- Table View
- List View
On Rocky Top: A Front-Row Seat to the End of an Era
by Clay Travis“The best book on college football I’ve read in a generation….If you love college football, you’ll love this book.”— Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Boys Will Be Boys and The Bad Guys Won!Part Season on the Brink, part Fever Pitch, On Rocky Top is a rollicking, all-access pass to the rough-and-tumble world of University of Tennessee football. The book chronicles the 2008 season, during which the team suffered its second worst record ever and Head Coach Phil Fulmer, the most beloved and recognized man in Tennessee, was fired. Author of Dixieland Delight, Clay Travis offers a fascinating inside look at the inner workings of a major college sports program, and chronicles a season of promise that went terribly wrong, ending a long, fabled era.
The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace
by Gordon Mathews, Linessa Dan Lin Yang YangOnly decades ago, the population of Guangzhou was almost wholly Chinese. Today, it is a truly global city, a place where people from around the world go to make new lives, find themselves, or further their careers. A large number of these migrants are small-scale traders from Africa who deal in Chinese goods—often knockoffs or copies of high-end branded items—to send back to their home countries. In The World in Guangzhou, Gordon Mathews explores the question of how the city became a center of “low-end globalization” and shows what we can learn from that experience about similar transformations elsewhere in the world. Through detailed ethnographic portraits, Mathews reveals a world of globalization based on informality, reputation, and trust rather than on formal contracts. How, he asks, can such informal relationships emerge between two groups—Chinese and sub-Saharan Africans—that don't share a common language, culture, or religion? And what happens when Africans move beyond their status as temporary residents and begin to put down roots and establish families? Full of unforgettable characters, The World in Guangzhou presents a compelling account of globalization at ground level and offers a look into the future of urban life as transnational connections continue to remake cities around the world.
Unshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution
by Willard Sterne RandallUnshackling America challenges the persistent fallacy that Americans fought two separate wars of independence. Williard Sterne Randall documents an unremitting fifty-year-long struggle for economic independence from Britain overlapping two armed conflicts linked by an unacknowledged global struggle. Throughout this perilous period, the struggle was all about free trade.Neither Jefferson nor any other Founding Father could divine that the Revolutionary Period of 1763 to 1783 had concluded only one part, the first phase of their ordeal. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War halted overt combat but had achieved only partial political autonomy from Britain. By not guaranteeing American economic independence and agency, Britain continued to deny American sovereignty.Randall details the fifty years and persistent attempts by the British to control American trade waters, but he also shows how, despite the outrageous restrictions, the United States asserted the doctrine of neutral rights and developed the world’s second largest merchant fleet as it absorbed the French Caribbean trade. American ships carrying trade increased five-fold between 1790 and 1800, its tonnage nearly doubling again between 1800 and 1812, ultimately making the United States the world’s largest independent maritime power.
Luck: The Essential Guide
by Deborah Aaronson Kevin KwanFilled with everything you need to live a luckier life, Luck: The Essential Guide is here with information, advice, or if you just have to knock on wood.
On Deadly Ground: A J.D. Books Mystery (J.D. Books Series #0)
by Michael NormanKanab, Utah is bitterly divided by the politics of land management. When environmentalist David Greenbriar is found dead, County Sheriff, Charley Sutter, seeks help from newly appointed Law Enforcement Ranger, J. D. Books. Books discovers that the victim's widow has been having an affair with Lance Clayburn. Physical evidence links Clayburn to the killing. Books connects Greenbriar's murder to a corrupt Kane County Sheriff's deputy and a Las Vegas business conglomerate with ties to organized crime. Enter Peter Deluca, a very dangerous mob contract killer, who will eliminate anyone who can link him or his employer to Greenbriar's murder.
