Best of
Social-Issues

2010

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness


Michelle Alexander - 2010
    His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power


Danielle L. McGuire - 2010
    Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of who Rosa Parks was and what really lay beneath the 1955 boycott is far different from anything previously written. In this important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer—Rosa Parks—to Abbeville. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that exposed a ritualized history of sexual assault against black women and added fire to the growing call for change.

Mummy Told Me Not to Tell


Cathy Glass - 2010
    As the details of his short life emerge, it becomes clear that to help him, Cathy will face her biggest challenge yet. Reece is the last of six siblings to be fostered. Having been in care for four months his aggressive and disruptive behavior has seen him passed from carer to carer. Although only 7, he has been excluded from school, and bites people so often that his mother calls him "Sharky." Cathy wants to find the answers for Reece's distressing behavior, but he has been sworn to secrecy by his mother, and will not tell them anything. As the social worker prepares for the final hearing, he finds five different files on Reece's family, and is incredulous that he had not been removed from them as a baby. When the darkest of family secrets is revealed to Cathy, Reece's behavior suddenly starts to make sense, and together they can begin to rebuild his life.

Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line


Abby Johnson - 2010
    That simple act became a national news story because Abby was the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas who, after participating in her first actual abortion procedure, walked across the road to join the Coalition for Life. "Unplanned" is a heartstopping personal drama of life-and-death encounters, a courtroom battle, and spiritual transformation that speaks hope and compassion into the political controversy that surrounds this issue. Telling Abby’s story from both sides of the abortion clinic property line, this book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the life versus rights debate and helping women who face crisis pregnancies.

Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just


Timothy J. Keller - 2010
    Isn't it full of regressive views? Didn't it condone slavery? Why look to the Bible for guidance on how to have a more just society? But Timothy Keller sees it another way. In Generous Justice, Keller explores a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace: a generous, gracious justice. Here is a book for believers who find the Bible a trustworthy guide as well as those who suspect that Christianity is a regressive influence in the world.Keller's church, founded in the eighties with fewer than one hundred congregants, is now exponentially larger. More than five thousand people regularly attend Sunday services, and another twenty-five thousand download Keller's sermons each week. A recent profile in New York magazine described his typical sermon as "a mix of biblical scholarship, pop culture, and whatever might have caught his eye in The New York Review of Books or on Salon.com that week." In short, Timothy Keller speaks a language that many thousands of people yearn to comprehend. In Generous Justice, he offers them a new understanding of modern justice and human rights.

Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking


Lydia Cacho - 2010
    The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, willfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reporting, the celebrated journalist Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, to expose the trade's hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism.This is an underground economy in which a sex slave can be bought for the price of a gun, but Cacho's powerful first-person interviews with mafiosi, pimps, prostitutes, and those who managed to escape from captivity makes it impossible to ignore the terrible human cost of this lucrative exchange.Shocking and sobering, Slavery Inc, is an exceptional book, both for the colossal scope of its enquiry, and for the tenacious bravery with which Cacho pursues the truth.

The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class


Bernie Sanders - 2010
    It turned out to be a very long speech, lasting over eight & a half hours. It hit a nerve. Millions followed the speech online until the traffic crashed the Senate server. A huge, positive grassroots response tied up the phones in the senator's offices in Vermont & Washington. Pres. Obama reportedly held an impromptu press conference with former Pres. Clinton to deflect media attention away from Sanders' speech. Editorials & news coverage appeared throughout the world. In his speech, Sanders blasted the agreement that President Obama struck with Republicans, which extended the Bush tax cuts for millionaires & billionaires, lowered estate tax rates for the very, very rich, & set a terrible precedent by establishing a "payroll tax holiday" diverting revenue away from the Social Security Trust Fund, threatening the fund's very future. But the speech was more than a critique of a particular piece of legislation. It was a dissection of the collapse of the American middle class & a well-researched attack on corporate greed & on public policy which, over the last several decades, has led to a huge growth in millionaires even as the US has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. It was a plea for a fundamental change in national priorities, for government policy that reflects the needs of working families, not just the wealthy & their lobbyists. Finally, Sanders' speech--published here in its entirety with a new introduction by the senator--is a call for action. It's a passionate statement informing us that the only people who will save the middle class of this country is the middle class itself, but only if it's informed, organized & prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests dominating Washington. Sen. Sanders is the longest-serving Independent in the history of the US Congress. He's represented Vermont in the Senate for four years & in the House for sixteen years. He served four terms as Mayor of Burlington, VT, during which time the city was recognized as one of the most livable cities in America.

