New Books, Films, Databases, and other Resources: February 2013

In 1938 Hale Woodruff (1900-1980) accepted a commission to paint a series of murals for Talladega College, one of the nation's first colleges established for blacks after the Civil War. Installed in the institution's newly constructed library, the six murals portray noteworthy events in the rise of blacks in America from slavery to freedom. Today they stand out as provocative and relevant symbols of the centuries-long struggle for civil and human rights. Essays consider the development of the murals, their presence and significance at Talladega College, and Woodruff's impact on American mural painting in the years surrounding the Talladega project. An illustrated essay details all phases of the murals' conservation. Illustrated works span Woodruff's career and include oil studies; support materials such as prints, drawings, and photographs; and mural cycles he made in Mexico while studying with Diego Rivera. Stephanie Mayer Heydt is the Margaret and Terry Stent Curator of American Art at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Other contributors include Renee Ater, David C. Driskell, Larry Shutts, and Juliette Smith.

From the Spanish American War through Vietnam, this is a collection of the most famous war photographs with information about the photographers.

The Civil War redefined America and forever changed American art. Its grim reality, captured through the new medium of photography, was laid bare. American artists could not approach the conflict with the conventions of European history painting, which glamorized the hero on the battlefield. Instead, many artists found ways to weave the war into works of art that considered the human narrative—the daily experiences of soldiers, slaves, and families left behind. Artists and writers wrestled with the ambiguity and anxiety of the Civil War and used landscape imagery to give voice to their misgivings as well as their hopes for themselves and the nation. This important book looks at the range of artwork created before, during, and following the war, in the years between 1852 and 1877.

"In 2010, pioneering sociologist Catherine Hakim shocked the world with a provocative new theory: In addition to the three recognized personal assets (economic, cultural, and social capital), each individual has a fourth asset-erotic capital-that he or she can, and should, use to advance within society. In this bold and controversial book, Hakim explores the applications and significance of erotic capital, challenging the disapproval meted out to women and men who use sex appeal to get ahead in life. Social scientists have paid little serious attention to these modes of personal empowerment, despite overwhelming evidence of their importance. In Erotic Capital, Hakim marshals a trove of research to show that rather than degrading those who employ it, erotic capital represents a powerful and potentially equalizing tool-one that we scorn only to our own detriment"

The Greek and Roman demigods will have to cooperate in order to defeat the giants released by the Earth Mother, Gaea. Then they will have to sail together to the ancient land--Greece itself--to find the Doors of Death"--

Achilles is the son of a king and a goddess and also the best warrior in Greece. So when Prince Paris claims Helen from a Greek king, and Troy declares war, everyone knows that Achilles will be vital to the Greek cause. With the help of the gods, can young Achilles lead his fellow countrymen to victory against the Trojans?

In this exciting second installment of the three-book series, Carter and Sadie, offspring of the brilliant Egyptologist Dr. Julius Kane, embark on a worldwide search for the Book of Ra, but the House of Life and the gods of chaos are determined to stop them.

Somewhere in the middle of the sea (not always in the same place) lies the island of Neverbelieve, populated with unusual creatures and astonishing discoveries. Explore the Land of Neverbelieve in these lush, vibrantly illustrated pages. Meet the island’s gentle, doll-like inhabitants. Discover its boggling collection of trees, such as the pasta tree, the rope tree, and the chocolate tree (taste the peppermint center if you have a chance). Be certain to visit Book Mountain, which whispers stories at bedtime. Observe the volcanic turtle and screaming night moth from afar. And beware the Spooky Dark Mountains, a horribly horrible area full of never-ending nastiness. Above all, don’t go swimming or sailing, lest the island get up and walk away. Investigating the Land of Neverbelieve is a fantastical adventure for imaginative young readers.

He's b-a-a-ack! Despite their best efforts, Carter and Sadie Kane can't seem to keep Apophis, the chaos snake, down. Now Apophis is threatening to plunge the world into eternal darkness, and the Kanes are faced with the impossible task of having to destroy him once and for all. Unfortunately, the magicians of the House of Life are on the brink of civil war, the gods are divided, and the young initiates of Brooklyn House stand almost alone against the forces of chaos. The Kanes' only hope is an ancient spell that might turn the serpent's own shadow into a weapon, but the magic has been lost for a millennia. To find the answer they need, the Kanes must rely on the murderous ghost of a powerful magician who might be able to lead them to the serpent's shadow . . . or might lead them to their deaths in the depths of the underworld. Nothing less than the mortal world is at stake when the Kane family fulfills its destiny in this thrilling conclusion to the Kane Chronicles.

Nearly one million weekly listeners trust NPR's Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the distortions and complexities of the modern media. This brilliant radio personality now bursts onto the page as an illustrated character in vivid comics drawn by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld. The cartoon of Brooke conducts the reader through two millennia of history-from the newspapers in Caesar's Rome to the penny press of the American Revolution and the manipulations of contemporary journalism. Gladstone's manifesto debunks the notion that "The Media" is an external force, outside of our control, since we've begun directly constructing, filtering, and responding to what we watch and read. With fascinating digressions, sobering anecdotes, and brave analytical wit, The Influencing Machine equips us to be smart, savvy, informed consumers and shapers of the media. It shows that we have met the media and it is us. So now what?

This is a general anthology of speeches. They range from the Sermon on the Mount to Kennedy's Ask not what speech, from the Gettysburg Address to Winston Churchill's war speeches, and from Adolf Hitler to Martin Luther.

While the importance of writing is well recognized, the role of books and, especially, libraries has often been neglected. Knowledge, once generated, must be communicated, preserved, and accessible. Books in various formats-from clay tablets, to scrolls and manuscripts to pixels-have been instrumental in spreading knowledge, although relatively little attention has been given to the story of books themselves.

This book offers a novel approach to food writing, presenting a history of eating habits and mores through the lens of the technologies we use to prepare, serve, and consume food. It tells the history of food through its tools across different eras and continents to present a fully rounded account of humans' evolving relationship to kitchen technology. From the birth of the fork in Italy as it discovered pasta, to culture wars over shaped how and what we cook. Encompassing inventors, scientists, cooks and chefs, this is the previously unsung history of our kitchens.

