Growing up in the aftermath of the Video Nasties, during the late eighties and early nineties, James Simpson is from a small town in the North East of England where talking about grisly horror flicks was the norm in his school playground. For the last few years, he has written about cult cinema for several magazines and websites as well as running his own-now-defunct site: Infernal Cinema. He has interviewed horror stars Emily Booth, Barbie Wilde, and the legendary Lloyd Kaufman, amongst others, during this time. He appears in the Jason Impey documentary: VIPCO: The Untold Story. This is his first book. His favourite VIPCO movie is Spookies.

Introduction; Part I. The European Experience: Economic and Political Development, 1870-1939: 1. The modernization of European societies; [...]opean agriculture in an age of economic instability; Part II. Spanish Agriculture, Economic Development and Democracy: 3. The limits to Spanish modernization, 1850-1936; 4. Agricultural growth, regional diversity, and regional land-tenure regimes; Part III. Explaining the Weakness of the Family Farm: 5. The family farm and the limits to village - level cooperation; 6. The persistence of the landed elites and the nature of farm lobbies; Part IV. Rural Elites, Poverty, and the Attempts at Land Reform: 7. Land ownership, economic development and poverty in Andalusia and southern Spain; 8. The limits to land reform; Part V. Rural Conflicts and the Polarization of Village Society: 9. Creating parties, political alliances, and interest groups: rural politics in the 1930s; 10. The growing polarization of rural society during the Second Republic; Conclusion; Appendix 1. Agricultural statistics in Spain, France and Italy in the early 1930s; Appendix 2. Dry-farming and the economics of the family farm.