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The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Migration, Citizenship, and Temporary Protection in Turkey (McGill-Queen's Refugee and Forced Migration Studies #5)
by Feyzi Baban Suzan Ilcan Kim RygielTurkey now hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees in the world, more than 3.6 million of the 12.7 million displaced by the Syrian Civil War. Many of them are subject to an unpredictable temporary protection, forcing them to live under vulnerable and insecure conditions.The Precarious Lives of Syrians examines the three dimensions of the architecture of precarity: Syrian migrants' legal status, the spaces in which they live and work, and their movements within and outside Turkey. The difficulties they face include restricted access to education and healthcare, struggles to secure employment, language barriers, identity-based discrimination, and unlawful deportations. Feyzi Baban, Suzan Ilcan, and Kim Rygiel show that Syrians confront their precarious conditions by engaging in cultural production and community-building activities, and by undertaking perilous journeys to Europe, allowing them to claim spaces and citizenship while asserting their rights to belong, to stay, and to escape. The authors draw on migration policies, legal and scholarly materials, and five years of extensive field research with local, national, and international humanitarian organizations, and with Syrians from all walks of life.The Precarious Lives of Syrians offers a thoughtful and compelling analysis of migration precarity in our contemporary context.
Precarious Passages: The Diasporic Imagination in Contemporary Black Anglophone Fiction
by Tuire ValkeakariPrecarious Passages unites literature written by members of the far-flung Black Anglophone diaspora. Rather than categorizing novels as simply "African American," "Black Canadian," "Black British," or "postcolonial African Caribbean," this book takes an integrative approach: it argues that fiction creates and sustains a sense of a wider African diasporic community in the Western world. Tuire Valkeakari analyzes the writing of Toni Morrison, Caryl Phillips, Lawrence Hill, and other contemporary novelists of African descent. She shows how their novels connect with each other and with defining moments in the transatlantic experience, most notably the Middle Passage and enslavement. The lives of their characters are marked by migration and displacement. Their protagonists yearn to experience fulfilling human connection in a place they can call home. Portraying strategies of survival, adaptation, and resistance across the limitless varieties of life experiences in the diaspora, these novelists continually reimagine what it means to share a Black diasporic identity.
Precarious Prescriptions: Contested Histories of Race and Health in North America
by Laurie B. Green, John McKiernan-González, and Martin SummersIn Precarious Prescriptions, Laurie B. Green, John Mckiernan-González, and Martin Summers bring together essays that place race, citizenship, and gender at the center of questions about health and disease. Exploring the interplay between disease as a biological phenomenon, illness as a subjective experience, and race as an ideological construct, this volume weaves together a complicated history to show the role that health and medicine have played throughout the past in defining the ideal citizen.By creating an intricate portrait of the close associations of race, medicine, and public health, Precarious Prescriptions helps us better understand the long and fraught history of health care in America.Contributors: Jason E. Glenn, U of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Mark Allan Goldberg, U of Houston; Jean J. Kim; Gretchen Long, Williams College; Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, Cornell U; Lena McQuade-Salzfass, Sonoma State U; Natalia Molina, U of California, San Diego; Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College; Jennifer Seltz, Western Washington U.
