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In the Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Story of the Indian Wars
by Roger L. Di SilvestroThe calamity at wounded knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890, is generally considered the closing salvo in America's Indian wars. But, as Roger Di Silvestro reveals in startling detail, the fight did not end at Wounded Knee. Two tragic events in early January 1891, overlooked by history, reignited passions on both sides of the conflict and forever colored its legacy.
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power
by Alfred W. McCoyFor a decade America&’s share of the global economy has been in decline. Its diplomatic alliances are under immense strain, and any claim of moral leadership has been abandoned. America is still a colossus, possessing half the world&’s manufacturing capacity, nearly half its military forces, and a formidable system of global surveillance and covert operations. But even at its peak it may have been sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Is it realistic to rely on the global order established after World War II, or are we witnessing the changing of the guard, with China emerging as the world&’s economic and military powerhouse? America clings to its superpower status, but for how much longer?
In the Shadows of the Holocaust and Communism: Czech and Slovak Jews Since 1945
by Alena HeitlingerWhen traumatic historical events and transformations coincide with one's entry into young adulthood, the personal and historical significance of life-course transitions interact and intensify. In this volume, Alena Heitlinger examines identity formation among a generation of Czech and Slovak Jews who grew up under communism, coming of age during the de-Stalinization period of 1962-1968.Heitlinger's main focus is on the differences and similarities within and between generations, and on the changing historical and political circumstances of state socialism/communism that have shaped an individual's consciousness and identity—as a Jew, assimilated Czech, Slovak, Czechoslovak and, where relevant, as an emigre or an immigrant. The book addresses a larger set of questions about the formation of Jewish identity in the midst of political upheavals, secularization, assimilation, and modernity: Who is a Jew? How is Jewish identity defined? How does Jewish identity change based on different historical contexts? How is Jewish identity transmitted from one generation to the next? What do the Czech and Slovak cases tell us about similar experiences in other former communist countries, or in established liberal democracies?Heitlinger explores the official and unofficial transmission of Holocaust remembering (and non-remembering), the role of Jewish youth groups, attitudes toward Israel and Zionism, and the impact of the collapse of communism. This volume is rich in both statistical and archival data and in its analysis of historical, institutional, and social factors. Heitlinger's wide-ranging approach shows how history, generational, and individual biography intertwine in the formation of ethnic identity and its ambiguities.
In the Sierra Madre
by Jeff BiggersA stunning history of legendary treasure seekers and enigmatic natives in Mexico's Copper Canyon The Sierra Madre--no other mountain range in the world possesses such a ring of intrigue. In the Sierra Madre is a groundbreaking and extraordinary memoir that chronicles the astonishing history of one of the most famous, yet unknown, regions in the world. Based on his one-year sojourn among the Raramuri/Tarahumara, award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers offers a rare look into the ways of the most resilient indigenous culture in the Americas, the exploits of Mexican mountaineers, and the fascinating parade of argonauts and accidental travelers that has journeyed into the Sierra Madre over centuries. From African explorers, Bohemian friars, Confederate and Irish war deserters, French poets, Boer and Russian commandos, Apache and Mennonite communities, bewildered archaeologists, addled writers, and legendary characters including Antonin Artaud, B. Traven, Sergei Eisenstein, George Patton, Geronimo, and Pancho Villa, Biggers uncovers the remarkable treasures of the Sierra Madre.
In the Slender Margin: The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying
by Eve JosephLike Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, an extraordinarily moving and engaging look at loss and death. Eve Joseph is an award-winning poet who worked for twenty years as a palliative care counselor in a hospice. When she was a young girl, she lost a much older brother, and her experience as a grown woman helping others face death, dying, and grief opens the path for her to recollect and understand his loss in a way she could not as a child. In the Slender Margin is an insider's look at an experience that awaits us all, and that is at once deeply fascinating, frightening, and in modern society shunned. The book is an intimate invitation to consider death and our response to it without fear or morbidity, but rather with wonder and a curious mind. Writing with a poet's precise language and in short meditative chapters leavened with insight, warmth, and occasional humor, Joseph cites her hospice experience as well as the writings of others across generations—from the realms of mythology, psychology, science, religion, history, and literature—to illuminate the many facets of dying and death. Offering examples from cultural traditions, practices, and beliefs from around the world, her book is at once an exploration of the unknowable and a very humane journey through the land of grief.
