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Los morros del narco
by Javier Valdez CárdenasExplotación, sicarios y sueños rotos Javier Valdez recoge los relatos más intensos, conmovedores y sorprendentes que tiñen la realidad social y política de México a diario. El número de niños y jóvenes que participan activamente en las actividades del narcotráfico en México es cada día mayor. Batos de 13, 14,15 años y hasta los 21 ó 23 años actúan alucinados y con feroz valentía en levantones, asesinatos, decapitaciones, transporte de droga y secuestros. Y este libro impactante comparte historias reales de estos acontecimientos. Javier Valdez Cárdenas, destacado periodista del norte de México y autor del exitoso libro Miss Narco, entrega en estas páginas el retrato de una realidad sangrienta e incontenible: la voraz guerra del narco en México, vista desde las acciones y secuelas de niños y jóvenes que se han integrado al narco por su propia voluntad, deslumbrados por el dinero o arrastrados en la lucha entre sicarios y ejército federal, narcos contra policías estatales, sin olvidar los enfrentamientos entre los narcotraficantes que luchan por dominar el negocio de la droga. Incontables son los testimonios de reporteros y fotógrafos que cubren las noticias del narcotráfico, que advierten sobre la creciente participación de adolescentes en estas tareas de crimen y barbarie. El gran valor de Los morros del narco radica no sólo en la forma en que se adentra en el corazón, los recuerdos e ilusiones de estos seres humanos violentos, sedientos de riqueza y poder, sino en la forma en que descubre en estos sicarios y adictos a la mariguana o la cocaína, en estos narcos indomables y salvajes, un pasado donde la falta de amor, la ausencia de afecto, la miseria y el hambre dejaron balas en sus almas que nunca nadie podrá sacar.
Los muchachos perdidos: Retratos e historias de una generación entregada al crimen
by Humberto Padgett Eduardo LozaUn escalofriante libro-reportaje sobre los jóvenes que se encuentran en las correccionales de la capital y que esperan pacientemente el transcurrir de los días para salir y vengarse de sus enemigos o unirse a las filas del crimen organizado. ¿Qué harás cuando salgas?- le pregunto al Banda, preso en la corre de San Fernando por robo, secuestro y asesinato. Me gustaría estudiar ingeniería automotriz. Ahora leo filosofía y novelas. Afuera no leía ni estudiaba. Mi novela favorita es de Carlos Cuauhtémoc Sánchez, Dirigentes del mundo futuro.» ¿Cuál es la causa de que un muchacho se ausente de la escuela, salga a la calle a vender droga, secuestre y asesine? En buena medida, la respuesta se encuentra en una fantasía del pasado. Al comienzo de la década de 1980, los demógrafos aseguraban que a partir de 2010 el país estaría conformado en su mayoría por una juventud vigorosa que podría llevarlo a un nivel de primer mundo. Las expectativas se cumplieron, pero el presente produjo una marea de desilusiones. Como nunca, México hoy cuenta con jóvenes, pero entre ellos hay más de ocho millones sin escuela ni empleo. Incontables chavos son rechazados por el sistema legal, pero el creciente poder ilegal los admite en sus filas para formar con ellos un interminable ejército criminal. Son los modernos jaibos, los mismos que Luis Buñuel retrató hace más de medio siglo en Los olvidados. Este libro representa la culminación de más de dos años de entrevistas y decenas de visitas a las principales correccionales para jóvenes en México. Con textos de Humberto Padgett y fotografías de Eduardo Loza, se trata de un notable trabajo de investigación en un ámbito sobre el que nunca antes se había realizado un reportaje de profundidad. He aquí los retratos y las historias de Los muchachos perdidos.