Precarious Priviledge: Race and the Middle-Class Immigrant Experience
by Irene BrowneIn recent years crackdowns on immigrant labor and a shrinking job market in California, Arizona, and Texas have pushed Latine immigrants to new destinations, particularly places in the American South. Although many of these immigrants work in manufacturing or food-processing plants, a growing number belong to the professional middle class. These professionals find that despite their privileged social class and regardless of their national origin, many non-Latines assume that they are undocumented working-class Mexicans, the stereotype of the “typical Latine.” In Precarious Privilege, sociologist Irene Browne focuses on how first-generation middle-class Mexican and Dominican immigrants in Atlanta respond to this stigmatizing assumption. Browne finds that when asked to identify themselves by race, these immigrants either reject racial identities entirely or draw on belief systems from Mexico and the Dominican Republic that emphasize European-indigenous mixed race identities. When branded as typical Latines in the U.S., Mexican middle-class immigrants emphasize their social class or explain that a typical Latine can be middle-class, while Dominicans simply indicate that they are not Mexican. Rather than blame systemic racism, both Mexican and Dominican middle-class immigrants often attribute misperceptions of their identity to non-Latines’ ignorance or to individual Latines’ lack of effort in trying to assimilate. But these middle-class Latine immigrants do not simply seek to position themselves on par with the U.S.-born white middle class. Instead, they leverage their cosmopolitanism—for example, their multilingualism or their children’s experiences traveling abroad—to engage in what Browne calls “one-up assimilation,” a strategy that aims to position them above the white middle class, who are often monolingual and unaware of the world outside the United States. Middle-class Latines’ cosmopolitanism and valuing of diversity also lead them to have cordial relations with African Americans, but these immigrants do not see themselves as sharing African Americans’ status as oppressed minorities. Although the stereotype of the typical Latine has made middle-class Latine immigrants susceptible to stigma, they insist that this stigma does not play a significant role in their lives. In many cases, they view the stereotype as a minor issue, feel that opportunities for upward mobility outweigh any negative experiences, or downplay racism by emphasizing their class privilege. Browne observes that while downplaying racism may help middle-class Latine immigrants maintain their dignity, it also perpetuates inequality by reinforcing the lower status of working-class undocumented immigrants. It is thus imperative, Browne argues, to repeal harsh anti-immigration policies, a move that will not only ease the lives of the undocumented but also send a message about who belongs in the country. Offering a nuanced exploration of how race, social class, and immigration status intersect, Precarious Privilege provides a complex portrait of middle-class Latine immigrants in the United States today.
Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the United States
by Chiara GalliMore children than ever are crossing international borders alone to seek asylum worldwide. In the past decade, over a half million children have fled from Central America to the United States, seeking safety and a chance to continue lives halted by violence. Yet upon their arrival, they fail to find the protection that our laws promise, based on the broadly shared belief that children should be safeguarded. A meticulously researched ethnography, Precarious Protections chronicles the experiences and perspectives of Central American unaccompanied minors and their immigration attorneys as they pursue applications for refugee status in the US asylum process. Chiara Galli debunks assumptions about asylum, including the idea that people are being denied protection because they file bogus claims. In practice, the United States interprets asylum law far more narrowly than what is necessary to recognize real-world experiences of escape from life-threatening violence. This is especially true for children from Central America. Galli reveals the formidable challenges of lawyering with children and exposes the human toll of the US immigration bureaucracy.
Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship (Latinidad: Transnational Cultures in the United States)
by Catherine S. RamírezPrecarity and Belonging examines how the movement of people and their incorporation, marginalization, and exclusion, under epochal conditions of labor and social precarity affecting both citizens and noncitizens, have challenged older notions of citizenship and alienage. This collection brings mobility, precarity, and citizenship together in order to explore the points of contact and friction, and, thus, the spaces for a possible politics of commonality between citizens and noncitizens.The editors ask: What does modern citizenship mean in a world of citizens, denizens, and noncitizens, such as undocumented migrants, guest workers, permanent residents, refugees, detainees, and stateless people? How is the concept of citizenship, based on assumptions of deservingness, legality, and productivity, challenged when people of various and competing statuses and differential citizenship practices interact with each other, revealing their co-constitutive connections? How is citizenship valued or revalued when labor and social precarity impact those who seemingly have formal rights and those who seemingly or effectively do not? This book interrogates such binaries as citizen/noncitizen, insider/outsider, entitled/unentitled, “legal”/“illegal,” and deserving/undeserving in order to explore the fluidity--that is, the dynamism and malleability--of the spectra of belonging.
