Best of
Anthropology

2021

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity


David Graeber - 2021
    Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.

Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding


Daniel E. Lieberman - 2021
    Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion.Exercised is entertaining and enlightening but also constructive. As our increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, Lieberman audaciously argues that to become more active we need to do more than medicalize and commodify exercise.Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, Lieberman suggests how we can make exercise more enjoyable, rather than shaming and blaming people for avoiding it. He also tackles the question of whether you can exercise too much, even as he explains why exercise can reduce our vulnerability to the diseases mostly likely to make us sick and kill us.

First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human


Jeremy DeSilva - 2021
    A seven-million-year journey to the very origins of the human lineage, First Steps shows how upright walking was a gateway to many of the other attributes that make us human—from our technological abilities, our thirst for exploration, our use of language–and may have laid the foundation for our species’ traits of compassion, empathy, and altruism. Moving from developmental psychology labs to ancient fossil sites throughout Africa and Eurasia, DeSilva brings to life our adventure walking on two legs. First Steps examines how walking upright helped us rise above all over species on this planet.First Steps includes an eight-page color photo insert.

It's Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity


Michael Foster - 2021
    They always have and always will. Nothing can change that. Nothing will. It is not a question of whether men will be ruling, but which ones and how.” ~From It's Good to Be a ManOur modern society has called for us to “smash the patriarchy,” and the church has not done much better.Instead of telling men how they can hone and refine their aggressive traits, the church has told men that they should aspire to be meek servant-leaders, and when a man shows any signs of independence, he is shown the door. This leaves most young men lost. They don’t know what to do or how to improve, so they watch Jordan Peterson videos on YouTube to learn how to grow in their masculinity and sense of mission.In this book, Michael Foster and Bnonn Tennant remind men that their natural aggressive instincts are gifts from God that are meant to be used for the kingdom. Men are supposed to found households, join brotherhoods, and work towards a mission.It's Good to Be A Man offers men a quick guide to where they are and how they can improve.God made men to be strong and aggressive risk-takers. This is a feature, not a bug. Foster and Tennant remind us that it’s good to be a man.

Ancestors: A History of Britain in Seven Burials


Alice Roberts - 2021
    It's about reaching back in time, to find ourselves, and our place in the world.We often think of Britain springing from nowhere with the arrival of the Romans. But in Ancestors, pre-eminent archaeologist, broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts explores what we can learn about the very earliest Britons - from their burial sites. Although we have very little evidence of what life was like in prehistorical times, here their stories are told through the bones and funerary offerings left behind, preserved in the ground for thousands of years.Told through seven fascinating burial sites, this groundbreaking prehistory of Britain teaches us more about ourselves and our history: how people came and went; how we came to be on this island.

The World Before Us: How Science is Revealing a New Story of Our Human Origins


Tom Higham - 2021
    If you read one book on human origins, this should be it' Ian Morris, author of Why the West Rules - For Now 'The who, what, where, when and how of human evolution, from one of the world's experts on the dating of prehistoric fossils' Steve Brusatte, author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs50,000 years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's ground-breaking discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham. In The World Before Us, he explains the scientific and technological advancements - in radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA, for example - that allowed each of these discoveries to be made, enabling us to be more accurate in our predictions about not just how long ago these other humans lived, but how they lived, interacted and live on in our genes today. This is the story of us, told for the first time with its full cast of characters.'The application of new genetic science to pre-history is analogous to how the telescope transformed astronomy. Tom Higham brings us to the frontier of recent discoveries with a book that is both gripping and fun' Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion'This exciting book shows that we now have a revolutionary new tool for reconstructing the human past: DNA from minute pieces of tooth and bone, and even from the dirt on the floor of caves' David Abulafia, author of The Boundless Sea'The remarkable new science of palaeoanthropology, from lab bench to trench' Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred'Higham's thrilling account makes readers feel as if they were participating themselves in the extraordinary series of events that in the last few years has revealed our long-lost cousins' David Reich, author of Who We Are and How We Got Here'A brilliant distillation of the ideas and discoveries revolutionising our understanding of human evolution' Chris Gosden, author of The History of Magic

What God Has to Say about Our Bodies: How the Gospel Is Good News for Our Physical Selves


Sam Allberry - 2021
    We can't write off our physical life as spiritually irrelevant." --Sam AllberryThere's a danger in focusing too much on the body. There's also a danger in not valuing it enough. In fact, the Bible has lots to say about the body. With the coming of Jesus, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us"--flesh that was pierced and crushed for the sins of the world.In What God Has to Say about Our Bodies, Sam Allberry explains that all of us are fearfully and wonderfully made, and should regard our physicality as a gift. He offers biblical guidance for living, including understanding gender, sexuality, and identity; dealing with aging, illness, and death; and considering the physical future hope that we have in Christ.In this powerfully written book, you'll gain a new understanding for the immeasurable value of our bodies and God's ultimate plan to redeem them.

Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages


Peggy Mohan - 2021
    Delving into the fascinating early history of South Asia, this original book reveals how migration, both external and internal, has shaped all Indians from ancient times. Through a first-of-its-kind and incisive study of languages, such as the story of early Sanskrit, the rise of Urdu, language formation in the North-east, it presents the astounding argument that all Indians are of mixed origins. It explores the surprising rise of English after Independence and how it may be endangering India’s native languages.

God: An Anatomy


Francesca Stavrakopoulou - 2021
    Ms. Stavrakopoulou has almost too much fun."--The EconomistThe scholarship of theology and religion teaches us that the God of the Bible was without a body, only revealing himself in the Old Testament in words mysteriously uttered through his prophets, and in the New Testament in the body of Christ. The portrayal of God as corporeal and masculine is seen as merely metaphorical, figurative, or poetic. But, in this revelatory study, Francesca Stavrakopoulou presents a vividly corporeal image of God: a human-shaped deity who walks and talks and weeps and laughs, who eats, sleeps, feels, and breathes, and who is undeniably male.Here is a portrait--arrived at through the author's close examination of and research into the Bible--of a god in ancient myths and rituals who was a product of a particular society, at a particular time, made in the image of the people who lived then, shaped by their own circumstances and experience of the world. From head to toe--and every part of the body in between--this is a god of stunning surprise and complexity, one we have never encountered before.

This Country


Chris Matthews - 2021
    It is a story of risk and adventure, of self-reliance and service, of loyalty and friendship. It is a story driven by an abiding faith in our country.Raised in a large Irish-Catholic family in Philadelphia at a time when kids hid under their desks in atomic war drills, Chris's life etched a pattern: take a leap, live an adventure, then learn what it means. As a young Peace Corps graduate, Chris moved to DC and began knocking on doors on Capitol Hill. With dreams of becoming what Ted Sorensen had been for Jack Kennedy, Chris landed as a staffer to Utah Senator Frank Moss, where his eyes were opened to the game of big-league politics.In the 1970s, Matthews mounted a campaign for Congress as a Democratic maverick running against Philadelphia's old political machine. He didn't win the most votes, but his grit put him on the path to a top job in the White House. As a speechwriter for President Carter, Matthews witnessed the triumphs and tragedies of that administration; from the diplomatic brilliance of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty to the disaster of the Iran hostage crisis. After Carter's defeat, Chris became chief of staff to legendary Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, a perch that gave him an on-the-job PhD in American politics during the Reagan years.Chris then leapt to the other side of the political matrix as a columnist and reporter. For the San Francisco Examiner, he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first all-races election in South Africa, the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and every American presidency from Reagan to George W. Bush. Chris would go on to pioneer cable news with a fast-paced, no-nonsense television program. His show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, would become a political institution for twenty years.As Chris charts his political odyssey, he paints an energetic picture of a nation searching for its soul. He reflects with grace and wisdom, showcasing the grand arc of the American story through one life dedicated to its politics.A sweeping memoir of American politics and history from Chris Matthews, New York Times bestselling author and former host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?: The Dark Emu Debate


Peter Sutton - 2021
    It argued that classical Aboriginal society was more sophisticated than Australians had been led to believe because it resembled more closely the farming communities of Europe.In Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe ask why Australians have been so receptive to the notion that farming represents an advance from hunting and gathering. Drawing on the knowledge of Aboriginal elders, previously not included within this discussion, and decades of anthropological scholarship, Sutton and Walshe provide extensive evidence to support their argument that classical Aboriginal society was a hunter-gatherer society and as sophisticated as the traditional European farming methods.Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? asks Australians to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal society and culture.

T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us


Carole Hooven - 2021
    Mythologized. Controversial.A Harvard evolutionary biologist debunks the myths and cultural stereotypes surrounding testosterone and reveals its far-reaching effects on gender and sexuality, sports, relationships, and many more aspects of our everyday lives.The biological source of virility and masculinity has inspired fascination, investigation, and controversy since antiquity. From the eunuchs in the royal courts of ancient China to the booming market for “elixirs” of youth in nineteenth-century Europe, humans have been obsessed with identifying and manipulating what we now know as testosterone. And the trends show no signs of slowing down—the modern market for testosterone supplements is booming. Thanks to this history and the methods of modern science, today we have a rich body of research about testosterone’s effects in both men and women.The science is clear: testosterone is a major, invisible player in our relationships, sex lives, athletic abilities, childhood play, gender transitions, parenting roles, violent crime, and so much more. But there is still a lot of pushback to the idea that it does, in fact, cause sex differences and significantly influence behavior.Carole Hooven argues in T that acknowledging testosterone as a potent force in society doesn’t reinforce stifling gender norms or patriarchal values. Testosterone and evolution work together to produce a huge variety of human behavior, and that includes a multitude of ways to be masculine or feminine. Understanding the science sheds light on how we work and relate to one another, how we express anger and love, and how we can fight bias and problematic behavior to build a more fair society.