Los muros de aire: y otras crónicas de frontera
by Yael WeissDetrás del primer muro había más muro, más rejas, y cámaras y reflectores y sensores de movimiento, además de soldados armados hasta los dientes y helicópteros de caza; no era solo cuestión de saltar y escabullirse en la tierra de la libertad. Esta frontera no era como las de América Central, tan endebles, ni como la que separa a México de Guatemala. En pequeños grupos o tan grandes como para formar caravanas, personas originarias de Centroamérica, y otras partes del mundo, que se dirigen a Estados Unidos, detienen su paso en las ciudades fronterizas de México. Antes y durante la pandemia de covid-19, laescritora Yael Weiss realizó estancias en las principales: Ciudad Hidalgo, Ciudad Juárez, Tenosique, Tijuana y Reynosa, para conocer de primera mano las historias de mujeres, niños y hombres que recorrieron de sur a norte el territorio mexicano, a pesar del miedo a la enfermedad, el hambre, la migra y el narco. Los muros de aire y otras crónicas de frontera es el retrato dinámico de los problemas y los azares de la migración. Un inigualable mosaico de voces que representa una diversidad de experiencias, motivaciones y sueños. Cinco crónicas literarias que nos acercan a los caminos, a los albergues, a sus comedores y dormitorios, pero también a esas zonas grises, tierras de nadie, kilómetros y kilómetros peligrosos de andar o rodear antes de llegar a la línea.
Los narcos gringos: Una radiografía inédita del tráfico de drogas en Estados Unidos
by J. Jesús EsquivelJ. Jesús Esquivel, autor de La D.E.A. en México, ha conseguido develar los entresijos del narcotráfico en Estados Unidos al sumergirse en la lectura de incontables expedientes judiciales, además de entrevistar a informantes clave.De San Francisco a Nueva York y de la línea divisoria hasta Chicago, Los narcos gringos describe con minucioso detalle los ingeniosos trucos de que se valen los brokers, los artífices del tráfico de estupefacientes, para llevar sus mercancías al interior de la Unión Americana y lavar el producto de su labor ilícita que hacen llegar a los cárteles mexicanos, el verdadero poder de la ecuación.A lo largo de la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos, una de las más extensas y complejas del mundo, tiene lugar uno de los comercios más perniciosos, aunque con implicaciones desiguales para una y otra nación: mientras de un lado se queda la sangre y la violencia, en el otro imperan la logística, los prejuicios raciales y la insaciable avidez de los consumidores; todo envuelto por un manto de corrupción .Relatos y retratos insólitos -algunos dignos de llegar a las pantallas cinematográficas, como el del inolvidable Don Henry Ford Jr.- desfilan por estas páginas para cuestionar mitos como la despenalización y el perdón presidencial a delincuentes, presentando en cambio un panorama demoledor sobre la adicción y el alcance de los intereses que buscan satisfacerla. Los narcos gringos no usan camisas de seda italiana o botas de pieles de animales exóticos, tampoco gruesas cadenas de oro y mucho menos relojes caros con incrustaciones de diamantes. El prototipo del narco gringo es una persona común y corriente que viste un pantalón de mezclilla, camisa o camiseta, que no usa anillos ni conduce autos caros.
Los olvidados
by Tim TzouliadisEn la década de 1930, la Gran Depresión golpea ferozmente a Estados Unidos y miles de jóvenes sin empleo, defraudados por el sueño americano, que ya no ofrece riqueza ni prosperidad, emigran a la Unión Soviética, el paraíso de los trabajadores, en busca de una oportunidad y de un sueño de signo contrario: el socialismo. Sin embargo, la promesa de un futuro mejor pronto se desmorona al comprobar las duras condiciones en las que han de vivir, y muchos de ellos quieren regresar. Es entonces cuando descubren toda la verdad: han perdido la nacionalidad estadounidense y con ella cualquier posibilidad de retorno. Atrapados en el terror estalinista y olvidados por su país de origen, la mayoría de ellos perecerán en la helada estepa rusa, víctimas de la represión y de los campos de reeducación, extenuados por el frío, el hambre y los trabajos forzados. Fruto de años de investigación en archivos internacionales, Los olvidados constituye una extraordinaria aportación a la historia de las barbaries del siglo XX, al tiempo que contribuye a una mejor comprensión de cuestiones eternas como la culpa y la inocencia que aún hoy nos acosan.