The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon
by Uroš KovačSince the 1990s, an increasing number of young men in Cameroon have aspired to play football as a career and a strategy to migrate abroad. Migration through the sport promises fulfillment of masculine dreams of sports stardom, as well as opportunities to earn a living that have been hollowed out by the country’s long economic stalemate. The aspiring footballers are increasingly turning to Pentecostal Christianity, which allows them to challenge common tropes of young men as stubborn and promiscuous, while also offering a moral and bodily regime that promises success despite the odds. Yet the transnational sports market is tough and unpredictable: it demands disciplined young bodies and introduces new forms of uncertainty. This book unpacks young Cameroonians' football dreams, Pentecostal faith, obligations to provide, and desires to migrate to highlight the precarity of masculinity in structurally adjusted Africa and neoliberal capitalism.
The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon
by Uroš KovačSince the 1990s, an increasing number of young men in Cameroon have aspired to play football as a career and a strategy to migrate abroad. Migration through the sport promises fulfillment of masculine dreams of sports stardom, as well as opportunities to earn a living that have been hollowed out by the country’s long economic stalemate. The aspiring footballers are increasingly turning to Pentecostal Christianity, which allows them to challenge common tropes of young men as stubborn and promiscuous, while also offering a moral and bodily regime that promises success despite the odds. Yet the transnational sports market is tough and unpredictable: it demands disciplined young bodies and introduces new forms of uncertainty. This book unpacks young Cameroonians' football dreams, Pentecostal faith, obligations to provide, and desires to migrate to highlight the precarity of masculinity in structurally adjusted Africa and neoliberal capitalism.
Preceramic Mesoamerica
by Jon C. LohsePreceramic Mesoamerica delivers cutting-edge research on the Mesoamerican Paleoindian and Archaic periods. The chapters address a series of fundamental questions in American archaeology including the peopling of the Americas, human adaptations to late glacial landscapes, the Neolithic transition, and the origins of sedentism and early village life. This volume presents innovative and previously unpublished research on the Paleoindian and Archaic periods and evaluates current models in light of new findings. Examples include breakthroughs in dating Mesoamerica’s earliest sites and their implications for models of hemispheric colonization; the transition to postglacial patterns of settlement and subsistence; divergent pathways to initial sedentism; the possibility of Archaic-period monumentality; changing patterns of interregional exchange and interaction; and debates surrounding the origins of agriculture, ceramics, and full-time village life. The volume provides a new perspective on the Mesoamerican Preceramic for students and scholars in archaeology, anthropology, and history. Readers will come to understand how the Preceramic contributed to the emergence of the cultural traditions that anthropologists recognize as Mesoamerica.
El precio del racismo: La hostilidad racial y la fractura del "sueño americano"
by Eduardo PorterUn examen profundo de cómo el racismo ha roto el pacto social, erosionado el bien común y dañado las vidas de todos los estadounidenses; un análisis sincero de cómo estas profundas heridas pueden comenzar a sanar. Si se compara con otras naciones industrializadas, Estados Unidos está perdiendo terreno en casi todos los indicadores de bienestar social. Eduardo Porter sostiene que esto se debe, en gran medida, al problema racial. En El precio del racismo Porter, periodista veterano del New York Times, muestra cómo la animadversión racial ha paralizado gran parte de las instituciones clave de una sociedad sana, incluyendo los sindicatos, la educación pública y la red de seguridad social, y cómo las profundas consecuencias se hacen cada día más graves. A través de un repaso de la historia reciente –desde el New Deal de Frankin D. Roosvelt, y las reformas de Bill Clinton o Barack Obama, hasta la política divisiva de Donald Trump— Porter argumenta cómo la hostilidad racial ha bloqueado en cada paso la cohesión social, dando lugar a un país que no solo falla a sus ciudadanos de color, sino a todos, incluidos los blancos.Análisis riguroso del pasado y llamada de atención para el futuro, en El precio del racismo Eduardo Porter señala también el camino para un futuro esperanzador en el que, en una sociedad cada día más diversa, sea posible construir un nuevo entendimiento de la identidad racial y una sociedad más unida.