Damage Control: A Josie Kendall Mystery (Josie Kendall Mysteries #1)
by Michael Bowen"Bowen writes with knowledge and wit, tongue in cheek or rudely protruding. His cat-and-mouse corporate thriller zips merrily to a high-speed conclusion."—Publishers WeeklyWhen shadowy gray market hustler and aspiring crony capitalist Jerzy Schroeder is murdered while Josie Kendall is hitting him up for a million dollars to help cash in on alternative energy funding, the police suspect her of adultery and her husband, Rafe, of homicide. Josie, who works for Majority Values Coalition, an "activist fundraising organization," is a new but passionate D.C. player. Suave Rafe, long a Washington insider, also a long widower, is passionate about Josie. He's on a new track as a literary agent and supporting Josie's how-Washington-works learning curve.For Josie and Rafe, this isn't a murder investigation but a political damage control problem. They attack the issue with an array of finely tuned skills: strategic leaks, manipulation of the media, judicious use of inside information, and a flexible attitude toward the truth—plus the assistance of Josie's Uncle Darius, a veteran spin doctor with surprising connections, who—luckily—is out on parole.They'll need a full arsenal, since, as one capital insider points out, "A damage control strategy that hasn't succeeded within thirty days has failed." Along the way, Josie, juggling plot lines, will have to decide whether there are ethical lines that even she won't cross.A proposal from Schroeder's ex-wife, Ann DeHoin, known as "The Gray Lady," thanks to her wardrobe, shows Josie that she was (and probably still is) being gamed. To what end?The priority here is to figure out what the game is before the body count rises, while staying on mission at MVC, which gets money from people committed to a cause, spends part of it promoting that cause through channels like running ads, and keeps the rest.In this contemporary House of Cards scenario, determining who actually murdered Schroeder is a low-priority problem but Josie manages to do that as well. It's all in a day's (well, thirty days') work.
White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America
by David HerzbergThe contemporary opioid crisis is widely seen as new and unprecedented. Not so. It is merely the latest in a long series of drug crises stretching back over a century. In White Market Drugs, David Herzberg explores these crises and the drugs that fueled them, from Bayer’s Heroin to Purdue’s OxyContin and all the drugs in between: barbiturate “goof balls,” amphetamine “thrill pills,” the “love drug” Quaalude, and more. As Herzberg argues, the vast majority of American experiences with drugs and addiction have taken place within what he calls “white markets,” where legal drugs called medicines are sold to a largely white clientele. These markets are widely acknowledged but no one has explained how they became so central to the medical system in a nation famous for its “drug wars”—until now. Drawing from federal, state, industry, and medical archives alongside a wealth of published sources, Herzberg re-connects America’s divided drug history, telling the whole story for the first time. He reveals that the driving question for policymakers has never been how to prohibit the use of addictive drugs, but how to ensure their availability in medical contexts, where profitability often outweighs public safety. Access to white markets was thus a double-edged sword for socially privileged consumers, even as communities of color faced exclusion and punitive drug prohibition. To counter this no-win setup, Herzberg advocates for a consumer protection approach that robustly regulates all drug markets to minimize risks while maintaining safe, reliable access (and treatment) for people with addiction. Accomplishing this requires rethinking a drug/medicine divide born a century ago that, unlike most policies of that racially segregated era, has somehow survived relatively unscathed into the twenty-first century. By showing how the twenty-first-century opioid crisis is only the most recent in a long history of similar crises of addiction to pharmaceuticals, Herzberg forces us to rethink our most basic ideas about drug policy and addiction itself—ideas that have been failing us catastrophically for over a century.
Flagstick (Alan Saxon Mysteries #4)
by Keith MilesA funeral in the family forces Alan Saxon to go home and confront the father he hates. Old wounds are reopened and he beats a hasty retreat. Though he flies off to the Far East, he cannot outrun his problems. His first port of call is Bangkok where he plays a round of golf with an old friend, Sam Limsong. Pleasure is soon overshadowed by some alarming developments, and he flies on to Tokyo with deep misgivings.Contracted to make an instructional video, Saxon falls foul of his host, the tyrannical Shoei Ogino, head of a giant corporation who is obsessed with the game of golf. In Ogino's relationship with his sons, Saxon sees parallels with his own father's attitudes. Those parallels are thrown into sharper relief when Ogino is murdered. Saxon is caught up in the family chaos and drawn into a relationship with the delectable Mitsu, bereaved daughter of Ogino. Problems multiply for the British golfer, but he continues to fly the flag bravely....