Your all - in - one guide to navigating college left and setting yourself up for success! 'Marcia Cantarella's advice is not only concrete and practical, it covers situations that may overwhelm and derail students as they attempt to navigate the path to graduation.' - Patty Machir, Executive Director, Futures and Options'I am excited about the students who will have the honor and pleasure to read this book.It's like something picked right out of my brain. This is incredible!' - Endri Horanalli, Hunter College GraduateCollege is a time of both great opportunities and great challenges. Regardless of your background, obstacles and adversity are sure to come your way. The key is knowing how to respond, how to navigate the system, and not letting anything get in the way of you reaching your ultimate goal. Wherever you're at in your educational journey, this book has the answers to your most difficult questions - and will answer the most important questions you need to know (and didn't know you had!). Whether you are the first in your family to attend college or come from a long line of graduates, are attending college right after high school or are going back to school later in life while balancing a career, I Can Finish College will take you through all central experiences, mysteries, and relationships that you'llencounter leading up to graduation and beyond.

Coming in April 2013: A major one-woman Broadway show starring Fiona Shaw, directed by Deborah Warner, and produced by Scott Rudin. Colm Tóibín's provocative, haunting, and indelible portrait of Mary presents her as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity. In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son’s crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel—her keepers, who provide her with food and shelter and visit her regularly. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was “worth it;” nor that the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye,” were holy disciples. Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the Cross until her son died—she fled, to save herself), and is equally harsh on her judgement of others. This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. Tóibín’s tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.

The books that we choose to keep-let alone read-can say a lot about who we are and how we see ourselves. In The ideal bookshelf, dozens of leading cultural figures share the books that matter to them most-books that define their dreams and ambitions and in many cases helped them find their way in the world. With colorful and endearingly hand-rendered images of book spines by Jane Mount, and first-person commentary from all the contributors, this is a perfect gift for avid readers, writers, and all who have known the influence of a great book.

For most of us, librarians are the quiet people behind the desk, who, apart from the occasional “shush,” vanish into the background. But inQuiet, Please,McSweeney’scontributor Scott Douglas puts the quirky caretakers of our literature front and center. With a keen eye for the absurd and a Kesey-esque cast of characters (witness the librarian who is sure Thomas Pynchon is Julia Roberts’s latest flame), Douglas takes us where few readers have gone before. Punctuated by his own highly subjective research into library history-from Andrew Carnegie’s Gilded Age to today’s Afghanistan-Douglas gives us a surprising (and sometimes hilarious) look at the lives which make up the social institution that is his library.

National Book Award Winner One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joes life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared. While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning. Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today.

"What does it mean to be out walking in the world, whether in a landscape or a metropolis, on a pilgrimage or a protest march? In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit draws together many histories - of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores - to create a portrait of the range of possibilities for this most basic act. Arguing that walking as history means walking for pleasure and for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit homes in on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from the peripatetic philosophers of ancient Greece to the poets of the Romantic Age, from the perambulations of the Surrealists to the ascents of mountaineers."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

At last, the way to become complete is here. Now we can live in the everlasting world of happiness. By discarding the fake within one s mind, one can live as the infinite, never changing universe, which is the true self. This book unveils the mystery of the human mind and teaches the ultimate solution to become liberated from the illusion of the false self and live forever as Truth. It gives all people hope to be free of pain and suffering.This book is for everyone: those seeking happiness, those suffering from stress and worries, those searching for the meaning and purpose of life, those wanting to understand the human mind, those wanting to know the universe mind, those interested in spirituality and Truth, and those wanting a unified world of harmony and peace. The diversity of people interested in these teachings is as vast as humanity itself. What is the human mind? What is the meaning and the purpose of life? What is enlightenment? Countless numbers have asked these questions and many have tried to answer them. This book provides the ultimate answers. Now is the time to stop living in this land. Now is time to go to the everlasting world of happiness. Now is the time to live forever in the true world. Woo Myung will teach you how.

J. Glenn Gray entered the army as a private in May 1941, having been drafted on the same day he was informed of his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University. He was discharged as a second lieutenant in October 1945, having been awarded a battlefield commission during fighting in France. Gray saw service in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany in a counter-espionage unit.   Fourteen years after his discharge, Gray began to reread his war journals and letters in an attempt to find some meaning in his wartime experiences. The result isThe Warriors, a philosophical meditation on what warfare does to us and an examination of the reasons soldiers act as they do. Gray explains the attractions of battle—the adrenaline rush, the esprit de corps—and analyzes the many rationalizations made by combat troops to justify their actions. In the end, Gray notes, “War reveals dimensions of human nature both above and below the acceptable standards for humanity.”

"In Dragonfly, Bryan Burrough tells for the first time the incredible true story of how a joint Russian-American crew narrowly survived almost every trauma an astronaut could imagine: fire, power blackouts, chemical leaks, docking failures, nail-biting spacewalks, and constant mechanical breakdowns, all climaxing in a dramatic midspace collision that left everyone on board scrambling for their lives." "Burrough portrays an American space program in which many astronauts refuse to raise safety concerns for fear they will be frozen out of future missions. It offers an unprecedented look inside the rattletrap Russian space program, where the desperate thirst for hard currency leads to safety shortcuts and exhausted, puppetlike cosmonauts endure truly inhuman pressures from their unfeeling, all-powerful masters on the ground."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Garrett takes us to India, where she meticulously examines the course of the countrys pneumonic plague; to Zaire, where the Ebola virus is still largely unchecked; and to Russia, where bad policy and a collapsing society have made for staggering setbacks in all areas of health. Garrett also exposes the ungoverned world of biological terrorism.

Details the struggles of those who served in Vietnam to deal with the negative reaction at home, their role in the anti-war movement, and their battle for medical help and compensation for Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress.

No other military force in the last century and a half has captured the popular imagination to such a degree or has been so surrounded by romance, legend, and mystery as the French Foreign Legion. This book is the most complete and balanced history of the Legion ever written.

In an extraordinary revision of received wisdom, Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass demonstrate convincingly in The Media Equation that interactions with computers, television, and new communication technologies are identical to real social relationships and to the navigation of real physical spaces. Authors Reeves and Nass present the results of numerous psychological studies that led them to the conclusion that people treat computers, television and new media as real people and places

The author offers a look at depression in which he draws on his own battle with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, researchers, doctors, and others to assess the complexities of the disease, its causes and symptoms, and available therapies. This book examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has on various demographic populations, around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness. He takes readers on a journey into the most pervasive of family secrets and contributes to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition.

J. William Fulbright is the second most successful Oxford-educated politician to come from Arkansas. Author of the Fulbright-Connally resolution, which committed the United States to participating in the United Nations, and creator of the exchange program that bears his name, Fulbright was the longest-serving and most powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Both an intellectual and an internationalist, Fulbright had great influence over the course of American foreign relations in the 1960s and 1970s.

