Best of
Class

2016

Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?


Ian Dunt - 2016
    Mishandling Brexit could lower our global status, diminish our quality of life, and throw our legal system into turmoil. With the help of leading experts in trade and law, Ian Dunt, editor of Politics.co.uk, explains:- why leaving the EU is set to make us permanently poorer- how cutting immigration will affect wages and taxes- why leading industries like farming, pharmaceuticals and finance will struggle to operate- whether the biggest constitutional change in post-war history will break up the UKThis is the first full public exploration of Brexit, shorn of the wishful thinking of its supporters in Parliament and the media.It is portrait of a country about to undergo a self-inflicted isolation.

Potted Meat


Steven Dunn - 2016
    Using fragments as a narrative mode to highlight the terror of ellipses, Potted Meat explores the fear, power, and vulnerability of storytelling, and in doing so, investigates the peculiar tensions of the body: How we seek to escape or remain embodied during repeated trauma.

Mommy’s Little Soldier: A troubled child. An absent mom. A shocking secret.


Casey Watson - 2016
    Despite letters being sent home regularly, his mother never turns up for any appointments, and when the school calls home she always seems to have an excuse.Though Casey has her hands full, she offers to intervene for a while, to try get Leo engaged in learning again and remaining in school. The head’s sceptical though and warns her that this is Leo’s very last chance. But Casey’s determined, because there’s something about Leo that makes her want to fight his corner, and get to the bottom of whatever it is that compels this enigmatic boy to keep running away. With Leo so resolutely tight-lipped and secretive, Casey knows that if she’s going to keep this child in education, she’s going to have to get to the bottom of it herself…

Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good


Chuck Collins - 2016
    As inequality grabs headlines, steals the show in presidential debates, and drives deep divides b....

The Darkening Trapeze: Last Poems


Larry Levis - 2016
    The two other acrobats were thieves. --from "Elegy with a Darkening Trapeze Inside It"The Darkening Trapeze collects the last poems by Larry Levis, written during the extraordinary blaze of his final years when his poetry expanded into the ambitious operatic masterpieces he is known for. Edited and with an afterword by David St. John and published twenty years after Levis's death, this collection contains major unpublished works, including final elegies, brief lyrics, and a coda believed to be the last poem Levis wrote, a heart-wrenching poem about his son. The Darkening Trapeze is an astonishing collection by a poet many consider to be among the greatest of late-twentieth-century American poetry.

Gospel-Centered Youth Ministry: A Practical Guide


Cameron ColeMichael McGarry - 2016
    And yet, there is a surprising lack of resources written specifically for youth workers focused on viewing all aspects of youth ministry through a gospel-focused lens. Featuring contributions from a host of experienced youth workers from a wide variety of churches, this how-to manual offers guidance related to every facet of youth ministry, from planning short-term mission trips to working with parents. Theologically rooted yet eminently practical, this handbook will equip youth leaders to effectively shepherd the young people under their care--training them to live faithfully in their homes, churches, and schools.

Style of Attack Report


Metropolarity - 2016
    This Style of Attack Report contains select work from Metropolarity's four founding members, who contribute theory, practice, and experience of home grown speculative visioning for both historical documentation as well as personal and collective survival. The collection serves as a model and a record of how Black, brown, queer, low-resource, working, ill and in-recovery people can project themselves into the future, conjuring resources, technology, and magic that aid us in the present. Also this sci-fi is FIRE cuz the crew don't play.

Intersectionality


Patricia Hill Collins - 2016
    But what exactly does it mean, and why has it emerged as such a vital lens through which to explore how social inequalities of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability and ethnicity shape one another?In this new book Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge provide a much-needed, introduction to the field of intersectional knowledge and praxis. They analyze the emergence, growth and contours of the concept and show how intersectional frameworks speak to topics as diverse as human rights, neoliberalism, identity politics, immigration, hip hop, global social protest, diversity, digital media, Black feminism in Brazil, violence and World Cup soccer. Accessibly written and drawing on a plethora of lively examples to illustrate its arguments, the book highlights intersectionality's potential for understanding inequality and bringing about social justice oriented change.Intersectionality will be an invaluable resource for anyone grappling with the main ideas, debates and new directions in this field.

