Best of
Class

2012

Who Am I? Identity in Christ


Jerry Bridges - 2012
    In Who am I? Jerry Bridges unpacks Scripture to give Christians eight clear, interlocking, illuminating answers: I Am a Creature / I Am in Christ / I Am Justified / I Am an Adopted Son of God / I Am a New Creation / I Am a Saint / I Am a Servant of Jesus Christ / I Am Not Yet Perfect

Ode to a Nightingale


John Keats - 2012
    The famous love poem Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats.

AAAA!: A FoxTrot Kids Edition


Bill Amend - 2012
    Revel in the sibling rivalry as oldest brother Peter dodges his homework and doesn't stop eating. Paige, the only girl amongst the siblings, continues her shopaholic, boyfriend-seeking antics. And Jason, the youngest, is geekier than ever, buildiing  robots and teaching his pet iguana, Quincy, how to annoy every member of the family. Throw into the mix,  sensible yet TV antenna-cutting mother, Andy, and backyard grilling disaster dad, Roger, and you have the perfect recipe for a family that every kid can relate to.

Island of Bones: Essays


Joy Castro - 2012
    You won’t find it in books. And you certainly won’t find it in the neighborhood. This is just the beginning of Joy Castro’s unmoored life of searching and striving that she’s turned to account with literary alchemy in Island of Bones. In personal essays that plumb the depths of not-belonging, Castro takes the all-too-raw materials of her adolescence and young adulthood and views them through the prism of time. The result is an exquisitely rendered, richly detailed perspective on a uniquely troubled young life that reflects on the larger questions each of us faces in a world where diversity and singularity are forever at odds. In the experiences of her past—hunger and abuse, flight as a fourteen-year-old runaway, single motherhood, the revelations of her “true” ethnic identity, the suicide of her father—Castro finds the “jagged, smashed place of edges and fragments” that she pieces together to create an island all her own. Hers is a complicated but very real depiction of what it is to “jump class,” to not belong but to find one’s voice in the interstices of identity.

Preparing for Marriage: Help for Christian Couples


John Piper - 2012
    There is some of the typical stuff—like friends and entertainment and lifestyle and children—but many have found that John’s way of putting the question helps get right at some pretty deep stuff.And then there’s the questions about theology, worship and devotion, and the roles of husband and wife—questions that far too many couples don’t think to ask. When preparing for marriage, or even in just beginning to consider it, it is of immense help to have the perspective not only of a seasoned husband of over 40 years, but also a seasoned pastor and theologian.

Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia


Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs - 2012
    Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and concrete recommendations, and provide a window into the struggles of professional women in a racially stratified but increasingly multicultural America.

Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected


Lisa Marie Cacho - 2012
    Lisa Marie Cacho forcefully argues that the demands for personhood for those who, in the eyes of society, have little value, depend on capitalist and heteropatriarchal measures of worth.With poignant case studies, Cacho illustrates that our very understanding of personhood is premised upon the unchallenged devaluation of criminalized populations of color. Hence, the reliance of rights-based politics on notions of who is and is not a deserving member of society inadvertently replicates the logic that creates and normalizes states of social and literal death. Her understanding of inalienable rights and personhood provides us the much-needed comparative analytical and ethical tools to understand the racialized and nationalized tensions between racial groups. Driven by a radical, relentless critique, Social Death challenges us to imagine a heretofore "unthinkable" politics and ethics that do not rest on neoliberal arguments about worth, but rather emerge from the insurgent experiences of those negated persons who do not live by the norms that determine the productive, patriotic, law abiding, and family-oriented subject.

A Pet Banana


Othen Donald Dale Cummings - 2012
    I found a pet banana today.Today I found a pet banana.Now I have a friend for me.Now I have a friend for my son.A pet banana for a friend,A pet banana to put in bed,You need a pet banana that is red.Children can learn basic colors with this story/rhyme!

Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars


Paul Ingrassia - 2012
    From the assembly lines of Henry Ford to the open roads of Route 66, from the lore of Jack Kerouac to the sex appeal of the Hot Rod, America’s history is a vehicular history—an idea brought brilliantly to life in this major work by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Paul Ingrassia. Ingrassia offers a wondrous epic in fifteen automobiles, including the Corvette, the Beetle, and the Chevy Corvair, as well as the personalities and tales behind them: Robert McNamara’s unlikely role in Lee Iacocca’s Mustang, John Z. DeLorean’s Pontiac GTO , Henry Ford’s Model T, as well as Honda’s Accord, the BMW 3 Series, and the Jeep, among others. Through these cars and these characters, Ingrassia shows how the car has expressed the particularly American tension between the lure of freedom and the obligations of utility. He also takes us through the rise of American manufacturing, the suburbanization of the country, the birth of the hippie and the yuppie, the emancipation of women, and many more fateful episodes and eras, including the car’s unintended consequences: trial lawyers, energy crises, and urban sprawl. Narrative history of the highest caliber, Engines of Change is an entirely edifying new way to look at the American story.

The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture


Kevin Quashie - 2012
    In The Sovereignty of Quiet, Kevin Quashie explores quiet as a different kind of expressiveness, one which characterizes a person’s desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities, and fears. Quiet is a metaphor for the inner life, and as such, enables a more nuanced understanding of black culture. The book revisits such iconic moments as Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s protest at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and Elizabeth Alexander’s reading at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. Quashie also examines such landmark texts as Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, and Toni Morrison’s Sula to move beyond the emphasis on resistance, and to suggest that concepts like surrender, dreaming, and waiting can remind us of the wealth of black humanity.