This groundbreaking work shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Based on years of research and access to a rich trove of public and private documents, this is a look at a gay world that was not supposed to have existed. Focusing on New York City, the gay capital of the nation for nearly a century, Chauncey recreates the saloons, speakeasies, and cafeterias where gay men gathered, the intimate parties and immense drag balls where they celebrated, and the highly visible residential enclaves they built in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and Times Square. He offers new perspectives on the gay rights revolution of our time by showing that the oppression the gay and lesbian movement attacked in the 1960s was not an unchanging phenomenon--it had intensified in the 1920s and 1930s as a direct response to the visibility of the gay world in those years.-

"Somewhere," muses Noah Calhoun, while sitting on his porch in the moonight, "there were people making love." The Notebook, a Southern-fried story of love-lost-and-found-again, revolves around a single time-honored romantic dilemma: will beautiful Allison Nelson stay with Mr. Respectability (to whom she happens to be engaged), or will she choose Noah, the romantic rascal she left so many years ago?

Entranced by Edward O. Wilson's mesmerizing evocation of his Southern childhood in The Naturalist and Anthill, Alex Harris approached the scientist about collaborating on a book about Wilson's native world of Mobile, Alabama. Perceiving that Mobile was a city small enough to be captured through a lens yet old enough to have experienced a full epic cycle of tragedy and rebirth, the photographer and the naturalist joined forces to capture the rhythms of this storied Alabama Gulf region through a swirling tango of lyrical words and breathtaking images. With Wilson tracing his family's history from the Civil War through the Depression-when mule-driven wagons still clogged the roads-to Mobile's racial and environmental struggles to its cultural triumphs today, and with Harris stunningly capturing the mood of a radically transformed city that has adapted to the twenty-first century, the book becomes a universal story, one that tells us where we all come from and why we are here.

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. With shades of Neal Stephenson and Neil Gaiman, this tour de force debut is a sophisticated melting pot of philosophy and technology.

In contemporary Western society, people are more often called upon to justify the choice not to have children than they are to supply reasons for having them. In this book, Christine Overall maintains that the burden of proof should be reversed: that the choice to have children calls for more careful justification and reasoning than the choice not to. Arguing that the choice to have children is not just a prudential or pragmatic decision but one with ethical repercussions, Overall offers a wide-ranging exploration of how we might think systematically and deeply about this fundamental aspect of human life. Writing from a feminist perspective, she also acknowledges the inevitably gendered nature of the decision; the choice has different meanings, implications, and risks for women than it has for men. After considering a series of ethical approaches to procreation, and finding them inadequate or incomplete, Overall offers instead a novel argument. Exploring the nature of the biological parent-child relationship -- which is not only genetic but also psychological, physical, intellectual, and moral -- she argues that the formation of that relationship is the best possible reason for choosing to have a child.

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting,The Red Tentcombines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.

Middleton experience reveals what happens when the old campus world.
meets the new head-on; it shows too that tensions can be ameliorated and that, even now in this time of rapid change and misunderstanding, campuses can sometimes move nearer to ideals of justice and equality.

Presents the stories of seven survivors of Hurricane Katrina who tried to evacuate, protect their possessions, and save loved ones before, during, and after the flood.

"Leading Lives that Matter" draws together a wide range of texts -- including fiction, autobiography, and philosophy -- that offer challenge and insight for those who are thinking about what to do with their lives.

The response to Nancy Pearland#8217;s surprise bestseller Book Lust was astounding: the Seattle librarian even became the model for the now-famous Librarian Action Figure. Readers everywhere welcomed Pearland#8217;s encyclopedic but discerning filter on books worth reading, and her Rule of 50 (give a book 50 pages before deciding whether to continue; but readers over 50 must read the same number of pages as their age) became a standard MO.

This is the tale of family, memory, love, and living told by 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is already in heaven. Through the voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and builds out of her family's grief a hopeful and joyful story.

After more than twenty years of marriage, Wilson Lewis, son-in-law of Allie and Noah Calhoun is forced to admit that the romance has gone out of his marriage. Desperate to win back his wife Jane's heart, he must figure out how to make her fall in love with him again.

Examines the increasing problem resulting from the fact that the people who make, support, or protest military policy have no military experience, analyzing the disconnect between military service and the privileged elite.

Gift from President West

The distinguished historian A.N. Wilson has charted, in vivid detail, Britain's rise to world dominance, a tale of how one small island nation came to be the mightiest, richest country on earth, reigning over much of the globe. Now in his much anticipated sequel to the classic The Victorians, he describes how in little more than a generation Britain's power and influence in the world would virtually dissolve. InAfter the Victorians, Wilson presents a panoramic view of an era, stretching from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the dawn of the cold war in the early 1950s. He offers riveting accounts of the savagery of World War I and the world-altering upheaval of the Communist Revolution. He explains Britain's role in shaping the destiny of the Middle East. And he casts a bright new light on the World War II years: Britain played a central role in defeating Germany but at a severe cost. The nation would emerge from the war bankrupt and fatally weakened, sidelined from world politics, while America would assume the mantle of dominant world power, facing off against the Soviet Union in the cold war. Wilson's perspective is not confined to the trenches of the battlefield and the halls of parliament: he also examines the parallel story of the beginnings of Modernism-he visits the novelists, philosophers, poets, and painters to see what they reveal about the activities of the politicians, scientists, and generals. Blending military, political, social, and cultural history of the most dramatic kind, A.N. Wilson offers an absorbing portrait of the decline of one of the world's great powers. The result is a fresh account of the birth pangs of the modern world, as well as a timely analysis of imperialism and its discontents.

Gift from President West

Recounts the author's life-long obsession with Graham Greene's writings on the experiences of being an outsider, which informed both the author's travels and his private explorations of his relationship with his elusive father.

Gift from President West

Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.

Gift from President West

Tyler and Lymie, eighth grade misfits, discover a dead body in a quarry and work to uncover the mystery behind it.

Gift from President West

Two eighth-graders, looking for the lost work of a famous sculptor, try their hand at the art.

Gift from President West

An 8th-grade boy deals with unattainable love and a very attainable outlet for his frustrations and energies: wrestling. Awards: SLJ Best Book; YALSA Best Book for Young Adults.

Presents the annotated transcription and original audio for the 1964 interviews with Jacqueline Kennedy on her experiences and impressions as the wife of John F. Kennedy, offering an intimate and detailed account of the man and his times.

The purely scholarly problem of determining the number of victims, like other aspects of demography related to the Holocaust, have suddenly become closely embroiled in geopolitics and the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, which is now a context that has been forced upon it. This book is imbued with these connections and interrelationships.