In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas
by Bruce GrantAt the outset of the twentieth century, the Nivkhi of Sakhalin Island were a small population of fishermen under Russian dominion and an Asian cultural sway. The turbulence of the decades that followed would transform them dramatically. While Russian missionaries hounded them for their pagan ways, Lenin praised them; while Stalin routed them in purges, Khrushchev gave them respite; and while Brezhnev organized complex resettlement campaigns, Gorbachev pronounced that they were free to resume a traditional life. But what is tradition after seven decades of building a Soviet world? Based on years of research in the former Soviet Union, Bruce Grant's book draws upon Nivkh interviews, newly opened archives, and rarely translated Soviet ethnographic texts to examine the effects of this remarkable state venture in the construction of identity. With a keen sensitivity, Grant explores the often paradoxical participation by Nivkhi in these shifting waves of Sovietization and poses questions about how cultural identity is constituted and reconstituted, restructured and dismantled. Part chronicle of modernization, part saga of memory and forgetting, In the Soviet House of Culture is an interpretive ethnography of one people's attempts to recapture the past as they look toward the future. This is a book that will appeal to anthropologists and historians alike, as well as to anyone who is interested in the people and politics of the former Soviet Union.
In the Sphere of The Soviets: Essays on the Cultural Legacy of the Soviet Union
by Charles MerewetherThe book distinctive is listed in points (i) it focuses on Eastern European art covering the historical avant-garde to the post-war and contemporary periods of; (ii) it looks at some key artists in the countries that have not been given so much attention within this content i.e. Georgia, Dagestan, Chechnya and Central Asia; (iii) it looks beyond Eastern Europe to the influence of Russia/Soviet Union in Asia. It explores the theoretical models developed for understanding contemporary art across Eastern Europe and focus on the new generation of Georgian artists who emerged in the immediate years before and after the country’s independence from the Soviet Union; and on to discuss the legacy and debates around monuments across Poland, Russia and Ukraine.helps in Better understanding the postwar and contemporary art in Eastern Europe.
In the Spirit of a New People: The Cultural Politics of the Chicano Movement (American Literatures Initiative)
by Randy J OntiverosReexamining the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, In the Spirit of a New People brings to light new insights about social activism in the twentieth-century and new lessons for progressive politics in the twenty-first. Randy J. Ontiveros explores the ways in which Chicano/a artists and activists used fiction, poetry, visual arts, theater, and other expressive forms to forge a common purpose and to challenge inequality in America.Focusing on cultural politics, Ontiveros reveals neglected stories about the Chicano movement and its impact: how writers used the street press to push back against the network news; how visual artists such as Santa Barraza used painting, installations, and mixed media to challenge racism in mainstream environmentalism; how El Teatro Campesino’s innovative “actos,” or short skits,sought to embody new, more inclusive forms of citizenship; and how Sandra Cisneros and other Chicana novelists broadened the narrative of the Chicano movement. In the Spirit of a New People articulates a fresh understanding of how the Chicano movement contributed to the social and political currents of postwar America, and how the movement remains meaningful today.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
by Martin Garbus Peter MatthiessenAn "indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the new novel In Paradise On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book. Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse reveals the Lakota tribe's long struggle with the U.S. government, and makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the earth is so important at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world.
In the Spirit of Homebirth
by Bronwyn PreeceThe collection gives voice to those often overlooked in birthing books, including stories from indigenous families, and families from diverse socio-economic classes, religions, and urban and rural lifestyles. Also unique are the additional stories from witnesses to birth: partners describe their awe, children write sweetly of siblings' arrivals and midwives and doulas recount their experiences aiding women in their journeys. Included as landmarks amongst the stories are testaments to birth traditions such as blessingways and umbilical cord and placenta practices.From days of labor, to babies born so quickly support did not make it in time; from waterbirths at home, to transfers to the hospital; from planned pregnancies to unexpected ones; from tales of tears to tales of euphoria--the eclectic stories brought together here share one theme: they capture an intent to birth at home that comes out of a deep love for and belief in the human body and spirit. These amazing voices rise to a clarion call--women of all descents reclaiming a birthright: to give birth, and to be birthed, as they choose. It is an ancient choice made now by modern women. These stories, delightful and empowering, find the new within the old.