Los olvidados: Una tragedia americana en la Rusia de Stalin
by Tim TzouliadisLa asombrosa y olvidada historia de cómo miles de estadounidenses huyeron de la Gran Depresión a Rusia en busca de empleo y una vida mejor para acabar atrapados en la pesadilla estalinista. En la década de 1930, la Gran Depresión golpea ferozmente a Estados Unidos y miles de jóvenes sin empleo, defraudados por el sueño americano, que ya no ofrece riqueza ni prosperidad, emigran a la Unión Soviética, el paraíso de los trabajadores, en busca de una oportunidad y de un sueño de signo contrario: el socialismo. Sin embargo, la promesa de un futuro mejor pronto se desmorona al comprobar las duras condiciones en las que han de vivir, y muchos de ellos quieren regresar. Es entonces cuando descubren toda la verdad: han perdido la nacionalidad estadounidense y con ella cualquier posibilidad de retorno. Atrapados en el terror estalinista y olvidados por su país de origen, la mayoría de ellos perecerán en la helada estepa rusa, víctimas de larepresión y de los campos de reeducación, extenuados por el frío, el hambre y los trabajos forzados. Fruto de años de investigación en archivos internacionales, Los olvidados constituye una extraordinaria aportación a la historia de las barbaries del siglo XX, al tiempo que contribuye a una mejor comprensión de cuestiones eternas como la culpa y la inocencia que aún hoy nos acosan. La crítica ha dicho...«Notable relato de las vidas de los extranjeros que trabajaron, padecieron y finalmente murieron en la Unión Soviética. La sombría naturaleza del material no consigue acallar la maravillosa voz narrativa de Tzouliadis.»Noel Malcolm, Telegraph «Tzouliadis ha revelado una historia que estadounidenses y soviéticos preferirían olvidar.»Virginia Rounding, The Independent «La lectura de este libro abrirá sus ojos con toda seguridad.»Richard Pipes, The Sun «Tzouliadis conecta brillantemente la alta política con el sufrimiento de personas inocentes añadiendo detalles devastadores.»George Walden, The Observer «Arroja nueva luz sobre un viejo tema, el de la Rusia estalinista, de manera convincente. Y tiene algo verdaderamente inusual en un libro de historia: es totalmente absorbente.»Paul Lay, presidente del jurado del Premio Longman - History Today
Los señores de la guerra
by Gustavo Duncan#Y es que quien quiera que reduzca el fenómeno de las autodefensasa un simple proyecto contrainsurgente, o a purosnarcotra?cantes, o a facciones criminales que se despojarondel control del establecimiento, está pasando por alto susprofundas implicaciones en la con?guración del Estado y lasociedad en Colombia durante los inicios del siglo XXI. Desdeque Carlos Castaño y los demás miembros de las AutodefensasCampesinas de Córdoba y Urabá (ACCU), a mediadosde los noventa, introdujeron una nueva doctrina parala construcción de ejércitos privados al servicio de los #hombresfuertes# de las comunidades y difundieron su creación,un nuevo orden social se impuso en muchas de las regionesrurales y semiurbanas del país". Gustavo Duncan
Los señores de la guerra
by Gustavo DuncanUn completo análisis sobre los grupos paramilitares "Y es que quien quiera que reduzca el fenómeno de las autodefensas a un simple proyecto contrainsurgente, o a puros narcotraficantes, o a facciones criminales que se despojaron del control del establecimiento, está pasando por alto sus profundas implicaciones en la configuración del Estado y la sociedad en Colombia durante los inicios del siglo XXI. Desde que Carlos Castaño y los demás miembros de las Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá (ACCU), a mediados de los noventa, introdujeron una nueva doctrina para la construcción de ejércitos privados al servicio de los "hombres fuertes" de las comunidades y difundieron su creación, un nuevo orden social se impuso en muchas de las regiones rurales y semiurbanas del país". Gustavo Duncan
Los zapatos rojos son de puta: Desafiemos las creencias patriarcales
by Jorgelina Albano"Este es un libro que habla de los sesgos culturales enraizados en la sociedad. Su intención es hacerlos visibles", nos advierte desde el comienzo Jorgelina Albano, directora e ideóloga, entre tantas otras cosas, de Alabadas.com, el sitio que pretende generar impacto en la sociedad a través de testimonios de mujeres y hombres que han desafiado las creencias patriarcales para dar lugar a la equidad de género. Estas páginas funcionan como un acelerador de cambio cultural. Desde el título, provocan, inquietan, seducen, invitan. Proponen pensar distinto, cuestionar creencias arraigadas. Jorgelina Albano, directora e ideóloga de Alabadas.com, escribe en primera persona un libro abiertamente subjetivo y pasional. Toma partido, inclina la balanza, no se queda quieta e incita a todas las mujeres a hacer lo mismo. Hagamos vivible, nos dice, la distorsión de la mirada hacia uno y otro género. Desafiemos lo patriarcal para alcanzar la equidad. Afinemos la visión, revisemos perspectivas, excavemos y destruyamos los cimientos de una sociedad profundamente desigual para mujeres y varones. Y sobre esas ruinas edifiquemos lo nuevo. Solo si cambiamos la mirada lograremos transformar el mundo.
Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
by Saidiya HartmanIn Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, Hartman reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African-American history. The slave, Hartman observes, is a stranger, one torn from family, home, and country. To lose your mother is to be severed from your kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as an outsider, an alien. There are no known survivors of Hartman's lineage, no relatives in Ghana whom she came hoping to find. She is a stranger in search of strangers, and this fact leads her into intimate engagements with the people she encounters along the way and draws her deeper into the heartland of slavery. She passes through the holding cells of military forts and castles, the ruins of towns and villages devastated by the trade, and the fortified settlements built to repel predatory armies and kidnappers. In artful passages of historical portraiture, she shows us an Akan prince who granted the Portuguese permission to build the first permanent trading fort in West Africa, a girl murdered aboard a slave ship, and a community of fugitives seeking a haven from slave raiders.
Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
by Saidiya HartmanThe slave, Saidiya Hartman observes, is a stranger torn from family, home, and country. To lose your mother is to be severed from your kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as an outsider. In Lose Your Mother, Hartman tracesthe history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana.There are no known survivors of Hartman's lineage, no relatives to find. She is a stranger in search of strangers, and this fact leads her into intimate engagements with the people she encounters along the way, and with figures from the past, vividly dramatising the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and American history.
Losing Afghanistan
by Noah CoburnThe U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan mobilized troops, funds, and people on an international level not seen since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of individuals and tens of billions of dollars flowed into the country. But what was gained for Afghanistan--or for the international community that footed the bill? Why did development money not lead to more development? Why did a military presence make things more dangerous? Through the stories of four individuals--an ambassador, a Navy SEAL, a young Afghan businessman, and a wind energy engineer--Noah Coburn weaves a vivid account of the challenges and contradictions of life during the intervention. Looking particularly at the communities around Bagram Airbase, this ethnography considers how Afghans viewed and attempted to use the intervention and how those at the base tried to understand the communities around them. These compelling stories step outside the tired paradigms of 'unruly' Afghan tribes, an effective Taliban resistance, and a corrupt Karzai government to show how the intervention became an entity unto itself, one doomed to collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy and contradictory intentions.
Losing Clive to Younger Onset Dementia: One Family's Story
by Helen BeaumontClive Beaumont was diagnosed with Younger Onset Dementia at age 45, when his children were aged just 3 and 4. He had become less and less able to do his job properly and had been made redundant from the Army the year before. Clive's wife, Helen, tells of how she and the rest of the family made it through the next six years until Clive died: the challenge of continually adapting to his progressive deterioration; having to address the legal implications of the illness; applying for benefit payments; finding nursing homes; and juggling her responsibilities as a wife, a mother and an employee. She also describes the successful founding and development of The Clive Project, a registered charity set up by Helen and others in a bid to establish support services for people with Younger Onset Dementia. Younger Onset Dementia is comparatively rare, but not that rare. This story is for the family and friends of people with the condition, for the people themselves, and for the professionals working with them.