Tigers


Laura Marsh - 2012
    These giant jungle cats can climb trees, swim, and run in sprints up to 32 mph--making them a predatory nightmare. Ranging from the warm climates of Southeast Asia to the frozen tundra of western Russia, these solitary hunters will devour whatever animal they catch. In this level 2 reader you'll learn all you ever wanted to know about tigers and so much more. Complete with fascinating facts, beautiful images, NGR Tigers can't miss.National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources.Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.

The Alphabet Not Unlike the World: Poems


Katrina Vandenberg - 2012
    With poems named for letters of the Phoenician alphabet, and employing such innovative forms as the ancient ghazal, Vandenberg deciphers the seemingly indecipherable in this extraordinary becoming of self through language. Moving between the physical and the abstract, the individual and the collective, Alphabet Not Unlike the World unearths meaning—with astonishing beauty—from the pain of loss and separation.

The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People


Barry J. Kemp - 2012
    Occupied for just sixteen or so years in the fourteenth century BC, the city lay largely abandoned and forgotten until excavations over the last hundred years brought it back into prominence. Based on more than three decades of research and excavation by Barry Kemp, the world authority on the city and its enigmatic pharaoh, this definitive account provides new insight into Amarna and its people. Professor Kemp brings to life the royal family and their offspring, including Tutankhamun, as well as prominent citizens such as the high priest Panehsy, the vizier Nakht, the general Ramose, and the sculptor Thutmose. It is a tour de force of archaeological writing, brilliantly illustrated with more than 260 photographs, evocative line drawings, and reconstructions by the author.

The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970


Sam Pizzigati - 2012
    Polls show that two-thirds of the nation now believe that America's enormous wealth ought to be "distributed more evenly." However, almost as many Americans — well over half — feel the protests will ultimately have "little impact" on inequality in America. What explains this disconnect? Most Americans have resigned themselves to believing that the rich simply always get their way.Except they don't.A century ago, the United States hosted a super-rich even more domineering than ours today. Yet fifty years later, that super-rich had almost entirely disappeared. Their majestic mansions and estates had become museums and college campuses, and America had become a vibrant, mass middle class nation, the first and finest the world had ever seen.Americans today ought to be taking no small inspiration from this stunning change. After all, if our forbears successfully beat back grand fortune, why can't we? But this transformation is inspiring virtually no one. Why?  Because the story behind it has remained almost totally unknown, until now.This lively popular history will speak directly to the political hopelessness so many Americans feel. By tracing how average Americans took down plutocracy over the first half of the 20th Century, and how plutocracy came back, The Rich Don't Always Win will outfit Occupy Wall Street America with a deeper understanding of what we need to do to get the United States back on track to the American dream.

Divided World Divided Class: Global Political Economy and the Stratification of Labour Under Capitalism


Zak Cope - 2012
    It argues that pervasive national, racial and cultural chauvinism in the core capitalist countries is not primarily attributable to ‘false class consciousness’, ideological indoctrination or ignorance as much left and liberal thinking assumes. Rather, these and related forms of bigotry are concentrated expressions of the major social strata of the core capitalist nations’ shared economic interest in the exploitation and repression of dependent nations.The book demonstrates not only how redistribution of income derived from super-exploitation has allowed for the amelioration of class conflict in the wealthy capitalist countries, it also shows that the exorbitant ‘super-wage’ paid to workers there has meant the disappearance of a domestic vehicle for socialism, an exploited working class. Rather, in its place is a deeply conservative metropolitan workforce committed to maintaining, and even extending, its privileged position through imperialism.The book is intended as a major contribution to debates on the international class structure and socialist strategy for the twenty-first century. What People Are Saying “Dr. Cope presents a thought provoking study of the political economy of the world system by focusing on the concept of a global labour aristocracy. Within the world system, which has also been described as a global apartheid system by some, enormous differences exist between workers’ wages and living conditions, depending on where the workers are located. The author details how a global labour aristocracy in core countries benefits at the expense of workers in periphery countries. The mechanisms supporting such a situation are identified as exploitation, imperialism and racism. The book is a valuable contribution to globalization critique.”- Gernot Köhler, Professor (retired) of Computer Studies at the Department of Computing and Information Management, Sheridan College, Ontario, Canada and author of The Global Wage System: A Study of International Wage Differences and Global Economics: An Introductory Course“How can we link the division between the poor and the rich people in one and any country and the division between the rich and poor nations together into an analytical framework? The answer lies in the concept of ‘the embourgeoisement of the working people’ of the rich core countries and the fact that colonialism and national chauvinism have gone hand in hand so as to breed a ‘labour aristocracy’. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about fairness. Zak Cope brings together brilliantly the concepts of nation, race and class analytically under the umbrella of capitalism, by situating racism in the class structure and by locating class in the context of the global economy.”- Mobo Gao, Chair of Chinese Studies and Director of the Confucius Institute at the Centre for Asian Studies, University of Adelaide, and author of The Battle for China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution“This is a surprising book. At a time when confusion about Globalization surrounds us, Zak Cope pulls us towards what is fundamental. He outlines the 19th & 20th century recasting of the diverse human world into rigid forms of oppressed colonized societies and oppressor colonizing societies. A world divide still heavily determining our lives. Working rigorously in a marxist-leninist vein, the author focuses on how imperialism led to a giant metropolis where even the main working class itself is heavily socially bribed and loyal to capitalist oppression. Much is laid aside in his analysis, in order to concentrate on only what he considers the most basic structure of all in world capitalist society. This is writing both controversial and foundational at one and the same time.”- J. Sakai, author of Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat

Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society


John A. Powell - 2012
    powell persuasively argues that we have not achieved a post-racial society and that there is much work to do to redeem the American promise of inclusive democracy. Culled from a decade of writing about social justice and spirituality, these meditations on race, identity, and social policy provide an outline for laying claim to our shared humanity and a way toward healing ourselves and securing our future. Racing to Justice challenges us to replace attitudes and institutions that promote and perpetuate social suffering with those that foster relationships and a way of being that transcends disconnection and separation.

