Best of
International

1999

The Uses of Haiti


Paul Farmer - 1999
    It tells the truth about what has been happening in Haiti, and the US role in its bitter fate.—Noam Chomsky, from the introductionIn this third edition of the classic The Uses of Haiti, Paul Farmer looks at what has happened to the health of the poor in Haiti since the coup.Winner of a McArthur Genius Award, Paul Farmer is a physician and anthropologist who has worked for 25 years in Haiti, where he serves as medical director of a hospital serving the rural poor. He is the subject of the Tracy Kidder biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds


David C. Pollock - 1999
    The book is rich with real-life anecdotes and examines the nature of the TCK kid experience and its effects on maturing, developing a sense of identity, and adjusting to one's passport country upon return. The authors give readers an understanding of the challenges and benefits of the TCK life and provide practical suggestions and advice on maximizing those benefits.

When the Moon Forgot


Jimmy Liao - 1999
    He takes it home and cares for it, slowly helping it heal. They become inseparable companions, exploring the world together both day and night. But when the world needs the moon to remember its place in the sky, the boy must help it find its way back home.This is an unforgettable tale of an unusual friendship by world-renowned illustrator Jimmy Liao. Gorgeous, evocative illustrations tell an imaginative story of love and courage; the world will never forget the time when the moon forgot.

The Emperor's General


James Webb - 1999
    He had witnessed the bloody horror left behind by the retreating Japanese army during World War II's final days. And he had abandoned his beautiful Filipina fiancee to see his duty through.But not even Marsh could guess the terrible personal price he would have to pay for his loyalty. He would follow General Douglas MacArthur to Tokyo itself. There he would become the brilliant, egocentric general's confidant, translator, surrogate son--and spy.Marsh would play a dangerous game of deliberate deceit and brutal injustice in the shadow world of postwar Japan's royal palaces and geisha houses, and recognize that the defeated emperor and his wily aides were exploiting MacArthur's ruthless ambition to become the American Caesar. The Emperor's General is a dramatic human story of the loss of innocence and the seduction of power, about the conflict between honor, duty, and love, all set against an extraordinary historical backdrop.

The Sharks of Lake Nicaragua: True Tales of Adventure, Travel, and Fishing


Randy Wayne White - 1999
    He studies antiterrorist driving techniques, dives for golf balls in a pond at a country club, hunts his fellow man with a paint gun, ice fishes for walleye with X-ray-stunned nightcrawlers, and poaches Panamanian crocodiles -- or goes pig shooting in the Australian outback. With self-effacing optimism, White captures the joys and fears of wandering the earth's surface with an eclectic cast of weirdo fellow travelers -- a frog that won't jump, a group of expatriate Brits who've developed an interesting cure for "road jaundice, " and even a mad Australian scientist.Though he rarely finds what he's looking for -- such as the legendary landlocked bull sharks of Nicaragua, or the secret to successful winter fishing on a Minnesota lake -- he develops a Zenlike "passion for the means" and a rare ability to revel in the rib-aching humor of each exotic trip.In the end, White leaves the reader mesmerized by the potential of undiscovered places and the promise of endless adventure in unfamiliar territory, from Florida to Bangkok to Borneo, and everywhere in between. An icon to the new breed of thick-skinned, high-endurance adventure travelers of the 1990s, Randy White uniquely extols the pleasures of being "alone and on the move."

Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know


Roy Gutman - 1999
    Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, it illustrates what is legal in war and what is not.

Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation


Ruth Gruber - 1999
    In the torn, square hole, as big as an open, blitzed barn, we could see a muddle of bedding, possessions, plumbing, broken pipes, overflowing toilets, half-naked men, women looking for children. Cabins were bashed in; railings were ripped off; the lifesaving rafts were dangling at crazy angles."On July 18, 1947, Ruth Gruber, an American journalist, waited on a wharf in Haifa as the Exodus 1947 limped into harbor. The evening before, Gruber had learned that this unarmed ship, with more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors crammed into a former tourist vessel designed for 400 passengers, had been rammed and boarded by the British Navy, which was determined to keep her desperate human cargo from finding refuge in Palestine. Now, though soldiers blockaded both exit and entry to the weary vessel, Gruber was determined to meet the refugees and hear their tales. For the next several months she pursued the émigrés' stories, from Haifa to the prison camps on Cyprus (where she was misled by the British to believe the DPs would land, though they never did), to southern France, and, appallingly, back to Hamburg, Germany, where they were ultimately sent by the intractable British authorities.  As the lone journalist covering this story, Gruber sent riveting dispatches and vivid photographs back to the New York and Paris Herald Tribune, which in turn sent them out to the rest of the world press. Gruber's relentless reporting and striking photographs shaped perceptions worldwide as to the situation of postwar Jewish refugees and of the British Mandate in Palestine, and arguably influenced the United Nations decision to finally create the State of Israel in 1948. In 1948, Gruber assembled her dispatches and thirty of her pictures into Destination Palestine, the book that became the basis for Leon Uris's bestselling novel Exodus and the film of the same name.  In this revised and expanded edition, Gruber has included a new opening chapter of never-before-published material on the wretched DP camps of Europe, where the refugees were living before boarding the Exodus 1947; updated the fate of many of the passengers, describing how they smuggled themselves into Palestine--despite the myriad obstacles thrown up by the British authorities--even before the State of Israel was born; and selected seventy additional photographs from her personal archives.  Bartley Crum's introduction to the original edition, retained here, likened Gruber's achievement to John Hersey's Hiroshima for its powerful compression of a momentous event, its vivid reportage, and its capacity to change the way people think about contemporary history. Exodus 1947 is an enormously moving account by one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women, stirring and shocking us more than fifty years after that battered ship entered Haifa harbor.

The Flower Boy


Karen Roberts - 1999
    Premawathi is their cook and housekeeper. She has two beautiful daughters and a son, Chandi, who even at four-years-old is bright, inventive and more mischievous than his young harried mother can sometimes cope with. As the novel opens Elsie Buckwater, an embittered woman, is giving birth to her third baby. Chandi is enchanted by the idea of making an English friend and he christens her Rose-Lizzie after the flowers he loves. But the discontented Elsie imposes a stifling and unhappy atmosphere on the household and forbids Chandi to go near her baby daughter, whom she herself largely ignores. Eventually however she packs her bags and returns to England. Without her, life at the bungalow flourishes.

Luke's Way of Looking


Nadia Wheatley - 1999
    Luke has his own vision of the world, a wild, colorful, crazy vision that upsets his art teacher ("he went ballistic") and confuses the other boys. When he just can't face one more difficult day at school, Luke discovers a whole "palace" filled with wild, colorful, crazy pieces of art.

First Encyclopedia of Our World


Felicity Brooks - 1999
    -- Why is night dark? What is snow? How do earthquakes happen? What's under the sea?-- These and hundreds of other questions about the world around us are answered in this charming book.-- Simple, easy-to-read text and lively, detailed illustrations introduce the basic concepts of geography to young readers.

A World in Transition: Finding Spiritual Security in Times of Change


Paramahansa Yogananda - 1999
    This anthology presents talks by Paramahansa Yogananda, his foremost lifing disciple Sri Daya Mata, and other long-time monks and nuns of his Self-Realization Order, offering keys to the art of spiritual living in the new millennium.

Building the Book Cathedral


David Macaulay - 1999
    David Macaulay's first book, CATHEDRAL, introduced readers around the world to his unique gift for presenting architecture and technology in simple terms, and for demystifying even the most complex of concepts. CATHEDRAL received a Caldecott Honor Medal and is now considered a classic. BUILDING THE BOOK CATHEDRAL includes the content of CATHEDRAL in its entirety. Here Macaulay traces the evolution of his creative process in "building" that first book, from the initial concept to the finished drawings. He introduces the basic elements of structure and sequence and explains why one angle of a drawing may be better for conveying an idea than another. He describes how perspective, scale, and contrast can be used to connect a reader with concepts, and how placement of a picture on a page can make a difference in the way information is communicated. Building the Book Cathedral provides an opportunity to examine Macaulay's unique problem-solving skills as he looks back over two and a half decades at the book that launched his distinguished career.

Vendela in Venice


Christina Björk - 1999
    Finally her father takes her on a special spring trip to the city, which turns out to be every bit as fairy-tale-like as he has promised. Vendela visits her special friends, the four golden horses in St. Mark's Basilica. She hunts winged lions, meets a terrible dragon, and explores colorful candy stores and samples almond-syrup milk.But there are more floods in Venice every year. Will it still be there when Vendela grows up? Vendela in Venice offers a wonderful introduction to the excitement of travel, art, and culture. Inga-Karin Eriksson's lovingly detailed illustrations of Venice will fire the imaginations of young readers and their parents whether they read the book at home or take it along on a trip to Italy.