Losing Culture: Nostalgia, Heritage, and Our Accelerated Times
by David BerlinerWe’re losing our culture… our heritage… our traditions… everything is being swept away. Such sentiments get echoed around the world, from aging Trump supporters in West Virginia to young villagers in West Africa. But what is triggering this sense of cultural loss, and to what ends does this rhetoric get deployed? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Berliner travels around the world, from Guinea-Conakry, where globalization affects the traditional patriarchal structure of cultural transmission, to Laos, where foreign UNESCO experts have become self-appointed saviors of the nation’s cultural heritage. He also embarks on a voyage of critical self-exploration, reflecting on how anthropologists handle their own sense of cultural alienation while becoming deeply embedded in other cultures. This leads into a larger examination of how and why we experience exonostalgia, a longing for vanished cultural heydays we never directly experienced. Losing Culture provides a nuanced analysis of these phenomena, addressing why intergenerational cultural transmission is vital to humans, yet also considering how efforts to preserve disappearing cultures are sometimes misguided or even reactionary. Blending anthropological theory with vivid case studies, this book teaches us how to appreciate the multitudes of different ways we might understand loss, memory, transmission, and heritage.
Losing Face: Status Politics in Japan (Philip E. Lilienthal Asian Studies Imprint)
by Susan J. PharrThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived</DIV
Losing Heaven: Religion in Germany since 1945
by Thomas GroßböltingAs the birthplace of the Reformation, Germany has been the site of some of the most significant moments in the history of European Christianity. Today, however, its religious landscape is one that would scarcely be recognizable to earlier generations. This groundbreaking survey of German postwar religious life depicts a profoundly changed society: congregations shrink, private piety is on the wane, and public life has almost entirely shed its Christian character, yet there remains a booming market for syncretistic and individualistic forms of “popular religion.” Losing Heaven insightfully recounts these dramatic shifts and explains their consequences for German religious communities and the polity as a whole.
Losing Legitimacy: Street Crime And The Decline Of Social Institutions In America
by Gary LafreeIn the past fifty years, street crime rates in America have increased eightfold. These increases were historically patterned, were often very rapid, and had a disproportionate impact on African Americans. Much of the crime explosion took place in a space of just ten years beginning in the early 1960s. Common explanations based on biological impulses, psychological drives, or slow-moving social indicators cannot explain the speed or timing of these changes or their disproportionate impact on racial minorities. Using unique data that span half a century, Gary LaFree argues that social institutions are the key to understanding the U.S. crime wave. Crime increased along with growing political distrust, economic stress, and family disintegration. These changes were especially pronounced for racial minorities. American society responded by investing more in criminal justice, education, and welfare institutions. Stabilization of traditional social institutions and the effects of new institutional spending account for the modest crime declines of the 1990s.
Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder
by Beth LoffredaThe infamous murder in October 1998 of a twenty-one-year-old gay University of Wyoming student ignited a media frenzy. The crime resonated deeply with America's bitter history of violence against minorities, and something about Matt Shepard himself struck a chord with people across the nation. Although the details of the tragedy are familiar to most people, the complex and ever-shifting context of the killing is not. Losing Matt Shepard explores why the murder still haunts us -- and why it should. Beth Loffreda is uniquely qualified to write this account. As a professor new to the state and a straight faculty advisor to the campus Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Association, she is both an insider and outsider to the events. She draws upon her own penetrating observations as well as dozens of interviews with students, townspeople, police officers, journalists, state politicians, activists, and gay and lesbian residents to make visible the knot of forces tied together by the fate of this young man. This book shows how the politics of sexuality -- perhaps now the most divisive issue in America's culture wars -- unfolds in a remote and sparsely populated area of the country. Loffreda brilliantly captures daily life since October 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming -- a community in a rural, poor, conservative, and breathtakingly beautiful state without a single gay bar or bookstore. Rather than focus only on Matt Shepard, she presents a full range of characters, including a panoply of locals (both gay and straight), the national gay activists who quickly descended on Laramie, the indefatigable homicide investigators, the often unreflective journalists of the national media, and even a cameo appearance by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Loffreda courses through a wide ambit of events: from the attempts by students and townspeople to rise above the anti-gay theatrics of defrocked minister Fred Phelps to the spontaneous, grassroots support for Matt at the university's homecoming parade, from the emotionally charged town council discussions about bias crimes legislation to the tireless efforts of the investigators to trace that grim night's trail of evidence. Charting these and many other events, Losing Matt Shepard not only recounts the typical responses to Matt's death but also the surprising stories of those whose lives were transformed but ignored in the media frenzy.