Grace, Guidance, and Gifts: Sacred Blessings to Light Your Way


Sonia Choquette - 2012
    This journey can feel overwhelming—even impossible—unless we gain access to the three sacred blessings of Spirit, made available to us from God. Without them we fail.     These sacred blessings are God’s grace, inner guidance, and personal gifts.     Grace lifts us beyond our own ability, inner guidance leads the way, and personal gifts are both the inner and outer resources given to us to succeed at every step. It is up to us to ask for these sacred blessings, and we must do so now more than ever before. This inspiring book will show you how.     Through the use of daily lessons, specific prayers, personal intentions, and powerful mantras, you will be showered with these blessings every day of your life. Simply open up this book and call upon your sacred blessings right now. Use it every day to keep your blessings flowing and guide your way back home.

Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect


Mel Y. Chen - 2012
    Chen draws on recent debates about sexuality, race, and affect to examine how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, or deathly, animates cultural lives. Toward that end, Chen investigates the blurry division between the living and the dead, or that which is beyond the human or animal. Within the field of linguistics, animacy has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, sentience, or liveness. Chen turns to cognitive linguistics to stress how language habitually differentiates the animate and the inanimate. Expanding this construct, Chen argues that animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal rights debates to biosecurity concerns.Chen's book is the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory. Through analyses of dehumanizing insults, the meanings of queerness, animal protagonists in recent Asian/American art and film, the lead toy panic in 2007, and the social lives of environmental illness, Animacies illuminates a hierarchical politics infused by race, sexuality, and ability. In this groundbreaking book, Chen rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness—and demonstrates how attention to the affective charge of matter challenges commonsense orderings of the world.Mel Y. Chen is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley."Animacies is a book about 'reworldings,' as Mel Y. Chen traces the myriad ways that objects and affects move through and reshape zones of possibility for political transformation and queer resistance to neoliberal biopolitics. At the same time, Animacies itself generates such transformations: grounded in a generous, expansive understanding of queer of color and disability/crip critique, Chen's study reworlds or reorients disability studies, gender and sexuality studies, critical race theory, animal studies, affect studies, and linguistics. In all of these critical spaces, Animacies might be described as the breathtaking and revivifying book we have been waiting for."—Robert McRuer, author of Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability"This ambitious transdisciplinary analysis of the relations between humans, nonhuman animals, and matter charts a compelling and innovative rethinking of the biopolitics of 'animacy.' Mel Y. Chen animates animacy, a concept of sentience hierarchy derived in linguistics, to offer a far-ranging critique that implicates disability studies, queer of color critique, and postcolonial theory. The generative result is a timely and crucial intervention that foregrounds the oft-occluded import of race and sex in the rapidly growing fields of posthumanist theory, new materialisms, and animal studies."—Jasbir K. Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

The Routledge Queer Studies Reader


Donald E. Hall - 2012
    The collection is edited by leading scholars in the field and presents:individual introductory notes that situate each work within its historical, disciplinary and theoretical contextsessays grouped by key subject areas including Genealogies, Sex, Temporalities, Kinship, Affect, Bodies, and Borderswritings by major figures including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, David M. Halperin, Jose Esteban Munoz, Elizabeth Grosz, David Eng, Judith Halberstam and Sara Ahmed.The Routledge Queer Studies Reader is a field-defining volume and presents an illuminating guide for established scholars and also those new to Queer Studies.

Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America


Barbara Jensen - 2012
    This accessible book makes class visible in everyday life. Solely identifying political and economic inequalities between classes offers an incomplete picture of class dynamics in America, and may not connect with people's lived experiences. In Reading Classes, Barbara Jensen explores the anguish caused by class in our society, identifying classism--or anti-working class prejudice--as a central factor in the reproduction of inequality in America. Giving voice to the experiences and inner lives of working-class people, Jensen--a community and counseling psychologist--provides an in-depth, psychologically informed examination of how class in America is created and re-created through culture, with an emphasis on how working- and middle-class cultures differ and conflict. This book is unique in its claim that working-class cultures have positive qualities that serve to keep members within them, and that can haunt those who leave them behind.Through both autobiographical reflections on her dual citizenship in the working class and middle class and the life stories of students, clients, and relatives, Jensen brings into focus the clash between the realities of working-class life and middle-class expectations for working-class people. Focusing on education, she finds that at every point in their personal development and educational history, working-class children are misunderstood, ignored, or disrespected by middle-class teachers and administrators. Education, while often hailed as a way to cross classes, brings with it its own set of conflicts and internal struggles. These problems can lead to a divided self, resulting in alienation and suffering for the upwardly mobile student. Jensen suggests how to increase awareness of the value of working-class cultures to a truly inclusive American society at personal, professional, and societal levels.

A People's Guide to Los Angeles


Laura Pulido - 2012
    It documents 115 little-known sites in the City of Angels where struggles related to race, class, gender, and sexuality have occurred. They introduce us to people and events usually ignored by mainstream media and, in the process, create a fresh history of Los Angeles. Roughly dividing the city into six regions—North Los Angeles, the Eastside and San Gabriel Valley, South Los Angeles, Long Beach and the Harbor, the Westside, and the San Fernando Valley—this illuminating guide shows how power operates in the shaping of places, and how it remains embedded in the landscape.