Pretty Good for a Girl: The Autobiography of a Snowboarding Pioneer
by Tina Basich Kathleen GasperiniWhen Tina Basich grabbed her rented snowboard and headed to the mountains in Lake Tahoe, snowboarding wasn't even considered a sport . . . yet. It was the beginning, and could have easily gone the way of many other sports and become dominated by male-driven competition.But not with Tina on the scene . . . Comments like "You're pretty good . . . for a girl" only pushed her harder to be the best and to prove she was more than just a token player on the slopes. Representing for women everywhere, she became a snowboarding all-star, started her own signature board and clothing lines for women, founded Boarding for Breast Cancer, and followed her heart, which led her on the adventure of a lifetime.This is her story.
Chicago: A Novel
by Alaa Al AswanyThe author of the highly acclaimed The Yacoubian Building returns with a story of love, sex, friendship, hatred, and ambition set in Chicago, with a cast of American and Arab characters achingly human in their desires and needs.Egyptian and American lives collide on a college campus in post-9/11 Chicago, and crises of identity abound in this extraordinary and eagerly anticipated new novel from Alaa Al Aswany. Among the players are a sixties-style anti-establishment professor whose relationship with a younger African-American woman becomes a moving target for intolerance; a veiled PhD candidate whose belief in the principles of her traditional upbringing is shaken by her exposure to American society; an émigré whose fervent desire to embrace his American identity is tested when he is faced with the issue of his daughter's "honor"; an Egyptian informant who spouts religious doctrines while hankering after money and power; and a dissident student poet who comes to America to finance his literary aspirations but whose experience in Chicago turns out to be more than he bargained for.Populated by a cast of intriguing, true-to-life characters, Chicago offers an illuminating portrait of America—a complex, often contradictory land in which triumph and failure, opportunity and oppression, licentiousness and tender love, small dramas and big dreams, coexist. Beautifully rendered, Chicago is a powerfully engrossing novel of culture and individuality from one of the most original voices in contemporary world literature.
The Wolf and the Lamb (Jerusalem Mysteries #3)
by Frederick RamsayIt's Passover. Gamaliel and his physician friend, Loukas, are crime-solving a third time—reluctantly. Pontius Pilate has been accused of murder. He denies the crime. If convicted, he might escape death but would be removed from Judea. Those rejoicing urge the Rabban to mind his own business. But Gamaliel is a just man which is, as Pilate says to him, "your weakness and also your strength."Knowing that exonerating the Roman could cost him his position, possibly his life, Gamaliel, as would Sherlock Holmes centuries later, examines evidence and sorts through tangled threads, teasing out suspects who include assassins, Roman nobles, Pilate's wife, rogue legionnaires, slaves, servants, and thespians. Unusually, justice triumphs over enmity. Gamaliel is satisfied, High Priest Caiaphas is irate, Loukas accepts an apprentice from Tarsus, and few notice the events of what will later be known as Easter.Ramsay's plausible narrative answers some questions which have puzzled Biblical scholars for centuries. Why did Pilate hear the case against Jesus? Why invent a tradition that required one prisoner be released at Passover? And we ask, why could Caiaphas not heed Gamaliel's warnings not to martyr the man?