Lost Cities, Ancient Tombs: 100 Discoveries That Changed the World


Ann R. Williams - 2021
    Ruined cities, golden treasures, cryptic inscriptions, and ornate tombs have been found across the world, and yet these artifacts of ages past often raised more questions than answers. But with the emergence of archaeology as a scientific discipline in the 19th century, everything changed.Illustrated with dazzling photographs, this enlightening narrative tells the story of human civilization through 100 key expeditions, spanning six continents and more than three million years of history. Each account relies on firsthand reports from explorers, antiquarians, and scientists as they crack secret codes, evade looters and political suppression, fall in love, commit a litany of blunders, and uncover ancient curses.Pivotal discoveries include:King Tut's tomb of treasureTerracotta warriors escorting China's first emperor into the afterlifeThe glorious Anglo-Saxon treasure of Sutton-HooGraves of the Scythians, the real Amazon warrior womenNew findings on the grim fate of the colonists of JamestownWith a foreword from bestselling author Douglas Preston, Lost Cities, Ancient Tombs is an expertly curated and breath-taking panorama of the human journey.

God 4.0: On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called “God”


Robert Ornstein - 2021
    They begin by coalescing findings from the shamans of the Ice Age (God 1.0), to the first temples, priests and gods of the Neolithic era and Mesopotamia (God 2.0), to the Axial Age prophets and the three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam (God 3.0).They explore in detail how verbal descriptions of a nonverbal transcendental experience were always understood to be metaphorical but that gradually became taken as literal truth. The differing interpretations of this literal view have been the cause of much conflict between religious denominations and between science and religion.The authors explain how our “everyday” mind works as a device for selecting just a few parts of the outside reality that are important for our survival. We don’t experience the world as it is, but as a virtual reality—a small, limited system which evolved to keep us safe and ensure our survival. This system, though essential for getting us safely across a busy street, is insufficient for understanding and solving the challenges of the modern world.But we are also endowed with a quiescent “second network” of cognition which, when activated, can dissolve or break through the barriers of ordinary consciousness. We all experience this activation to some degree when we suddenly see a solution to a problem or have an intuitive or creative insight – when we connect to a larger whole beyond the self.By combining ancient teachings with modern science, we have a new psychology of spiritual experience – the knowledge to explore how this second network can be developed and stabilized, providing the much-needed higher perceptive capacity that is humanity’s next evolutionary step.The authors take care to differentiate this development from temporary trance experiences or from overloading the brain with drugs, dancing, drumming, or other practices.Instead, they emphasize the need, both individually and collectively, to reflect on and explicate the functional value of virtues such as generosity, humility and gratitude, and of service. These attituted and activities shift brain function away from the self toward an expanded consciousness, an experience of the world’s greater interconnectedness and unity and an understanding of one’s place in it.Neither an academic tome nor a religious treatise, God 4.0 is a comprehensive, thoroughly researched work addressed to inquisitive, open-minded people genuinely trying to understand life and meaning. It is written for critical thinkers, for readers of news, history, biography and science who seek more from life than is accessible through any one of these disciplines, people who may find religion as they’ve encountered it to be unsatisfactory.The authors neither advocate nor dismiss organized religion but contend that knowledge we have now of how higher consciousness happens in the brain allows us to move beyond faith, belief, and ritual to a direct experience of self-transcendence which has been called “seeing God.” Developing this innate second system of perception could be the first step toward finding the vital common ground that reconciles science, religion and spirituality, allowing us to approach our global problems from a new spiritual literacy and enter a new era—God 4.0.

Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body


John W. Kleinig - 2021
    In our secular age, there has been a loss of the body's goodness, purpose, and end. Many people, driven by shame and idolatry, abuse their body through self-harm or self-improvement. How can we renew our understanding and see our bodies the way God does?In Wonderfully Made, John Kleinig forms a properly biblical theology of our bodies. Through his keen sensitivity to Scripture's witness, Kleinig explains why bodies matter. While sin has corrupted our bodies and how we think of them, God's creation is still good. Thus, our bodies are good gifts. The Son took on a body to redeem our bodies. Kleinig addresses issues like shame, chastity, desire, gender dysphoria, and more, by integrating them into the biblical vision of creation.Readers of Wonderfully Made will not only be equipped to engage in current issues; they will gain a robust theology of the body and better appreciation of God's very good creation.

Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness


Roy Richard Grinker - 2021
    In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy.Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma. The preeminent historian of medicine, Sander Gilman, calls Nobody’s Normal “the most important work on stigma in more than half a century.”

A Book of Life


Peter Kingsley - 2021
    As a historian he has revolutionized our understanding of ancient philosophy and religion; as a mystic, he introduced us to what philosophy and religion are meant to be.Hauntingly personal, almost autobiographical, this is not the story of one man’s life. It’s the secret story of us all. Beyond scepticism and cynicism, belief or imagination, A Book of Life offers a roadmap to reality by showing how it still is possible to experience the sacred truths our ancestors knew and lived—that inside every human being lies the universe and that life itself, in all its splendour, is what lies behind our tiny lives.This little book is a wide open door into the timeless magic and unfathomable mystery our modern world has managed to forget. Even so, to encourage anyone to read it now would be totally wrong—because it was written to be read not by people today but in a distant future. “This indescribable book is more than a book. It’s an apocalypse—a fire from another world.”PIR ZIA INAYAT-KHAN

The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World


Nichola Raihani - 2021
    It’s how we progressed through scale and complexity, from free-floating strands of genetic material, to nation states. But given what we know about the mechanisms of evolution, cooperation is also something of a puzzle. How does cooperation begin, when on a Darwinian level, all that the genes in your body care about is being passed on to the next generation? Why do meerkat colonies care for one another’s children? Why do babbler birds in the Kalahari form colonies in which only a single pair breeds? And how come some coral wrasse fish actually punish each other for harming fish from another species?A biologist by training, Raihani looks at where and how collaborative behavior emerges throughout the animal kingdom, and what problems it solves. She reveals that the species that exhibit cooperative behavior–teaching, helping, grooming, and self-sacrifice–most similar to our own tend not to be other apes; they are birds, insects, and fish, occupying far more distant branches of the evolutionary tree. By understanding the problems they face, and how they cooperate to solve them, we can glimpse how human cooperation first evolved. And we can also understand what it is about the way we cooperate that has made humans so distinctive–and so successful.

Scenes from Prehistoric Life: From the Ice Age to the Coming of the Romans


Francis Pryor - 2021
    

Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life


Gillian Tett - 2021
    Gillian Tett points to anthropology—the study of human culture. Anthropologists learn to get inside the minds of other people, helping them not only to understand other cultures but also to appraise their own environment with fresh perspective as an insider-outsider, gaining lateral vision. Today, anthropologists are more likely to study Amazon warehouses than remote Amazon tribes; they have done research into institutions and companies such as General Motors, Nestlé, Intel, and more, shedding light on practical questions such as how internet users really define themselves; why corporate projects fail; why bank traders miscalculate losses; how companies sell products like pet food and pensions; why pandemic policies succeed (or not). Anthropology makes the familiar seem unfamiliar and vice versa, giving us badly needed three-dimensional perspective in a world where many executives are plagued by tunnel vision, especially in fields like finance and technology. “Fascinating and surprising” (Fareed Zararia, CNN), Anthro-Vision offers a revolutionary new way for understanding the behavior of organizations, individuals, and markets in today’s ever-evolving world.

Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution


Elsa Panciroli - 2021
    They made the world theirs long before the rise of dinosaurs. Travelling forward into the Permian and then Triassic periods, we learn how our ancient mammal ancestors evolved from large hairy beasts with accelerating metabolisms to exploit miniaturisation, which was key to unlocking the traits that define mammals as we now know them. Elsa criss-crosses the globe to explore the sites where discoveries are being made and meet the people who make them. In Scotland, she traverses the desert dunes of prehistoric Moray, where quarry workers unearthed the footprints of Permian creatures from before the time of dinosaurs. In South Africa, she introduces us to animals, once called 'mammal-like reptiles', that gave scientists the first hints that our furry kin evolved from a lineage of egg-laying burrowers. In China, new, complete fossilised skeletons reveal mammals that were gliders, shovel-pawed Jurassic moles, and flat-tailed swimmers.This book radically reframes the narrative of our mammalian ancestors and provides a counterpoint to the stereotypes of mighty dinosaur overlords and cowering little mammals. It turns out the earliest mammals weren't just precursors, they were pioneers.

Hellebore #6: The Summoning Issue


Maria J. Pérez CuervoMatthew Melvin-Koushki - 2021
    The calling of a supernatural agent may bring power, but also comes with many risks. In these pages, games of cards usher in cloven-footed strangers, runic inscriptions conjure up demons, a communal warning is uttered every Bonfire Night, and the pagan dead rise from ancient barrows.Hellebore is a collection of writings and essays devoted to folk horror and the themes that inspire it: folklore, myth, history, archaeology, psychogeography, and the occult.Featuring words by Christine Ferguson, Victoria Anne Pearson, Per Faxneld, Efram Sera-Shriar, John Reppion, Katherine Weikert, Verity Holloway, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, and Francis Young. Artwork by Courtney Brooke (Lightwitch), Ellen Rogers, and Nathaniel Winter-Hébert.