A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys through Urban Britain


Owen Hatherley - 2012
    He explores the urban consequences of what Conservatives privately call the progressive nonsense of the Big Society and the localism agenda, the putative replacement of the state with charity and voluntarism; and he casts an eye over the last great Blairite schemes limping to completion, from London 's Shard to the site of the 2012 Olympics. Crisscrossing Britain from Aberdeen to Plymouth, from Croydon to Belfast, A New Kind of Bleak finds a landscape left to rot and discovers strange and potentially radical things growing in the wasteland.

The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Vampire Anthology


Andrew Barger - 2012
    They are collected for the first time in this groundbreaking book on the origins of vampire lore. Watch the book trailer: www.AndrewBarger.com/bestvampirestori...The cradle of all vampire short stories in the English language is the first half of the 19th century. Andrew Barger combed forgotten journals and mysterious texts to collect the very best vintage vampire stories from this crucial period in vampire literature. In doing so, Andrew found the second and third vampire stories originally published in the English language, neither printed since their first publication nearly 200 years ago. Also included is the first vampire story originally written in English by John Polidori after a dare with Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. The book contains the first vampire story by an American who was a graduate of Columbia Law School. The book further includes the first vampire stories by an Englishman and German, including the only vampire stories by such renowned authors as Alexander Dumas, Théophile Gautier and Joseph le Fanu.As readers have come to expect from Andrew, he has added his scholarly touch to this collection by including story backgrounds, author photos and a foreword titled "With Teeth." The ground-breaking stories are:1819 The Vampyre - John Polidori (1795-1821)1823 Wake Not the Dead - Ernst Raupach1848 The Vampire of the Carpathian Mountains - Alexander Dumas (1802-1870)1839 Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter - Joseph Sheridan le Fanu (1814-1873)1826 Pepopukin in Corsica - Arthur Young (1741-1820)1819 The Black Vampyre: A Legend of Saint Domingo - Robert Sands (1799-1832)1836 Clarimonde - Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)

Irresistible Revolution


Urvashi Vaid - 2012
    This optimistic book challenges advocates for LGBT rights in the U.S. to aspire beyond the narrow framework of equality. It outlines a more substantive politics with race, class, and gender at its foundation, and suggests that such a politics will produce greater and more meaningful change for a larger number of people.Irresistible Revolution is intended for a broad and general audience. The book turns an experienced and thoughtful lens onto many common controversies, rhetoric, and strategic questions that face contemporary social change movements: pursuit of broad or narrow agendas, integration of economic and racial justice, integrating sexual orientation and gender identity in human rights frameworks, the persistence of sexism, the dilemmas of bipartisanship, and the challenge of seeing beyond the short term to secure gains made for the long run.

Exposing the Dark Work of Abortion


John Piper - 2012
    Abortion is a work of darkness. The apostle Paul said, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11).Our aim, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ, through the authority of his word, is to glorify God by making much of his image in the unborn, and his mercy in forgiving sinners.We would like to give you a free eBook based on three sermons I preached on abortion. We hope it helps you speak out. Please feel free to download it, print it, copy it, and share it with as many people as you like.Here’s a sample sentence:God is calling passive, inactive Christians today to engage our minds and hearts and hands in exposing the barren works of darkness. To be the conscience of our culture. To be the light of the world. To live in the great reality of being loved by God and adopted by God and forgiven by Christ (yes—for all the abortions that dozens of you have had), and be made children of the light. I call you to walk as children of light.Thanks for caring,John Piper

The Black Revolution on Campus


Martha Biondi - 2012
    In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Black students organized hundreds of protests that sparked a period of crackdown, negotiation, and reform that profoundly transformed college life. At stake was the very mission of higher education. Black students demanded that public universities serve their communities; that private universities rethink the mission of elite education; and that black colleges embrace self-determination and resist the threat of integration. Most crucially, black students demanded a role in the definition of scholarly knowledge.Martha Biondi masterfully combines impressive research with a wealth of interviews from participants to tell the story of how students turned the slogan “black power” into a social movement. Vividly demonstrating the critical linkage between the student movement and changes in university culture, Biondi illustrates how victories in establishing Black Studies ultimately produced important intellectual innovations that have had a lasting impact on academic research and university curricula over the past 40 years. This book makes a major contribution to the current debate on Ethnic Studies, access to higher education, and opportunity for all.

Transformation Now!: Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change


AnaLouise Keating - 2012
    women-of-color feminist/womanist thought and queer studies, inviting us to transform how we think about identity, difference, social justice and social change, metaphysics, reading, and teaching. Through detailed investigations of women of color theories and writings, indigenous thought, and her own personal and pedagogical experiences, Keating develops transformative modes of engagement that move through oppositional approaches to embrace interconnectivity as a framework for identity formation, theorizing, social change, and the possibility of planetary citizenship. Speaking to many dimensions of contemporary scholarship, activism, and social justice work, Transformation Now! calls for and enacts innovative, radically inclusionary ways of reading, teaching, and communicating.