Bitter Frost Omnibus 1: Books 1-4


Kailin Gow - 2010
    In her dreams, he was always there the breathtakingly handsome but dangerous Winter Prince, Kian, who is her intended. When Breena turns sixteen, she begins seeing fairies and other creatures mortals don t see. Her best friend Logan, suddenly acts very protective. Then she sees Kian, who seems intent on finding her and carrying her off to Feyland. That's fine and all, but for the fact that humans rarely survive a trip to Feyland, a kiss from a fairy generally means death to the human unless that human has fairy blood in them or is very strong, and although Kian seemed to be her intended, he seems to hate her and wants her dead. This edgy tale about beautiful and dangerous fairies, based on Dutch lore, will leave you breathless... This Omnibus Contains the first 4 Full Books of the Bitter Frost Series: Bitter Frost Forever Frost Silver Frost Frost Kisses An Epic Fantasy

What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth


Wendell Berry - 2010
    There is perhaps no more demanding or important critique available to contemporary citizens than Berry’s writings — just as there is no vocabulary more given to obfuscation than that of economics as practiced by professionals and academics. Berry has called upon us to return to the basics. He has traced how the clarity of our economic approach has eroded over time, as the financial asylum was overtaken by the inmates, and citizens were turned from consumers — entertained and distracted — to victims, threatened by a future of despair and disillusion.For this collection, Berry offers essays from over the last 25 years, alongside new essays about the recent economic collapse, including “Money Versus Goods” and “Faustian Economics,” treatises of great alarm and courage. He offers advice and perspective that should be heeded by all concerned as our society attempts to steer from its present chaos and recession to a future of hope and opportunity. With urgency and clarity, Berry asks us to look toward a true sustainable commonwealth, grounded in realistic Jeffersonian principles applied to our present day.

Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life


Margaret Price - 2010
    We do not know how to abandon the myth of the 'pure (ivory) tower that props up and is propped up by ableist ideology.' . . . Mad at School is thoroughly researched and pathbreaking. . . . The author's presentation of her own experience with mental illness is woven throughout the text with candor and eloquence."---Linda Ware, State University of New York at GeneseoMad at School explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in the setting of U.S. higher education. Much of the research and teaching within disability studies assumes a disabled body but a rational and energetic (an "agile") mind. In Mad at School, scholar and disabilities activist Margaret Price asks: How might our education practices change if we understood disability to incorporate the disabled mind?Mental disability (more often called "mental illness") is a topic of fast-growing interest in all spheres of American culture, including popular, governmental, aesthetic, and academic. Mad at School is a close study of the ways that mental disabilities impact academic culture. Investigating spaces including classrooms, faculty meeting rooms, and job searches, Price challenges her readers to reconsider long-held values of academic life, including productivity, participation, security, and independence. Ultimately, she argues that academic discourse both produces and is produced by a tacitly privileged "able mind," and that U.S. higher education would benefit from practices that create a more accessible academic world.Mad at School is the first book to use a disability-studies perspective to focus on the ways that mental disabilities impact academic culture at institutions of higher education. Individual chapters examine the language used to denote mental disability; the role of "participation" and "presence" in student learning; the role of "collegiality" in faculty work; the controversy over "security" and free speech that has arisen in the wake of recent school shootings; and the marginalized status of independent scholars with mental disabilities. Margaret Price is Associate Professor of English at Spelman College.

The 100 Best African American Poems


Nikki Giovanni - 2010
    Out of necessity, Giovanni admits she cheats a little, selecting a larger, less round number.The result is this startlingly vibrant collection that spans from historic to modern, from structured to freeform, and reflects the rich roots and visionary future of African American verse. These magnetic poems are an exciting mix of most-loved classics and daring new writing. From Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes to Tupac Shakur, Natasha Trethewey, and many others, the voice of a culture comes through in this collection, one that is as talented, diverse, and varied as its people.African American poems are like all other poems: beautiful, loving, provocative, thoughtful, and all those other adjectives I can think of. "Poems know no boundaries." They, like all Earth citizens, were born in some country, grew up on some culture, then in their blooming became citizens of the Universe. "Poems fly from heart to heart," head to head, to whisper a dream, to share a condolence, to congratulate, and to vow forever. The poems are true. They are translated and they are celebrated. They are sung, they are recited, they are "delightful." They are neglected. They are forgotten. They are put away. Even in their fallow periods they sprout images. And fight to be revived. And spring back to life with a bit of sunshine and caring. -Nikki Giovanni"Read" Gwendolyn Brooks Kwame Alexander Tupac Shakur Langston Hughes Mari Evans Kevin Young Asha Bandele Amiri Baraka"Hear" Ruby Dee Novella Nelson Nikki Giovanni Elizabeth Alexander Marilyn Nelson Sonia Sanchez"And many, many, more"Nikki Giovanni is an award-winning poet, writer, and activist. She is the author of more than two dozen books for adults and children, including "Bicycles," "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea," "Racism 101," "Blues: For All the Changes," and "Love Poems." Her children's book-plus-audio compilation "Hip Hop Speaks to Children "was awarded the NAACP Image Award. Her children's book "Rosa," a picture-book retelling of the Rosa Parks story, was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. Both books were "New York Times "bestsellers. Nikki is a Grammy nominee for her spoken-word album "The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection "and has been nominated for the National Book Award. She has been voted Woman of the Year by "Essence," "Mademoiselle," and "Ladies' Home Journal." She is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, where she teaches writing and literature.

Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans


Wendell Potter - 2010
    This former senior VP of CIGNA explained how health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and how they skew political debate with multibillion-dollar PR campaigns designed to spread disinformation.Potter had walked away from a six-figure salary and two decades as an insurance executive because he could no longer abide the routine practices of an industry where the needs of sick and suffering Americans take a backseat to the bottom line. The last straw: when he visited a rural health clinic and saw hundreds of people standing in line in the rain to receive treatment in stalls built for livestock.In Deadly Spin, Potter takes readers behind the scenes to show how a huge chunk of our absurd healthcare spending actually bankrolls a propaganda campaign and lobbying effort focused on protecting one thing: profits. Whatever the fate of the current health care legislation, it makes no attempt to change that fundamental problem. Potter shows how relentless PR assaults play an insidious role in our political process anywhere that corporate profits are at stake-from climate change to defense policy. Deadly Spin tells us why-and how-we must fight back.

Journey to the Common Good


Walter Brueggemann - 2010
    Yet in spite of these great challenges, Brueggemann calls us to journey together to the common good through neighborliness, covenanting, and reconstruction. Such a concept may seem overwhelming, but writing with his usual theological acumen and social awareness Brueggemann distills this challenge to its most basic issues: where is the church going? What is its role in contemporary society? What lessons does it have to offer a world enmeshed in such turbulent times? The answer is the same answer God gave to the Israelites thousands of years ago: love your neighbor and work for the common good. Brueggemann considers biblical texts as examples of the journey now required of the faithful if they wish to move from isolation and distrust to a practice of neighborliness, as an invitation to a radical choice for life or for death, and as a reliable script for overcoming contemporary problems of loss and restoration in a failed urban economy.

The Church Awakening: An Urgent Call for Renewal


Charles R. Swindoll - 2010
    He reveals the problems inherent in the entertainment-based postmodern church and shows how a return to biblical teaching will restore its strength and impact. Now being replaced by a feel-good message instead of what Christians need to know to stand strong in a world that's lost its way--Swindoll exposes the problems of--and solutions for--the postmodern evangelical church. Just as he opened readers' eyes with his bold statements in The Grace Awakening, now he offers a straightforward volume revealing how to reestablish a life-altering church with Christ as Lord and Master. Illuminating and empowering, THE CHURCH AWAKENING will ignite a revolution in the way Christians "do church" for years to come.