Chronicles the American general's experiences overseeing the war in Kosovo and his attempts to mediate conflicts within Kosova as well as between representatives of NATO's governments, policy makers, the military, and the media.

Offers a detailed look at the life and career of the famous World War II general, and depicts his accomplishments and complex personality.

Recounts the daily lives of the prisoners held at the World War II prison camp Stalag Luft III.

"The towering figure of the postwar Democratic Party, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill was one of the last of the great political warhorses, a man who cared as much about his family and friends as he did about the issues, someone who knew how to have a good time and do a good deed. Now, based on previously untapped records, interviews, and private correspondence, prizewinning journalist John A. Farrell gives us the first full-scale biography of this legendary American: a garrulous legislative titan who fought with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich and prevailed because he never forgot where he came from." "In Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century John Farrell has crafted an epic biography, not just of a person, but of politics. Full of larger-than-life personalities and historic moments, it is a grand waltz through the corridors and back rooms of American power. And like Tip himself, Farrell's dazzling book is majestic, powerful, important, and utterly winning."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Elizabeth Bowen, one of the writers considered in this book, described the relationship of Ireland and England as 'a mixture of showing-off and suspicion, nearly as bad as sex'. In these essays Roy Foster explores the patterns of resentment, exploitation, dependence and rejection which were created by centuries of proximity, colonization and emigration.

Describes the life of Jesse Jackson, a Civil rights worker who dreamed of becoming an "American Gandhi" since his youth.

In a panoramic history of our criminal justice system from Colonial times to today, one of our foremost legal thinkers shows how America fashioned a system of crime and punishment in its own image.

"Crazy Rhythm is a smart, swinging memoir that answers the question "How did a liberal Jewish jazz musician from Brooklyn become one of President Richard Nixon's most trusted advisers and one of Washington's most influential lawyers?"" "Leonard Garment was probably the hippest man ever to serve in the White House - a jazz musician with an affinity for artists, African-Americans, Jews, American Indians, and the "rabble-rousers" of post-1960s American politics, a man as comfortable with Dick Gregory as he was with Dick Nixon. Garment presents a rare view of Nixon, showing us the man as he ascended to the presidency - brilliant, fascinating, and complex." "Garment describes his advocacy on behalf of Israel at the United Nations, his efforts to expand government support for the arts, his crisis management of American Indian protests, and his ideological wrestling matches with Pat Buchanan. He also writes poignantly of his tumultuous first marriage to Grace Albert, a talented television writer who, one day, mysteriously disappeared."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"In 1948 the column-writing Alsop brothers produced an article for the Saturday Evening Post, then the country's preeminent weekly magazine. Its title: "Must America Save the World?" Their answer was a resounding yes. Indeed, Joseph and Stewart Alsop were there in those heady postwar years when the country's foreign-policy elite created what became known as the American Century. As men of words, they served as confidants of and cheerleaders for the men of deeds, who came largely from the country's patrician class." "Within the lifetime of the Alsop brothers the country was remade. And its remaking illuminates their careers, just as their careers illuminate the American Century." Robert Merry casts brilliant light on these two remarkable men, and on one of the most tumultuous periods of the country's history."

Recounts the public and private life of Thomas Jefferson as well as the age in which he lived.

Assesses President Lincoln's leadership in the one hundred days preceding the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, a period characterized by mounting deaths on the battlefield and heated national debates.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson provides an ideal short account of Lincoln--a compelling biography of a man of humble origins who preserved our nation during its greatest catastrophe and ended the scourge of slavery.

Between 1939 and 1945 the Nazi regime systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of adults and children with physical and mental disabilities. Their `euthanasia' programme was designed to eliminate anyone who, according to Nazi ideology, threatened the purity of the German race.

Gift from President West

Based on interviews with some of his closest associates, a portrait of the thirty-fifth president discusses his privileged childhood, military service, struggles with a life-threatening disease, and career in politics.

Even as the decline of the reading of literature, as argued by the National Endowment for the Arts, proceeds in our culture, the author, gives us a meditation on the usefulness and uselessness of literature in the digital age. What is literature, anyway? How has it been understood over time, and what is its relevance for us today? Who are its gatekeepers? Is its canonicity fixed? Why has literature been on the defensive since Plato? Does it have any use at all, or does it merely serve as an aristocratic or bourgeois accoutrement attesting to worldly sophistication and refinement of spirit? Is it, as most of us assume, good to read literature, much less study it, and what does either mean? This is a book about our culture in crisis, as well as an appreciation of popular culture. The winning aim is to reclaim literature from the margins of our personal, educational, and professional lives and restore it to the center, as a fierce, radical way of thinking

This book charts the evolution, from the World War II period to the present day, of racial relationships and their repercussions in Hollywood films and examines a neglected sub-genre.

In France in 1933, two sisters, presumed to be lovers, murdered the women who employed them as maids. Known as "the Papin affair," the incident inspired not only Jean Genet's 1947 The Maids but also an essay by Jacques Lacan that presents the sisters' crime as fueled by a narcissistic, homosexual drive that culminated in the assault. In this new investigation of the roots of the twentieth-century myth of the lesbian-as-madwoman, Christine Coffman argues that the female psychotic was the privileged object of Lacan's effort to derive a revolutionary theory of subjectivity from the study of mental illness. Examining Lacan's early writings, French surrealism, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, and H.D.'s homoerotic fiction in light of feminist and queer theory, Insane Passions argues that the psychotic woman that fascinates modernist writers returns with a murderous vengeance in a number of late twentieth-century films--including Basic Instinct, Sister My Sister, Single White Female, and Murderous Maids. Marking the limit of social acceptability, the "psychotic lesbian" repeatedly appears as the screen onto which the violence and madness of twentieth-century life are projected.

In this daring, provocative, and insightful book, bestselling author and internationally acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler writes fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls around the globe. Moving through a world of topics and emotions, these voices are fierce, alive, tender, complicated, imaginative, and smart. Girls today often find themselves in a struggle between remaining strong and true to themselves and conforming to society’s expectations in an attempt to please. They are taught not to be too intense, too passionate, too smart, too caring, too open. They are encouraged to shut down their instincts, their outrage, their desires and their dreams, to be polite, to obey the rules.I Am an Emotional Creatureis a celebration of the authentic voice inside every girl and an inspiring call to action for girls everywhere to speak up, follow their dreams, and become the women they were always meant to be. Among the girls Ensler creates are an American who struggles with peer pressure in a suburban high school; an anorexic blogging as she eats less and less; a Masai girl from Kenya unwilling to endure female genital mutilation; a Bulgarian sex slave, no more than fifteen, a Chinese factory worker making Barbies; an Iranian student who is tricked into a nose job; a pregnant girl trying to decide if she should keep her baby. Through rants, poetry, questions, and facts, we come to understand the universality of girls everywhere: their resiliency, their wildness, their pain, their fears, their secrets, and their triumphs.I Am an Emotional Creatureis a call, a reckoning, an education, an act of empowerment for girls, and an illumination for parents and for us all.