In the Struggle: Scholars and the Fight against Industrial Agribusiness in California
by Scott J. Peters Daniel J. O'ConnellA call to action in an ongoing battle against industrial agricultureFrom the early twentieth century and across generations to the present, In the Struggle brings together the stories of eight politically engaged scholars, documenting their opposition to industrial-scale agribusiness in California. As the narrative unfolds, their previously censored and suppressed research, together with personal accounts of intimidation and subterfuge, is introduced into the public arena for the first time. In the Struggle lays out historic, subterranean confrontations over water rights, labor organizing, and the corruption of democratic principles and public institutions. As California’s rural economy increasingly consolidates into the hands of land barons and corporations, the scholars’ work shifts from analyzing problems and formulating research methods to organizing resistance and building community power. Throughout their engagement, they face intense political blowback as powerful economic interests work to pollute and undermine scientific inquiry and the civic purposes of public universities.The findings and the pressure put upon the work of these scholars—Paul Taylor, Ernesto Galarza, and Isao Fujimoto among them—are a damning indictment of the greed and corruption that flourish under industrial-scale agriculture. After almost a century of empirical evidence and published research, a definitive finding becomes clear: land consolidation and economic monopoly are fundamentally detrimental to democracy and the well-being of rural societies.
In the Thick of the Fight: The Writing of Emily Wilding Davison, Militant Suffragette
by Carolyn P. ColletteOne of the most memorable images of the British women's suffrage movement occurred on June 4, Derby Day, 1913. As the field of horses approached a turning at Epsom, militant suffragette Emily Wilding Davison ducked out from under the railing and ran onto the track, reaching for the bridle of the King's horse, and was killed in the collision. While her death transformed her into a heroine, it all but erased her identity. To identify what impelled Davison to suffer multiple imprisonments, to experience the torture of force-feedings and the insults of hostile members of the crowds who came to hear her speak, Carolyn P. Collette explores a largely ignored source--the writing to which Davison dedicated so much time and effort during the years from 1908 to 1913. Davison's writing is an implicit apologia for why she lived the life of a militant suffragette and where she continually revisits and restates the principles that guided her: that woman suffrage was necessary to improve the lives of men, women, and children; that the freedom and justice women sought was sanctioned by God and unjustly withheld by humans whose opposition constituted a tyranny that had to be opposed; and that the evolution of human progress demanded that women become fully equal citizens of their nation in every respect-- politically, economically, and culturally. In the Thick of the Fight makes available for the first time the archive of published and unpublished writings of Emily Wilding Davison. Collette reorients both scholarly and public attention away from a single, defining event to the complexity of Davison's contributions to modern feminist discourse, giving the reader a sense of the vibrancy and diversity of Davison's suffrage writings.
In the Time of Oil
by Mandana E. LimbertBefore the discovery of oil in the late 1960s, Oman was one of the poorest countries in the world, with only six kilometers of paved roads and one hospital. By the late 1970s, all that had changed as Oman used its new oil wealth to build a modern infrastructure. In the Time of Oil describes how people in Bahla, an oasis town in the interior of Oman, experienced this dramatic transformation following the discovery of oil, and how they now grapple with the prospect of this resource's future depletion. Focusing on shifting structures of governance and new forms of sociality as well as on the changes brought by mass schooling, piped water, and the fracturing of close ties with East Africa, Mandana Limbert shows how personal memories and local histories produce divergent notions about proper social conduct, piety, and gendered religiosity. With close attention to the subtleties of everyday life and the details of archival documents, poetry, and local histories, Limbert provides a rich historical ethnography of oil development, piety, and social life on the Arabian Peninsula.