First Americans: A History of Native Peoples, Combined Volume: A History of Native Peoples, Powerpoints


Kenneth W. Townsend - 2012
    " "First Americans" provides a history of Native Americans, from their earliest appearance in North America to the present, that covers the complexity and diversity of their past. The text demonstrates Native Americans' participation in determining their own future and helps students place Native American history in context with national and international developments. Present throughout the text is the "native voice," giving American Indians' perspectives on historical developments. The text also enforces the reality that native people retain a presence in the U.S. today as a growing population with a rich diversity of roles, ideas, and contributions. A better teaching and learning experienceThis program will provide a better teaching and learning experience--for you and your students. Here's how:"Personalize Learning "- MySearchLab delivers proven results in helping students succeed, provides engaging experiences that personalize learning, and comes from a trusted partner with educational expertise and a deep commitment to helping students and instructors achieve their goals."Improve Critical Thinking "- To enhance student comprehension, each chapter includes features such as Chronologies, Key Questions, Review Questions, and Recommended Readings."Engage Students -" Special features are included to highlight the native voice and support the themes presented."Support Instructors -" MySearchLab, Instructor's Resource Center, Instructor's Manual, Test Bank, MyTest, and PowerPoint presentations are available to be packaged with this text.For volume one of this text, search ISBN-10: 0205055761For volume two of this text, search ISBN-10: 0205055877 Note: MySearchLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MySearchLab, please visit: www.mysearchlab.com or you can purchase a ValuePack of the text + MySearchLab (at no additional cost): ValuePack ISBN-10: 0205721818 / ValuePack ISBN-13: 9780205721818.

The Future of Our Schools: Teachers Unions and Social Justice


Lois Weiner - 2012
    Drawing on research and her experience as a public school teacher and union activist, she explains how to create the teachers unions public education desperately needs.Lois Weiner is a professor at New Jersey City University and has been a life-long teacher union activist who has served as an officer of three different union locals. She is the author of The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions: Stories for Resistanc e .

Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America


Jennifer L. Anderson - 2012
    This exotic wood, imported from the West Indies and Central America, quickly displaced local furniture woods as the height of fashion. Over the next century, consumer demand for mahogany set in motion elaborate schemes to secure the trees and transform their rough-hewn logs into exquisite objects. But beneath the polished gleam of this furniture lies a darker, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation."Mahogany" traces the path of this wood through many hands, from source to sale: from the enslaved African woodcutters, including skilled "huntsmen" who located the elusive trees amidst dense rainforest, to the ship captains, merchants, and timber dealers who scrambled after the best logs, to the skilled cabinetmakers who crafted the wood, and with it the tastes and aspirations of their diverse clientele. As the trees became scarce, however, the search for new sources led to expanded slave labor, vicious competition, and intense international conflicts over this diminishing natural resource. When nineteenth-century American furniture makers turned to other materials, surviving mahogany objects were revalued as antiques evocative of the nation's past.Jennifer Anderson offers a dynamic portrait of the many players, locales, and motivations that drove the voracious quest for mahogany to adorn American parlors and dining rooms. This complex story reveals the cultural, economic, and environmental costs of America's growing self-confidence and prosperity, and how desire shaped not just people's lives but the natural world.

The Book I Will Write


John Henry Fleming - 2012
    Not just any book. A book about love, fate, hope, dreams, reality, and “fantastic visions of dancing foxes sporting mirrored sunglasses.” Despite a polite brush-off, Fleming’s persistence strikes a chord, and he’s soon exchanging emails with the hard-drinking editor (“a specter in a windy Italian restaurant”), her lovelorn editorial assistant (“your baggage-free ex-lover), and a desperate literary agent (“when I say ‘we,’ I’m referring mainly to myself”)—all without having written anything but the dedication.After Fleming gets kicked out of his self-described garret and is forced to live in the local public library, he’s stalked and later kidnapped by members of The Zeppelin Society, then threatened with murder by the son of a famous dead author whose book Fleming must track down for inspiration. Through it all, Fleming keeps up a virtual flirtation with the editorial assistant, falls hard for the mysterious library Story Lady, and makes plans for a book his agent believes will be a “vegetarian alt-history eco-thriller” featuring Michael Jackson as an organic tomato farmer with a plan to save the world.Will Fleming get his book written before he’s hunted down? Will he ever even start it? The Book I Will Write, told completely in email exchanges, is a hilarious send-up of the writing life and the modern publishing business by the author of Fearsome Creatures of Florida, The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman, and Songs for the Deaf. The book first appeared as a serial novel on the Atticus Books website and is now available as an ebook.

Faster Than Light: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2011


Marilyn Nelson - 2012
    This volume contains a selection of Marilyn Nelson s new and uncollected poems as well as work from each of her lyric histories of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century African American individuals and communities, and The Cachoeira Tales, a long riff on Chaucer s Canterbury Tales. Poems include the stories of historical figures like Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy lynched in 1955, and the inhabitants of Seneca Village, an African American community razed in 1857 for the creation of Central Park. Bivouac in a Storm tells the story of a group of young soldiers, later to become known as the Tuskegee Airmen, as they trained near Biloxi, Mississippi, marching in summer heat / thick as blackstrap molasses, under trees / haunted by whippings. Later pieces range from the poet s travels in Africa, Europe, and Polynesia, to poems written in collaboration with Father Jacques de Foiard Brown, a former Benedictine monk who becomes the subject of Nelson s playful fictional fantasy sequence, Adventure-Monk Both personal and historical, these poems are grounded in quotidian detail but reach toward spiritual and moral truths.

Racial Democracy and the Black Metropolis: Housing Policy in Postwar Chicago


Preston H. Smith II - 2012
    In Racial Democracy and the Black Metropolis, Preston H. Smith II examines housing debates in Chicago that go beyond black and white politics, and he shows how class and factional conflicts among African Americans actually helped to reproduce stunning segregation along economic lines.Class and factional conflicts were normal in the rough-and-tumble world of land use politics. They are, however, often not visible in accounts of the postwar fight against segregation. Smith outlines the ideological framework that black civic leaders in Chicago used to formulate housing policy, both within and outside the black community, to reveal a surprising picture of leaders who singled out racial segregation as the source of African Americans’ inadequate housing rather than attacking class inequalities. What are generally presented as black positions on housing policy in Chicago, Smith makes clear, belonged to the black elite and did not necessarily reflect black working-class participation or interests.This book details how black civic leaders fought racial discrimination in ways that promoted—or at least did not sacrifice—their class interests in housing and real estate struggles. And, as Smith demonstrates, their accommodation of the real estate practices and government policy of the time has had a lasting effect: it contributed to a legacy of class segregation in the housing market in Chicago and major metropolitan areas across the country that is still felt today.

