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This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
by Ivan DoigNational Book Award Finalist: A &“beautifully written, deeply felt&” memoir about growing up in the American West (Los Angeles Times). Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us, but also of the ties to our mothers and fathers, to those who love us, and our inextricable connection to those who shaped our values in our search for intimacy, independence, love, and family. A powerfully told story, This House of Sky is uniquely American—yet also universal in its ability to awaken a longing for an explicable past. &“Engrossing and moving.&”—Time
This is a Book for People Who Love Tattoos
by Verena HutterJourney from ink to skin with This Is a Book for People Who Love Tattoos, a glorious full-color celebration of the history and craft of tattooing. From the earliest known origins of tattooing to the latest trends, this gorgeously illustrated guide offers a deep look at the culture of American Traditional style tattoos. Tattoo aficionado and historian Verena Hutter profiles not just the key tattoo artists who inspired the style, such as Sailor Jerry, Bert Grimm, and Dainty Dottie, but also the meanings and origins behind some of the most iconic designs found in tattoo shops across the globe She traces the indelible &“I love Mom&” tattoo back to a 19th-century folk song sung by Irish sailors and reveals the significance of eagles, skulls, horseshoes, lighthouses, and dozens of other designs. This Is a Book for People Who Love Tattoos will inspire your next tattoo session while celebrating the rich history of the craft.
This Is All I Got: A New Mother's Search for Home
by Lauren SandlerFrom an award-winning journalist, a poignant and gripping immersion in the life of a young, homeless single mother amid her quest to find stability and shelter in the richest city in America&“Lauren Sandler has brilliantly written the story of America in the age of inequality. Read this book, please—it is as gripping as it is moving as it is important.&”—Darren Walker, president, The Ford Foundation Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren Sandler chronicles a year in Camila&’s life—from the birth of her son to his first birthday—as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City. In her attempts to secure a safe place to raise her son and find a measure of freedom in her life, Camila copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, the desolation of abandonment, and miles of red tape with grit, humor, and uncanny resilience. Every day, more than forty-five million Americans attempt to survive below the poverty line. Every night, nearly sixty thousand people sleep in New York City-run shelters, 40 percent of them children. In This Is All I Got, Sandler brings this deeply personal issue to life, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her steadfast determination to change her life despite the myriad setbacks she encounters. This Is All I Got is a rare feat of reporting and a dramatic story of survival. Sandler&’s candid and revealing account also exposes the murky boundaries between a journalist and her subject when it becomes impossible to remain a dispassionate observer. She has written a powerful and unforgettable indictment of a system that is often indifferent to the needs of those it serves, and that sometimes seems designed to fail.
This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground
by Brian DohertyIt's been compared to Brigadoon and Woodstock, called Xanadu and Utopia. But none of these terms captures the essence of the ecstatically wild, visionary desert gathering known as Burning Man. Every year, an elaborate, fantastical city rises out of Nevada's vast and forbidding Black Rock Desert, only to vanish again one week later. The rules are few: Participation and self-reliance are mandatory; money and spectators are not allowed. It is, without question, the most glamorous, anarchic city on earth, dedicated purely to creativity and play, where on any given stroll you might wander past giant metal flame-spewing lotus flowers, commune at a three-story temple made from discarded dinosaur puzzle pieces, or hop on a life-size, glowing white whale as it sails over the sands backlit by an endless starry sky. But Burning Man is more than just fun. It's an environment that exists in complete opposition to normal society in that the usual rules and standards are ignored or inverted in the pursuit of fresh experiences and new identities. It's a place where accumulated cultural debris is swept aside in order to reestablish and reinvent what's important and what's meaningful in one intensely accelerated, vividly colorful week. Burning Man is the most profound and subversive idea to surface in decades - and has become the underground mecca for Americans who are searching for community and meaning.