In the Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan
by Bhoju Ram Gujar Ann Grodzins GoldIn the Time of Trees and Sorrows showcases peasants' memories of everyday life in North India under royal rule and their musings on the contrast between the old days and the unprecedented shifts that a half century of Indian Independence has wrought. It is an oral history of the former Kingdom of Sawar in the modern state of Rajasthan as it was from the 1930s to the 1950s.Based on testimonies from the 1990s, this book stands as a polyvocal account of the radical political and environmental changes the region and its people have faced in the twentieth century. Not just the story of modernity from the perspective of a rural village, these interviews and author commentaries narrate this small rural community's relatively sudden transformation from subjection to a local despot and to a remote colonial power to citizenship in a modern postcolonial democracy. Unlike other recent studies of Rajasthan, the current study gives voice exclusively to former subjects who endured the double oppression of colonial and regional rulers. Gold and Gujar thus place subjective subaltern experiences of daily routines, manifestations of power relations, and sweeping changes to the environment (after the fall of kings) that turned lush forests into a barren landscape on equal footing with historical "fact" and archival sources. Ambiguous, complex, and culturally laden as it is in Western thought, the concept of nature is queried in this ethnographic text. For persons in Sawar the environment is not only a means of sustenance, its deterioration is linked to human morality and to power, both royal and divine. The framing questions of this South Asian history revealed through memories are: what was it like in the time of kings and what happened to the trees?
In the True Blue's Wake: Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation (The American South Series)
by Daniel B. ThorpIn 1759, William Preston purchased sixteen enslaved Africans brought to America aboard the True Blue, an English slave ship. Over the next century, the Preston family enslaved more than two hundred individuals and used their labor to establish and operate Smithfield Plantation in Blacksburg, Virginia. Daniel Thorp uncovers the stories of the men and women who were enslaved at Smithfield, one of the first plantations west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, between its establishment in 1774 and the abolition of slavery there in 1865 and offers powerful biographies of their descendants after emancipation.In the True Blue’s Wake is the first book to chronicle the lives of the enslaved families whose labor was crucial to the success of the Prestons, a family that played a central role in the European settlement of southwestern Virginia and produced dozens of state legislators, three governors, ten members of Congress, two cabinet members, and a vice president of the United States. Drawing on records from Smithfield, the Preston family, and the surrounding community, as well as from the Freedmen’s Bureau, federal censuses, military records, newspapers, and oral histories, Thorp tracks the identities and experiences of the enslaved. He then traces the diverse paths and accomplishments of those families as they moved throughout the United States after 1865. A model of public history, In the True Blue’s Wake is an illuminating examination of an enslaved community in a region often ignored by historians of slavery in the United States yet representative of a broad swath of pivotal American history.
In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch
by John ZadaA journalist travels through British Columbia exploring of one of the world’s most baffling mysteries?the existence of the Sasquatch.On the central and north coast of British Columbia, the Great Bear Rainforest is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, containing more organic matter than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. The area plays host to a wide range of species, from thousand-year-old western cedars to humpback whales to iconic white Spirit bears.According to local residents, another giant is said to live in these woods. For centuries people have reported encounters with the Sasquatch—a species of hairy bipedal man-apes said to inhabit the deepest recesses of this pristine wilderness. Driven by his own childhood obsession with the creatures, John Zada decides to seek out the diverse inhabitants of this rugged and far-flung coast, where nearly everyone has a story to tell, from a scientist who dedicated his life to researching the Sasquatch, to members of the area’s First Nations, to a former grizzly bear hunter-turned-nature tour guide. With each tale, Zada discovers that his search for the Sasquatch is a quest for something infinitely more complex, cutting across questions of human perception, scientific inquiry, indigenous traditions, the environment, and the power and desire of the human imagination to believe in—or reject—something largely unseen.Teeming with gorgeous nature writing and a driving narrative that takes us through the forests and into the valleys of a remote and seldom visited region, In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond sheds light on what our decades-long pursuit of the Sasquatch can tell us about ourselves and invites us to welcome wonder for the unknown back into our lives.Praise for In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond“Books on supernatural phenomena typically steer one of two courses: tabloid gullibility or mean-spirited debunkery. Zada deftly tightropes between the two. . . . In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond is not really about sasquatch. It is about how we see what we want to see and don’t see what we’re not prepared to see. . . . A quirky and oddly captivating tale.” —Eric Weiner, Washington Post“An adventure story in the tradition of Paul Theroux and, in parts, Jon Krakauer. . . . Zada is a latter-day Henry David Thoreau or John Muir. . . . Searching for an elusive ape, Zada has a knack for meeting unforgettable humans.” —Peter Kuitenbrouwer, Globe and Mail“If people can believe in God, why not Sasquatch? Zada takes us through the temperate rainforest of British Columbia looking for both the hairy bipedal and the mythology and landscape surrounding it. Terrific nature writing with a furry twist.” —Kerri Arsenault, Orion
In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice, and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Violence in Latin American History #7)
by Gema Kloppe-SantamaríaIn the Vortex of Violence examines the uncharted history of lynching in post-revolutionary Mexico. Based on a collection of previously untapped sources, the book examines why lynching became a persistent practice during a period otherwise characterized by political stability and decreasing levels of violence. It explores how state formation processes, as well as religion, perceptions of crime, and mythical beliefs, contributed to shaping people’s understanding of lynching as a legitimate form of justice. Extending the history of lynching beyond the United States, this book offers key insights into the cultural, historical, and political reasons behind the violent phenomenon and its continued practice in Latin America today.