Lou Lou and Pea and the Mural Mystery


Jill Diamond - 2016
    Pea is proper, Lou Lou is not!2. Lou Lou loves gardening, Pea prefers art.3. But neither can turn down an adventure...On Friday afternoons, the girls get together in Lou Lou's backyard garden for their PSPP (post-school pre-parents) tea parties. They chat about the school week, discuss Pea's latest fashions, and plot the weekend's activities.But all plans go out the window when a series of small crimes crop up around El Corazón, their quirky neighborhood, right before the Día de los Muertos procession. First, Pea's cousin's quinceañera dress is tragically ruined. Then Lou Lou's beloved camellia bush, Pinky, suffers a serious blow. When clues start to appear in the painted murals around their community, these best friends must join forces - both floral expertise and artistic genius - to solve the mysteries.Debut author Jill Diamond weaves a delightful romp, full of colorful characters and gentle intrigue, while artist Lesley Vamos punctuates the story with black-and-white illustrations throughout. Backmatter includes crafting activities and a glossary of Spanish terms!

When I Died


Elizabeth Eckert - 2016
    Eckert weaves a beautiful, highly textured tale in her debut novel. Seriously thought provoking.”Hey! I am Adrianna… seventeen, ordinary and …dead.A short time ago my biggest worries were my mom staying sober, my new stepdad sticking around, and how my hair looked. Now, I am knee-deep into angels, unimaginable evil, fading thousand-year-old monks, and I am falling head over heels for a gorgeous dead guy, and an adorable, vision-transmitting little artist. The secret Jonathan – my new dead boyfriend – is keeping from may prove more than I can handle. I am responsible for saving my new world and everyone in it!More Amazon Reviews:Richly imaginative and compelling, “When I Died” is an after-death love and adventure story with dark forces creating suspense and turmoil. An air of mystery in the story adds to its quality, and there is definitely a what-happens-next aspect that propels the story along. There’s also a truly charming quality in the story, especially in the voice of young Adrianna (Anna), who is only 17 when she dies. Elizabeth Eckert has Anna’s voice just right—from the somewhat petulance of her first few days being dead, to her compassion for her little sister, and on through the story to her growing love of Jonathan. Anna and Jonathan have to make some heart-wrenching choices, especially in the climax, that make their characters all the more intriguing. Readers will watch Anna grow up and mature—even if she is technically dead. People back on the earth—especially Anna's beloved friend Willie—also have important roles in the story and create suspense and drama in the book. Well done, with some surprising twists and a not-what-I-expected ending, which of course will pull me into the sequel. The writing is lovely, with a lyrical quality to the language, and Eckert excels in creating another world for her readers. A thought-provoking tale, and even though it does not follow traditional Christian or Jewish beliefs, it’s a surprisingly spiritual book.Elizabeth Eckert weaves an intriguing tale of people coping with an ethereal existence after their deaths. Angels, archangels and the devil play their part in this well-written novel. I enjoyed the complex interplay of the characters, as the author builds on an innovative concept of an afterlife. Congratulations on the superb ending.

Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas about Race


H. Samy Alim - 2016
    The book brings together a team of leading scholars-working both within and beyond the United States-to share powerful, much-needed research that helps us understand the increasinglyvexed relationships between race, ethnicity, and language in our rapidly changing world. Combining the innovative, cutting-edge approaches of race and ethnic studies with fine-grained linguistic analyses, authors cover a wide range of topics including the struggle over the very term AfricanAmerican, the racialized language education debates within the increasing number of majority-minority immigrant communities in the U.S., the dangers of multicultural education in a Europe that is struggling to meet the needs of new migrants, and the sociopolitical and cultural meanings oflinguistic styles used in Brazilian favelas, South African townships, Mexican and Puerto Rican barrios in Chicago, and Korean American cram schools in New York City, among other sites.Taking into account rapidly changing demographics in the U.S and shifting cultural and media trends across the globe--from Hip Hop cultures, to transnational Mexican popular and street cultures, to Israeli reality TV, to new immigration trends across Africa and Europe--Raciolinguistics shapes thefuture of scholarship on race, ethnicity, and language. By taking a comparative look across a diverse range of language and literacy contexts, the volume seeks not only to set the research agenda in this burgeoning area of study, but also to help resolve pressing educational and political problemsin some of the most contested raciolinguistic contexts in the world.

Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy


LaShawn Harris - 2016
    LaShawn Harris illuminates the labor patterns and economic activity of three perennials within this kaleidoscope of underground industry: sex work, numbers running for gambling enterprises, and the supernatural consulting business. Mining police and prison records, newspaper accounts, and period literature, Harris teases out answers to essential questions about these women and their working lives. She also offers a surprising revelation, arguing that the burgeoning underground economy served as a catalyst in working-class black women ™s creation of the employment opportunities, occupational identities, and survival strategies that provided them with financial stability and a sense of labor autonomy and mobility. At the same time, urban black women, all striving for economic and social prospects and pleasures, experienced the conspicuous and hidden dangers associated with newfound labor opportunities.

Coming of Age in the Other America


Stefanie DeLuca - 2016
    Coming of Age in the Other America shows that despite overwhelming odds, some disadvantaged urban youth do achieve upward mobility. Drawing from ten years of fieldwork with parents and children who resided in Baltimore public housing, sociologists Stefanie DeLuca, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin highlight the remarkable resiliency of some of the youth who hailed from the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and show how the right public policies might help break the cycle of disadvantage.Coming of Age in the Other America illuminates the profound effects of neighborhoods on impoverished families. The authors conducted in-depth interviews and fieldwork with 150 young adults, and found that those who had been able to move to better neighborhoods—either as part of the Moving to Opportunity program or by other means—achieved much higher rates of high school completion and college enrollment than their parents. About half the youth surveyed reported being motivated by an “identity project”—or a strong passion such as music, art, or a dream job—to finish school and build a career.Yet the authors also found troubling evidence that some of the most promising young adults often fell short of their goals and remained mired in poverty. Factors such as neighborhood violence and family trauma put these youth on expedited paths to adulthood, forcing them to shorten or end their schooling and find jobs much earlier than their middle-class counterparts. Weak labor markets and subpar postsecondary educational institutions, including exploitative for-profit trade schools and under-funded community colleges, saddle some young adults with debt and trap them in low-wage jobs. A third of the youth surveyed—particularly those who had not developed identity projects—were neither employed nor in school. To address these barriers to success, the authors recommend initiatives that help transform poor neighborhoods and provide institutional support for the identity projects that motivate youth to stay in school. They propose increased regulation of for-profit schools and increased college resources for low-income high school students.Coming of Age in the Other America presents a sensitive, nuanced account of how a generation of ambitious but underprivileged young Baltimoreans has struggled to succeed. It both challenges long-held myths about inner-city youth and shows how the process of “social reproduction”—where children end up stuck in the same place as their parents—is far from inevitable.Stefanie DeLuca is associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University.Susan Clampet-Lundquist is associate professor of sociology at Saint Joseph’s University.Kathryn Edin is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University.

Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl


Rashod Ollison - 2016
    After his parents’ volatile marriage ended in divorce, when Rashod was six years old, he retreated into the records his father left behind—discovering that the music of Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack, Al Green, and others provided solace and coherence. Soul Serenade is the captivating coming-of-age story of a boy who tries to makes sense of life in central Arkansas in the 1980s and ’90s, his family’s tragic past, and his sexuality, all through empowering soul music.

Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard: Life Among the Stowaways


Sean Christie - 2016
    When journalist Sean Christie meets Adam Bashili, he comes to know the extraordinary world of the Beachboys, a multi-port, fourth-generation subculture that lives to stow away and stows away to survive. But as Sean starts to accompany the Beachboys on trips around their everyday Cape Town, he becomes more than a casual observer, serving as sometime moneylender, driver, confidant and scribe, and eventually joining Adam on an unprecedented tour of Dar es Salaam’s underworld and a reckless run down Africa’s east coast. Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard remaps both city and continent, introducing us to the places and people we so frequently overlook.