El precio del racismo: La Hostilidad Racial Y La Fractura Del Sueño Americano
by Eduardo PorterUn examen profundo de cómo el racismo ha roto el pacto social, erosionado el bien común y dañado las vidas de todos los estadounidenses; un análisis sincero de cómo estas profundas heridas pueden comenzar a sanar. Si se compara con otras naciones industrializadas, Estados Unidos está perdiendo terreno en casi todos los indicadores de bienestar social. Eduardo Porter sostiene que esto se debe, en gran medida, al problema racial. En El precio del racismo Porter, periodista veterano del New York Times, muestra cómo la animadversión racial ha paralizado gran parte de las instituciones clave de una sociedad sana, incluyendo los sindicatos, la educación pública y la red de seguridad social, y cómo las profundas consecuencias se hacen cada día más graves. A través de un repaso de la historia reciente desde el New Deal de Frankin D. Roosvelt, y las reformas de Bill Clinton o Barack Obama, hasta la política divisiva de Donald Trump Porter argumenta cómo la hostilidad racial ha bloqueado en cada paso la cohesión social, dando lugar a un país que no solo falla a sus ciudadanos de color, sino a todos, incluidos los blancos. Análisis riguroso del pasado y llamada de atención para el futuro, en El precio del racismo Eduardo Porter señala también el camino para un futuro esperanzador en el que, en una sociedad cada día más diversa, sea posible construir un nuevo entendimiento de la identidad racial y una sociedad más unida.
El precio del racismo: La hostilidad racial y la fractura del "sueño americano"
by Eduardo PorterBREAKING UP
Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time
by Helen MolesworthA renowned jewelry expert recounts her career working with nature&’s most extraordinary treasures—gemstones—and traces these rare jewels from ancient Egyptian records through the high-stakes auctions of today.Helen Molesworth has been captivated by precious stones since early childhood but she struggled to join the gemstone industry, having no connections to the few family-run companies that have dominated the field for centuries. She persevered, and more than two decades later, Molesworth is now an international authority hired to appraise the extraordinary jewelry of such clients as the British royal family. Precious is packed with inside stories about fabulous jewels associated with generations of celebrities, from Cleopatra (emerald) to Catherine, Princess of Wales (sapphire); from Marilyn Monroe (pearl) to Beyoncé (garnet); from Jackie O (pearl) to Lady Gaga (diamond); and from Marie Antoinette (pearl) to Elizabeth Taylor (pearl, ruby, and emerald)! As Molesworth tells it, the history of gemstones is the history of humanity. And so she journeys the world, navigating African diamond mines, Colombian emerald mines, and the sapphire-rich rivers of Sri Lanka to study gems at their source. She has selected ten of nature&’s most dazzling gems, tracing their discovery to when these cut-and-polished masterpieces first adorned empresses and kings. From the stories of a priceless emerald watch hidden under floorboards for centuries to the common quartz fashioned into world-famous royal jewels, and diamonds selling for multi-millions, Precious is not just a chronicle of archeology and geology, high society and high finance, it&’s the story of our timeless ambition to make—and wear—something beautiful.
Precious: Identity, Adaptation and the African-American Youth Film (Cinema and Youth Cultures)
by Katherine WhitehurstExamining how the discourses of youth, race, poverty and identity take shape when Push is adapted to the big screen, this book brings together valuable research to delve into representations of African-American girlhood. The book draws attention to how Black girlhood takes shape in the film under the dominant White discourses that racialise non-White bodies, and examines how these discourses inform a critical reception of the film and Precious, as a Black girl. Through a consideration of Black culture and heritage, it questions what narratives of girlhood, growth and development are afforded to the main character, in a film that is informed by neoliberal and colour-blind discourses. Highlighting the social context in which Precious was received, the book draws attention to how a discussion of Precious in the critical press gives insight into the racial politics that were dominant at the time of the film’s release. It considers whether race impacts how the film engages with, reflects and moves beyond conventions within the genre of youth film. Concise and engaging, this vital book sheds light on underrepresented areas of film studies that make it an invaluable resource for students and scholars of film, race and youth cultures.
