of loose enforcement, The Cancer Factory exposes the terrible health risks too many workers face.This amazing true story of America&’s first Black generals, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Jr., a father and son who…
helped integrate the American military and created the Tuskegee Airmen, is &“the book Black America needs in this moment&” (Eboni K. Williams, lawyer and cohost of State of the Culture).Red Tails, George Lucas&’s celebration of America&’s first Black flying squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen, should have been a moment of victory for Doug Melville. He expected to see his great-uncle Benjamin O. Davis Jr.—the squadron&’s commander—immortalized on-screen for his selfless contributions to America. But as the film rolled, Doug was shocked when he realized that Ben Jr.&’s name had been omitted and replaced by the fictional Colonel A. J. Bullard. And Ben&’s father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., America&’s first Black general who helped integrate the military, was left out completely. Dejected, Doug looked inward and realized that unless he worked to bring their inspirational story to light, it would remain hidden from the world just as it had been concealed from him. In this &“thoughtful, highly readable blend of family and military history&” (Kirkus Reviews), Melville shares his quest to rediscover his family&’s story across five generations, from post-Civil War America to modern day Asia and Europe. In life, the Davises were denied the recognition and compensation they&’d earned, but through his journey, Melville uncovers something greater: that dedication and self-sacrifice can move proverbial mountains—even in a world determined to make you invisible. Invisible Generals recounts the lives of a father and his son who always maintained their belief in the American dream. As the inheritor of their legacy, Melville retraces their steps, advocates for them to receive their long-overdue honors and unlocks the potential we all hold to retrieve powerful family stories lost to the past.The Sea Warriors: Fighting Captains and Frigate Warfare in the Age of Nelson
Par Richard Woodman. 2014
&“A marvelous book. . . . shows where Patrick O&’Brian and C.S Forester got all their stuff from, but is more exciting than…
either.&” —Times Literary Supplement The Sea Warriors is the true story of the great frigate captains of the Nelsonic Royal Navy who spent long and arduous years away from their homes fighting for king and country, to win and hold control of the seas. Richard Woodman skillfully dissects the events of the war years, focusing on the cruiser war, that war between opposing frigates that entailed the blockade of enemy ports, the interception of enemy trade, and the protection of Britain&’s merchant ships. The whole magnificent sweep of this great struggle is set against its political background of the Napoleonic wars and the sea war with America. With this narrative come an extraordinary array of young, daring, and hugely skilled frigate captains whose ability to grasp the chances offered by war made them household names in this savage age. Some, like Warren, Pellew, Cochrane, and Collingwood, are still renowned; others are here rescued from under the shadow of Nelson as the author recounts their brave and brilliant exploits. As well as the thrilling accounts of sea battles and single-ship actions, the author describes the darker side to life at sea—the constant danger and harsh discipline, the wearying monotony of sea-keeping, the scourges of disease, and the occasional outbreaks of mutiny. All this is brought together in a stirring narrative by one of Britain&’s finest naval writers. &“A superb Napoleonic war study&” —Daily Telegraph