The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working-Class Kids Still Get Working-Class Jobs


James Bloodworth - 2016
    Meanwhile, it is increasingly difficult for bright but poor children to transcend their circumstances. This state of affairs should not only worry the poor. It hurts the middle classes too, who are increasingly locked out of the top professions by those from wealthy backgrounds.Hitherto, both Labour and Conservative politicians have sought to deal with this problem by promoting the idea of 'equality of opportunity'. In politics, social mobility is the only game in town and old socialist arguments, which emphasised economic equality, are about as unfashionable today as mullets and shell suits. Yet genuine equality of opportunity is impossible against a backdrop of levels of inequality last seen during the 1930s. In a grossly unequal society, the privileges of the parents unfailingly become the privileges of the children.A vague commitment from our politicians to build a ‘meritocracy’ is not enough. And besides, a perfectly stratified meritocracy, in which everyone knew their station based on ‘merit’, would be a deeply unpleasant place to live. Attempts to improve social mobility must start by reducing the gap between rich and poor.

The Little Book of Tom. Blue Collar


Tom of Finland - 2016
    Finland is a land of tough physical men, catching fish in the icy sea; cutting logs in the endless forests; threshing oats, rye, and barley on the farms. Tom, a more sensitive boy, admired these rough men and their distinctive clothing, designed for protection and utility. He later said, "When I was young, leather was worn by people who worked outside because it was warm. All the men who wore leather, they were the type of men which I adored."When he began to draw he celebrated these early idols, improving their wardrobes with tight jeans, faded T-shirts, and thigh-high beak-toed Lappish boots. It was a young logger in this gear who appeared on the spring 1957 cover of Physique Pictorial, introducing Tom to the world. In the decades to follow Tom added truckers, repairmen, construction workers, circus roustabouts, and the American cowboy to his roster of working-class heroes. Though just sexual fantasies for him, his portrayal of blue-collar lovers helped working class gays accept their true selves.The Little Book of Tom: Blue Collar traces Tom's fascination with working men in one compact and affordable package. A brawny lineup of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings is set alongside archival and contextual material, including historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom's own reference photos.

Global Heartland: Displaced Labor, Transnational Lives, and Local Placemaking


Faranak Miraftab - 2016
    The meat processing plant that is the town’s main employer replaced its white, native-born workforce by recruiting laborers from Mexico, West Africa, and Detroit, and the newcomers transformed and revitalized this former “sundown town.” Faranak Miraftab draws on ethnographic research in Beardstown, Mexico, and Togo to analyze a space that is often overlooked in scholarship on globalization. Tracing the global processes that produce displaced workers and the social relationships that maintain them, she offers a fresh perspective on place and placemaking.

Frankly, I'd Rather Spin Myself a New Name!: The Story of Rumpelstiltskin as Told by Rumpelstiltskin


Jessica S. Gunderson - 2016
    Rumpelstiltskin's gold-spinning skills are legendary, but what's the little man's story? This first-person narrative charms and sparkles, while delivering a subtle lesson on point of view and supporting Common Core standards.

Black Anarchism: A Reader


Black Rose Anarchist Federation - 2016
    Countless books, films, songs, pamphlets, buttons, t-shirts, and more are rightfully devoted to this transformative struggle for social revolution by Spanish workers and peasants. But digging through the mountain of available material, little can be found on black militants in the Spanish revolution, like the one featured in the powerful photo on the cover of this reader — a member of the Bakunin Barracks in Barcelona, Spain 1936, and a symbol of both the profound presence and absence of Black anarchism internationally.For more than 150 years, black anarchists have played a critical role in shaping various struggles around the globe, including mass strikes, national liberation movements, tenant organizing, prisoner solidarity, queer liberation, the formation of autonomous black liberation organizations, and more.Our current political moment is one characterized by a global resurgence of Black rebellion in response to racialized state violence, criminalization, and dispossession. Black and Afro-diasporic communities in places like Britain, South Africa, Brazil, Haiti, Colombia and the US have initiated popular social movements to resist conditions of social death and forge paths toward liberation on their own terms. Given the anti-authoritarian spirit of these struggles, the time is ripe to take a closer look at anarchism more broadly, and Black anarchism in particular.The deceptive absence of Black anarchist politics in the existing literature can be attributed to an inherent contradiction found within the Eurocentric canon of classical anarchism which, in its allegiance to a Western conception of universalism, overlooks and actively mutes the contributions by colonized peoples. In recent years, Black militants, and others dedicated to Black anarchist politics, have gone a long way toward bringing Black anarchism into focus through numerous essays, books, interviews, and public talks, many of which are brought together for the first time in this reader.Our hope is that this reader will serve as a fruitful contribution to ongoing dialogues, debates, and struggles occurring throughout the Black diaspora about how to move forward toward our liberation globally. “Anarchism,” noted Hannibal Abdul Shakur, “like anything else finds a radical new meaning when it meets blackness.” While this reader brings us closer to “a radical new meaning” for anarchism, there are glaring gaps that need to be filled to get a fuller picture of Black anarchism, particularly the vital contributions of black women, queer militants, and more folks from the Global South.