The Selected Poems


Max Jacob - 1999
    Now this delightful and utterly original poet has been given a detailed and careful presentation in English, through William Kulik's imaginative translations. In a selection that covers the whole of Jacob's career and that does particular justice to his accomplishments as a prose poet, Kulik offers us a full and sympathetic portrait, framing it with an Introduction that sketches the biography and fills out the historical context. A divided man--sexually, culturally, artistically--Jacob moves us deeply with his steady commitment to his art and its possibilities.

Selected Poems: Charlotte Mew


Charlotte Mew - 1999
    In her tragically short life, Charlotte Mew produced poetry that was intense, emotional, original, and praised by her contemporaries Dylan Thomas, Ezra Pound, Thomas Hardy, and Virginia Woolf. Gathered together by Ireland's most distinguished modern female poet, this collection includes a diverse range of her work, dealing with pain, love, and feminist themes.

The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture


Charles King - 1999
    The author•Highlights the political uses of culture—the ways in which language, history, and identity can be manipulated by political elites •Examines why some attempts to mold identity succeed where others fail •Reveals why, in the case of Moldova, a project of identity construction succeeded in creating a state but failed to make an independent nation

The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for the Transformation of a Culture


Vishal Mangalwadi - 1999
    An economist. A medical humanitarian. A media pioneer. An educator. A moral reformer. A botanist. And a Christian missionary. And he did more for the transformation of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than any other individual before or since. Many know of William Carey. Some know about the specifics of his work and ministry. But few understand the profound contemporary significance of his life. Few realize how much we owe the increasing globalization of Christianity to the silent revolution he initiated. Fewer still are aware of his legacy of sensitivity to the variety of issues confronting true gospel witness in any culture. This biography about the central character in the story of India's modernization and transformation will help you understand Carey's impact. But The Legacy of William Carey is more than a biography. It is a charge to all Christians to respond in kind within our own cultures, and to use Carey's example as our model for taking the light of the Gospel into every corner of society. If we follow in his footsteps, not only will lives be bettered this side of heaven, but hearts will be changed for eternity--and entire cultures transformed for Christ.

Under the Lemon Moon


Edith Hope Fine - 1999
    One night Rosalinda is awakened by a noise in the garden. A man is taking lemons from her beloved tree. She consults the wise old woman La Anciana, who offers her a creative solution. Watercolor and pastel illustrations make the story appealing for young readers who are learning what it feels like to share. The Spanish vocabulary in the book gives the characters a sense of place.

The Umbrella Country


Bino A. Realuyo - 1999
    . . .But certain things you have to find out now. . . ."On the tumultuous streets of Manila, where the earth is as brown as a tamarind leaf and the pungent smells of vinegar and mashed peppers fill the air, where seasons shift between scorching sun and torrential rain, eleven-year-old Gringo strives to make sense of his family and a world that is growing increasingly harsher before his young eyes. There is Gringo's older brother, Pipo, wise beyond his years, a flamboyant, defiant youth and the three-time winner of the sequined Miss Unibers contest; Daddy Groovie, whiling away his days with other hang-about men, out of work and wilting like a guava, clinging to the hope of someday joining his sister in Nuyork; Gringo's mother, Estrella, moving through their ramshackle home, holding her emotions tight as a fist, which she often clenches in anger after curfew covers the neighborhood in a burst of dark; and Ninang Rola, wise godmother of words, who confides in Gringo a shocking secret from the past--and sets the stage for the profound events to come, in which no one will remain untouched by the jagged pieces of a shattered dream.As Gringo learns; shame is passed down through generations, but so is the life-changing power of blood ties and enduring love.In this lush, richly poetic novel of grinding hardship and resilient triumph, of selfless sacrifice and searing revelation, Bino A. Realuyo brings the teeming world of 1970s Manila brilliantly to life. While mapping a young boy's awakening to adulthood in dazzling often unexpected ways, The Umbrella Country subtly works sweet magic.

The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins


Bea Uusma - 1999
    Reminiscent of a scrapbook, this extraordinary book chronicles what Michael Collins did, saw, and thought about in space. Through fascinating facts, quotes, checklists, original drawings, and photos taken both in space and on Earth, it also tells how the astronauts prepared for their historic journey, what they brought with them, and what they left behind.