One of the greatest American novels finds its perfect contemporary champion in Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick's enlightening and entertaining tour through the world of Melville's classic.  Alone among its peers, Moby-Dick's length and subject matter have always made it an intimidating read, and in a moment when our culture increasingly comes to us in bites and bytes, Philbrick shows why this book will always deserve our time and capture our imagination.  As he did in his National Book Award-winning bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick brings a sailor's eye and an adventurer's passion to unfolding the story behind an epic American journey.  He skilfully navigates Melville's world and illuminates the book's humor and unforgettable characters-finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and, indeed, to all times.  An ideal match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? will start conversations, inspire arguments, and make a powerful case that this classic tale still waits to be discovered anew.

Written with undergraduate readers in mind, these essays cover the central issues raised in today s cinema courses and provide students with practical models to help them improve their own writing and film-analysis skills. Film Analysis also includes a helpful introduction and an extensive glossary. Already half the price of competing texts when purchased alone, Film Analysis can be packaged at 50 percent off with either A History of Narrative Film or Looking at Movies.

"This anthology makes it abundantly clear that feminist film criticism is flourishing and has developed dramatically since its inception in the early 1970s." -- Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Erens brings together a wide variety of writings and methodologies by U.S. and British feminist film scholars. The twenty-seven essays represent some of the most influential work on Hollywood film, women's cinema, and documentary filmmaking to appear during the past decade and beyond. Contributors include Lucie Arbuthnot, Linda Artel, Pam Cook, Teresa de Lauretis, Mary Ann Doane, Elizabeth Ellsworth, Lucy Fischer, Jane Gaines, Mary C. Gentile, Bette Gordon, Florence Jacobowitz, Claire Johnston, E. Ann Kaplan, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Sonya Michel, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Gail Seneca, Kaja Silverman, Lori Spring, Jackie Stacey, Maureen Turim, Diane Waldman, Susan Wengraf, Linda Williams, and Robin Wood.

As late as 1958, homosexuality couldn't be mentioned in a movie, as proven by the elaborate rituals the producers of Tennessee Williams' swampy drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof used to evade the obvious fact that its hero, as played by Paul Newman, was playing it gay. Cinema emerged from its celluloid closet in 1960 and has since allowed many cult icons into America's mainstream: gay cowboys, gay Nazis, S&M fetish groups and women in love with each other. 50 Years of Queer Cinema documents it all, focusing on cinema's most intriguing queer films.

Though movies have remained our foremost cultural pastime for over 100 years, many of us still know very little about the tools used to create them. In this groundbreaking new book, Vincent LoBrutto provides an enjoyable and accessible education in the art of cinema: using 50 landmark films spanning the history of the medium, LoBrutto illustrates such important concepts as editing, production design, cinematography, sound, screen acting, narrative structure, and various genres, nationalities, and film eras. Each concept is illustrated by the selection of a film that epitomizes its use, so that readers will learn about film authorship in Citizen Kane, multiplot narrative in Nashville, widescreen filmmaking in Rebel without a Cause, and screen violence in The Wild Bunch. Explaining the various tricks of the moviemaking trade, Becoming Film Literate offers a crash course in cinema, one designed to give even the novice reader a solid introduction to this complex and multifaceted medium. Though movies have remained our foremost cultural pastime for over 100 years, many of us still know very little about the tools used to create them. In this groundbreaking new book, Vincent LoBrutto provides an enjoyable and accessible education in the art of cinema: using 50 landmark films spanning the history of the medium, LoBrutto illustrates such important concepts as editing, production design, cinematography, sound, screen acting, narrative structure, and various genres, nationalities, and film eras. Each concept is illustrated by the selection of a film that epitomizes its use, so that readers will learn about film authorship in Citizen Kane, multiplot narrative in Nashville, widescreen filmmaking in Rebel without a Cause, and screen violence in The Wild Bunch. Providing a unique opportunity to become acquainted with important movies and the elements of their greatness, Becoming Film Literate offers a crash course in cinema, one designed to give even the novice reader a solid introduction to this complex and multifaceted medium.

Explores the anguish, obsessions, and vulnerabilities of women as they reflect on their bodies, from an aging magazine executive and her desperate pursuit of youth to a woman being surgically reconstructed by her plastic surgeon spouse.

A biography of the life and work of the celebrated English novelist.

Nicholas Boyle has written the definitive biography of this extraordinary figure--indeed,The Poet and the Ageis the first full-length, original English-language biography of Goethe in sixty years. In this elegant and enjoyable first volume--the first of two projected books--Boyle captures the passions and poetry of the young Goethe, leading us up to the moment when the French Revolution shook the foundations of all of Europe. Boyle contends that, although Goethe was certainly as much a part of German social and political life as he was its cultural nucleus, there was no single "Age of Goethe." Instead, Goethe's life spanned a great divide in European history: half was spent under a monarchy, and half under a middle-class bureaucracy.

Born on May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois, to the craggy but prosperous president of Carson Pirie Scott and an idealistic mother who had been a college president, Archibald MacLeish grew up to become not only a highly regarded poet, even eventually the unofficial poet laureate of his time, but one of our most dedicated and effective public servants. Educated at Hotchkiss (which he hated), Yale (football, Skull and Bones), and Harvard Law School, he abandoned a promising law practice in Boston on the very day he was to be offered a partnership, to take his wife, a gifted singer, and their young children to Paris and write poetry full-time.

In the 1920s, Lewis fired off a fusillade of sensational novels, exploding American shibboleths with a volatile mixture of caricature and photographic realism. With an unerring eye for the American scene and an omnivorous ear for American talk, he mocked such sacrosanct institutions as the small town (Main Street), business (Babbitt), medicine (Arrowsmith), and religion (Elmer Gantry). His shrewdly observed characters became part of the American gallery, and his titles became part of the language. Despite his books’ innate subversiveness, they were bestsellers and widely discussed—–and almost as widely damned.