In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse


Carolyn Zaikowski - 2016
    Unnamed narrators rise and fall, weaving in and out of each other while silently nodding to something larger and also, as yet, unnamed. Though structured around the breakdown of voice, mind, and narrative itself, In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse is also a witness to what happens when these three things must pull themselves up and face forward again.“Equal parts vulnerable, logical, affirming, and schematic, In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse is a frothing workbook with ‘Floating fractals everywhere.’ Like a vending machine stocked with formal innovation, fabulist imagery, and rigorous self-examination, Zaikowski drops goodies all the way through. This is a must for anyone invested in how a self processes the world–and how the world processes a self.”—Amy King“Case studies. Quizzes. Announcements. Definitions. Interviews. Lists. Dreams. Carolyn Zaikowski’s In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse amalgamates these things into a workbook that is a novel doing a headstand. The emotional depth, generosity, and playfulness of this book makes want to write, and read on.”—Claire Donato

A Very Capitalist Condition: A history and politics of disability


Roddy Slorach - 2016
    In recent years, it has become associated with unemployment and dependence on benefits. But how were people we now call disabled treated in earlier societies?This book examines the origins and development of disability and highlights the hidden history of groups such as disabled war veterans, deaf people and those in mental distress.In a wide-ranging critique, Roddy Slorach describes how capitalist society segregates and marginalises disabled people, turning our minds and bodies into commodities and generating new impairment and disability as it does so.He argues that Marxism not only helps provide a fuller understanding of the politics and nature of disability, but also offers a vision of how disabled people can play a part in building a better world for all.

Zoned Out! Race, Displacement, and City Planning in New York City


Tom Angotti - 2016
    Race matters but the city ignores it when shaping land use and housing policies. The city promises “affordable housing” that is not truly affordable. Zoned Out! shows how this has played in Williamsburg, Harlem and Chinatown, neighborhoods facing massive displacement of people of color. It looks at ways the city can address inequalities, promote authentic community-based planning and develop housing in the public domain.

Tell Me Why My Children Died: Rabies, Indigenous Knowledge, and Communicative Justice


Charles L. Briggs - 2016
    In this pathbreaking book, Charles L. Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs relay the nightmarish and difficult experiences of doctors, patients, parents, local leaders, healers, and epidemiologists; detail how journalists first created a smoke screen, then projected the epidemic worldwide; discuss the Chávez government's hesitant and sometimes ambivalent reactions; and narrate the eventual diagnosis of bat-transmitted rabies. The book provides a new framework for analyzing how the uneven distribution of rights to produce and circulate knowledge about health are wedded at the hip with health inequities. By recounting residents' quest to learn why their children died and documenting their creative approaches to democratizing health, the authors open up new ways to address some of global health's most intractable problems.