This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together
by Jon MooallemThe thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster—and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together&“An intimate, moving story about our capacity to care for one another when things fall apart—and, just maybe, on all the ordinary days, too.&”—Elizabeth Gilbert In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis—the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale. For four and a half minutes, the ground lurched and rolled. Streets cracked open and swallowed buildings whole. And once the shaking stopped, night fell and Anchorage went dark. The city was in disarray and sealed off from the outside world.Slowly, people switched on their transistor radios and heard a familiar woman&’s voice explaining what had just happened and what to do next. Genie Chance was a part-time radio reporter and working mother who would play an unlikely role in the wake of the disaster, helping to put her fractured community back together. Her tireless broadcasts over the next three days would transform her into a legendary figure in Alaska and bring her fame worldwide—but only briefly. That Easter weekend in Anchorage, Genie and a cast of endearingly eccentric characters—from a mountaineering psychologist to the local community theater group staging Our Town—were thrown into a jumbled world they could not recognize. Together, they would make a home in it again.Drawing on thousands of pages of unpublished documents, interviews with survivors, and original broadcast recordings, This Is Chance! is the hopeful, gorgeously told story of a single catastrophic weekend and proof of our collective strength in a turbulent world.There are moments when reality instantly changes—when the life we assume is stable gets upended by pure chance. This Is Chance! is an electrifying and lavishly empathetic portrayal of one community rising above the randomness, a real-life fable of human connection withstanding chaos.
This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life
by Nigel Poor Earlonne WoodsAn illuminating view of prison life, as told by currently and formerly incarcerated people, from the co-creators and co-hosts of the Peabody- and Pulitzer-nominated podcast Ear Hustle&“A must-read for fans of the legendary podcast and all those who seek to understand crime, punishment, and mass incarceration in America.&”—Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New BlackWhen Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods met, Nigel was a photography professor volunteering with the Prison University Project and Earlonne was serving thirty-one years to life at California&’s San Quentin State Prison. Initially drawn to each other by their shared interest in storytelling, neither had podcast production experience when they decided to enter Radiotopia&’s contest for new shows . . . and won. Using the prize for seed money, Nigel and Earlonne launched Ear Hustle, named after the prison term for &“eavesdropping.&” It was the first podcast created and produced entirely within prison and would go on to be heard millions of times worldwide, garner Peabody and Pulitzer award nominations, and help earn Earlonne his freedom when his sentence was commuted in 2018. In This Is Ear Hustle, Nigel and Earlonne share their own stories of how they came to San Quentin, how they created their phenomenally popular podcast amid extreme limitations, and what has kept them collaborating season after season. They present new stories, all with the same insight, balance, and rapport that distinguish the podcast. In an era when more than two million people are incarcerated across the United States—a number that grows by 600,000 annually—Nigel and Earlonne explore the full and often surprising realities of prison life. With characteristic candor and humor, their moving portrayals include unexpected moments of self-discovery, unlikely alliances, inspirational resilience, and ingenious work-arounds.One personal narrative at a time, framed by Nigel&’s and Earlonne&’s distinct perspectives, This Is Ear Hustle reveals the complexity of life for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people while illuminating the shared experiences of humanity that unite us all.
This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang
by Samuel LoganLike any American teenager, Brenda Paz spent much of her time with her friends. They would go to parties, listen to music, and show off their cars late into the night. But Brenda and her friends belonged to the Mara Salvatrucha--the MS-13--the most violent gang in America, and in addition to enjoying the things that all teenagers do, her friends were thieves, drug dealers, human traffickers, and murderers. A street gang that began in Los Angeles in the 1980s, the Mara Salvatrucha has spread across the United States and Central America with startling speed, boasting tens of thousands of members. They deal ruthlessly with competing gangs and any members who display disloyalty, often leaving a trail of dismembered corpses in their wake. They are poised to surpass the Mafia as the country's most organized criminal network. And by operating within the insular Central American immigrant communities, the Mara Salvatrucha has been able to easily elude law enforcement. All that changed when Brenda Paz turned informant for the FBI, exposing the incredible scope of the gang's operations. But Brenda's cooperation with the FBI was only the beginning. What followed is an extraordinary story of strength, intelligence, and incredible courage. This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha takes us into a dark and violent world that few people have seen, but is closer than you think.