"After thirty-five years in a sealed vault, the autobiography of America's great social and literary critic now comes to light, edited and with an introduction by Jonathan Yardley. H. L. Mencken stipulated in his will that the manuscript not be read for thirty-five years so that no one mentioned in its pages would still be alive on publication, thus giving the author the freedom to write what he pleased." "The narrative contains many profiles and reminiscences covering Mencken's years in the magazine world, particularly with the Smart Set, which he co-edited with George Jean Nathan. The heart of the book, however, lies in the descriptions of the relationships - rivalries, feuds, friendships and mentorships - that Mencken carried on with many of the significant writers of the twentieth century, including Theodore Dreiser, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, Frank Harris, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley and Sinclair Lewis." "Full of wonderfully revealing anecdotes and biting observations, these pages are spiked with his trademark outrageous and pugnacious wit, as well as his alarming frankness. Although the memoir breaks off in the early 1920's because of a stroke he suffered in 1948, it contributes significantly to our understanding of the legendary literary era of which he was at the center. It also makes abundantly clear - if proof were ever needed - why he was our greatest social commentator, and why he has had an enduring impact on American society and letters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"Up in the Old Hotel had its beginnings in the nineteen-thirties, in the hopelessness of the early days of the Great Depression, when Joseph Mitchell, at that time a young newspaper reporter in New York City, gradually became aware that the people be respected the most and got the most pleasure out of interviewing were really pretty strange. "Among them," he once wrote, were visionaries, obsessives, imposters, fanatics, lost souls, the-end-is-near street preachers, old Gypsy kings and old Gypsy queens, and out-and-out freak-show freaks." One of the street preachers was a gloomily eloquent old Southerner named the Reverend Mr. James Jefferson Davis Hall, who carried a WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? sign up and down the sidewalks of the theatrical district, which he called "the belly and the black heart of that Great Whore of Babylon, the city of New York," for a generation; one of the Gypsy kings was King Cockeye Johnny Nikanov, who liked to say that the difference between Gypsies and gajos, or non-Gypsies, is that a Gypsy will steal gasoline out of the tanks of parked automobiles but that a high-class United States politician gajo will steal a whole damned oil well; one of the freak-show freaks was Jane Barnell, billed as Lady Olga, who was the Bearded Lady in Hubert's Museum and Flea Circus on Forty-second Street and who was a legend in the freak-show world because of her imaginatively sarcastic and sometimes imaginatively obscene and sometimes imaginatively brutal remarks about people in freak-show audiences delivered deadpan and sotto voce to her fellow freaks gathered about her on the platform. These people were extraordinarily dissimilar, but all of them, each and every one of them, protected themselves and kept themselves going by the use of a kind of humor that Mitchell thought of as graveyard humor, and he admired them for this.

A selection of original writings and illuminating essays documents the continuing problem of violence against women in works by such notables as Alice Walker, Michael Cunningham, Kathy Najimy, Jane Fonda, Maya Angelou, and Edwidge Danticat.

Feminists opened up thousands of doors in the 1960s and 1970s, but decades later, are U.S. women where they thought they'd be? The answer, it turns out, is a resounding no. Surely there have been gains. Women now comprise nearly 60 percent of college undergraduates and half of all medical and law students. They have entered the workforce in record numbers, making the two-wage-earner family the norm. But combining a career and family turned out to be more complicated than expected. While women changed, social structures surrounding work and family remained static. Affordable and high-quality child care, paid family leave, and equal pay for equal work remain elusive for the vast majority of working women. In fact, the nation has fallen far behind other parts of the world on the gender-equity front. We lag behind more than seventy countries when it comes to the percentage of women holding elected federal offices. Only 17 percent of corporate boards include women members. And just 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by women. It's time, says Madeleine M. Kunin, to change all that. Looking back over five decades of advocacy, she analyzes where progress stalled, looks at the successes of other countries, and charts the course for the next feminist revolution--one that mobilizes women, and men, to call for the kind of government and workplace policies that can improve the lives of women and strengthen their families.

This book pays tribute to the sacrifices and achievements of seven individuals who made difficult and controversial choices to insure that black Americans shared in the evolution of the nation's cultural heritage. Transcriptions and analyses of never-before published uncensored conversations with Lorenzo Tucker, Lillian Gish, King Vidor, Clarence Muse, Woody Strode, Charles Gordone, and Frederick Douglass O?Neal reveal many of the reasons and rationalizations behind a racist screen imagery in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. This primary source, replete with pictures, documentation, and extensive annotations, recounts through the words of important participants what happened to many film pioneers when a new generation of African-Americans rebelled against the nation's stereotyped film imagery. Praise?A unique historical resource, this book is a fitting tribute to these artists, reminding us of their courage, integrity, and perseverance to succeed against great odds. The thorough, meticulous annotations make it an indispensable addition to collections in film studies and African American studies.' -Denise Youngblood, Professor of History,University of Vermont.'The author has taken a unique approach and may have even created a new genre of writing: the interview embellished with scholarly commentary. It is a fascinating experiment. . . This book belongs in every research library and in all public libraries from mid-size to large cities. It fills in lacunae between existing studies.' -Peter C. Rollins, Editor-in-Chief of Film & History.

Interweaves memoir and observation to explain how fears on both a personal and global scale result in a less secure existence.

This volume is the third in a trilogy of critical books exploring cinema in the second half of the 20th century. It re-examines the legacy of modernist innovation and evaluates the relationship of film and politics in the cinema.

The Film Cultures Reader brings together key writings on contemporary cinema by leading authors in cinema and cultural studies. It focuses on film as a social and cultural practice, and on the relationship between cinema and popular culture.

Spotlighting Asian Americans on both sides of the motion picture camera, this title examines the aesthetics, material circumstances, and politics of a broad spectrum of films released in the last thirty years. It focuses in particular on the growing presence of Asian Americans as makers of independent films and cross-over successes.

Now a classic,The World in a Framecovers the history of popular American films from the 1930s to the 1970s. Leo Braudy, one of America's leading film critics, gives an account of the histories of visual style and film genres, as ell as techniques of characterization—all in an evolving cultural context. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new preface addressing developments in film since 1976.

In this deeply engaging account, Michelle H. Raheja offers the first book-length study of the Indigenous actors, directors, and spectators who helped shape Hollywood's representation of Indigenous peoples. Since the era of silent films, Hollywood movies and visual culture generally have provided the primary representational field on which Indigenous images have been displayed to non-Native audiences. These films have been highly influential in shaping perceptions of Indigenous peoples as, for example, a dying race or as inherently unable or unwilling to adapt to change.

Feminist Film Studies: Writing the Woman into Cinema provides an introduction to feminist film theory as a discourse that grew in cultural significance since the early 1970s to the present. Janet McCabe traces the broad-ranging knowledges produced by feminist film scholarship, from formalist readings and psychoanalytical approaches to debates initiated by cultural studies, race and queer theory. This book thus documents a dynamic critical field, charting the numerous feminist interventions, and critically assesses how the social, political and cultural contexts informed debates and shaped the writing of a feminist film theory.