Jeremy Deller: Joy in People


Ralph Rugoff - 2012
    Over the past two decades, he has been a pioneering and highly influential figure in contemporary art, helping to rewrite the rules of artistic practice with his extraordinary collaborative interventions, which have included parades, battle re-enactments and exhibitions of folk art. This comprehensive catalogue is published for Deller's first major survey exhibition. Employing a wealth of ephemera, critical writing and documentary and artwork photography, this beautiful book is the first and only complete survey of the artist's multifaceted practice.

New American Haggadah


Jonathan Safran Foer - 2012
     Read each year around the seder table, the Haggadah recounts through prayer, song, and ritual the extraordinary story of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land. Now, Jonathan Safran Foer has orchestrated a new way of experiencing and understanding one of our oldest, most timeless, and sacred stories, with a new translation of the traditional text by Nathan Englander and provocative commentary by major Jewish writers and thinkers Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch. Ravishingly designed and illustrated by the acclaimed Israeli artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer, New American Haggadah is an utterly unique and absorbing prayer book, the first of its kind, that brings together some of the preeminent voices of our time. "The best book of modern religious thought in recent memory." --The Millions "What makes this haggadah shine is the combination of commentary, design, and illustration." --Financial Times

History of Modern Art, Vol 1


H. Harvard Arnason - 2012
    KEY TOPICS: Traces the trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. MARKET: For those interested in an analysis of artworks based on formal and contextual elements

Place: New Poems


Jorie Graham - 2012
    Throughout, Graham seeks out sites of wakeful resistance and achieved presence. From the natural world to human sensation, the poems test the unstable congeries of the self, and the creative tensions that exist within and between our inner and outer landscapes--particularly as these are shaped by language.Beginning with a poem dated June 5th, placed on Omaha Beach, in Normandy--the anniversary of the day before the "historical" events of June 6th--Place is made up of meditations written in a uneasy lull before an unknowable, potentially drastic change--meditations which enact and explore the role of the human in and on nature. In these poems, time lived is felt to be both incipient, and already posthumous. This is not the same as preparing for a death. It is preparing for a life we know we, and our offspring, shall have no choice but to live. How does one think ethically as well as emotionally in such a predicament? How does one think of one's child--of having brought a person into this condition? How does love continue, and how is it supposed to be transmitted? Does the nature of love change?Both formally and thematically poems of ec(h)o-location in space/time, Graham's new poems work to discern "aftermath" from "future"--as the two margins of the form ask us to feel the vertiginous "double" position in which we find ourselves, constantly looking back just as we are forced to try to see ahead.In an era where distrust of human experience and its attendant accountability are pervasive Place calls us, in poems of unusual force and beauty, to re-inhabit and make full use of--and even rejoice in--a more responsive and responsible place of the human in the world.

Parenting the Difficult Child: A Biblical Perspective on Reactive Attachment Disorder


Linda J. Rice - 2012
    Adopted children are especially prone to develop it. Parenting the Difficult Child: A Biblical Perspective on Reactive Attachment Disorder applies a biblical lens to a child exhibiting defiant and aggressive behaviors and RAD characteristics. Using specific examples and practical implementation ideas, it explains how parents can apply the clear, practical solutions of Scripture to address the habituated heart motivations, thoughts, and actions of an alienated, angry child. It shows how to get to heart issues and how to handle manipulation. The behaviors of the antisocial child challenge the whole family. Two chapters are devoted to encouraging and guiding parents and siblings who may themselves struggle with difficult emotions. Part three concisely explains several primary attachment theories and contrasts them with biblical principles. For example, what does the Bible say about the idea that children labeled with RAD do not trust and lack a conscience? It provides biblical principles pertinent for evaluating behavioral research and attachment therapies. Christian parents, counselors, and pastors will find this practical book helpful for learning what the Bible says about difficult children, including those labeled with RAD, and how to parent them.

The Boy Who Slept Under the Stars: A Memoir in Poetry


Roseann Lloyd - 2012
    His clothes are found but not his body. How does one mourn without a body? This absence calls up memories of his life and mixed emotions; it evokes other disappearances—children missing in Iraq, climbers lost on Everest, a college student drowned.Even though I've said, for two years now, I don't need his bodyto do my mourning, I'm suddenly desperateto touch your arms, muscled and tan . . .Full of verbal energy and rich patterns of sound, Lloyd's lines are allowed to breathe and move about in always interesting forms: prose poems, found poems, section poems, swirling mosaics of time and place. Beautifully crafted, the poems are emotionally complex yet accessible.Roseann Lloyd has published eight books, including three poetry collections: Because of the Light (Holy Cow! Press), War Baby Express (Holy Cow! Press—awarded the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry), and Tap Dancing for Big Mom (New Rivers Press). The anthology she co-edited with Deborah Keenan, Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile (Milkweed Editions), was awarded an American Book Award. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

All Power to the Councils!: A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919