This Is Getting Old: Zen Thoughts on Aging with Humor and Dignity
by Susan MoonIn this intimate and funny collection of essays on the sometimes confusing, sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious condition of being a woman over sixty, Susan Moon keeps her sense of humor and she keeps her reader fully engaged. Among the pieces she has included here are an essay on the gratitude she feels for her weakening bones; observations on finding herself both an orphan and a matriarch following the death of her mother; musings on her tendency to regret the past; thoughts on how not to be afraid of loneliness; appreciation for the inner tomboy; and celebratory advice on how to regard "senior moments" as opportunities to be in the here and now.
This Is HerStory: A Celebration of Remarkable Women Who Changed the World
by Harriet DyerFor many years we’ve learned about the unforgettable events in history. All very remarkable, yet all very male – where on earth were the women?!In this book, you will meet some of the most fascinating females inherstory, all of whom are guaranteed to inspire you to follow your dreams and believe you can achieve whatever you set your mind to.
This is Home Now: Kentucky's Holocaust Survivors Speak (Kentucky Remembered: An Oral History Series #Kyre)
by Arwen DonahueA look at the lives of nine Jewish Holocaust survivors after their liberation from Nazi concentration camps, when they settled in rural Kentucky.At the end of World War II, many thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors immigrated to the United States from Europe in search of a new beginning. Most settled in major metropolitan areas, usually in predominantly Jewish communities, where proximity to coreligionists offered a measure of cultural and social support. However, some survivors settled in smaller cities and rural areas throughout the country, including in Kentucky, where they encountered an entirely different set of circumstances. Although much scholarship has been devoted to Holocaust survivors living in major cities, little has been written about them in the context of their experiences elsewhere in America.This Is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak presents the accounts of Jewish survivors who resettled outside of the usual major metropolitan areas. Using excerpts from oral history interviews and documentary portrait photography, author Arwen Donahue and photographer Rebecca Gayle Howell tell the fascinating stories of nine of these survivors in a unique work of history and contemporary art. The book focuses on the survivors’ lives after their liberation from Nazi concentration camps, illuminating their reasons for settling in Kentucky, their initial reactions to American culture, and their reflections on integrating into rural American life.Praise for This is Home Now“Until Donahue and Howell turned their recorders and cameras on these well-chosen survivors living in Kentucky, no one had taken the time to ask how these solitary transplants made new lives for themselves and their children in rural middle America. The stories and images reproduced in this book are both moving and arresting. We owe Donahue and Howell a great debt for rescuing them before they disappeared down the trapdoor of historical memory.” —Lawrence N. Powell, author of Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana“Each of the stories can stand on its own as a fascinating example of what has transpired for Jews outside of New York City.” —David Wallace, Community (Jewish Community Association of Louisville)“This Is Home Now focuses on the overlooked stories of Holocaust survivors who relocated to the commonwealth.” —Lexington Herald-Leader
This Is How We Survive: Revolutionary Mothering, War, and Exile in the 21st Century
by Mai’a Williams Ariel GoreIn This Is How We Survive: Revolutionary Mothering, War, and Exile in the 21st Century, Mai’a Williams shares her experiences working in conflict zones and with liberatory resistance communities as a journalist, human rights worker, and midwife in Palestine, Egypt, Chiapas, Berlin, and the U.S., while mothering her young daughter Aza. She first went to Palestine in 2003 during the Second Intifada to support Palestinians resisting the Israeli occupation. In 2006, she became pregnant in Bethlehem, West Bank. By the time her daughter was three years old, they had already celebrated with Zapatista women in southern Mexico and survived Israeli detention, and during the 2011 Arab Spring they were in the streets of Cairo protesting the Mubarak dictatorship. She watched the Egyptian revolution fall apart and escaped the violence, like many of her Arab comrades, by moving to Europe. Three years later, she and Aza were camping at Standing Rock in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline and co-creating revolutionary mothering communities once again. This is a story about mothers who are doing the work of deep social transformation by creating the networks of care that sustain movements and revolutions. By centering mothers in our organizing work, we center those who have the skills and the experience of creating and sustaining life on this planet. This Is How We Survive illuminates how mothering is a practice essential to the work of revolution. It explores the heartbreak of revolutionary movements falling apart and revolutionaries scattering across the globe into exile. And most importantly, how mamas create, no matter the conditions, the resilience to continue doing revolutionary work.