Modernist writing has always been linked with cinema. The recent renaissance in early British film studies has allowed cinema to emerge as a major historical context for literary practice. Treating cinema as a historical rather than an aesthetic influence, this book analyzes the role of early British film culture in literature, thus providing the first account of cinema as a cause for modernism.

In Horror Noire, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of blackness itself. Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films.

With an emphasis on the narrative film, "The Art of Watching Films" challenges students to take their film experience further by sharpening their powers of observation, developing the skills and habits of perceptive watching, and discovering complex aspects of film art that they might otherwise overlook. "The Art of Watching Films" introduces the formal elements and production process of films, and helps students analytically view and understand films within their historical, cultural and social contexts. The text presents an analytical framework that can be applied to all movies, as distinctly different as "Avatar, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Vertigo, Iron-Man, Man on Wire, and The Hurt Locker."

"Starting with the roadhouses and mob-ruled politics of the old South, Partners in Power draws the reader into the dramatic, seamy, largely hidden world that gave rise to - and explains - the Clinton presidency. Morris weaves together three essential themes: the parallel lives and tortured relationship of the Clintons personally; the essence of the bipartisan misrule that is Washington, D.C. (how the collusive culture of our national government defeats change); and, most telling, the behind-the-scenes story of the making of a president in a world where corrupting money and favors flow freely and the tyranny of wealthy interests and their captive politicians mock democracy." "Beyond myriad scandals - whether shady bond, banking, and commodity "deals"; the Whitewater imbroglio; abuses of power in covering up sexual infidelities; document "shredding parties"; the Vince Foster tragedy; or a multibillion-dollar Arkansas gunrunning and drug-smuggling ring implicating the Colombian cartel, the CIA, organized crime, and two Republican presidents as well as a Democratic governor and future president - Morris's evocation of a climb to power is the most candid, revealing, and courageous portrait ever drawn of a sitting president."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

""It is probable H. R. Haldeman never told all he knew about Nixon's role, the Watergate cover-up, or the Administration's abusive tactics against its political enemies," wrote Newsweek upon Haldeman's death on November 12, 1993. "He takes [those] secrets - and whatever else he knew - to final judgment."" "But not all he knew, nor all the secrets. When Haldeman died, he left behind a profound legacy that few knew existed - four years, three months of diaries, which he wrote and dictated every day that he was Chief of Staff for President Richard Nixon. These diaries, never before published, offer a fascinating portrait of an era and a White House that still haunt American history and politics to this day." "With keen observations and complete frankness, this record, written for Haldeman alone, reflects an unvarnished view of the triumphs and tragedy of those years. Here is a riveting portrait of that period's more celebrated events - the Cambodia bombings, the Kent State killings, the ground-breaking Russia and China trips, the 1972 election campaign, the Vietnam peace negotiations, the power struggles of the White House staff, the manipulations and headaches caused by Henry Kissinger, the beginning of the fall of Spiro Agnew, and, especially, the Watergate scandal - written exactly as they happened and reported in astonishing detail. More important, here is a fresh view of Richard Nixon, by the man who knew him best." "Nixon, who was the biggest star of his own drama, is revealed more intimately than we have ever seen him - shrewd, complex, petty, obsessive, sensitive, manipulative, and self-absorbed." "Here we learn of Nixon's double-cross of Senator Howard Baker and his chance for a Supreme Court seat; Nixon's plan to photograph Ted Kennedy in compromising positions, then leak the photos to the press; Nixon's attempts to get John Connally to replace Agnew on the 1972 ticket; how Nixon attempted to get LBJ to fix the Senate Watergate investigation; and how Nixon's inner circle hunted for a fall guy as the Watergate drama unfolded, and who some of the surprising candidates were...." "The Haldeman Diaries is perhaps the most meticulously reported and eye-opening chronicle we will ever have of those years, a definitive insider's account so illuminating and candid that we will never look at the Nixon White House in the same way again."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Tom Hayden emerged as a major political figure in the 1960s as a member of the Chicago Seven, the group that led the protests at the Democratic convention of 1968. In this autobiography, he examines his career and reaffirms his commitment to the value of dissent and its power to improve America and the lives of its citizens.

A unique and comprehensive study, One Hundred Years of Socialism traces the fortunes of the political parties on the left in Western Europe through the twentieth century. From the Second International to the birth of the welfare state to the student uprisings of the 1960s and beyond, acclaimed historian Donald Sassoon charts the course of socialism across fourteen countries, showing us both the origins of Western socialism and its considerable accomplishments, particularly since 1945. One Hundred Years of Socialism is an essential account of the love/hate relationship between capitalism and socialism in twentieth century Western Europe

Gift from President West

Although the presidential election of 1944 placed FDR in the White House for an unprecedented fourth term, historical memory of the election itself has been overshadowed by the war, Roosevelt's health and his death the following April, Truman's ascendancy, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Today most people assume that FDR's re-election was assured. Yet, as David M. Jordan's engrossing account reveals, neither the outcome of the campaign nor even the choice of candidates was assured. Just a week before Election Day, pollster George Gallup thought a small shift in votes in a few key states would award the election to Thomas E. Dewey. Though the Democrats urged voters not to "change horses in midstream," the Republicans countered that the war would be won "quicker with Dewey and Bricker." With its insider tales and accounts of party politics, and campaigning for votes in the shadow of war and an uncertain future,FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944makes for a fascinating chapter in American political history.

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Through an examination of the pleas and petitions of ordinary North Carolinians, Downs contends that the Civil War redirected, not destroyed, claims of dependence by exposing North Carolinians to the expansive but unsystematic power of Union and Confederate governments, and by loosening the legal ties that bound them to husbands, fathers, and masters.

Gift from President West

Gift from President West

In this pioneering exploration of the interplay between liberalism and black nationalism, Devin Fergus returns to the tumultuous era of Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Helms and challenges us to see familiar political developments through a new lens. What if the liberal coalition, instead of being torn apart by the demands of Black Power, actually engaged in a productive relationship with radical upstarts, absorbing black separatists into the political mainstream and keeping them from a more violent path? What if the New Right arose not only in response to Great Society Democrats but, as significantly, in reaction to Republican moderates who sought compromise with black nationalists through conduits like the Blacks for Nixon movement? Focusing especially on North Carolina, a progressive southern state and a national center of Black Power activism, Fergus reveals how liberal engagement helped to bring a radical civic ideology back from the brink of political violence and social nihilism.