Gabriel Kuhn - 2012
    While the Social Democrats grabbed power, radicals across the country rallied to establish a communist society under the slogan "All Power to the Councils!" The Spartacus League launched an uprising in Berlin, council republics were proclaimed in Bremen and Bavaria, and workers' revolts shook numerous German towns. Yet in an act that would tragically shape the course of history, the Social Democratic government crushed the rebellions with the help of right-wing militias, paving the way for the ill-fated Weimar Republic—and ultimately the ascension of the Nazis. This definitive documentary history collects manifestos, speeches, articles, and letters from the German Revolution—Rosa Luxemburg, the Revolutionary Stewards, and Gustav Landauer amongst others—introduced and annotated by the editor. Many documents, such as the anarchist Erich Mühsam's comprehensive account of the Bavarian Council Republic, are presented here in English for the first time. The volume also includes materials from the Red Ruhr Army that repelled the reactionary Kapp Putsch in 1920 and the communist bandits that roamed Eastern Germany until 1921. All Power to the Councils! provides a dynamic and vivid picture of a time of great hope and devastating betrayal. “Drawing on newly uncovered material through pioneering archival historical research, Gabriel Kuhn’s powerful book on the German workers’ councils movement is essential reading to understanding the way forward for democratic worker control today.”—Immanuel Ness, Graduate Center for Worker Education, Brooklyn College “An indispensable resource on a world-historic event.”—Lucien van der Walt, Rhodes University, South Africa

Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina


Christopher Charles Morris - 2012
    But since then much has changed, forthe river and for the surrounding valley. Indeed, by the 1890s, the valley was rapidly drying. Morris shows how centuries of increasingly intensified human meddling--including deforestation, swamp drainage, and levee construction--led to drought, disease, and severe flooding. He outlines the damagedone by the introduction of foreign species, such as the Argentine nutria, which escaped into the wild and are now busy eating up Louisiana's wetlands. And he critiques the most monumental change in the lower Mississippi Valley--the reconstruction of the river itself, largely under the direction ofthe Army Corps of Engineers. Valley residents have been paying the price for these human interventions, most visibly with the disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina. Morris also describes how valley residents have been struggling to reinvigorate the valley environment in recent years--such as withthe burgeoning catfish and crawfish industries--so that they may once again live off its natural abundance.Morris concludes that the problem with Katrina is the problem with the Amazon Rainforest, drought and famine in Africa, and fires and mudslides in California--it is the end result of the ill-considered bending of natural environments to human purposes.

Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture


Sarah Banet-Weiser - 2012
    Branding is central to political campaigns and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed "greening" of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture.Authentic(TM) maintains that branding has extended beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and personal relationships--what Banet-Weiser refers to as "brand cultures." Distinct brand cultures, that at times overlap and compete with each other, are taken up in each chapter: the normalization of a feminized "self-brand" in social media, the brand culture of street art in urban spaces, religious brand cultures such as "New Age Spirituality" and "Prosperity Christianity,"and the culture of green branding and "shopping for change."In a culture where graffiti artists loan their visions to both subway walls and department stores, buying a cup of "fair-trade" coffee is a political statement, and religion is mass-marketed on t-shirts, Banet-Weiser questions the distinction between what we understand as the "authentic" and branding practices. But brand cultures are also contradictory and potentially rife with unexpected possibilities, leading Authentic(TM) to articulate a politics of ambivalence, creating a lens through which we can see potential political possibilities within the new consumerism.

Braided Worlds


Alma Gottlieb - 2012
    Their commitment over the span of several decades has lent them a rare insight. Braiding their own stories with those of the villagers of Asagbé and Kosangbé, Gottlieb and Graham take turns recounting a host of unexpected dramas with these West African villages, prompting serious questions about the fraught nature of cultural contact. Through events such as a religious leader’s declaration that the authors’ six-year-old son, Nathaniel, is the reincarnation of a revered ancestor, or Graham’s late father being accepted into the Beng afterlife, or the increasing, sometimes dangerous madness of a villager, the authors are forced to reconcile their anthropological and literary gaze with the deepest parts of their personal lives. Along with these intimate dramas, they follow the Beng from times of peace through the times of tragedy that led to Côte d’Ivoire’s recent civil conflicts. From these and many other interweaving narratives—and with the combined strengths of an anthropologist and a literary writer—Braided Worlds examines the impact of postcolonialism, race, and global inequity at the same time that it chronicles a living, breathing village community where two very different worlds meet.

Principles of Management


P.C. Tripathi - 2012
    Legal to use despite any disclaimer on cover. Save Money. Contact us for any queries. Best Customer Support! All Orders shipped with Tracking Number

Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery


Henry Goings - 2012
    Born Elijah Turner in the Virginia Tidewater, circa 1810, the author eventually procured freedom papers from a man he resembled and took the man's name, Henry Goings. His life story takes us on an epic journey, traveling from his Virginia birthplace through the cotton kingdom of the Lower South, and upon his escape from slavery, through Tennessee and Kentucky, then on to the Great Lakes region of the North and to Canada. His Rambles show that slaves were found not only in fields but also on the nation's roads and rivers, perpetually in motion in massive coffles or as solitary runaways.A freedom narrative as well as a slave narrative, this compact yet detailed book illustrates many important developments in antebellum America, such as the large-scale forced migration of enslaved people from long-established slave societies in the eastern United States to new settlements on the cotton frontier, the political-economic processes that framed that migration, and the accompanying human anguish. Goings's life and reflections serve as important primary documents of African American life and of American national expansion, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. This edition features an informative and insightful introduction by Calvin Schermerhorn.

American Creative Writers on Class


Oliver de la Paz - 2012
    At a time when economic inequality is on all of our minds, this collection of nonfiction and poetry from accomplished American writers focuses on intimate moments, personal relationships, and common daily experiences at the intersection of people of different economic status.