This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope
by Shayla LawsonA National Book Critics Circle Finalist in Autobiography * Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award * Named one of the most anticipated books of the year by USA Today, Bitch Magazine, Parade, Salon and Ms. MagazineFrom a fierce and humorous new voice comes a relevant, insightful, and riveting collection of personal essays on the richness and resilience of black girl culture—for readers of Samantha Irby, Roxane Gay, Morgan Jerkins, and Lindy West. Shayla Lawson is major. You don’t know who she is. Yet. But that’s okay. She is on a mission to move black girls like herself from best supporting actress to a starring role in the major narrative. Whether she’s taking on workplace microaggressions or upending racist stereotypes about her home state of Kentucky, she looks for the side of the story that isn’t always told, the places where the voices of black girls haven’t been heard.The essays in This is Major ask questions like: Why are black women invisible to AI? What is “black girl magic”? Or: Am I one viral tweet away from becoming Twitter famous? And: How much magic does it take to land a Tinder date?With a unique mix of personal stories, pop culture observations, and insights into politics and history, Lawson sheds light on these questions, as well as the many ways black women and girls have influenced mainstream culture—from their style, to their language, and even their art—and how “major” they really are.Timely, enlightening, and wickedly sharp, This Is Major places black women at the center—no longer silenced, no longer the minority.
This Is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (Politics and Culture in Modern America)
by Melanie NewportWhile state and federal prisons like Attica and Alcatraz occupy a central place in the national consciousness, most incarceration in the United States occurs within the walls of local jails. In This Is My Jail, Melanie D. Newport situates the late twentieth-century escalation of mass incarceration in a longer history of racialized, politically repressive jailing. Centering the political actions of people until now overlooked—jailed people, wardens, corrections officers, sheriffs, and the countless community members who battled over the functions and impact of jails—Newport shows how local, grassroots contestation shaped the rise of the carceral state.As ground zero for struggles over criminal justice reform, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, jails in Chicago and Cook County were models for jailers and advocates across the nation who aimed to redefine jails as institutions of benevolent transformation. From a slave sale on the jail steps to new jail buildings to electronic monitoring, from therapy to job training, these efforts further criminalized jailed people and diminished their capacity to organize for their civil rights. With prisoners as famous as Al Capone, Dick Gregory, and Harold Washington, and a place in culture ranging from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to B. B. King’s Live in Cook County Jail, This Is My Jail places jails at the heart of twentieth-century urban life and politics.As a sweeping history of urban incarceration, This Is My Jail shows that jails are critical sites of urban inequality that sustain the racist actions of the police and judges and exacerbate the harms wrought by housing discrimination, segregated schools, and inaccessible health care. Structured by liberal anti-Blackness and legacies of violence, today’s jails reflect longstanding local commitments to the unfreedom of poor people of color.