A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor


Alexes Harris - 2016
    Court-ordered monetary sanctions that compel criminal defendants to pay fines, fees, surcharges, and restitution further inhibit their ability to reenter society. In A Pound of Flesh, sociologist Alexes Harris analyzes the rise of monetary sanctions in the criminal justice system and shows how they permanently penalize and marginalize the poor. She exposes the damaging effects of a little-understood component of criminal sentencing and shows how it further perpetuates racial and economic inequality.Harris draws from extensive sentencing data, legal documents, observations of court hearings, and interviews with defendants, judges, prosecutors, and other court officials. She documents how low-income defendants are affected by monetary sanctions, which include fees for public defenders and a variety of processing charges. Until these debts are paid in full, individuals remain under judicial supervision, subject to court summons, warrants, and jail stays. As a result of interest and surcharges that accumulate on unpaid financial penalties, these monetary sanctions often become insurmountable legal debts which many offenders carry for the remainder of their lives. Harris finds that such fiscal sentences, which are imposed disproportionately on low-income minorities, help create a permanent economic underclass and deepen social stratification.A Pound of Flesh delves into the court practices of five counties in Washington State to illustrate the ways in which subjective sentencing shapes the practice of monetary sanctions. Judges and court clerks hold a considerable degree of discretion in the sentencing and monitoring of monetary sanctions and rely on individual values—such as personal responsibility, meritocracy, and paternalism—to determine how much and when offenders should pay. Harris shows that monetary sanctions are imposed at different rates across jurisdictions, with little or no state government oversight. Local officials’ reliance on their own values and beliefs can also push offenders further into debt—for example, when judges charge defendants who lack the means to pay their fines with contempt of court and penalize them with additional fines or jail time.A Pound of Flesh provides a timely examination of how monetary sanctions permanently bind poor offenders to the judicial system. Harris concludes that in letting monetary sanctions go unchecked, we have created a two-tiered legal system that imposes additional burdens on already-marginalized groups.

Resistance and Decolonization


Amilcar Cabral - 2016
    These texts demonstrate his frank and insightful directives to his comrades in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde's party for independence, as well as reflections on culture and combat written the year prior to his assassination by the Portuguese secret police. As one of the most important and profound African revolutionary leaders in the 20th century, and justly compared in importance to Frantz Fanon, Cabral's thoughts and instructions as articulated here help us to rethink important issues concerning nationalism, culture, vanguardism, revolution, liberation, colonialism, race, and history. The volume also includes two introductory essays: the first introduces Cabral's work within the context of Africana critical theory, and the second situates these texts in the context their historical-political context and analyzes their relevance for contemporary anti-imperialism.

Modern Monetary Theory and Practice: An Introductory Text


William F. Mitchell - 2016
    It is based on the principles of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and includes the following detailed chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: How to Think and Do Macroeconomics Chapter 3: A Brief Overview of the Economic History and the Rise of Capitalism Chapter 4: The System of National Income and Product Accounts Chapter 5: Sectoral Accounting and the Flow of Funds Chapter 6: Introduction to Sovereign Currency: The Government and its Money Chapter 7: The Real Expenditure Model Chapter 8: Introduction to Aggregate Supply Chapter 9: Labour Market Concepts and Measurement Chapter 10: Money and Banking Chapter 11: Unemployment and Inflation Chapter 12: Full Employment Policy Chapter 13: Introduction to Monetary and Fiscal Policy Operations Chapter 14: Fiscal Policy in Sovereign nations Chapter 15: Monetary Policy in Sovereign Nations It is intended as an introductory course in macroeconomics and the narrative is accessible to students of all backgrounds. All mathematical and advanced material appears in separate Appendices.

Parenting to a Degree: How Family Matters for College Women's Success


Laura T. Hamilton - 2016
    But do involved parents really damage their children and burden universities? In this book, sociologist Laura T. Hamilton illuminates the lives of young women and their families to ask just what role parents play during the crucial college years.             Hamilton vividly captures the parenting approaches of mothers and fathers from all walks of life—from a CFO for a Fortune 500 company to a waitress at a roadside diner. As she shows, parents are guided by different visions of the ideal college experience, built around classed notions of women’s work/family plans and the ideal age to “grow up.” Some are intensively involved and hold adulthood at bay to cultivate specific traits: professional helicopters, for instance, help develop the skills and credentials that will advance their daughters’ careers, while pink helicopters emphasize appearance, charm, and social ties in the hopes that women will secure a wealthy mate. In sharp contrast, bystander parents—whose influence is often limited by economic concerns—are relegated to the sidelines of their daughter’s lives. Finally, paramedic parents—who can come from a wide range of class backgrounds—sit in the middle, intervening in emergencies but otherwise valuing self-sufficiency above all.             Analyzing the effects of each of these approaches with clarity and depth, Hamilton ultimately argues that successfully navigating many colleges and universities without involved parents is nearly impossible, and that schools themselves are increasingly dependent on active parents for a wide array of tasks, with intended and unintended consequences. Altogether, Parenting to a Degree offers an incisive look into the new—and sometimes problematic—relationship between students, parents, and universities.