The Fire Within: Desire, Sexuality, Longing, and God


Ronald Rolheiser - 2021
      God is conceived of as holy, pure, sexless, and as morally above the raw desires that so powerfully beset us. Sex, on the other hand, is conceived of as earthy and unholy, something we must snatch, and not without guilt, from the gods. Christianity has struggled mightily with sex; so too have most other religions. And yet when we look at sexual desire and ask where it comes from, there can be only one answer. It comes from God.   This is a book on desire, its experience, its origins, its meaning, and how it might be generatively channeled. Sexuality is inside us to help lure us back to God, but dealing with this fire inside us is a lifelong struggle. Ron Rolheiser sheds light on this mystery and the journey it takes us on in these tantalizing fragments that help give us permission to feel what we feel and know that God is still smiling on us.

In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration


William Lane Craig - 2021
    He begins with an inquiry into the genre of Genesis 1–11, determining that it can most plausibly be classified as mytho-history—a narrative with both literary and historical value. He then moves into the New Testament, where he examines references to Adam in the words of Jesus and the writings of Paul, ultimately concluding that the entire Bible considers Adam the historical progenitor of the human race—a position that must therefore be accepted as a premise for Christians who take seriously the inspired truth of Scripture. Working from that foundation of biblical truth, Craig embarks upon an interdisciplinary survey of scientific evidence to determine where Adam could be most plausibly located in the evolutionary history of humankind, ultimately determining that Adam lived between 750,000 and 1,000,000 years ago as a member of the archaic human species Homo heidelbergensis. He concludes by reflecting theologically on his findings and asking what all this might mean for us as human beings created in the image of God, literally descended from a common ancestor—albeit one who lived in the remote past.

The History of Stand-Up : From Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle


Wayne Federman - 2021
    

Incerto 5-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game


Nassim Nicholas Taleb - 2021
    The main thread is that while there is inordinate uncertainty about what is going on, there is great certainty as to what one should do about it.This boxed set includes:FOOLED BY RANDOMNESSTHE BLACK SWANTHE BED OF PROCRUSTESANTIFRAGILESKIN IN THE GAME

On Revision: The Only Writing That Counts


William Germano - 2021
    So you’ve just finished writing something? Congratulations! Now revise it. Because revision is about getting from good to better, and it’s only finished when you decide to stop. But where to begin? In On Revision, William Germano shows authors how to take on the most critical stage of writing anything: rewriting it. For more than twenty years, thousands of writers have turned to Germano for his insider’s take on navigating the world of publishing. A professor, author, and veteran of the book industry, Germano knows what editors want and what writers need to know: Revising is not just correcting typos. Revising is about listening and seeing again. Revising is a rethinking of the principles from the ground up to understand why the writer is doing something, why they’re going somewhere, and why they’re taking the reader along with them.On Revision steps back to take in the big picture, showing authors how to hear their own writing voice and how to reread their work as if they didn’t write it. On Revision will show you how to know when your writing is actually done—and, until it is, what you need to do to get it there.

Defund Fear: Safety Without Policing, Prisons, and Punishment


Zach Norris - 2021
    

Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg


I. India Thusi - 2021
    As I. India Thusi argues in Policing Bodies, this results in both room for negotiation that can benefit sex workers and also extreme precarity in which the security police officers provide can be offered and taken away at a moment's notice. Sex work straddles the line between formal and informal. Attitudes about beauty and subjective value are manifest in formal tasks, including police activities, which are often conducted in a seemingly ad hoc manner. However, high-level organizational directives intended to regulate police obligations and duties toward sex workers also influence police action and tilt the exercise of discretion to the formal. In this liminal space, this book considers how sex work is policed and how it should be policed. Challenging discourses about sexuality and gender that inform its regulation, Thusi exposes the limitations of dominant feminist arguments regarding the legal treatment of sex work. This in-depth, historically informed ethnography illustrates the tension between enforcing a country's laws and protecting citizens' human rights.

Research Practice: Perspectives from UX researchers in a changing field


Gregg Bernstein - 2021
    It's a practical field guide that will give you the encouragement to get started, no matter what your background.-Aarron WalterThis book is not an argument for doing user research. Nor is it a tutorial or toolkit for common methodologies. It won't show you how to run a usability session or recruit users remotely.Research Practicecaptures the day-to-day of the practice of user research-what it looks like to work with peers and stakeholders, to raise awareness of research, to make tradeoffs, and to build a larger team. This book takes you inside the field of applied user research through the stories and experiences of the people doing the work. Each chapter explores a specific theme:Finding a way in presents the various pathways people take to this field. You'll learn how practitioners navigated from schools, the social sciences, fine arts, and beyond to a career that satisfies and rewards a passion for understanding people.Getting started in a new role demystifies why organizations hire researchers, how to assess a role, the hiring process, and how to start when you land a new job.Building momentum describes the different roles and teams a user researcher might work with, how to build and navigate relationships with colleagues and stakeholders, and the best place within an organization for researchers to make an impact.Sharing the work unpacks what researchers really share by exploring how practitioners build an awareness of research, teach research methodologies, and-yes-disseminate research findings with their teams and organizations.Expanding your practice covers how to navigate growth in both influence and headcount for practitioners, from what research leadership means to how to hire a team to when to operationalize a practice.Overcoming challenges exposes the hard parts that no one tells you about user research, from the loneliness of being a team of one to battling imposter syndrome to advocating for change to taking an ethical stand.Where to go next charts the pathways of a research career through an examination of possible career ladders, perspectives on when it's time to leave a role, and thoughts on where a research leader goes when there isn't a clear next step.If you're in school or considering a career switch, you'll learn what a job in user research might look like. If you're new to the field, you'll see where your career might go and know how to get there. And if you're expanding the size or reach of a practice, you'll understand how others have approached it.

The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit


Randy E. Barnett - 2021
    Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendment's key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws.Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment was the culmination of decades of debates about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. Antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law. They also utilized what is today called public-meaning originalism. Although their arguments lost in the courts, the Republican Party was formed to advance an antislavery political agenda, eventually bringing about abolition. Then, when abolition alone proved insufficient to thwart Southern repression and provide for civil equality, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. It went beyond abolition to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of Republican citizenship and granted Congress power to protect fundamental rights and ensure equality before the law. Finally, Congress used its powers to pass Reconstruction-era civil rights laws that tell us much about the original scope of the amendment.With evenhanded attention to primary sources, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment shows how the principles of the Declaration eventually came to modify the Constitution and proposes workable doctrines for implementing the key provisions of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life


Timothy J. Jorgensen - 2021
    But electricity is more than an external source of power, heat, or illumination. Life at its essence is nothing if not electrical.The story of how we came to understand electricity's essential role in all life is rooted in our observations of its influences on the body--influences governed by the body's central nervous system. Spark explains the science of electricity from this fresh, biological perspective. Through vivid tales of scientists and individuals--from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk--Timothy Jorgensen shows how our views of electricity and the nervous system evolved in tandem, and how progress in one area enabled advancements in the other. He explains how these developments have allowed us to understand--and replicate--the ways electricity enables the body's essential functions of sight, hearing, touch, and movement itself.Throughout, Jorgensen examines our fascination with electricity and how it can help or harm us. He explores a broad range of topics and events, including the Nobel Prize-winning discoveries of the electron and neuron, the history of experimentation involving electricity's effects on the body, and recent breakthroughs in the use of electricity to treat disease.Filled with gripping adventures in scientific exploration, Spark offers an indispensable look at electricity, how it works, and how it animates our lives from within and without.

Eating in Theory


Annemarie Mol - 2021
    In Eating in Theory Annemarie Mol takes inspiration from these transformative entanglements to rethink what it is to be human. Drawing on fieldwork at food conferences, research labs, health care facilities, restaurants, and her own kitchen table, Mol reassesses the work of authors such as Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas. They celebrated the allegedly unique capability of humans to rise above their immediate bodily needs. Mol, by contrast, appreciates that as humans we share our fleshy substance with other living beings, whom we cultivate, cut into pieces, transport, prepare, and incorporate—and to whom we leave our excesses. This has far-reaching philosophical consequences. Taking human eating seriously suggests a reappraisal of being as transformative, knowing as entangling, doing as dispersed, and relating as a matter of inescapable dependence.

Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i


Candace Fujikane - 2021
    Cartographies of capital enable the seizure of abundant lands by enclosing "wastelands" claimed to be underdeveloped. By contrast, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) cartographies map the continuities of abundant worlds. Vital to restoration movements is the art of kilo, intergenerational observation of elemental forms encoded in storied histories, chants, and songs. As a participant in these movements, Fujikane maps the ecological lessons of these elemental forms: reptilian deities who protect the waterways, sharks who swim into the mountains, the navigator Maui who fishes up the islands, the deities of snow and mists on Mauna Kea. The laws of these elements are now being violated by toxic waste dumping, leaking military jet fuel tanks, and astronomical-industrial complexes. As Kanaka Maoli and their allies stand as land and water protectors, Fujikane calls for a profound attunement to the elemental forms in order to transform climate events into renewed possibilities for planetary abundance.

Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities


Aaron J. Jackson - 2021
    Grounded in the intimate everyday lives of men caring for children with major physical and intellectual disabilities, Worlds of Care undertakes an exploration of how men shape their identities in the context of caregiving. Anthropologist Aaron J. Jackson fuses ethnographic research and creative nonfiction to offer an evocative account of what is required for men to create habitable worlds and find some kind of “normal” when their circumstances are anything but. Combining stories from his fieldwork in North America with reflections on his own experience caring for his severely disabled son, Jackson argues that care has the potential to transform our understanding of who we are and how we relate to others.

Embodied: Living as Whole People in a Fractured World


Gregg R Allison - 2021
    We have somehow internalized the unbiblical idea that the immaterial aspect of our being (our soul or spirit) is inherently good while the material aspect (our body) is at worst inherently evil and at best neutral--just a vehicle for our souls to get around. So we end up neglecting or disparaging our bodies, seeing them as holding us back from spiritual growth and longing for the day we will be free of them.But the thing is, we don't have bodies; we are our bodies. And God created us that way for a reason. With Scripture as his guide, theologian Gregg Allison presents a holistic theology of the human body from conception through eternity to equip us to address pressing contemporary issues related to our bodies, including how we express our sexuality, whether gender is inherent or constructed, the meaning of suffering, body image, end of life questions, and how to live as whole people in a fractured world.

Animals' Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild


Barbara J. King - 2021
    But how do we translate this compassion into helping other creatures, both those that are and are not our pets? Bringing together the latest science with heartfelt storytelling, Animals’ Best Friends reveals the opportunities we have in everyday life to help animals in our homes, in the wild, in zoos, and in science labs, as well as those considered to be food. Barbara J. King, an expert on animal cognition and emotion, guides us on a journey both animal and deeply human. We meet cows living relaxed lives in an animal sanctuary—and cows with plastic portals in their sides at a university research station. We observe bison free-roaming at Yellowstone National Park and chimpanzees confined to zoos. We learn with King how to negotiate vegetarian preferences in omnivore restaurants. We experience the touch of a giant Pacific octopus tasting King’s skin with one of his long, neuron-rich arms. We reflect on animal testing as King shares her own experience as the survivor of a particularly nasty cancer. And in a moment all too familiar to many of us, we recover from a close encounter with two spiders in the home. This is a book not of shaming and limitation, but of uplift and expansion. Throughout this journey, King makes no claims of personal perfection. Though an animal expert, she is just like the rest of us: on a journey still, learning each day how to be better, and do better, for animals. But as Animals’ Best Friends makes clear, challenging choices can bring deep rewards. By turning compassion into action on behalf of animals, we not only improve animals’ lives—we also immeasurably enrich our own.

A Most Interesting Problem: What Darwin's Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about Human Evolution


Jeremy Desilva - 2021
    A Most Interesting Problem brings together twelve world-class scholars and science communicators to investigate what Darwin got right--and what he got wrong--about the origin, history, and biological variation of humans.Edited by Jeremy DeSilva and with an introduction by acclaimed Darwin biographer Janet Browne, A Most Interesting Problem draws on the latest discoveries in fields such as genetics, paleontology, bioarchaeology, anthropology, and primatology. This compelling and accessible book tackles the very subjects Darwin explores in Descent, including the evidence for human evolution, our place in the family tree, the origins of civilization, human races, and sex differences.A Most Interesting Problem is a testament to how scientific ideas are tested and how evidence helps to structure our narratives about human origins, showing how some of Darwin's ideas have withstood more than a century of scrutiny while others have not.A Most Interesting Problem features contributions by Janet Browne, Jeremy DeSilva, Holly Dunsworth, Agust�n Fuentes, Ann Gibbons, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Brian Hare, John Hawks, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Kristina Killgrove, Alice Roberts, and Michael J. Ryan.

Doggerland: The History of the Land that Once Connected Great Britain to Continental Europe


Charles River Editors - 2021
    

Seminole Wars: A History from Beginning to End (Native American History)


Hourly History - 2021
    Yet to the Spanish, French, and English who traveled from their countries in search of gold and land, the native populations already living on the North American continent were an inferior race. Enslavement, eradication, and imprisonment were the just fates, they felt, for any who could keep them from attaining the wealth they sought. The Seminole Wars, which took place in modern-day Florida in three different phases of the first half of the nineteenth century, were at first glance the battle between the Native Americans who lived in Florida and the settlers who wanted that land for themselves. However, the settlers from Georgia and the Carolinas were also furious because the Seminoles provided a haven for African-American slaves who sought freedom. Andrew Jackson, the military leader and future president of the United States, supported the Indian Removal Act which would force the native peoples to leave their homes to live west of the Mississippi, in the Indian Territory that is now Oklahoma. The Seminoles refused to leave without resistance, and as a result, they were at war with the United States government. In the end, of course, most of them were relocated to the Indian Territory, but a remnant remained behind and their descendants had the hard-won satisfaction of being recognized, in 1957, as the Seminole Tribe of Florida by the U.S. federal government.Discover a plethora of topics such asOrigin of the Seminole TribeA Sanctuary for SlavesThe First Seminole WarThe Second Seminole WarThe Third Seminole WarThe Legacy of the Seminole WarsAnd much more!So if you want a concise and informative book on the Seminole Wars, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button for instant access!

Edward S. Curtis Portraits: The Many Faces of the Native Americans


Wayne Youngblood - 2021
    P. Morgan commissioned Edward S. Curtis to produce a series of books depicting Native American life. Edward S. Curtis Portraits contains over 250 of the project’s beautiful and haunting portraits. “In Mr. Curtis we have both an artist and a trained observer, whose pictures are pictures, not merely photographs.” —President Theodore Roosevelt Talented photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis set out on the project with the goal of becoming a successful portrait artist, but as he worked taking photographs of the “vanishing Indian,” he discovered a calling as an ethnographer and embarked on a mission to document every aspect of traditional Native American culture before it disappeared forever. He considered the loss of Native American traditions a national tragedy and sacrificed his financial security, marriage, and even his health to pursue his mission. Curtis’s highly expressive portraits convey the full range of human emotions, attesting to the trust he established with his subjects, and serve as exquisite examples of classic portraiture. From Alaska to Mexico, the photographs in this compact volume feature tribes such as:The ApacheThe JicarillasThe NavahoThe PapagoThe QahatikaThe MohaveThe YumaThe MaricopaThe WalapaiThe HavasupaiThe YavapaiAnd many moreThough Curtis has been criticized for idealizing the people he photographed with props and staged shots, his deep respect for them and earnest attempt to understand them is apparent in his work. Today, these portraits allow us a precious glimpse into Native American life as it existed before complete colonial expansion in the United States.

Why Bushwick Bill Matters


Charles L. Hughes - 2021
    Born with dwarfism, Bill was one of the few visibly disabled musicians to achieve widespread fame and one of the even fewer to address disability in a direct, sustained manner. Initially hired as a dancer, Bill became central to the Geto Boys as the Houston crew became one of hip-hop’s most important groups.Why Bushwick Bill Matters chronicles this crucial artist and explores what he reveals about the relationships among race, sex, and disability in pop music. Charles L. Hughes examines Bill's recordings and videos (both with the Geto Boys and solo), from the horror-comic persona of “Chuckie” to vulnerable verses in songs such as “Mind Playing Tricks On Me,” to discuss his portrayals of dwarfism, addiction, and mental illness. Hughes also explores Bill’s importance to his era and to the longer history of disability in music. A complex figure, Bill exposed the truths of a racist and ableist society even as his violent and provocative lyrics put him in the middle of debates over censorship and misogyny. Confrontational and controversial, Bushwick Bill left a massive legacy as he rhymed and swaggered through an often-inaccessible world.

Relational Spirituality: A Psychological-Theological Paradigm for Transformation


Todd W. Hall - 2021
    Common models of spiritual transformation are proving inadequate to address "the sanctification gap." In recent decades, however, a new paradigm of human and spiritual development has been emerging from multiple fields. It's supported by a critical mass of evidence, all pointing to what psychologists Todd W. Hall and M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall call a relational revolution. In Relational Spirituality, Hall and Hall present a definitive model of spiritual transformation based on a relational paradigm. At its heart is the truth that human beings are fundamentally relational--we develop, heal, and grow through relationships. While many sanctification models are fragmented, individualistic, and lack a clear process for change, the relational paradigm paints a coherent picture of both process and goal, supported by both ancient wisdom and cutting-edge research. Integrating insights from psychology and theology, this book lays out the basis for relational spiritual transformation and how it works practically in the context of relationships and community. Relational Spirituality draws together themes such as trinitarian theology, historical and biblical perspectives on the imago Dei, relational knowledge, attachment patterns, and interpersonal neurobiology into a broad synthesis that will stimulate further dialogue across a variety of fields. Highlighting key characteristics of spiritual communities that foster transformation, Hall and Hall equip spiritual leaders and practitioners to more effectively facilitate spiritual growth for themselves and those they serve.

Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States


Kevin Bruyneel - 2021
    Indigeneity often remains absent or invisible, however, especially in contemporary political and intellectual discourse about white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and racism in general. In this ambitious new book, Kevin Bruyneel confronts the chronic displacement of Indigeneity in the politics and discourse around race in American political theory and culture, arguing that the ongoing influence of settler-colonialism has undermined efforts to understand Indigenous politics while also hindering conversation around race itself. By reexamining major episodes, texts, writers, and memories of the political past from the seventeenth century to the present, Bruyneel reveals the power of settler memory at work in the persistent disavowal of Indigeneity. He also shows how Indigenous and Black intellectuals have understood ties between racism and white settler memory, even as the settler dimensions of whiteness are frequently erased in our discourse about race, whether in conflicts over Indian mascotry or the white nationalist underpinnings of Trumpism. Envisioning a new political future, Bruyneel challenges readers to refuse settler memory and consider a third reconstruction that can meaningfully link antiracism and anticolonialism.

The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere


Paulette F.C. Steeves - 2021
    Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years. Steeves discusses the political history of American anthropology to focus on why pre-Clovis sites have been dismissed by the field for nearly a century. She explores supporting evidence from genetics and linguistic anthropology regarding First Peoples and time frames of early migrations. Additionally, she highlights the work and struggles faced by a small yet vibrant group of American and European archaeologists who have excavated and reported on numerous pre-Clovis archaeology sites. In this first book on Paleolithic archaeology of the Americas written from an Indigenous perspective, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere includes Indigenous oral traditions, archaeological evidence, and a critical and decolonizing discussion of the development of archaeology in the Americas.

A History of the Human Brain: From the Sea Sponge to CRISPR, How Our Brain Evolved


Bret Stetka - 2021
    

Blood Washing Blood: Afghanistan’s Hundred-Year War


Phil Halton - 2021
    The seemingly never-ending conflict has become synonymous with a number of issues — global jihad, rampant tribalism, and the narcotics trade — but despite being cited as causes of the conflict, they are in fact symptoms.Rather than beginning after 9/11, or with the Soviet “invasion” in 1979, the current conflict in Afghanistan began with the social reforms imposed by Amanullah Amir in 1919. Western powers have failed to recognize that legitimate grievances dating back as long ago as that are driving the local population to turn to insurgency in Afghanistan. The issues they are willing to fight over today — secularism, modernity, and centralized power — are not new ones; in fact, they have been the source of a hundred-year-long social conflict.The first step toward achieving a “solution” to the Afghanistan “problem” is to have a clear-eyed view of what is really driving it.

United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to Mass Delusional Psychosis


Mark McDonald - 2021
    

The Indus: Lost Civilizations


Andrew Robinson - 2021
    It remained invisible for almost four thousand years, until its ruins were discovered in the 1920s by British and Indian archaeologists. Today, after almost a century of excavation, it is regarded as the beginning of Indian civilization and possibly the origin of Hinduism. The Indus: Lost Civilizations is an accessible introduction to every significant aspect of an extraordinary and tantalizing “lost” civilization, which combined artistic excellence, technological sophistication, and economic vigor with social egalitarianism, political freedom, and religious moderation. The book also discusses the vital legacy of the Indus civilization in India and Pakistan today.

Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Anxiety and the National College Entrance Exam in China


Zachary M Howlett - 2021
    Each year, some nine million high school seniors in China take the Gaokao, which determines college admission and provides a direct but difficult route to an urban lifestyle for China's hundreds of millions of rural residents. But with college graduates struggling to find good jobs, some are questioning the exam's legitimacy--and, by extension, the fairness of Chinese society. Chronicling the experiences of underprivileged youth, Zachary M. Howlett's research illuminates how people remain captivated by the exam because they regard it as fateful--an event both consequential and undetermined. He finds that the exam enables people both to rebel against the social hierarchy and to achieve recognition within it.In Meritocracy and Its Discontents, Howlett contends that the Gaokao serves as a pivotal rite of passage in which people strive to personify cultural virtues such as diligence, composure, filial devotion, and divine favor.

Plant Teachers: Ayahuasca, Tobacco, and the Pursuit of Knowledge


Jeremy Narby - 2021
    

Eaters of the Dead: Myths and Realities of Cannibal Monsters


Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. - 2021
       Every culture has monsters that eat us, and every culture repels in horror when we eat ourselves. From Grendel to medieval Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean, and from the Ghuls of ancient Persia to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, tales of being consumed are both universal and universally terrifying. In this book, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. explores the full range of monsters that eat the dead: ghouls, cannibals, wendigos, and other beings that feast on human flesh. Moving from myth through history to contemporary popular culture, Wetmore considers everything from ancient Greek myths of feeding humans to the gods, through sky burial in Tibet and Zoroastrianism, to actual cases of cannibalism in modern societies. By examining these seemingly inhuman acts, Eaters of the Dead reveals that those who consume corpses can teach us a great deal about human nature—and our deepest human fears.

Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move


Rebecca Hamlin - 2021
    Immigration laws have developed to reinforce a dichotomy between those viewed as voluntary, often economically motivated, migrants who can be legitimately excluded by potential host states, and those viewed as forced, often politically motivated, refugees who should be let in. In Crossing, Rebecca Hamlin argues against advocacy positions that cling to this distinction. Everything we know about people who decide to move suggests that border crossing is far more complicated than any binary, or even a continuum, can encompass. Drawing on cases of various border crises across Europe, North America, South America, and the Middle East, Hamlin outlines major inconsistencies and faulty assumptions on which the binary relies. The migrant/refugee binary is not just an innocuous shorthand--indeed, its power stems from the way in which it is painted as apolitical. In truth, the binary is a dangerous legal fiction, politically constructed with the ultimate goal of making harsh border control measures more ethically palatable to the public. This book is a challenge to all those invested in the rights and study of migrants to move toward more equitable advocacy for all border crossers.

Rites of Retaliation: Civilization, Soldiers, and Campaigns in the American Civil War


Lorien Foote - 2021
    One hallmark of civilized warfare was a highly ritualized approach to retaliation. This ritual provided a forum to accuse the enemy of excessive behavior, to negotiate redress according to the laws of war, and to appeal to the judgment of other civilized nations. As the war progressed, Northerners and Southerners feared they were losing their essential identity as civilized, and the attention to retaliation grew more intense. When Black soldiers joined the Union army in campaigns in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, raiding plantations and liberating enslaved people, Confederates argued the war had become a servile insurrection. And when Confederates massacred Black troops after battle, killed white Union foragers after capture, and used prisoners of war as human shields, Federals thought their enemy raised the black flag and embraced savagery.Blending military and cultural history, Lorien Foote's rich and insightful book sheds light on how Americans fought over what it meant to be civilized and who should be extended the protections of a civilized world.

Artful Truths: The Philosophy of Memoir


Helena de Bres - 2021
     Artful Truths offers a concise guide to the fundamental philosophical questions that arise when writing a literary work about your own life. Bringing a philosopher’s perspective to a general audience, Helena de Bres addresses what a memoir is, how the genre relates to fiction, memoirists’ responsibilities to their readers and subjects, and the question of why to write a memoir at all. Along the way, she delves into a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of the self, the limits of knowledge, the idea of truth, the obligations of friendship, the relationship between morality and art, and the question of what makes a life meaningful.   Written in a clear and conversational style, it offers a resource for those who write, teach, and study memoirs, as well as those who love to read them. With a combination of literary and philosophical knowledge, de Bres takes the many challenges directed at memoirists seriously, while ultimately standing in defense of a genre that, for all its perplexities—and maybe partly because of them—continually proves to be both beloved and valuable.

Remote Access: Small Public Libraries in Arkansas


Sabine Schmidt - 2021
    Remote Access is the culmination of this fascinating three-year effort, which took the artists to every region of their home state.Schmidt’s carefully constructed color images of libraries and the communities they serve and House’s rich black-and-white portraits of library patrons and staff shine alongside the authors’ personal essays about their experiences. The pages here come alive with a deep connection to Arkansas’s history and culture as we accompany the authors on visits to a section of the Trail of Tears near Parkin, to the site of the tragic 1959 fire at the Arkansas Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville, and to Maya Angelou’s childhood home in Stamps, among many other significant destinations.Through this testament to the essential role of libraries in the twenty-first century, Schmidt and House have created a clear-eyed portrait of contemporary rural life, delving into issues of race, politics, gender, and isolation as they document the remarkable hard work and generosity put forth in community efforts to sustain local libraries.

The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell


Michael Griffith - 2021
    While working on a novel, author and longtime Cincinnati resident Michael Griffith starts visiting Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, the nation’s third-largest cemetery. Soon he’s taking almost daily jaunts, following curiosity and accident wherever they lead. The result is this fascinating collection of essays that emerge from chance encounters with an interesting headstone, odd epitaph, unusual name, or quirk of memory. Researching obituaries, newspaper clippings, and family legacies, Griffith uncovers stories of race, feminism, art, and death. Rather than sticking to the cemetery’s most famous, or infamous, graves, Griffith stays true to the principle of ramble and incidental discovery. The result is an eclectic group of subjects, ranging from well-known figures like the feminist icon and freethinker Fanny Wright to those much less celebrated— a spiritual medium, a temperance advocate, a young heiress who died under mysterious circumstances. Nearly ninety photos add dimension and often an element of playfulness.The Speaking Stone examines what endures and what does not, reflecting on the vanity and poignancy of our attempt to leave monuments that last. In doing so, it beautifully weaves connections born out of the storyteller’s inquisitive mind.