This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It
by Tabitha CarvanWhy We Can&’t Sleep meets Furiously Happy in this hilarious, heartfelt memoir about one woman&’s midlife obsession with Benedict Cumberbatch, and the liberating power of reclaiming our passions as we age, whatever they may be. Tabitha Carvan was a new mother, at home with two young children, when she fell for the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. You know the guy: strange name, alien face, made Sherlock so sexy that it became one of the most streamed shows in the world? The force of her fixation took everyone—especially Carvan herself—by surprise. But what she slowly realized was that her preoccupation was not about Benedict Cumberbatch at all, as dashing as he might be. It was about finally feeling passionate about something, anything, again at a point in her life when she had lost touch with her own identity and sense of self. In This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Carvan explores what happens to women's desires after we leave adolescence…and why the space in our lives for pure, unadulterated joy is squeezed ever smaller as we age. She shines a light onto the hidden corners of fandom, from the passion of the online communities to the profound real-world connections forged between Cumberbatch devotees. But more importantly, she asks: what happens if we simply decide to follow our interests like we used to—unabashedly, audaciously, shamelessly? After all, Carvan realizes, there&’s true, untapped power in finding your &“thing&” (even if that thing happens to be a British-born Marvel superhero) and loving it like your life depends on it.
This Is Not a Feminism Textbook (This Is Not a...Textbook)
by Catherine RottenbergFeminist scholars from around the world on key debates and concerns ranging from motherhood, home, and family to media, technology, and medicine.This thought-provoking book is written by prominent feminist scholars from around the world. It is engaging and accessible, distilling the highest level of knowledge into fascinating but concise entries. This Is Not A Feminism Textbook offers a clear, straightforward overview of key feminist debates and concerns ranging from motherhood, home, work and family to media, technology, and medicine. This book is a must-read for everyone who is curious about the sex/gender distinction, and the relation between gender and other aspects of identity; and it tackles plenty more questions along the way. Are smart homes really smart? Will technology save the world? What does class have to do with feminism? And what does &‘intersectionality&’ actually mean? The work of feminism to help create a more just and equal society is not yet done. This book provides a roadmap to inspire each and every reader to continue exploring, thinking about, discussing, and &‘doing&’ feminism. ContributorsCelia Roberts, Amber Jamilla Musser, Simidele Dosekun, Sara R. Farris, Chiara Pellegrini, Cynthia Barounis, Suzanne Leonard, Yolande Strengers, Heather Berg
This Is Not a Peace Pipe
by Dale TurnerHow can indigenous people best assert their legal and political distinctiveness? In This is Not a Peace Pipe, Dale Turner explores indigenous intellectual culture and its relationship to, and within, the dominant Euro-American culture. He contends that indigenous intellectuals need to engage the legal and political discourses of the state, respecting both indigenous philosophies and Western European intellectual traditions.According to Turner, the intellectual conversation about the meaning of indigenous rights, sovereignty, and nationhood must begin by recognizing, firstly, that the discourses of the state have evolved with very little if any participation from indigenous peoples and, secondly, that there are unique ways of understanding the world embedded in indigenous communities. Further, amongst indigenous peoples, a division of intellectual labour must be invoked between philosophers, who possess and practice indigenous forms of knowledge, and those who have been educated in the universities and colleges of the Euro-American world. This latter group, Turner argues, must assert, protect, and defend the integrity of indigenous rights, sovereignty, and nationhood, as they are the ones able to 'speak the language' of the dominant culture while being guided by their indigenous philosophies. This is Not a Peace Pipe is a work that will be controversial amongst indigenous scholars by upsetting the assumptions many have about how best to fight for recognition of their legal and political distinctiveness. It will be debated for years to come.