Precious Objects: A Story of Diamonds, Family, and a Way of Life
by Alicia OltuskiIn the middle of New York City lies a neighborhood where all secrets are valuable, all assets are liquid, and all deals are sealed with a blessing rather than a contract. Welcome to the diamond district. Ninety percent of all diamonds that enter America pass through these few blocks, but the inner workings of this mysterious world are known only to the people who inhabit it. In Precious Objects, twenty-six-year-old journalist Alicia Oltuski, the daughter and granddaughter of diamond dealers, seamlessly blends family narrative with literary reportage to reveal the fascinating secrets of the diamond industry and its madcap characters: an Elvis-impersonating dealer, a duo of diamond-detective brothers, and her own eccentric father. With insight and drama, Oltuski limns her family's diamond-paved move from communist Siberia to a displaced persons camp in post-World War II Germany to New York's diamond district, exploring the connections among Jews and the industry, the gem and its lore, and the exotic citizens of this secluded world. Entertaining and illuminating, Precious Objects offers an insider's look at the history, business, and society behind one of the world's most coveted natural resources, providing an unforgettable backstage pass to an extraordinary and timeless show.
Precious Objects
by Alicia OltuskiIn the middle of New York City lies a neighborhood where all secrets are valuable, all assets are liquid, and all deals are sealed with a blessing rather than a contract. Welcome to the diamond district. Ninety percent of all diamonds that enter America pass through these few blocks, but the inner workings of this mysterious world are known only to the people who inhabit it. In Precious Objects, twenty-six-year-old journalist Alicia Oltuski, the daughter and granddaughter of diamond dealers, seamlessly blends family narrative with literary reportage to reveal the fascinating secrets of the diamond industry and its madcap characters: an Elvis-impersonating dealer, a duo of diamond-detective brothers, and her own eccentric father. With insight and drama, Oltuski limns her family's diamond-paved move from communist Siberia to a displaced persons camp in post-World War II Germany to New York's diamond district, exploring the connections among Jews and the industry, the gem and its lore, and the exotic citizens of this secluded world. Entertaining and illuminating, Precious Objects offers an insider's look at the history, business, and society behind one of the world's most coveted natural resources, providing an unforgettable backstage pass to an extraordinary and timeless show.
Precious Threads and Precarious Lives: Histories of Shawl and Silk Industries of Kashmir, 1846–1950
by Amit KumarThis book studies the hitherto unexplored history of the shawl and silk industries of the himalyan state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It focuses on the three processes – production, circulation, and consumption – of the textile industry of the region to highlight its socio-economic and political importance in 19th- and 20th-century Kashmir. Using the micro-history approach, it studies the sites of production – the home looms or the small karkhana – efficiency of labour, and innovations by weavers in their techniques to suit the demands of the market. It also locates the impact colonialism had on transforming the labour economy in the Kashmir textile industry. Further, it compares these karkhanas with the Scottish factories or home looms to illuminate many sites of difference and comparison between the working styles and technologies. Mapping a history as complex as the weave on the finest Kashmiri shawl, this book brings to life the interface between culture, commodity, and colonial networks. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South Asian history, colonial and imperial history, cultural studies, and economic and labour history.
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
by Toby OrdThis urgent and eye-opening book makes the case that protecting humanity's future is the central challenge of our time. If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years - enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes - those from which we could never come back. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pathogens and artificial intelligence. If we do not act fast to reach a place of safety, it will soon be too late. Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies that can safeguard humanity. An Oxford philosopher committed to putting ideas into action, Toby Ord has advised the US National Intelligence Council, the UK Prime Minister's Office, and the World Bank on the biggest questions facing humanity. In The Precipice, he offers a startling reassessment of human history, the future we are failing to protect, and the steps we must take to ensure that our generation is not the last.