The Ulysses Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit


Cecilia Konchar Farr - 2016
    At coffee shops or out for drinks, after faculty meetings or classes, even at family reunions – they are persistently pressed to talk about bestselling novels. Questions immediately follow: What do I mean when I say a book is "good"? Why do contemporary novels like these, conversations like these, matter to professors of literature? Shouldn't they be spending their time re-reading The Great Gatsby? The Ulysses Delusion confronts these questions and answers their call for more engaged conversations about books. Through topics like the Oprah's Book Club, Harry Potter, and Chick Lit, Cecilia Konchar Farr explores the lively, democratic, and gendered history of novels in the US as a context for understanding how avid readers and literary professionals have come to assess them so differently.

Truth or Dare


Barbara Dee - 2016
    It's thanks to the loyal supportive friendship of Marley, Abi, Makayla, and Jules that Lia's doing okay after her mom dies in a car crash. But the summer before seventh grade, Lia's feeling out of sync with her friends. And after a vacation up in Maine, Lia returns home to find her friends...well, different. For one thing, they're arguing more than ever. Also, they're competing. And some of them are making her feel like a "late bloomer." When her friends launch into an extended game of Truth or Dare, Lia tells a lie about her summer just to keep up with them. Then she tells another lie. And another. Soon, it's hard to remember what's a lie and what isn't. Friendships are threatened, boys are getting kissed (or note), and Lia's wondering if there's anyone to confide in. In this funny, touching coming-of-age story, Lia learns that it's possible to face the hardest truths--as long as you have the right people by your side.

Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times


Stacy Alaimo - 2016
    Including such divergent topics as landscape art, ocean ecologies, and plastic activism, Alaimo explores our environmental predicaments to better understand feminist occupations of transcorporeal subjectivity.She puts scientists, activists, artists, writers, and theorists in conversation, revealing that the state of the planet in the twenty-first century has radically transformed ethics, politics, and what it means to be human. Ultimately, Exposed calls for an environmental stance in which, rather than operating from an externalized perspective, we think, feel, and act as the very stuff of the world.

An Earlier Life


Brenda Miller - 2016
    Whether traveling from synagogue to sweat lodge, from the Arizona desert to a communal hot springs in California, she navigates the expectations placed on young girls and women at every turn. She finds guidance in her four major creeds (Judaism, Home Improvement, the Grateful Dead, and Rescue Dogs), while charting a course toward an authentic life. Each stage demands its own form, its own story, sometimes as a means of survival: “No straight line between here and there, between past and future; instead, many small rifts open between where you stand now and where you are trying to go.” “Further proving herself as the master of the short essay, Brenda Miller’s latest collection deep dives into her past, taking a sepia-tinged world and offering it anew in Technicolor. Each essay’s a revelation, an untangling, an epiphany whispered in our ears. Listen carefully or you’ll miss it: the way our lives expand when we distill them.”—B.J. Hollars, author of This is Only a Test

Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen


Olafur Eliasson - 2016
    A cookbook with over 100 vegetarian recipes for the home cook from the studio kitchen of world-renowned artist Olafur Eliasson.Discover the act of cooking and eating in a creative environment with Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen.Featuring over 100 vegetarian recipes cooked at Olafur Eliasson's studio kitchen, these recipes have served as nourishment and source of creative inspiration and communal discussion every day for his staff, artists, and guest collaborators, including René Redzepi and Alice Waters.Foreword by Alice Waters, who has cooked in the kitchen, and shares Olafur's vision for cooking and eating together as a daily connection that inspires.

Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets


Leah Platt Boustan - 2016
    Competition in the Promised Land provides a comprehensive account of the long-lasting effects of the influx of black workers on labor markets and urban space in receiving areas.Traditionally, the Great Black Migration has been lauded as a path to general black economic progress. Leah Boustan challenges this view, arguing instead that the migration produced winners and losers within the black community. Boustan shows that migrants themselves gained tremendously, more than doubling their earnings by moving North. But these new arrivals competed with existing black workers, limiting black-white wage convergence in Northern labor markets and slowing black economic growth. Furthermore, many white households responded to the black migration by relocating to the suburbs. White flight was motivated not only by neighborhood racial change but also by the desire on the part of white residents to avoid participating in the local public services and fiscal obligations of increasingly diverse cities.Employing historical census data and state-of-the-art econometric methods, Competition in the Promised Land revises our understanding of the Great Black Migration and its role in the transformation of American society.

Rotten Row


Petina Gappah - 2016
    Rotten Row represents a leap in artistry and achievement from the award-winning author of An Elegy for Easterly and The Book of Memory. With compassion and humour, Petina Gappah paints portraits of lives aching for meaning to produce a moving and universal tableau.

Experimental Music Since 1970


Jennie Gottschalk - 2016
    This book takes the stance that experimental music is not a limited historical event, but is a proliferation of approaches to sound that reveals much about present-day experience. An experimental work is not identifiable by its sound alone, but by the nature of the questions it poses and its openness to the sounding event.Experimentation is a way of working. It pushes past that which is known to discover what lies beyond it, finding new knowledge, forms, and relationships, or accepting a state of uncertainty. For each of these composers and sound artists, craft is developed and transformed in response to the questions they bring to their work. Scientific, perceptual, or social phenomena become catalysts in the operation of the work.These practices are not presented according to a chronology, a set of techniques, or social groupings. Instead, they are organized according to the content areas that are their subjects, including resonance, harmony, objects, shapes, perception, language, interaction, sites, and histories. Musical materials may be subject, among other treatments, to systemization, observation, examination, magnification, fragmentation, translation, or destabilization. These restless and exploratory modes of engagement have continued to develop over recent decades, expanding the scope of both musical practice and listening.

Clinical Interviewing, with Video Resource Center


John Sommers-Flanagan - 2016
    This invaluable text provides vast insight into and practical examples of useful interviewing techniques for more effective therapy.

Stuck in Poo, What to Do?


Samantha Laugesen - 2016
    When Luke the Pook, a cheeky young pukeko, borrows a child's gumboots without permission, he is unexpectedly stuck in a cowpat.

City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age


Richard C. Schragger - 2016
    In City Power, Richard C. Schragger challenges the existing assumptions, arguing that cities can govern, but only if we let them. In thepast decade, city leaders across the country have raised the minimum wage, expanded social services, and engaged in social welfare redistribution. These cities have not suffered capital flight. In fact, many are experiencing an economic renaissance. Schragger argues that city policies are notlimited by the demands of mobile capital, but instead by constitutional restraints serving the interests of state and federal officials. Maintaining weak cities is a political choice. In this new era of global capital, the power of cities is more relevant to citizen well-being than ever before. Adynamic vision of city politics for our new urban age, City Power reveals how cities can govern despite these constitutional limits - and why we should want them to.

Chigou: Valley of Progress, Book 1


Cory Sheldon - 2016
    Chigou's founder declares his city to be society's greatest accomplishment; a competitive theater for ambitions, ideologies and life itself.A Civil Enforcer searches for a new purpose as he tries to escape the violent conflict of his past. A young farmer strives to make a bigger difference after she takes charge of a child, one tragically snared by a growing conflict. They are all visited by the young heir of an industrial empire, and questions quickly arise over the foreigner's true intentions.As their lives unexpectedly collide, they begin to discover a subversive power emerging from the shadows. They must decide to face the threat, or run towards something else known only through tales and legends. Their decisions will not only change their lives, but could alter the course of their entire society.

Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization


Kim Scipes - 2016
    In response, new labor movements have emerged across the Global South—from Brazil and South Africa to Indonesia and Pakistan.Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization is a call for international solidarity to resist the assaults on labor’s power. This collection of essays by international labor activists and academics examines models of worker solidarity, different forms of labor organizations, and those models’ and organizations’ relationships to social movements and civil society.