The First Thing and the Last


Allan G. Johnson - 2010
    Subject of an author interview on National Public Radio's Here and Now.In the middle of a horrific night, Katherine Stuart barely escapes being murdered by her abusive husband in the kitchen of their suburban Boston home. In the aftermath of utter loss and devastation, Katherine is sought out by Lucy Dudley, an elderly woman living on a family farm in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, who reads about Katherine in the news and is drawn to her by a closely guarded history of her own. Katherine, unable to bear the accusing eyes of her family, accepts Lucy’s invitation to come to Vermont, setting in motion a deepening relationship between the two women that frames a universal struggle to heal and reclaim what severe trauma takes from people’s lives. The First Thing and the Last is an inspiring, heartbreaking story of the resilience of the human spirit."This beautiful, brave, and liberating book is a triumph of the spirit. Engrossing and exquisitely written, it shines with rare courage and a tender, life-saving wisdom that comes only through facing the darkness we suffer or inflict on others. It is a marvelous story whose characters I am glad to have in my life." Joanna Macy Author, World as Lover, World as Self "Allan Johnson's illumination of the mind of a woman recovering from horrific abuse and loss is miraculous, carried by a story that is both gripping and inspiring. It is a stunning achievement." Jean Kilbourne Creator of the award-winning film series, Killing Us Softly "Allan Johnson's writing is moving, insightful, and deeply human. He takes us inside painful lives with courageous truth-telling, yet at the same time takes us inside of characters who can heal and thrive. This is a novel that rings true, and that we need urgently to take into our hearts." Lundy Bancroft Author, Why Does He Do That? "The First Thing and the Last portrays an extraordinary woman who is brutalized - but the abuse becomes her sorrow and not her identity in Allan Johnson's complex, masterful and exacting understanding of such a woman's life. His ability and willingness to see so deeply, to portray a woman and her story so profoundly, takes our breath away. Welcome this extraordinary and most original novelist to the ranks of American literature." Deena Metzger Poet, novelist, and author of Writing For Your Life"Read this book. Savor it. Allow it to work on your spirit and body and mind as only a well-told tale of high morality and beauty can. Share this book with those you love and those you don’t; suggest it to everyone and share it widely. This is the kind of book that culture depends on, and by culture I mean a shared sense of responsibility, and I mean shared community: civilization in the truest sense of the word. To truly be human and to truly be civilized, our public life is in desperate need of more works of art like this one. Share this book and, in whatever way possible, encourage the publication of more like it.” Charles Dickey Leftunder Books"The First Thing and the Last is a must-read for anyone working to end domestic and sexual violence and for those interested in educating themselves about the issue. Allan Johnson has deftly woven the issues of intimate-partner violence, trauma, and healing into a compelling novel that challenges the reader to question their own beliefs and assumptions about family violence. The First Thing and the Last firmly establishes Johnson as ally in the fight to end violence against women.” Erika Tindill, Esq.Executive Director of the Connecticut Coalition against Domestic Violence

The Sojourner's Passport A Black Woman's Guide To Having The Life And Love You Deserve


Khadija Nassif - 2010
     You can change self-limiting attitudes and open up new opportunities for happiness. You can become a sojourner. A sojourner is a woman who is free to choose her own path and go wherever her dreams take her. Are you ready to create the life you truly want? The Sojourner’s Passport shares ideas that have helped thousands of women overcome self-defeating beliefs and self-imposed barriers to personal fulfillment.

All Labor Has Dignity


Martin Luther King Jr. - 2010
    King’s speeches on labor rights and economic justice Covering all the civil rights movement highlights--Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, and Memphis--award-winning historian Michael K. Honey introduces and traces Dr. King's dream of economic equality. Gathered in one volume for the first time, the majority of these speeches will be new to most readers. The collection begins with King's lectures to unions in the 1960s and includes his addresses made during his Poor People's Campaign, culminating with his momentous "Mountaintop" speech, delivered in support of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis. Unprecedented and timely, "All Labor Has Dignity" will more fully restore our understanding of King's lasting vision of economic justice, bringing his demand for equality right into the present.

Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission


Christopher L. Heuertz - 2010
    But sometimes Christians inadvertently marginalize and objectify the very ones they most want to serve. Chris Heuertz, international director of Word Made Flesh, and theologian and ethicist Christine Pohl show how friendship is a Christian vocation that can bring reconciliation and healing to our broken world. They contend that unlikely friendships are at the center of an alternative paradigm for mission, where people are not objectified as potential converts but encountered in a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity. When we befriend those on the margins of society by practicing hospitality and welcome, we create communities where righteousness and justice can be lived out. Heuertz and Pohl's reflections offer fresh insight into Christian mission and what it means to be the church in the world today.

Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us about Spreading Social Change


Nick Cooney - 2010
    Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change brings this information to light so that non-profits, community organizers and others can make science-driven decisions in their advocacy work. The book examines more than eighty years of empirical research in areas including social psychology, communication studies, diffusion studies, network systems and social marketing, distilling the highlights into easy-to-use advice and serving as a psychology primer for anyone wanting to spread progressive social change.

Lambs of Men


Charles Dodd White - 2010
    His mother has committed suicide, dredging up old resentments between Hiram and his father, Sloane. When a gruesome act of violence stuns the insular mountain community, father and son must journey together to see justice carried out while coming to terms with a deeply troubled family history.