Precisely: Working with Precision Systems in a World of Data
by Zachary Tumin Madeleine WantIf you want to win an election, improve the health of a city, or thrill your customers, you’re going to need precision systems—the highly engineered working arrangements of teams, processes, and technologies that put data and AI to work creating the change that leaders want, exactly how they want it. Big Tech firms like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook have mastered their own precision systems, building trillion-dollar businesses using data-driven tools from mass-market “nudges” to industrial-grade recommendation systems.Precisely is the playbook for the rest of us. Zachary Tumin and Madeleine Want show how leaders in every domain are taking real-time precision systems into the marketplace, the political race, and the fight for health—from New York-Presbyterian Hospital to the New York Times, the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens to BNSF Railroad, the Biden-Harris campaign to the NYPD—to reveal elusive patterns, perform a repetitive task, run a play, or tailor a message, one at a time or by the millions.Precisely provides insight that will help leaders choose the system that’s right for them, decide which problem to tackle first, sell the importance of precision to stakeholders, power-up the people and the technology, and accomplish change that delivers precisely what’s needed every time—and do it all responsibly.
Precision Community Health: Four Innovations for Well-being
by Bechara ChoucairWhen Bechara Choucair was a young doctor, he learned an important lesson: treating a patient for hypothermia does little good if she has to spend the next night out in the freezing cold. As health commissioner of Chicago, he was determined to address the societal causes of disease and focus the city's resources on its most vulnerable populations. That targeted approach has led to dramatic successes, such as lowering rates of smoking, teen pregnancy, breast cancer mortalities, and other serious ills.In Precision Community Health, Choucair shows how those successes can be replicated and expanded around the country. The key is to use advanced technologies to identify which populations are most at risk for specific health threats and avert crises before they begin. Big data makes precision community health possible. But in our increasingly complex world, we also need new strategies for developing effective coalitions, media campaigns, and policies. This book showcases four innovations that move public health departments away from simply dispensing medical care and toward supporting communities to achieve true well-being.The approach Choucair pioneered in Chicago requires broadening our thinking about what constitutes public health. It is not simply about access to a doctor, but access to decent housing, jobs, parks, food, and social support. It also means acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all strategy may exacerbate inequities. By focusing on those most in need, we create an agenda that is simultaneously more impactful and more achievable. The result is a wholesale change in the way public health is practiced and in the well-being of all our communities.
Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession
by Ander MonsonA searching memoir of a life lived in the flicker of an action film, by the author of I Will Take the Answer In his first memoir, Ander Monson guides readers through a scene-by-scene exploration of the 1987 film Predator, which he has watched 146 times. Some fighters might not have time to bleed, but Monson has the patience to consider their adventure, one frame at a time. He turns his obsession into a lens through which he poignantly examines his own life, formed by mainstream, white, male American culture. Between scenes, Monson delves deeply into his adolescence in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Riyadh, his role as a father and the loss of his own mother, and his friendships with men bound by the troubled camaraderie depicted in action and sci-fi blockbusters. Along with excursions into the conflicted pleasures of cosplay and first-person shooters, he imagines himself beside the poet and memoirist Paul Monette, who wrote the novelization of the movie while his partner was dying of AIDS.A sincere and playful book that lovingly dissects the film, Predator also offers questions and critiques of masculinity, fandom, and their interrelation with acts of mass violence. In a stirring reversal, one chapter exposes Monson through the Predator’s heat-seeking vision, asking him, “What do you know about the workings of the hidden world?” As Monson brings us into the brilliant depths of the film and its universe, the hunt begins.