This Is Not a President: Sense, Nonsense, and the American Political Imaginary
by Diane RubensteinRead The Chronicle of Higher Ed Author InterviewIn This Is Not a President, Diane Rubenstein looks at the postmodern presidency - from Reagan and George H. W. Bush, through the current administration, and including Hillary. Focusing on those seemingly inexplicable gaps or blind spots in recent American presidential politics, Rubenstein interrogates symptomatic moments in political rhetoric, popular culture, and presidential behavior to elucidate profound and disturbing changes in the American presidency and the way it embodies a national imaginary.In a series of essays written in real time over the past four presidential administrations, Rubenstein traces the vernacular use of the American presidency (as currency, as grist for popular biography, as fictional TV material) to explore the ways in which the American presidency functions as a "transitional object" that allows the American citizen to meet or discover the president while going about her everyday life. The book argues that it is French theory - primarily Lacanian psychoanalysis and the radical semiotic theories of Jean Baudrillard - that best accounts for American political life today. Through episodes as diverse as Iran Contra, George H. W. Bush vomiting in Japan, the 1992 Republican convention, the failed nomination of Lani Guinier, and the Iraq War, This Is Not a President brilliantly situates our collective investment in American political culture.
This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927
by Brent M.S. CampneyOften defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere. Brent M. S. Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of freedom with an in-depth study of assaults both active and threatened faced by African Americans in post-Civil War Kansas. Campney's capacious definition of white-on-black violence encompasses not only sensational demonstrations of white power like lynchings and race riots, but acts of threatened violence and the varied forms of pervasive routine violence--property damage, rape, forcible ejection from towns--used to intimidate African Americans. As he shows, such methods were a cornerstone of efforts to impose and maintain white supremacy. Yet Campney's broad consideration of racist violence also lends new insights into the ways people resisted threats. African Americans spontaneously hid fugitives and defused lynch mobs while also using newspapers and civil rights groups to lay the groundwork for forms of institutionalized opposition that could fight racist violence through the courts and via public opinion. Ambitious and provocative, This Is Not Dixie rewrites fundamental narratives on mob action, race relations, African American resistance, and racism's grim past in the heartland.
This Is Not Normal: The Politics of Everyday Expectations
by Cass R. SunsteinHow our shifting sense of "what's normal" defines the character of democracy"A provocative examination of social constructs and those who would alternately undo or improve them."—Kirkus Reviews This sharp and engaging collection of essays by leading governmental scholar Cass R. Sunstein examines shifting understandings of what&’s normal, and how those shifts account for the feminist movement, the civil rights movement, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the founding itself, the rise of gun rights, the response to COVID-19, and changing understandings of liberty. Prevailing norms include the principle of equal dignity, the idea of not treating the press as an enemy of the people, and the social unacceptability of open expressions of racial discrimination. But norms are very different from laws. They arise and change in response to individual and collective action. Exploring Nazism, #MeToo, the work of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, constitutional amendments, pandemics, and the influence of Ayn Rand, Sunstein reveals how norms ultimately determine the shape of government in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.
This Is Ohio: The Overdose Crisis and the Front Lines of a New America
by Jack ShulerFor readers of Dopesick and Dreamland, journalist Jack Shuler explores the current addiction crisis as a human rights problem fostered by poverty and inadequate health care in this “insightful look at how the issues in Ohio affect the rest of the country” (Cosmopolitan, A Best Nonfiction Book of the Year).Tainted drug supplies, inadequate civic responses, and prevailing negative opinions about people who use drugs, the poor, and those struggling with mental health issues lead to thousands of preventable deaths each year while politicians are slow to adopt effective policies. Putting themselves at great personal risk (and often breaking the law to do so), the brave men and women profiled in This Is Ohio are mounting a grassroots effort to combat ineffective and often incorrect ideas about addiction and instead focus on saving lives through commonsense harm reduction policies.Opioids are the current face of addiction, but as Shuler shows, the crisis in our midst is one that has long been fostered by income inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs across the Rust Belt, and lack of access to health care. What is playing out in Ohio today isn’t only about opioids, but rather a decades–long economic and sociological shift in small towns all across the United States. It’s also about a larger culture of stigma at the heart of how we talk about addiction. What happens in Ohio will have ramifications felt across the nation and for decades to come.