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
by Christina SharpeIn this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of "wake"--the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness--Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation. Initiating and describing a theory and method of reading the metaphors and materiality of "the wake," "the ship," "the hold," and "the weather," Sharpe shows how the sign of the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora and how the specter of the hold produces conditions of containment, regulation, and punishment, but also something in excess of them. In the weather, Sharpe situates anti-Blackness and white supremacy as the total climate that produces premature Black death as normative. Formulating the wake and "wake work" as sites of artistic production, resistance, consciousness, and possibility for living in diaspora, In the Wake offers a way forward.
In the Wake of Medea: Neoclassical Theater and the Arts of Destruction
by Juliette CherbuliezIn the Wake of Medea examines the violence of seventeenth-century French political dramas. French tragedy has traditionally been taken to be a passionless, cerebral genre that refused all forms of violence. This book explores the rhetorical, literary, and performance strategies through which violence persists, contextualizing it in a longer literary and philosophical history from Ovid to Pasolini.The mythological figure of Medea, foreigner who massacres her brother, murders kings, burns down Corinth, and kills her own children, exemplifies the persistence of violence in literature and art. A refugee who is welcomed yet feared, who confirms the social while threatening its integrity, Medea offers an alternative to western philosophy’s ethical paradigm of Antigone. The Medean presence, Cherbuliez shows, offers a model of radically persistent and disruptive outsiderness, both for classical theater and for its wake in literary theory.In the Wake of Medea explores a range of artistic strategies integrating violence into drama, from rhetorical devices like ekphrasis to dramaturgical mechanisms like machinery, all of which involve temporal disruption. The full range of this Medean presence is explored in treatments of the character Medea and in works figuratively invoking a Medean presence, from the well-known tragedies of Racine and Corneille through a range of other neoclassical political theater, including spectacular machine plays, Neo-Stoic parables, didactic Christian theater. In the Wake of Medea recognizes the violence within these tragedies to explain why violence remains so integral to literature and arts today.
In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture And The Biblical Transformation Of Pagan Myth
by Tikva Frymer-KenskyThe current return to spiritual values has spawned a surge of interest in the ancient goddess-based religions as a remedy to a long tradition of misogyny in the Western religions. In a provocative work of biblical scholarship on gender and sexuality, the author shows that the ideal of monotheism may offer far more to us today than a return to the gender-based worldview of the goddess religions.
