Includes bibliographical references and index.

A Walk on the Dark Side: The Metaphorical Night -- Class and Gender in the Dissolution: of the Ancien Regime -- Blood, Bread, and Blasphemy: Peasant Nights -- Witches: Europe and America -- Marginality and the Age of Revolution -- Libertines, Licentiousness, and Liberty: The Underworld of Pornography's Political Beginnings -- Conspiracies of the Night: Anglo-French Radicalism, Jacobinism, and the Age of Revolution -- Monsters of the Night: Historicizing Fantasy -- Exchange Relations, Empire's Underside, and Early Capitalism -- Productions of the Night: Dark and Dangerous Labors -- Dark Continents: Empire and Race -- In the Shadow of Empire: Pirates and Maroons -- The Transforming Power of Capital -- Sociabilities of the Night: Fraternalism and the Tavern -- Nights of the Bomb Throwers: The Dangerous Classes Become Dangerous -- Working for the Devil: Dark Dimensions of Exploitation -- Eroticism and Revolutions: The Pleasures and Dangers of Difference -- Nights of Leather and Lace: Transgressive Sexualities -- Festivals of Revolution: Light Out of Dark -- Decade of Darkness: The Fascist Night -- Making Cultures in the Heart of Capitalist Commodification -- Blues, Jazz, and Jookin': Nights of Soul and Swing -- A Walk on the Wild Side: Bohemia and the Beats -- Noir: The Cultural Politics of Darkness -- Race and Capitalist Crisis -- Nights of Accumulation: Banditry, Mafias, and the Contemporary Spirit of Capitalism -- The Implosion of the City: Nights of Race Rage and Riot -- Dark Cultures and the Politics of Transgression/Transformation.