82189: Confessions of a Prison Bitch


Henry Adams Bellows - 2021
    Unrefined and unfinished, 82189 was written by a man – posthumously assigned the pen-name “Henry Bellows” – who died while serving a life sentence for rape, and who spent most his life in penal confinement. Whatever literary aspiration may have motivated Bellows’ late-life confessional writing, his text now invites interest for such insight that it may offer (or conceal) regarding the formative experiences and criminal exploits of a repeat sex offender who was also rape victim. In telling his story, Bellows embeds a coldly observed account of carceral culture and the grim reality of sexual violence and abjection behind prison walls.In her introduction to this central text and in an appending interview, Mikita Brottman provides relevant background about its origins and her association with the author to frame a more probing interpretation not only of Bellows’ “unfinished memoir” as such, but of the psychosexual and institutional factors that inform and complicate broader societal narratives of sex crime and the the sexual victimization of prisoners.

Homo Americanus: The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy in America


Zbigniew Janowski - 2021
    This man is suppressed and separated, and not by Fascism or Communism. In present-day America this has been accomplished by democracy. “Only someone shortsighted, or someone who values equality more than freedom, would deny that today’s citizens enjoy little or no freedom, particularly freedom of speech, and even less the ability to express openly or publicly the opinions that are not in conformity with what the majority considers acceptable at a given moment. It may sound paradoxical to contemporary ears, but a fight against totalitarianism must also mean a fight against the expansion of democracy.” Janowski all at once brazen and out of bounds states what he calls the obvious and unthinkable truth: In the United States, we are already living in a totalitarian reality. The American citizen, the Homo Americanus, is an ideological being who is no longer good or bad, reasonable or irrational, proper or improper except when measured against the objectives of the dominating egalitarian mentality that American democracy has successfully incubated. American democracy has done what other despotic regimes have likewise achieved––namely, taken hold of the individual and forced him to renounce (or forget) his greatness, pursuit of virtue and his orientation toward history and Tradition. Homo Americanus, Janowski argues, has no mind or soul and he cannot tolerate diversity and indeed he now censors himself. Democracy is not benign, and we should fear its principles come by and applied ad hoc. It is deeply troublesome that in the way democracy moves today it gives critics no real insight into any trajectory of reason behind its motion, which is erratic and unmappable. The Homo Americanus is an ideological entity whose thought and even morality are forbidden from universal abstraction.  Janowski mounts the offensive against what the American holds most sacred, and he does so in order to save him. After exposing the danger and the damage done, Janowski makes another startling proposal. It is a “diseased collective mind” that is the source of this ideology, the liberal anti-perspective that presses man into the image of the Homo Americanus, and its grip can only be broken through the recovery of instinct. Homo Americanus cannot be free again until he is himself again. That is, until the shadow that belongs only to him is restored, and he is thereby no longer alienated from others. Despite the condemnation Janowski seems to be levying on the citizen of the United States, he betrays a great hope and confidence that the means to shake ourselves awake from the bad dream are nevertheless in hand. Janowski’s work is the next title in St. Augustine’s Press Dissident American Thought Today Series. It occupies a controversial overlapping terrain between the philosophical descriptions of liberalism as a tradition, psychology and the fundamentally influential critiques of democracy offered by Thucydides, Jefferson, Franklin, Tocqueville, Mill, Burke and more. More anecdotal than analytical, Janowski offers the contemporary proof that the reader is right to be scandalized by democracy and his or her own likeness of the Homo Americanus. Once upon a time it was the despicable Homo Sovieticus fruit of tyranny, but now we fear democratic society too might fall and all its citizens never be found again.

Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births


Michelle Millar Fisher - 2021
    The designed objects that surround us when it comes to menstruation, birth control, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood vary as oddly, messily, and dramatically as the stereotypes suggest. This smart, image-rich, fashion-forward, and design-driven book explores more than eighty designs--iconic, conceptual, archaic, titillating, emotionally charged, or just plain strange--that have defined the relationships between people and babies during the past century.Each object tells a story. In striking images and engaging text, Designing Motherhood unfolds the compelling design histories and real-world uses of the objects that shape our reproductive experiences. The authors investigate the baby carrier, from the Snugli to BabyBj�rn, and the (re)discovery of the varied traditions of baby wearing; the tie-waist skirt, famously worn by a pregnant Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy, and essential for camouflaging and slowly normalizing a public pregnancy; the home pregnancy kit, and its threat to the authority of male gynecologists; and more. Memorable images--including historical ads, found photos, and drawings--illustrate the crucial role design and material culture plays throughout the arc of human reproduction.The book features a prologue by Erica Chidi and a foreword by Alexandra Lange.ContributorsLuz Argueta-Vogel, Zara Arshad, Nefertiti Austin, Juliana Rowen Barton, Lindsey Beal, Thomas Beatie, Caitlin Beach, Maricela Becerra, Joan E. Biren, Megan Brandow-Faller, Khiara M. Bridges, Heather DeWolf Bowser, Sophie Cavoulacos, Meegan Daigler, Anna Dhody, Christine Dodson, Henrike Dreier, Adam Dubrowski, Michelle Millar Fisher, Claire Dion Fletcher, Tekara Gainey, Lucy Gallun, Angela Garbes, Judy S. Gelles, Shoshana Batya Greenwald, Robert D. Hicks, Porsche Holland, Andrea Homer-Macdonald, Alexis Hope, Malika Kashyap, Karen Kleiman, Natalie Lira, Devorah L Marrus, Jessica Martucci, Sascha Mayer, Betsy Joslyn Mitchell, Ginger Mitchell, Mark Mitchell, Aidan O'Connor, Lauren Downing Peters, Nicole Pihema, Alice Rawsthorn, Helen Barchilon Redman, Airyka Rockefeller, Julie Rodelli, Raphaela Rosella, Loretta J. Ross, Ofelia P�rez Ruiz, Hannah Ryan, Karin Satrom, Tae Smith, Orkan Telhan, Stephanie Tillman, Sandra Oyarzo Torres, Malika Verma, Erin Weisbart, Deb Willis, Carmen Winant, Brendan Winick, Flaura Koplin Winston

The Nine Lives of Florida's Famous Key Marco Cat


Austin J Bell - 2021
    This book takes readers into the deep past of the artifact and the Native American society in which it was created.Austin Bell explores nine periods in the life of the six-inch-high wooden carving, beginning with how it was sculpted with shell and shark-tooth tools and what it may have represented to the ancient Calusa--perhaps a human-panther god. Preserved in the muck for centuries on Marco Island and discovered in pristine condition due to its oxygen-free environment, the Cat has since traveled more than 12,000 miles and has been viewed by millions of people. It is one of the Smithsonian Institution's most irreplaceable items. In this fascinating account, Bell traces the clues to the Cat's mysterious origins that have emerged in its later lives.Captivating readers with the miracle and beauty of this rare example of pre-Columbian art, Bell marvels at how an object originally understood to hold cosmological power has indeed transformed the people and places around it. The Nine Lives of Florida's Famous Key Marco Cat is the story of a timeless masterpiece of staggering simplicity that has prevailed over impossibly long odds.

Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age


Nelson Tebbe - 2021
    As lawmakers work to protect LGBT citizens and women seeking reproductive freedom, religious traditionalists assert their right to dissent from what they see as a new liberal orthodoxy. Some religious advocates are going further and expressing skepticism that egalitarianism can be defended with reasons at all. Legal experts have not offered a satisfying response--until now.Nelson Tebbe argues that these disputes, which are admittedly complex, nevertheless can be resolved without irrationality or arbitrariness. In Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age, he advances a method called social coherence, based on the way that people reason through moral problems in everyday life. Social coherence provides a way to reach justified conclusions in constitutional law, even in situations that pit multiple values against each other. Tebbe contends that reasons must play a role in the resolution of these conflicts, alongside interests and ideologies. Otherwise, the health of democratic constitutionalism could suffer.Applying this method to a range of real-world cases, Tebbe offers a set of powerful principles for mediating between religion and equality law, and he shows how they can lead to workable solutions in areas ranging from employment discrimination and public accommodations to government officials and public funding. While social coherence does not guarantee outcomes that will please the liberal Left, it does point the way toward reasoned, nonarbitrary solutions to the current impasse.

The End of Adolescence: The Lost Art of Delaying Adulthood


Nancy E Hill - 2021
    Nancy Hill and Alexis Redding argue that what is perceived as stalled development is in fact typical. Those reprimanding today's youth have forgotten that they once balked at the transition to adulthood themselves.From an abandoned archive of recordings of college students from half a century ago, Hill and Redding discovered that there is nothing new about feeling insecure, questioning identities, and struggling to find purpose. Like many of today's young adults, those of two generations ago also felt isolated and anxious that the path to success felt fearfully narrow. This earlier cohort, too, worried about whether they could make it on their own.Yet, among today's young adults, these developmentally appropriate struggles are seen as evidence of immaturity. If society adopts this jaundiced perspective, it will fail in its mission to prepare young adults for citizenship, family life, and work. Instead, Hill and Redding offer an alternative view of delaying adulthood and identify the benefits of taking additional time to construct a meaningful future. When adults set aside judgment, there is a lot they can do to ensure that young adults get the same developmental chances they had.

The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm: Intimate Citizenship Regimes in a Changing Europe


Sasha Roseneil - 2021
    The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm offers an anatomical dissection of the concept—an analysis of its structure, organization, and internal workings. It explores how the couple-norm is lived and experienced, how it has evolved and mutated, and how it varies among places and social groups. In doing so, the book provides an analysis of changing intimate citizenship regimes in Europe and makes a major intervention in understandings of the contemporary condition of personal life.  The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm makes an important contribution to literature on citizenship, intimacy, family life, and social change in sociology, social policy, socio-legal studies, gender/sexuality/queer studies, and psychosocial studies.

Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data


Nanna Bonde Thylstrup - 2021
    Scholars from a range of disciplines analyze concepts relevant to critical studies of big data, arranged glossary style—from abuse and aggregate to visualization and vulnerability. They not only challenge conventional usage of such familiar terms as prediction and objectivity but also introduce such unfamiliar ones as overfitting and copynorm. The contributors include a broad range of leading and agenda-setting scholars, including as N. Katherine Hayles, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Johanna Drucker, Lisa Gitelman, Safiya Noble, Sarah T. Roberts and Nicole Starosielski.Uncertainty is inherent to archival practices; the archive as a site of knowledge is fraught with unknowns, errors, and vulnerabilities that are present, and perhaps even amplified, in big data regimes. Bringing lessons from the study of the archive to bear on big data, the contributors consider the broader implications of big data's large-scale determination of knowledge.

Show Time: The Logic and Power of Violent Display


Lee Ann Fujii - 2021
    Closely examining three horrific and extreme episodes--the murder of a prominent Tutsi family amidst the genocide in Rwanda, the execution of Muslim men in a Serb-controlled village in Bosnia during the Balkan Wars, and the lynching of a twenty-two-year old Black farmhand on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1933--Fujii shows how violent displays are staged to not merely to kill those perceived to be enemies or threats, but also to affect and influence observers, neighbors, and the larger society.Watching and participating in these violent displays profoundly transforms those involved, reinforcing political identities, social hierarchies, and power structures. Such public spectacles of violence also force members of the community to choose sides--openly show support for the goals of the violence, or risk becoming victims, themselves. Tracing the ways in which public displays of violence unfold, Show Time reveals how the perpetrators exploit the fluidity of social ties for their own ends.

The Reimagined PhD: Navigating 21st Century Humanities Education


Leanne M HorinkoJoseph M. Vukov - 2021
    Prompted by poor placement numbers and guided by the efforts of academic organizations, administrators and faculty are beginning to feel called to equip students for a range of careers. Yet, graduate students, faculty, and administrators often feel ill-prepared for this pivot. The Reimagined PhD assembles an array of professionals to address this difficult issue. The contributors show that students, faculty, and administrators must collaborate in order to prepare the 21st century PhD for a wide range of careers. The volume also undercuts the insidious notion that career preparation is a zero sum game in which time spent preparing for alternate careers detracts from professorial training. In doing so, The Reimagined PhD normalizes the multiple career paths open to PhD students, while providing practical advice geared to help students, faculty, and administrators incorporate professional skills into graduate training, build career networks, and prepare PhDs for a variety of careers.

How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens


Hillary Angelo - 2021
    Formerly neglected urban spaces and new high-end developments draw huge crowds thanks to the considerable efforts of city governments. But why are greening projects so widely taken up, and what good do they do? In How Green Became Good, Hillary Angelo uncovers the origins and meanings of the enduring appeal of urban green space, showing that city planners have long thought that creating green spaces would lead to social improvement. Turning to Germany’s Ruhr Valley (a region that, despite its ample open space, was “greened” with the addition of official parks and gardens), Angelo shows that greening is as much a social process as a physical one. She examines three moments in the Ruhr Valley's urban history that inspired the creation of new green spaces: industrialization in the late nineteenth century, postwar democratic ideals of the 1960s, and industrial decline and economic renewal in the early 1990s. Across these distinct historical moments, Angelo shows that the impulse to bring nature into urban life has persistently arisen as a response to a host of social changes, and reveals an enduring conviction that green space will transform us into ideal inhabitants of ideal cities. Ultimately, however, she finds that the creation of urban green space is more about how we imagine social life than about the good it imparts.

Slut-Shaming, Whorephobia, and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution


Meredith Ralston - 2021
    A sexual double standard between men and women still exists, and society continues to punish bad girls and reward good ones. Until we eliminate good-girl privilege and bad-girl stigma, women will not be fully free to embrace their sexuality. In Slut-Shaming, Whorephobia, and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution Meredith Ralston looks at the common denominators between the #MeToo movement, the myths of rape culture, and the pleasure gap between men and women to reveal the ways that sexually liberated women threaten the patriarchy. Weaving in history, pop culture, philosophy, interviews with sex workers, and personal anecdotes, Ralston shows how women cannot achieve sexual equality until the sexual double standard and good girl/bad girl binary are eliminated and women viewed by society as "whores" are destigmatized. Illustrating how women's sexuality is policed by both men and women, she argues that women must be allowed the same personal autonomy as men: the freedom to make sexual decisions for themselves, to obtain orgasm equality, and to insist on their own sexual pleasure. Dispelling the myth that all sex workers are victims and all clients are violent, Slut-Shaming, Whorephobia, and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution calls out Western society's hypocrisy about sex and shows how stigma and the marginalization of sex workers harms all women.

Terror Flyers: The Lynching of American Airmen in Nazi Germany


Kevin T. Hall - 2021
    Using engaging first-person accounts of downed pilots, as well as previously unused primary sources, Terror Flyers challenges the notion that such lynchings were exclusively the domain of Nazi party officials and soldiers. New evidence reveals ordinary German people executed Lynchjustiz as well.Initially occurring as a spontaneous reaction to the devastation of the Allied air campaign against the cities of the Third Reich, Lynchjustiz offered the Nazi regime a unique propaganda opportunity to harness the outrage of the German population. Fueled by inspiration from America's own history of the lynching of African Americans, Nazi propaganda exploited the very same imagery found in US publications to escalate the anger of the German people.Drawing heavily on the accounts of the downed airmen themselves, testimonies from the "flyer trials" held in Dachau during 1945–48, and rarely seen Nazi propaganda, Terror Flyers offers a new narrative of this previously overlooked aspect of the Allied campaign in Europe and suggests that at least 3,000 cases of lynch justice likely occurred between 1943 and 1945.

Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering


Mara Van Der Lugt - 2021
    Dark Matters traces how the competing philosophical traditions of optimism and pessimism arose from early modern debates about the problem of evil, and makes a compelling case for the rediscovery of pessimism as a source for compassion, consolation, and perhaps even hope.Bringing to life one of the most vibrant eras in the history of philosophy, Mara van der Lugt discusses legendary figures such as Leibniz, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and Schopenhauer. She also introduces readers to less familiar names, such as Bayle, King, La Mettrie, and Maupertuis. Van der Lugt describes not only how the earliest optimists and pessimists were deeply concerned with finding an answer to the question of the value of existence that does justice to the reality of human suffering, but also how they were fundamentally divided over what such an answer should look like.A breathtaking work of intellectual history by one of today's leading scholars, Dark Matters reveals how the crucial moral aim of pessimism is to find a way of speaking about suffering that offers consolation and does justice to the fragility of life.

Insurance Era: Risk, Governance, and the Privatization of Security in Postwar America


Caley Horan - 2021
    Calculations of risk permeate our institutions, influencing how we understand and manage crime, education, medicine, finance, and other social issues. Caley Horan’s remarkable book charts the social and economic power of private insurers since 1945, arguing that these institutions’ actuarial practices played a crucial and unexplored role in insinuating the social, political, and economic frameworks of neoliberalism into everyday life. Analyzing insurance marketing, consumption, investment, and regulation, Horan asserts that postwar America’s obsession with safety and security fueled the exponential expansion of the insurance industry and the growing importance of risk management in other fields. Horan shows that the rise and dissemination of neoliberal values did not happen on its own: they were the result of a project to unsocialize risk, shrinking the state’s commitment to providing support, and heaping burdens upon the people often least capable of bearing them. Insurance Era is a sharply researched and fiercely written account of how and why private insurance and its actuarial market logic came to be so deeply lodged in American visions of social welfare.

How to Make a Wetland: Water and Moral Ecology in Turkey


Caterina Scaramelli - 2021
    

The History of Hentai Manga


Kimi Rito - 2021
    Japanese media critic Kimi Rito dives into the history of manga's erotic world a genre known internationally simply as - hentai. What are the origins of hentai? How has it evolved from the days of ukiyo-e to today's modern comics and animation. Who are the people making hentai? And who are the people reading these works? And what is the medium ultimately trying to express beyond sexuality? Rito looks at the content from a number of perspectives covering everything from the indie comics scene (doujinshi) to how hentai's symbolism has extended far beyond Japan and it's comics industry.

Privacy Is Hard and Seven Other Myths: Achieving Privacy Through Careful Design


Jaap-Henk Hoepman - 2021
    Meanwhile, governments and businesses collect our data and use it to monitor us without our knowledge. So we have resigned ourselves to the belief that privacy is hard--choosing to believe that websites do not share our information, for example, and declaring that we have nothing to hide anyway. In this informative and illuminating book, a computer privacy and security expert argues that privacy is not that hard if we build it into the design of systems from the start.Along the way, Jaap-Henk Hoepman debunks eight persistent myths surrounding computer privacy. The website that claims it doesn't collect personal data, for example; Hoepman explains that most data is personal, capturing location, preferences, and other information. You don't have anything to hide? There's nothing wrong with wanting to keep personal information--even if it's not incriminating or embarrassing--private. Hoepman shows that just as technology can be used to invade our privacy, it can be used to protect it, when we apply privacy by design. Hoepman suggests technical fixes, discussing pseudonyms, leaky design, encryption, metadata, and the benefits of keeping your data local (on your own device only), and outlines privacy design strategies that system designers can apply now.