Brooklyn Graves: An Erica Donato Mystery (Erica Donato Mysteries #2)
by Triss SteinA brutally murdered family man without an enemy in the world. A box full of charming letters home, written a century ago by an unknown female worker at the famed Tiffany studios. Historic Green-Wood cemetery, where a decrepit mausoleum with stunning stained glass windows is now off limits. Suddenly, all of this is part of Erica Donato's life.Erica is a youngish single mother of a teen, an oldish history grad student, and the lowest person on the totem pole of the history museum where she works.Soon secrets begin to emerge in the most unexpected places. An admirable life was not what it seemed, confiding letters conceal their most important story. All set against the background of the splendid old cemetery and the life of modern Brooklyn, the stories of old families and old loves with hidden ties merges with new crimes and the true value of art.
Networks of Improvement: Literature, Bodies, and Machines in the Industrial Revolution
by Jon MeeA new literary-cultural history of the Industrial Revolution in Britain from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Working against the stubbornly persistent image of “dark satanic mills,” in many ways so characteristic of literary Romanticism, Jon Mee provides a fresh, revisionary account of the Industrial Revolution as a story of unintended consequences. In Networks of Improvement, Mee reads a wide range of texts—economic, medical, and more conventionally “literary”—with a focus on their circulation through networks and institutions. Mee shows how a project of enlightened liberal reform articulated in Britain’s emerging manufacturing towns led to unexpectedly coercive forms of machine productivity, a pattern that might be seen repeating in the digital technologies of our own time. Instead of treating the Industrial Revolution as Romanticism’s “other,” Mee shows how writing, practices, and institutions emanating from these industrial towns developed a new kind of knowledge economy, one where local literary and philosophical societies served as important transmission hubs for the circulation of knowledge.
The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family
by Richard Avedon Shannon Thomas PerichIn the early 1960s, Richard Avedon was commissioned by Harper's Bazaar to create Observations, a column that consisted of a series of nine photographic essays. The subject of the first essay was John F. Kennedy and his young family, who sat for formal black-and-white portraits just three weeks prior to Kennedy's presidential inauguration. Six images appeared in the magazine's February 1961 issue.That same day, Avedon created more informal color portraits of Kennedy and his family at the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach. One of these images ran as the cover of LOOK magazine's February 28 issue, with photographs by Avedon inside. Just before the magazine hit the newsstands and was delivered to over 6.5 million people, a set of photographs, comprised mostly of the LOOK images, was released by the White House and appeared in newspapers across the country.During his lifetime, Richard Avedon donated more than two hundred images to the Smithsonian Institution, including all of the photographs of the Kennedy family sitting for Harper's Bazaar. Smithsonian curator Shannon Thomas Perich has culled more than seventy-five images from that donation for The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family, making these stunning photographs available for view for the first time. Perich's introductory essay—accompanied by a wealth of archival photographs of both Avedon and the Kennedy family—provides historical background on the two sittings within a political and cultural context and critically examines the work of one of the finest photographers of the twentieth century. A foreword by Robert Dallek, distinguished historian and author of the bet-selling An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, provides authoritative and compelling insight to one of the most fascinating presidents in American history.
Anchoress of Shere
by Paul L. Moorcraft"This engrossing, subtle historical centers on a spiritual quest into Christian mysticism and smoothly alternates between past and present."—Publishers Weekly STARRED reviewSet in two different centuries, Anchoress of Shere depicts the story of a beautiful young woman, Christine Carpenter, who chooses to be walled up alive in a church in the English town of Shere. The historical records, which still exist, put the date at 1329.The 20th century chronicler of her story is Father Michael Duval, a deranged Catholic priest. Gradually, two separate sagas unfold: the bizarre world of the Middle Ages centered on Christine's entombment, and the 1967 abduction of Marda Stewart in nearby Guildford. Soon the medieval world of knights, debauchery, peasant uprisings and civil war merges into a modern hunt for a serial killer. The final piece of the puzzle is discovered in the late 1990s, revealing a gripping adventure story of love so obsessive that it spans more than six hundred years.