Predator: Rape, Madness and Injustice in Seattle
by Jack OlsenJack Olsen, "the master of the true crime book," now gives us an incisive, probing look into the creation and development of the criminal mind, as well as a shocking case of justice gone awry. From childhood, McDonald Smith took to heart the lessons drummed into him by antisocial relatives and peers. As a teenager, unburdened by conscience or pity, he experimented with child abuse and bestiality, then moved on to larceny, stickups, incest, and, finally, rape. Warned by a "witch" that he was about to be arrested, he fled Los Angeles for Seattle and the Northwest--already the breeding ground of predatory monsters like Ted Bundy, Kenneth Bianchi, and the Green River Killer. There, for years, he stalked the women of Seattle, seeking his prey on the dark streets and in the quiet homes, then returning to his wife and family: too careful--and too clever--to be caught. By fall 1980, Mac Smith's luck still held. A respectable young businessman named Steve Titus found himself charged with one of Smith's most sadistic rapes in a nightmarish case of mistaken identity and injustice. The idealistic Titus was certain that the American system of justice would clear him--right up to the day that a jury of his peers returned a verdict of guilty as charged. While Mac Smith continued to terrorize the women of Seattle, Titus lost everything: his reputation, his job, his loved ones, his freedom. It was only when a Pulitzer prizewinning reporter answered Titus's pleas for justice that the terrible truth emerged: a truth that was darker than anyone imagined. Predator is a gripping work of true crime reporting: Jack Olsen doing what he does best. It is a searing study of violations: of women, of justice, of power, and of the human spirit.
Predator Empire: Drone Warfare and Full Spectrum Dominance
by Ian G. ShawWhat does it mean for human beings to exist in an era of dronified state violence? How can we understand the rise of robotic systems of power and domination? Focusing on U.S. drone warfare and its broader implications as no other book has to date, Predator Empire argues that we are witnessing a transition from a labor-intensive &“American empire&” to a machine-intensive &“Predator Empire.&” Moving from the Vietnam War to the War on Terror and beyond, Ian G. R. Shaw reveals how changes in military strategy, domestic policing, and state surveillance have come together to enclose our planet in a robotic system of control. The rise of drones presents a series of &“existential crises,&” he suggests, that are reengineering not only spaces of violence but also the character of the modern state. Positioning drone warfare as part of a much longer project to watch and enclose the human species, he shows that for decades—centuries even—human existence has slowly but surely been brought within the artificial worlds of &“technological civilization.&” Instead of incarcerating us in prisons or colonizing territory directly, the Predator Empire locks us inside a worldwide system of electromagnetic enclosure—in which democratic ideals give way to a system of totalitarian control, a machinic &“rule by Nobody.&” As accessibly written as it is theoretically ambitious, Predator Empire provides up-to-date information about U.S. drone warfare, as well as an in-depth history of the rise of drones.
Predator of the Seas: A History of the Slaveship that Fought for Emancipation
by Stephen TaylorThe dramatic biography of a slaveship turned freedom-fighter—which brings new insights into Britain’s involvement in the end of the trade in enslaved people In 1827 the Royal Navy purchased a Baltimore clipper and renamed her the Black Joke. Assigned to the Preventative Squadron, she patrolled the west coast of Africa and freed 3,692 captives from enslavement. Beloved by seafarers and celebrated by the public, the Black Joke would become the most famous weapon in the campaign for abolition. But in her previous life as the Henriqueta, the Black Joke had been a slave ship. Through the experiences of slavers and abolitionists, captives and crew, Stephen Taylor charts the vessel’s extraordinary double life. As the Henriqueta she operated as an engine of atrocity, trafficking over 3,000 captives to plantations in Brazil. But subsequently manned by British seamen and Liberian Kru, the Black Joke became the scourge of Spanish and Brazilian slavers. She did so despite limited resources, neglect, and even obstruction by the authorities at home. Taylor offers a gripping account of the world of the transatlantic trade, through the eyes of its perpetrators—and those who sought its end.
Predator's Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders
by Connie BruckDuring the '80s, Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham created the corporate raiders. He was the billionaire Junk Bond King. But, in the corner stood the U.S. District Attorney waiting to file criminal and racketeering charges.