Facing Social Class: How Societal Rank Influences Interaction


Susan T. Fiske - 2012
    Yet the ways we talk and dress, our interactions with authority figures, the degree of trust we place in strangers, our religious beliefs, our achievements, our senses of morality and of ourselves—all are marked by social class, a powerful factor affecting every domain of life. In Facing Social Class, social psychologists Susan Fiske and Hazel Rose Markus, and a team of sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, and legal scholars, examine the many ways we communicate our class position to others and how social class shapes our daily, face-to-face interactions—from casual exchanges to interactions at school, work, and home.Facing Social Class exposes the contradiction between the American ideal of equal opportunity and the harsh reality of growing inequality, and it shows how this tension is reflected in cultural ideas and values, institutional practices, everyday social interactions, and psychological tendencies. Contributor Joan Williams examines cultural differences between middle- and working-class people and shows how the cultural gap between social class groups can influence everything from voting practices and political beliefs to work habits, home life, and social behaviors. In a similar vein, Annette Lareau and Jessica McCrory Calarco analyze the cultural advantages or disadvantages exhibited by different classes in institutional settings, such as those between parents and teachers. They find that middle-class parents are better able to advocate effectively for their children in school than are working-class parents, who are less likely to challenge a teacher's authority.Michael Kraus, Michelle Rheinschmidt, and Paul Piff explore the subtle ways we signal class status in social situations. Conversational style and how close one person stands to another, for example, can influence the balance of power in a business interaction. Diana Sanchez and Julie Garcia even demonstrate that markers of low socioeconomic status such as incarceration or unemployment can influence whether individuals are categorized as white or black—a finding that underscores how race and class may work in tandem to shape advantage or disadvantage in social interactions.The United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality and one of the lowest levels of social mobility among industrialized nations, yet many Americans continue to buy into the myth that theirs is a classless society. Facing Social Class faces the reality of how social class operates in our daily lives, why it is so pervasive, and what can be done to alleviate its effects.Contributors: Courtney Bearns, Jessica McCrory Colarco, Paul DiMaggio, Susan R. Fisk, Stephanie A. Fryberg, Julie A. Garcia, Crystal C. Hall, Michael W. Kraus, Adrie Kusserow, Annette Lareau, Peggy J. Miller, Miguel Moya, Paul K. Piff, Michelle L. Rheinschmidt, Cecilia L. Ridgeway, Ann Marie Russell, Diana T. Sanchez, Douglas E. Sperry, Nicole M. Stephens, Joan C. Williams.

Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights


Erik S. Gellman - 2012
    Over the next decade, the NNC and its offshoot, the Southern Negro Youth Congress, sought to coordinate and catalyze local antiracist activism into a national movement to undermine the Jim Crow system of racial and economic exploitation. In this pioneering study, Erik S. Gellman shows how the NNC agitated for the first-class citizenship of African Americans and all members of the working class, establishing civil rights as necessary for reinvigorating American democracy. Much more than just a precursor to the 1960s civil rights movement, this activism created the most militant interracial freedom movement since Reconstruction, one that sought to empower the American labor movement to make demands on industrialists, white supremacists, and the state as never before. By focusing on the complex alliances between unions, civic groups, and the Communist Party in five geographic regions, Gellman explains how the NNC and its allies developed and implemented creative grassroots strategies to weaken Jim Crow, if not deal it the "death blow" they sought.

LIFE The Pocket Guide to Digital Photography: Everything You Need to Shoot Like the Pros


LIFE - 2012
    If you've ever experienced one of Joe's workshops or seminars, you know he's a fantastic teacher, and this book is an extension of that. While he does write about the basics of photography, if you know Joe, you know that he's found a way to work his own sense of humor and familiarity in with all the nuts and bolts to make it an entertaining read." Thousands of photo fans agreed, and eagerly joined Joe on his happy journey through the pixelated world of modern-day photography. In so doing, they learned from one of LIFE's master shooters-in fact, the final in the long line of distinguished LIFE staff photographers-who encouraged them that, with a little preparation and care, with a dash of enthusiasm and daring, anyone can make a better photo: Anyone can turn a "keeper" into a treasure. It has since become clear to Joe and the editors of LIFE that their Guide to Digital Photography was built to last-that its tips and tone had struck a chord with photography enthusiasts everywhere. One thing it wasn't, however, was built to fit in your camera bag when you were heading into the field. Now it is! Here's the digest-sized version, filled with the same wonderful collection of McNally photography, beautifully illustrating the points Joe is making. Everything you need to know about light and lenses, about color or composition, is in these pages. And now, when you're just about to click and you wonder "What would Joe advise?" the answer is at your fingertips.

Men, Women, and the Meaning of Marriage


David W. Jones - 2012
    Jones explores foundational biblical teachings on the institution of marriage. The goal of this book is to give readers a better understanding of the nature and purpose of marriage, with a focus upon showing men and women the importance of gender roles within the institution of marriage. Through careful, winsome biblical analysis the author explains the revelatory nature of the estate of marriage, as he demonstrates that this divinely bestowed institution is ultimately about the sanctification of mankind and the glorification of God. A perfect read for anyone seeking to enrich their own marriage by gaining a better understanding of the biblical foundations of this institution.

Contextualized French Grammar: A Handbook


Stacey Katz Bourns - 2012
    The handbook presents grammar rules in a detailed yet concise manner so students can learn to create language and develop greater awareness of language and comprehension in different contexts. Instructors may use the handbook as a supplement to the materials they are already using or students may use it as a self-guide.