School for Cool: The Academic Jazz Program and the Paradox of Institutionalized Creativity
by Eitan Y. WilfJazz was born on the streets, grew up in the clubs, and will die—so some fear—at the university. Facing dwindling commercial demand and the gradual disappearance of venues, many aspiring jazz musicians today learn their craft, and find their careers, in one of the many academic programs that now offer jazz degrees. School for Cool is their story. Going inside the halls of two of the most prestigious jazz schools around—at Berklee College of Music in Boston and the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York—Eitan Y. Wilf tackles a formidable question at the heart of jazz today: can creativity survive institutionalization? Few art forms epitomize the anti-institutional image more than jazz, but it’s precisely at the academy where jazz is now flourishing. This shift has introduced numerous challenges and contradictions to the music’s practitioners. Solos are transcribed, technique is standardized, and the whole endeavor is plastered with the label “high art”—a far cry from its freewheeling days. Wilf shows how students, educators, and administrators have attempted to meet these challenges with an inventive spirit and a robust drive to preserve—and foster—what they consider to be jazz’s central attributes: its charisma and unexpectedness. He also highlights the unintended consequences of their efforts to do so. Ultimately, he argues, the gap between creative practice and institutionalized schooling, although real, is often the product of our efforts to close it.
My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace
by Ehud BarakWINNER OF THE 2018 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDThe definitive memoir of one of Israel's most influential soldier-statesmen and one-time Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, with insights into forging peace in the Middle East.In the summer of 2000, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history—Ehud Barak—set himself a challenge as daunting as any he had faced on the battlefield: to secure a final peace with the Palestinians. He would propose two states for two peoples, with a shared capital in Jerusalem. He knew the risks of failure. But he also knew the risks of not trying: letting slip perhaps the last chance for a generation to secure genuine peace.It was a moment of truth.It was one of many in a life intertwined, from the start, with that of Israel. Born on a kibbutz, Barak became commander of Israel's elite special forces, then army Chief of Staff, and ultimately, Prime Minister.My Country, My Life tells the unvarnished story of his—and his country's—first seven decades; of its major successes, but also its setbacks and misjudgments. He offers candid assessments of his fellow Israeli politicians, of the American administrations with which he worked, and of himself. Drawing on his experiences as a military and political leader, he sounds a powerful warning: Israel is at a crossroads, threatened by events beyond its borders and by divisions within. The two-state solution is more urgent than ever, not just for the Palestinians, but for the existential interests of Israel itself. Only by rediscovering the twin pillars on which it was built—military strength and moral purpose—can Israel thrive.
Judy: The Life, Legend, and Tragedy of an American Icon
by Gerold FrankThe tumultuous life story of Judy Garland, based on more than two hundred interviews and authorized access to her private papers, by the New York Times–bestselling biographer. Gerold Frank met with legendary singer and actress Judy Garland to collaborate on her autobiography—but he completed the project alone after her fatal overdose in 1969. Drawn from more than two hundred interviews and full access to her personal records and pictures, Frank delves into the superstar&’s troubled life, assisted by the cooperation of her family, her doctors, and her friends in Hollywood. Still vivid in our memory thanks to films like The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, and A Star Is Born, Judy Garland was an incomparable figure whose outsized talent made her an American icon—and her life story, an American tragedy. &“[A] messy and insatiably involving story. . . . Somehow beyond all the mythology of how a star was born and a cult created, Judy&’s consuming presence remains—the insecure charm, the mischievous humor, the guts—all programmed on self-destruct.&” —Kirkus Reviews &“When [Frank] digs into the roots of her behavior, he makes more sense than anybody else I have read. He is the perfect Dante for this trip into the underworld, the biographer Judy Garland deserves.&” —The New York TimesIncludes photographs
Why Parties Matter: Political Competition & Democracy in the American South
by John H. Aldrich John D. GriffinSince the founding of the American Republic, the North and South have followed remarkably different paths of political development. Among the factors that have led to their divergence throughout much of history are differences in the levels of competition among the political parties. While the North has generally enjoyed a well-defined two-party system, the South has tended to have only weakly developed political parties—and at times no system of parties to speak of. With Why Parties Matter, John H. Aldrich and John D. Griffin make a compelling case that competition between political parties is an essential component of a democracy that is responsive to its citizens and thus able to address their concerns. Tracing the history of the parties through four eras—the Democratic-Whig party era that preceded the Civil War; the post-Reconstruction period; the Jim Crow era, when competition between the parties virtually disappeared; and the modern era—Aldrich and Griffin show how and when competition emerged between the parties and the conditions under which it succeeded and failed. In the modern era, as party competition in the South has come to be widely regarded as matching that of the North, the authors conclude by exploring the question of whether the South is poised to become a one-party system once again with the Republican party now dominant.