In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made
by Norman F. CantorMuch of what we know about the greatest medical disaster ever, the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren -- the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the final, awful end by respiratory failure -- are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was, and how it made history, remain shrouded in a haze of myths.Norman Cantor, the premier historian of the Middle Ages, draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and groundbreaking historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death afresh, as a gripping, intimate narrative.In the Wake of the Plague presents a microcosmic view of the Plague in England (and on the continent), telling the stories of the men and women of the fourteenth century, from peasant to priest, and from merchant to king. Cantor introduces a fascinating cast of characters. We meet, among others, fifteen-year-old Princess Joan of England, on her way to Spain to marry a Castilian prince; Thomas of Birmingham, abbot of Halesowen, responsible for his abbey as a CEO is for his business in a desperate time; and the once-prominent landowner John le Strange, who sees the Black Death tear away his family's lands and then its very name as it washes, unchecked, over Europe in wave after wave.Cantor argues that despite the devastation that made the Plague so terrifying, the disease that killed more than 40 percent of Europe's population had some beneficial results. The often literal demise of the old order meant that new, more scientific thinking increasingly prevailed where church dogma had once reigned supreme. In effect, the Black Death heralded an intellectual revolution. There was also an explosion of art: tapestries became popular as window protection against the supposedly airborne virus, and a great number of painters responded to the Plague. Finally, the Black Death marked an economic sea change: the onset of what Cantor refers to as turbocapitalism; the peasants who survived the Plague thrived, creating Europe's first class of independent farmers.Here are those stories and others, in a tale of triumph coming out of the darkest horror, wrapped up in a scientific mystery that persists, in part, to this day. Cantor's portrait of the Black Death's world is pro-vocative and captivating. Not since Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror have medieval men and women been brought so vividly to life. The greatest popularizer of the Middle Ages has written the period's most fascinating narrative.
In the World: From the Big House to Hollywood (Cannabis Americana: Remembrance of the War on Plants, Book 3) (Cannabis Americana: Remembrance of the W #3)
by Richard StrattonThe Hollywood Ending of an Adrenaline-Filled and, By Turns, Harrowing and Funny Odyssey of Crime and Redemption in America's War on DrugsSmuggler's Blues, the first book in Richard Stratton's memoir of his criminal career, detailed his years as a kingpin in the Hippie Mafia. Kingpin, the second book, traced his eight-year journey through the criminal justice system, through two federal trials and myriad jails and prisons, and culminating in his success as a self-taught jailhouse lawyer in winning his own release. In this final volume, Stratton recounts his return to civilian life, as a convicted felon who had been forced to confront his demons and an aspiring writer who yearned to make his mark. From parole to Hollywood to marriage and fatherhood, he found his way in the free world. Working in the New York office of a criminal defense attorney, he somehow adhered to the stringent conditions of his release not to associate with other felons. When his prison novel Smack Goddess was published, his mentor, Norman Mailer, entered his life again. Going to Hollywood to consult on a documentary, he became a writer and producer, and his feature film Slam won major awards at Sundance and Cannes. In the World includes profiles of celebrities such as Mailer, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, and others.
In Their Own Best Interest: A History of the U.S. Effect to Improve Latin Americans
by Lars SchoultzFor over a century the U.S. has “improved” the peoples of Latin America by promoting everything from representative democracy and economic development to oral hygiene. How did this paternalistic practice evolve and spread globally and what are the troubling consequences for a country with a habit of giving—and for others with a habit of receiving?
In Their Own Hands
by Kyla Jagger Neilan Frances Moore Lappé Jeffrey AsheTwo and a half billion people worldwide, most of them desperately poor villagers, need a better way to save and to borrow. Even the most innovative banking institutions can't reach them; savings groups can. In savings groups, members save what they can in a communal pot and loan their growing fund to each other for their short-term needs. Jeffrey Ashe and Kyla Neilan illustrate how these savings groups form and function and how little "outside" support is actually required for their success. Drawing on decades of Ashe's personal experience, this book describes how he developed Saving for Change, which leveraged the wisdom and strength of group members to train and establish new groups. This model has impacted the lives of 680,000 people across five countries. Savings groups are a "catalytic innovation" that bypasses subsidies, dependency, and high costs while effectively reducing chronic hunger, building assets, and empowering the community. Today, saving groups have 9 million members around the globe--with minimal support, membership could grow to ten times this number.
In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories, vol. 4
by Rhonda M. Roorda Rita J. SimonNearly forty years after researchers first sought to determine the effects, if any, on children adopted by families whose racial or ethnic background differed from their own, the debate over transracial adoption continues. In this collection of interviews conducted with black and biracial young adults who were adopted by white parents, the authors present the personal stories of two dozen individuals who hail from a wide range of religious, economic, political, and professional backgrounds. How does the experience affect their racial and social identities, their choice of friends and marital partners, and their lifestyles? In addition to interviews, the book includes overviews of both the history and current legal status of transracial adoption.