Losing Music: A Memoir
by John Cotter“In his moving memoir, John Cotter anticipates a world without sound . . . a compelling portrait of how deafness isolates people.” —The Washington PostJohn Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came partial deafness, then dizziness and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate. At a stage of life when he expected to be emerging fully into adulthood, teaching and writing books, he found himself “crippled and dependent,” and in search of care.When he is first told that his debilitating condition is likely Ménière’s Disease, but that there is “no reliable test, no reliable treatment, and no consensus on its cause,” Cotter quits teaching, stops writing, and commences upon a series of visits to doctors and treatment centers. What begins as an expedition across the country navigating and battling the limits of the American healthcare system, quickly becomes something else entirely: a journey through hopelessness and adaptation to disability. Along the way, hearing aids become inseparable from his sense of self, as does a growing understanding that the possibilities in his life are narrowing rather than expanding. And with this understanding of his own travails comes reflection on age-old questions around fate, coincidence, and making meaning of inexplicable misfortune.A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating—a story that will make readers see their own lives anew.
Losing One's Head in the Ancient Near East: Interpretation and Meaning of Decapitation (Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East)
by Rita DolceIn the Ancient Near East, cutting off someone’s head was a unique act, not comparable to other types of mutilation, and therefore charged with a special symbolic and communicative significance. This book examines representations of decapitation in both images and texts, particularly in the context of war, from a trans-chronological perspective that aims to shed light on some of the conditions, relationships and meanings of this specific act. The severed head is a “coveted object” for the many individuals who interact with it and determine its fate, and the act itself appears to take on the hallmarks of a ritual. Drawing mainly on the evidence from Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia between the third and first millennia BC, and with reference to examples from prehistory to the Neo-Assyrian Period, this fascinating study will be of interest not only to art historians, but to anyone interested in the dynamics of war in the ancient world.
Losing Our Way
by Bob HerbertFrom longtime New York Times columnist Bob Herbert comes a wrenching portrayal of ordinary Americans struggling for survival in a nation that has lost its wayIn his eighteen years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times, Herbert championed the working poor and the middle class. After filing his last column in 2011, he set off on a journey across the country to report on Americans who were being left behind in an economy that has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. The portraits of those he encountered fuel his new book, Losing Our Way. Herbert's combination of heartrending reporting and keen political analysis is the purest expression since the Occupy movement of the plight of the 99 percent. The individuals and families who are paying the price of America's bad choices in recent decades form the book's emotional center: an exhausted high school student in Brooklyn who works the overnight shift in a factory at minimum wage to help pay her family's rent; a twenty-four-year-old soldier from Peachtree City, Georgia, who loses both legs in a misguided, mismanaged, seemingly endless war; a young woman, only recently engaged, who suffers devastating injuries in a tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis; and a group of parents in Pittsburgh who courageously fight back against the politicians who decimated funding for their children's schools. Herbert reminds us of a time in America when unemployment was low, wages and profits were high, and the nation's wealth, by current standards, was distributed much more equitably. Today, the gap between the wealthy and everyone else has widened dramatically, the nation's physical plant is crumbling, and the inability to find decent work is a plague on a generation. Herbert traces where we went wrong and spotlights the drastic and dangerous shift of political power from ordinary Americans to the corporate and financial elite. Hope for America, he argues, lies in a concerted push to redress that political imbalance. Searing and unforgettable, Losing Our Way ultimately inspires with its faith in ordinary citizens to take back their true political power and reclaim the American dream.From the Hardcover edition.
Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live without a Self
by Jay L. GarfieldWhy you don’t have a self—and why that’s a good thingIn Losing Ourselves, Jay Garfield, a leading expert on Buddhist philosophy, offers a brief and radically clear account of an idea that at first might seem frightening but that promises to liberate us and improve our lives, our relationships, and the world. Drawing on Indian and East Asian Buddhism, Daoism, Western philosophy, and cognitive neuroscience, Garfield shows why it is perfectly natural to think you have a self—and why it actually makes no sense at all and is even dangerous. Most importantly, he explains why shedding the illusion that you have a self can make you a better person.Examining a wide range of arguments for and against the existence of the self, Losing Ourselves makes the case that there are not only good philosophical and scientific reasons to deny the reality of the self, but that we can lead healthier social and moral lives if we understand that we are selfless persons. The book describes why the Buddhist idea of no-self is so powerful and why it has immense practical benefits, helping us to abandon egoism, act more morally and ethically, be more spontaneous, perform more expertly, and navigate ordinary life more skillfully. Getting over the self-illusion also means escaping the isolation of self-identity and becoming a person who participates with others in the shared enterprise of life.The result is a transformative book about why we have nothing to lose—and everything to gain—by losing our selves.
Losing Political Office
by Jane RobertsBased on in-depth interviews conducted with British politicians, this book analyses the different impacts of leaving political office. Representative democracy depends on politicians exiting office, and yet while there is considerable interest in who stands for and gains office, there is curiously little discussed about this process. Jane Roberts seeks to address this gap by asking: What is the experience like? What happens to politicians as they make the transition from office? What is the impact on their partners and family? Does it matter to anyone other than those immediately affected? Are there any wider implications for our democratic system? This book will appeal to academics in the fields of leadership, political science, public management and administration and psychology. It will also be of interest to elected politicians in central, devolved and local government (current and former), policy makers and political commentators, and more widely, the interested general reader.
Losing Sleep: Risk, Responsibility, and Infant Sleep Safety
by Laura HarrisonNew insights into the anxiety over infant sleep safetyNew parents are inundated with warnings about the fatal risks of “co-sleeping,” or sharing a bed with a newborn, from medical brochures and website forums, to billboard advertisements and the evening news. In Losing Sleep, Laura Harrison uncovers the origins of the infant sleep safety debate, providing a window into the unprecedented anxieties of modern parenthood. Exploring widespread rhetoric from doctors, public health experts, and the media, Harrison explains why our panic has reached an all-time high. She traces the way safe sleep standards in the United States have changed, and shows how parents, rather than broader systems of inequality that impact issues of housing and precarity, are increasingly being held responsible for infant health outcomes. Harrison shows that infant mortality rates differ widely by race and are linked to socioeconomic status. Yet, while racial disparities in infant mortality point to systemic and structural causes, the discourse around infant sleep safety often suggests that individual parents can protect their children from these tragic outcomes, if only they would make the right choices about safe sleep. Harrison argues that our understanding of sleep-related infant death, and the crisis of infant mortality in general, has burdened parents, especially parents of color, in increasingly punitive ways. As the government takes a more visible role in criminalizing parents, including those whose children die in their sleep, this book provides much-needed insight into a new era of parenthood.
Losing Tim: How Our Health and Education Systems Failed My Son with Schizophrenia
by Paul GionfriddoPaul Gionfriddo's son Tim is one of the "6 percent"—an American with serious mental illness. He is also one of the half million homeless people with serious mental illnesses in desperate need of help yet underserved or ignored by our health and social-service systems.In this moving, detailed, clear-eyed exposé, Gionfriddo describes how Tim and others like him come to live on the street. Gionfriddo takes stock of the numerous injustices that kept his son from realizing his potential from the time Tim first began to show symptoms of schizophrenia to the inadequate educational supports he received growing up, his isolation from family and friends, and his frequent encounters with the juvenile justice system and, later, the adult criminal-justice system and its substandard mental health care. Tim entered adulthood with limited formal education, few work skills, and a chronic, debilitating disease that took him from the streets to jails to hospitals and then back to the streets. Losing Tim shows that people with mental illness become homeless as a result not of bad choices but of bad policy. As a former state policy maker, Gionfriddo concludes with recommendations for reforming America's ailing approach to mental health.