The Music of Silence: A Memoir


Andrea Bocelli - 1999
    Born among the vineyards of Tuscany, Bocelli was still an infant when he developed glaucoma. Music filtering into his room soothed the unsettled child. By the age of twelve he was completely blind, but his passion for music brought light back into his life.Here Bocelli reveals the anguish of his blindness and the transcendent experience of singing. He writes about his loving parents, who nurtured his musical interests, the challenges of learning to read music in Braille and of competing in talent shows, his struggles with law school, and his desire to turn an avocation into a way of life. He describes falling in love and singing in piano bars until his big break in 1992, when a stunned Pavarotti heard him sing "Miserere." The international acclaim and success that have followed Bocelli ever since have done nothing to dull his sense of gratitude and wonder about the world. No classical music fan can afford to be without this engaging and humble memoir of a fascinating and triumphant star.

Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent


Simon Njami - 1999
    It features more than 80 artists from nearly 30 countries, well representing the geographic diversity of Africa--from Egypt and Morocco to South Africa. Both well-known artists, who are already established in the international scene, as well as new, emerging talents are included. In an attempt to do justice to the complexity of current artist production, this survey covers film, documentary photography, fashion, music and literature, in addition to the fine arts. Experts in the field comment on the different artistic positions represented and their sources of inspiration. Rather than relying on the traditional categories of postcolonial discourse, this publication concentrates on the "fact of the present" the artworks are seen as an expression of the direct influence of the present on the artist. An illustrated dictionary on the important aspects of African art and culture completes this fascinating study.

The Gullah People and Their African Heritage


William S. Pollitzer - 1999
    Isolated off the South Carolina-Georgia coast for nearly three centuries, the native black population of the Sea Islands has developed a vibrant way of life that remains, in many ways, as African as it is American. This landmark volume tells a multifaceted story of this venerable society, emphasizing its roots in Africa, its unique imprint on America, and current threats to its survival.With a keen sense of the limits to establishing origins and tracing adaptations, William S. Pollitzer discusses such aspects of Gullah history and culture as language, religion, family and social relationships, music, folklore, trades and skills, and arts and crafts. Readers will learn of the indigo- and rice-growing skills that slaves taught to their masters, the echoes of an African past that are woven into baskets and stitched into quilts, the forms and phrasings that identify Gullah speech, and much more. Pollitzer also presents a wealth of data on blood composition, bone structure, disease, and other biological factors. This research not only underscores ongoing health challenges to the Gullah people but also helps to highlight their complex ties to various African peoples.Drawing on fields from archaeology and anthropology to linguistics and medicine, The Gullah People and Their African Heritage celebrates a remarkable people and calls on us to help protect their irreplaceable culture.

The Gate in the Wall


Ellen Howard - 1999
    Although it is a better existence than her strenuous job in the English silk mill, she feels guilty over the sister she left behind. Authentic details make this an engaging story--one that reveals the hardships of the mid-1800s when life for the poor in England was unrelentingly cruel. It is also a liberating tale as Emma draws on her inner strength to find her true calling.

The Vietnam War


History Collection - 1999
    FallDiem Defeats His Own Best TroopsBy Stanley KarnowA "Very Real War" in Vietnam and the Deep U.S. CommitmentBy Homer BigartThe Tonkin Gulf IncidentFrom The Pentagon PapersSpeechesBy President Lyndon Johnson and Ho Chi MinhFrom If I Die in a Combat ZoneBy Tim O’BrienDeath in the Ia Drang ValleyBy Specialist 4/CJack P. SmithA Journalist Discovers a New Kind of WarBy Michael HerrAfrican Americans in VietnamBy Thomas A. JohnsonFrom A Piece of My HeartBy Keith WalkerLetters HomeEdited by Bernard EdelmanPoetryBy Bruce Weigl, W. D. Ehrhart, and Yusef KomunyakaaJoining the Viet CongBy Susan SheehanPolitical ConflictBy Don MoserWar for a Viet CongBy Truong Nhu TangFrom One Very Hot DayBy David HalberstamA Civilian’s TaleBy Le Ly HayslipResisting the DraftTwo statements against the draft used by young men as protests and pledges.Two PoemsBy Barbara Beidler and Huy CanThe Whole World Was WatchingBy Lance MorrowFrom Born on the Fourth of JulyBy Ron KovicSongs of the WarBy Barry Sadler and Robin Moore, Country Joe McDonald, and Creedence Clearwater RevivalNot a Dove, But No Longer a HawkBy Neil SheehanFrom America’s Longest Warby George C. Herring"We Are Mired in Stalemate . . ."By Walter CronkiteMy Lai MassacreBy Seymour HershFrom BloodsBy Wallace TerryThe Paris AccordsBy Flora LewisThe Fall of SaigonBy Van Tien DungFrom In CountryBy Bobbie Ann MasonCan Vietnam Forget?By Kevin Whitelaw