Skinny Bitch in Love: A Novel
by Kim BarnouinFrom the #1 New York Times–bestselling co-author of Skinny Bitch, &“a clever . . . mouth-watering story of a vegan chef with big dreams.&” —San Francisco Book Review A rising culinary star of the vegan foodie scene, Clementine Cooper gets her big chance to impress a top food critic—until a backstabbing co-worker sabotages her exquisite entrée with butter. Blacklisted from every vegan kitchen in Los Angeles, Clem decides to open her own cooking school with aspirations of turning a neighborhood restaurant into a café. But when a sexy restauranteur settles on her dream locale as the perfect place for his steakhouse, Clem prepares for battle. Then she lays eyes on him. Zach Jeffries is way too good looking. Worse, when he shows up at her cooking class, he&’s more than the meathead she expects him to be. Much more. Turns out the attraction is mutual, even if their dreams are not. So Clem does what every self-respecting single woman would do—she tries to fall in love with a more suitable man. Alexander Orr is not only a vegan chef, too, but British and adorably sweet. Yet, despite her best efforts Clem still has an irresistible taste for a certain hunky carnivore. . . . &“Barnouin has cooked up one tasty love triangle. . . . Her characters are as sharp as her no-nonsense cookbooks.&” —USA Today &“Barnouin&’s debut novel asks: Can a vegan chef find love with a carnivore? It&’s lightweight fare, starring a sassy heroine.&” —Kirkus Reviews &“Those looking for a lazy beach reach or . . . fans of the Skinny Bitch Empire should find something here to enjoy.&” —Publishers Weekly
A Shattered Circle: A Legal Thriller
by Kevin EganA judge&’s wife struggles under the deadly weight of secrets both past and present in &“Egan&’s excellent third legal thriller . . . his best to date&” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Ever since a fall from a stepladder, Judge Lonergan hasn&’t been the same. The accident triggered traumatic dementia—a condition that his wife and secretary, Barbara, is desperate to keep hidden from the public. With the help of the judge&’s law clerk, she seems to be succeeding—until a judicial complaint is filed against her husband. Meanwhile, in another part of the courthouse, court officer Foxx begins an unofficial investigation into a twenty-five-year-old murder that occurred there. It&’s the least he can do for his dying childhood friend, the convicted killer who still proclaims his innocence. From the inner sanctums and shadowy depths of the historic Manhattan courthouse, old secrets and scandals come to light, entangling both Foxx and Barbara in a web of ruthless ambition and dangerous obsession . . .
The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War
by Dan Gilgoff*The crucial Ohio get-out-the-vote effort that lifted Bush over Kerry. *The Terri Schiavo controversy. *The push for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. *Attacks on Roe v. Wade. *"Intelligent design" in our science curriculum. The evangelical right has pushed all of these initiatives, led by the immense behind-the-scenes influence of Dr. James Dobson, the founder and chairman of Focus on the Family: an organization that has grown from its roots as a local parenting advice center to a powerful ministry that broadcasts Dr. Dobson each day on more than 3,000 radio and 80 television stations in the U.S. alone. Dobson has supplanted Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed as the spokesman for tens of millions of American evangelical Christians--even though Dobson is not a minister, but a family therapist with a doctorate in child development. Dobson maintains that the American political and social spectrums are firmly rooted in a centuries-old Christian tradition--one that has come under siege beginning in the 1960s, spear-headed by court rulings that have undermined the necessity of religion in public life. With the support of evangelical followers, Dobson has garnered more and support than many ever thought possible and has harnessed this power to wage a crusade in support of strengthening abortion restrictions and establishing anti-gay rights litigation. The Jesus Machine is the first book to examine Focus on the Family as the cutting edge of the larger evangelical movement, backing what many view to be goals in common with the current political agenda of the Bush administration, as it works to become the voice of mainstream America. Through exhaustive research, Dan Gilgoff, a Senior Reporter for US News & World Report, exposes the intricacies of the Focus on the Family's rallying cry and the drastic implications they hold for the future of America's political system.