This is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces and Technologies (Routledge Revivals)
by Hillegonda C. RietveldOriginally published in 1998. House music has had a considerable influence in shaping the sound of pop music from the late 1980s onwards. From underground dance events to the pop charts, traces of this aesthetic can be found in many guises. This book traces a genealogy of house and maps some of the power structures that are at play in its production and consumptoin. Places like Chicago, New York, London, Manchester, Amsterdam and Rotterdam have been visited, providing the material to discuss such subjects as contemporary dance culture, DJs and the roles of musical technologies. The author, Hillegonda Rietveld, was already steeped in dance club culture before she decided to write this loving piece of academic prose about house. Taking critical culture studies as its aesthetic fuel, she ram-raids boundaries of academic disciplines, fusing ideas like a meticulous DJing curator.
This Is Our Land
by Cody FergusonIn the last three decades of the twentieth century, the environmental movement experienced a quiet revolution. In This is Our Land, Cody Ferguson documents this little-noted change as he describes the efforts of three representative grassroots groups--in Montana, Arizona, and Tennessee--revealing how quite ordinary citizens fought to solve environmental problems. Here are stories of common people who, confronting environmental threats to the health and safety of their families and communities, bonded together to protect their interests. These stories include successes and failures as citizens learned how to participate in their democracy and redefined what participation meant. Equally important, Ferguson describes how several laws passed in the seventies--such as the National Environmental Policy Act--gave citizens the opportunity and the tools to fight for the environment. These laws gave people a say in the decisions that affected the world around them, including the air they breathed, the water they drank, the land on which they made their living, and the communities they called home. Moreover, Ferguson shows that through their experiences over the course of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, these citizen activists broadened their understanding of "this is our land" to mean "this is our community, this is our country, this is our democracy, and this is our planet." As they did, they redefined political participation and expanded the ability of citizens to shape their world. Challenging us to see activism in a new way, This is Our Land recovers the stories of often-unseen citizens who have been vitally important to the environmental movement. It will inspire readers to confront environmental threats and make our world a safer, more just, and more sustainable place to live.
This is Portland: The City You've Heard You Should Like
by Alexander BarrettThis is Portland is a first-hand look at a city that people can't seem to stop talking about. It's a guidebook of sorts, but not to restaurants and sightseeing.<P><P> Instead, Alexander Barrett is your friendly guide to the quirky characters and atmosphere of Portland, Oregon and how fun, beautiful, and ridiculous it can be. With its approachable, often hilarious tone, this book is perfect for anyone who wants to learn more about bikes, beards, beers, rain, and everything else important about the city you've heard you should like.
This is Portland: The City You've Heard You Should Like (People's Guide Ser.)
by Alexander Barrett Andrew DicksonUpdated with a new edition for 2018 and 50% additional material, This is Portland is a first-hand look at a city that people can't seem to stop talking about. It's a guidebook of sorts, but not to restaurants and sightseeing. Instead, Alexander Barrett is your friendly guide to the quirky characters and atmosphere of Portland, Oregon and how fun, beautiful, and ridiculous it can be. With its approachable, often hilarious tone, this book is perfect for anyone who wants to learn more about bikes, beards, beers, rain, and everything else important about the city you've heard you should like.
This Is Running for Your Life: Essays
by Michelle OrangeMichelle Orange uses the lens of pop culture to decode the defining characteristics of our media-drenched timesIn This Is Running for Your Life, Michelle Orange takes us from Beirut to Hawaii to her grandmother's retirement home in Canada in her quest to understand how people behave in a world increasingly mediated—for better and for worse—by images and interactivity. Orange's essays range from the critical to the journalistic to the deeply personal; she seamlessly combines stories from her own life with incisive analysis as she explores everything from the intimacies we develop with celebrities and movie characters to the troubled creation of the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. With the insight of a young Joan Didion and the empathy of a John Jeremiah Sullivan, Orange dives into popular culture and the status quo and emerges with a persuasive and provocative book about how we live now. Her singular voice will resonate for years to come.