Rocking Qualitative Social Science: An Irreverent Guide to Rigorous Research


Ashley T. Rubin - 2021
    This figure provides an apt analogy for the scholar at the center of this unique book. In Rocking Qualitative Social Science, Ashley Rubin provides an entertaining treatise, corrective vision, and rigorously informative guidebook for qualitative research methods that have long been dismissed in deference to traditional scientific methods. Recognizing the steep challenges facing many, especially junior, social science scholars who struggle to adapt their research models to narrowly defined notions of "right," Rubin argues that properly nourished qualitative research can generate important, creative, and even paradigm-shifting insights. This book is designed to help people conduct good qualitative research, talk about their research, and evaluate other scholars' work. Drawing on her own experiences in research and life, Rubin provides tools for qualitative scholars, synthesizes the best advice, and addresses the ubiquitous problem of anxiety in academia. Ultimately, this book argues that rigorous research can be anything but rigid.

The Foundations of Nature: Metaphysics of Gift for an Integral Ecological Ethic (Veritas Book 39)


Michael Dominic Taylor - 2021
    

Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology


Samuel J Redman - 2021
    Convinced that Indigenous peoples were doomed to disappear, collectors donated these objects to museums and universities that would preserve and exhibit them. Samuel Redman dives into the archive to understand what the collectors deemed the tradition of the "vanishing Indian" and what we can learn from the complex legacy of salvage anthropology.The salvage catalog betrays a vision of Native cultures clouded by racist assumptions--a vision that had lasting consequences. The collecting practice became an engine of the American museum and significantly shaped public education and preservation, as well as popular ideas about Indigenous cultures. Prophets and Ghosts teases out the moral challenges inherent in the salvage project. Preservationists successfully maintained an important human inheritance, sometimes through collaboration with Indigenous people, but collectors' methods also included outright theft. The resulting portrait of Indigenous culture reinforced the public's confidence in the hierarchies of superiority and inferiority invented by "scientific" racism.Today the same salvaged objects are sources of invaluable knowledge for researchers and museum visitors. But the question of what should be done with such collections is nonetheless urgent. Redman interviews Indigenous artists and curators, who offer fresh perspectives on the history and impact of cultural salvage, pointing to new ideas on how we might contend with a challenging inheritance.

From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors: Constructing American Boyhood in Postwar Hollywood Films


Peter W.Y. Lee - 2021
    But the angst that Dean symbolized—anxieties over parents, the “Establishment,” and the expectations of future citizen-soldiers—long predated Rebels without a Cause. Historians have largely overlooked how the Great Depression and World War II impacted and shaped the Cold War, and youth contributed to the national ideologies of family and freedom. From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors explores this gap by connecting facets of boyhood as represented in American film from the 1930s to the postwar years. From the Andy Hardy series to pictures such as The Search, Intruder in the Dust, and The Gunfighter, boy characters addressed larger concerns over the dysfunctional family unit, militarism, the “race question,” and the international scene as the Korean War began. Navigating the political, social, and economic milieus inside and outside of Hollywood, Peter W.Y. Lee demonstrates that continuities from the 1930s influenced the unique postwar moment, coalescing into anticommunism and the Cold War.

Camp Century: The Untold Story of America's Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice


Henry Nielsen - 2021
    Officially defined as a scientific research station, this facility had an undisclosed purpose: to aim up to 600 nuclear warheads, buried in the ice, at the Soviet Union. In 1966, just six years after the camp was established, the United States gave up this provocative strategy and abandoned the base. Despite its brief life, Camp Century has been the cause of controversies from diplomatic relations between the United States and its Arctic allies, Denmark and Greenland, to the risks of radioactive waste abandoned at the site.This book is the first comprehensive account of the U.S. Army's "city under the ice." Beginning with the Truman administration's vision of military superiority in the Arctic and continuing through present-day concerns over the effects of climate change, Kristian H. Nielsen and Henry Nielsen unravel the extraordinary history of this clandestine installation. Drawing on sources including top-secret memos and never-before-seen photographic evidence, they follow the intertwining threads of high-level politics, ice-core research, media representations, daily life beneath the ice, and the specter of long-buried environmental problems that will one day resurface. Camp Century reveals a hidden chapter of Cold War history--and why, as the Greenland ice cap slowly melts, this story is not yet over.

Coronavirus, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy: Conversations on Pandemics, Politics and Society


Fernando Castrillon - 2021
    Pandemics do not wait for comprehension in order to proliferate. Confusion, sickness, and death punctuate the failure of governments worldwide to respond. This collection of writings examines the effects of the pandemic and the conditions that make possible such a global crisis. The writers provoke us to consider how capitalism, governmental power, and biopolitics mold the contours of life and death. The contributors in this collection ignite urgent political dialogue, address emergent transformations in the social field and offer perspectives on shifts in subjectivity and psychoanalytic practice. Beyond providing reflections on the impact of the coronavirus, the authors point to determinants of how the crisis will unfold and what may be on the horizon.This book will be invaluable to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, philosophers, and to all those interested in the implications of the virus for psychoanalytic practice and theory, and the social, cultural and political spheres of our world.

Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality


Todne Thomas - 2021
    Drawing on fieldwork in an Afro-Caribbean and African American church association in Atlanta, Thomas locates black evangelicals at the center of their own religious story, presenting their determined spiritual relatedness as a form of insurgency. She outlines how church members cocreate themselves as spiritual kin through what she calls kincraft—the construction of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. Kincraft, which Thomas traces back to the diasporic histories and migration experiences of church members, reflects black evangelicals' understanding of Christian familial connection as transcending racial, ethnic, and denominational boundaries in ways that go beyond the patriarchal nuclear family. Church members also use their spiritual relationships to navigate racial and ethnic discrimination within the majority-white evangelical movement. By charting kincraft's functions and significance, Thomas demonstrates the ways in which black evangelical social life is more varied and multidimensional than standard narratives of evangelicalism would otherwise suggest.

First Peoples in a New World: Populating Ice Age America


David J. Meltzer - 2021
    They soon found themselves in a world rich in plants and animals, but also a world still shivering itself out of the coldest depths of the Ice Age. The movement of those first Americans was one of the greatest journeys undertaken by ancient peoples. In this book, David Meltzer explores the world of Ice Age Americans, highlighting genetic, archaeological, and geological evidence that has revolutionized our understanding of their origins, antiquity, and adaptation to climate and environmental change. This fully updated edition integrates the most recent scientific discoveries, including the ancient genome revolution and human evolutionary and population history. Written for a broad audience, the book can serve as the primary text in courses on North American Archaeology, Ice Age Environments, and Human evolution and prehistory.

Maid to Queer: Asian Labor Migration and Female Same-Sex Desires


Francisca Lai - 2021
    Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong, the book explores the meanings of same-sex relationships to these migrant women. Instead of searching for reasons to explain why they engage in a same-sex relationship, this book provides an ethnographic perspective by addressing their Sunday activities and considering how migration policies and the practices of Hong Kong people unintentionally produce alternative sexuality and desires for them. The author contrasts the migrant experiences of same-sex relationships with the Western discourse that individuals carry a strong sense of sexual identification prior to migration; same-sex desires among Indonesian domestic workers are often not realized until they leave home. Addressing the changes from maid to queer, this book documents the intersections of domestic work, labor migration, race, and religion on the sexual subject formation, specifically how Indonesian women negotiate heteronormativity and remake a space for their love, sex, and intimacy. For those interested in lesbian studies, Asian labor migration, sexual citizenship, and queer migration, this ethnography fills an important gap in explaining how the feminization of international migration and the constraints imposed on live-in domestic workers unintentionally become productive possibilities of queerness and normativity.

God's Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State


Nada Moumtaz - 2021
    Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.Up to the twentieth century, Islamic charitable endowments provided the material foundation of the Muslim world. In Lebanon, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the imposition of French colonial rule, many of these endowments reverted to private property circulating in the marketplace. In contemporary Beirut, however, charitable endowments have resurged as mosques, Islamic centers, and non-profit organizations. A historical anthropology in dialogue with Islamic law, God's Property demonstrates how these endowments have been drawn into secular logics—no longer the property of God but of the Muslim community—and shaped by the modern state and modern understandings of charity and property. Although these transformations produced new kinds of loyalties and new ways of being in society, Moumtaz’s ethnography reveals the furtive persistence of endowment practices that perpetuate older ways of thinking of one’s self and one’s responsibilities toward family and state.

Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military


Thomas A Guglielmo - 2021
    While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that's the story many Americans have long told themselves.Divisions offers a decidedly different view. Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military; of high command and ordinary GIs; and of African Americans, white Americans, AsianAmericans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Guglielmo argues that the military built not one color line, but a complex tangle of them. Taken together, they represented a sprawling structure of white supremacy. Freedom struggles arose in response, democratizing portions of the wartime military andsetting the stage for postwar desegregation and the subsequent civil rights movements. But the costs of the military's color lines were devastating. They impeded America's war effort; undermined the nation's rhetoric of the Four Freedoms; further naturalized the concept of race; deepened manywhites' investments in white supremacy; and further fractured the American people.Offering a dramatic narrative of America's World War II military and of the postwar world it helped to fashion. Guglielmo fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the war and of mid-twentieth-century America.