The Revolution’s Echoes: Music, Politics, and Pleasure in Guinea (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
by Nomi DaveMusic has long been an avenue for protest, seen as a way to promote freedom and equality, instill hope, and fight for change. Popular music, in particular, is considered to be an effective form of subversion and resistance under oppressive circumstances. But, as Nomi Dave shows us in The Revolution’s Echoes, the opposite is also true: music can often support, rather than challenge, the powers that be. Dave introduces readers to the music supporting the authoritarian regime of former Guinean president Sékou Touré, and the musicians who, even long after his death, have continued to praise dictators and avoid dissent. Dave shows that this isn’t just the result of state manipulation; even in the absence of coercion, musicians and their audiences take real pleasure in musical praise of leaders. Time and again, whether in traditional music or in newer genres such as rap, Guinean musicians have celebrated state power and authority. With The Revolution’s Echoes, Dave insists that we must grapple with the uncomfortable truth that some forms of music choose to support authoritarianism, generating new pleasures and new politics in the process.
Big Kibble: The Hidden Dangers of the Pet Food Industry and How to Do Better by Our Dogs
by Shawn Buckley Oscar ChavezA big, inside look at the shocking lack of regulation within the pet food industry, and how readers can dramatically improve the quality of their dogs’ lives through diet. What's really going into commercial dog food? The answer is horrifying. Big Kibble is big business: $75 billion globally. A handful of multi-national corporations dominate the industry and together own as many as 80% of all brands. This comes as a surprise to most people, but what’s even more shocking is how lax the regulations and guidelines are around these products. The guidelines—or lack thereof—for pet food allow producers to include ever-cheaper ingredients, and create ever-larger earnings. For example, “legal” ingredients in kibble include poultry feces, saw dust, expired food, and diseased meat, among other horrors. Many vets still don’t know that kibble is not the best food for dogs because Big Kibble funds the nutrition research. So far, these corporations have been able to cut corners and still market and promote feed-grade food as if it were healthful and beneficial—until now.Just as you are what you eat, so is your dog. Once you stop feeding your dog the junk that’s in kibble or cans, you have taken the first steps to improving your dog’s health, behavior and happiness.You know the unsavory side of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma. Now Shawn Buckley, Dr. Oscar Chavez, and Wendy Paris explain all you need to know about unsavory Big Kibble—and offer a brighter path forward for you and your pet.
Policing Welfare: Punitive Adversarialism in Public Assistance
by Spencer HeadworthMeans-tested government assistance in the United States requires recipients to meet certain criteria and continue to maintain their eligibility so that benefits are paid to the “truly needy.” Welfare is regarded with such suspicion in this country that considerable resources are spent policing the boundaries of eligibility, which are delineated by an often confusing and baroque set of rules and regulations. Even minor infractions of the many rules can cause people to be dropped from these programs, and possibly face criminal prosecution. In this book, Spencer Headworth offers the first study of the structure of fraud control in the welfare system by examining the relations between different levels of governmental agencies, from federal to local, and their enforcement practices. Policing Welfare shows how the enforcement regime of welfare has been constructed to further stigmatize those already living in poverty and deepens disparities of class, race, and gender in our society.