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism is a multi-authored interdisciplinary guide to the study of Christian mysticism, with an emphasis on the third through the seventeenth centuries. The book is thematically organized in terms of the central contexts, practices and concepts associated with the mystical life in early, medieval and early modern Christianity. This book looks beyond the term 'mysticism', which was an early modern invention, to explore the ways in which the ancient terms 'mystic' and 'mystical' were used in the Christian tradition: what kinds of practices, modes of life and experiences were described as 'mystical'? What understanding of Christianity and of the life of Christian perfection is articulated through mystical interpretations of scripture, mystical contemplation, mystical vision, mystical theology or mystical union? This volume both provides a clear introduction to the Christian mystical life and articulates a bold new approach to the study of mysticism.

Explores the ways in which women from a variety of faiths and denominations are challenging traditional male-focused interpretations of religion and demanding equal treatment.

This work addresses the issue of what the New Testament actually teaches, and it's not what most people think. The author, a Bible expert demonstrates that the New Testament is riddled with contradictory views about who Jesus was and the significance of his life. He reveals that many of the books were written in the names of the apostles by Christians living decades later, and that central Christian doctrines were the inventions of still later theologians. Although this has been the standard and widespread view of scholars for two centuries, most people have never learned of it. Read less

For the millions of people who identify as liberal Christians. In McLennan’s bold call to reclaim ownership of Christianity, he advocates a sense of religion based not on doctrinal readings of scripture but on the humanity behind Christ’s teachings. He addresses such topics as intelligent design, abortion, same sex marriage, war. torture and much, much more. As he says in the Preface, “We liberal Christians know in our hearts that there is much more to life than seems to meet the rational eye of atheists; yet we find it hard to support supernatural claims about religion that fly in the face of scientific evidence.”

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism is a multi-authored interdisciplinary guide to the study of Christian mysticism, with an emphasis on the third through the seventeenth centuries. The book is thematically organized in terms of the central contexts, practices and concepts associated with the mystical life in early, medieval and early modern Christianity. This book looks beyond the term 'mysticism', which was an early modern invention, to explore the ways in which the ancient terms 'mystic' and 'mystical' were used in the Christian tradition: what kinds of practices, modes of life and experiences were described as 'mystical'? What understanding of Christianity and of the life of Christian perfection is articulated through mystical interpretations of scripture, mystical contemplation, mystical vision, mystical theology or mystical union? This volume both provides a clear introduction to the Christian mystical life and articulates a bold new approach to the study of mysticism.

Jonathan Kwitny draws on hundreds of firsthand accounts and eight years of research to reveal the pope in all his complexity. Debunking the theory of a "holy alliance" between the U.S. government and the Vatican, Kwitny shows that Solidarity won its victory despite the CIA; another myth - that the Pope was the victim of a "Bulgarian" plot engineered by the Soviet Union - is shown here to be an elaborate fabrication.

"What society considers blasphemy - a verbal assault against the sacred - is a litmus test of the standards it believes to be necessary to preserve unity, order, and morality. Society has always condemned as blasphemy what it regards as an abuse of liberty." "Levy also makes it clear that while past sanctions against blasphemy have inhibited all manner of cultural, political, scientific, and literary expression, we also pay a price for the current extraordinary expansion in the scope of permissible speech. We have become, he says, not only a free society but a "numb" society. We are beyond outrage."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The great Biblical flood so described in Genesis has long been a subject of fascination and speculation. Proof of the flood, which is an element of so many creation myths, began in earnest when archaeology started connecting physical evidence with Biblical story. The dream of proving the Bible as literal truth has proven irresistible, producing both spurious claims and serious scholarship. As best-selling historian Ian Wilson reveals in this fascinating new book, evidence of a catastrophic event has been building steadily, culminating in the work of William Ryan and Walter Pitman. Scrupulous in its details and compelling in its sweep,Before the Floodis narrative detective history at its most provocative, contributing a vital new chapter to the debate about the Bible and origins of the modern world.

The masterpiece of the father of modern philosophy A seminal text of modern philosophy, Immanuel Kant'sCritique of Pure Reason(1781) made history by bringing together two opposing schools of thought: rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Published here in a lucid reworking of Max Müller's classic translation, the Critique is a profound investigation into the nature of human reason, establishing its truth, falsities, illusions, and reality.

For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail.

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The authors offer a new definition and analysis of Christian scholarship that respects the insights of different Christian traditions (e.g., Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Wesleyan, Pentecostal) and that applies to the arts and to professional studies as much as it does to the humanities and the natural and social sciences. The book itself is organized as a conversation. Five chapters by the Jacobsens alternate with four contributed essays that sharpen, illustrate, or complicate the material in the preceding chapters.

Gift from President West

Gift from President West

A head of the Human Genome Project and former atheist presents a scientific argument for the existence of God, revealing how science can support faith by citing the areas of nature that can and cannot be fully explained by Darwinian evolution.

Renowned humorist and die-hard football fan Chad Gibbs knows he cannot serve two masters, but at times his faith is overwhelmed by his fanaticism. He is not alone.

For all that science knows about the living world, notes David P. Barash, there are even more things that we don't know, genuine evolutionary mysteries that perplex the best minds in biology. Paradoxically, many of these mysteries are very close to home, involving some of the most personal aspects of being human. Homo Mysterious examines a number of these evolutionary mysteries, exploring things that we don't yet know about ourselves, laying out the best current hypotheses, and pointing toward insights that scientists are just beginning to glimpse.

Features an international mix of classic first-person accounts of exploration, literary travelogues and works of cultural history, natural science and fiction about the South Pole. Published alongside, "The Arctic: An Anthology", this title also includes contributors from explorers such as Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, and Richard Byrd.

A literary anthology explores the natural wonders of the frozen landscapes of the Arctic in a compilation of first-person narratives, cultural histories, science and nature writing, and fiction.

Gift from President West

A medical revolution is upon us, and leading geneticist Collins explains its dimensions here. Our knowledge of the genetic basis for disease has increased exponentially in recent years, and we are now able to understand and treat diseases at the molecular level with personalized medicine--care based on an individual's genetic makeup. Collins presents cutting-edge science for lay readers who want to take control of their medical lives. He discusses cancer, obesity, aging, racial differences, and a host of other concerns, as well as the medical advances directly attributable to the Human Genome Project. He is also not shy about taking on large political issues: he points out problems with our current health-care system, discusses stem-cell research, and in a cogent commentary, recommends--with caveats--direct-to-consumer DNA testing. He does a superb job of humanizing a complex scientific and medical subject.