A Gift of Time: Continuing Your Pregnancy When Your Baby's Life Is Expected to Be Brief


Amy Kuebelbeck - 2010
    With compassion and support, A Gift of Time walks them step-by-step through this challenging and emotional experience—from the infant's life-limiting prenatal diagnosis and the decision to have the baby to coping with the pregnancy and making plans for the baby’s birth and death.A Gift of Time also offers inspiration and reassurance through the memories of numerous parents who have loved a child who did not survive. Their moving experiences are stories of grief—and of hope. Their anguish over the prenatal diagnosis turns to joy and love during the birth of their child and to gratitude and peace when reflecting on their baby’s short life.Full of practical suggestions for parents and for caregivers, A Gift of Time also features the innovative concept of perinatal hospice and palliative care. Caring and thoughtful, the book helps parents embrace the extraordinary time they will have with their child.

12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today


Gregory S. Parks - 2010
    From a Harvard law school student tackled by a security guard on the streets of Manhattan, a federal prosecutor detained while walking in his own neighborhood in Washington, DC, and a high school student in Colorado arrested for "loitering" in the subway station as he waits for the train home, to a bike rider in Austin, Texas, a professor at a Big Ten university in Iowa, and the head of the ACLU's racial profiling initiative (who was pursued by national guardsmen after arriving on the red-eye in Boston's Logan airport), here are true stories of law-abiding Americans who also happen to be black men (Publishers Weekly).Cumulatively, the effect is staggering, and will open the eyes of anyone who thinks we live in a "post-racial" or "colorblind" America."Powerful." --Jet"This is raw testimony intended to vividly capture the invasions of privacy and the assaults on dignity that always accompany unreasonable government intrusion." --Kirkus Reviews

The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance


Michael Perino - 2010
     In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history had so many financial titans been called to account before the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for nearly a year and was universally written off as dead. The Hellhound of Wall Street provides a minute-by-minute account of the ten dramatic days when Pecora turned the hearings around, cross- examining the officers of National City Bank (today's Citigroup), particularly its chairman, Charles Mitchell, one of the best known bankers of his day. Mitchell strode into the hearing room in obvious disdain for the proceedings, but he left utterly disgraced. Pecora's rigorous questioning revealed that City Bank was guilty of shocking financial abuses, from selling worthless bonds to manipulating its stock price. Most offensive of all was the excessive compensation and bonuses awarded to its executives for peddling shoddy securities to the American public. Pecora became an unlikely hero to a beleaguered nation. The man whom the press called "the hellhound of Wall Street" was the son of a struggling factory worker. Precocious and determined, he became one of New York's few Italian American lawyers at a time when Italians were frequently stereotyped as anarchic criminals. The image of an immigrant lawyer challenging a blue-blooded Wall Street tycoon was just one more sign that a fundamental shift was taking place in America. By creating the sensational headlines needed to galvanize public opinion for reform, the Pecora hearings spurred Congress to take unprecedented steps to rein in the freewheeling banking industry and led directly to the New Deal's landmark economic reforms. A gripping courtroom drama with remarkable contemporary relevance, The Hellhound of Wall Street brings to life a crucial turning point in American financial history.

Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class


Jefferson R. Cowie - 2010
    Jefferson Cowie’s edgy and incisive book—part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American musical, film, and TV lore—makes new sense of the 1970s as a crucial and poorly understood transition from New Deal America (with its large, optimistic middle class) to the widening economic inequalities, poverty, and dampened expectations of the 1980s and into the present.Stayin’ Alive takes us from the factory floors of Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Detroit, to the Washington of Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Cowie also connects politics to culture, showing how the big screen and the jukebox can help us understand how America turned away from the radicalism of the 1960s and toward the patriotic promise of Ronald Reagan. Cowie makes unexpected connections between the secrets of the Nixon White House and the failings of George McGovern campaign; radicalism and the blue-collar backlash; the earthy twang of Merle Haggard’s country music and the falsetto highs of Saturday Night Fever. Like Jeff Perlstein’s acclaimed Nixonland, Stayin’ Alive moves beyond conventional understandings of the period and brilliantly plumbs it for insights into our current way of life.

Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam


Brian Sussman - 2010
    Climategate is intended for anyone who has ever expressed skepticism about the clamorous environmentalist claims that the Earth is in peril because of mankind's appetite for carbon-based fuels.By tracing the origins of the current climate scare, Sussman guides the reader from the diabolical minds of Marx and Engles in the 1800s, to the global governance machinations of the United Nations today. Climategate is a call to action, warning Americans that their future is being undermined by a phony pseudo-science aimed at altering and dominating every aspect of life in the United States and the world.

The Big Picture: What You Need to Succeed! Bk 3


Jerry Craft - 2010
    

Arab & Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, & Belonging


Rabab Abdulhadi - 2010
    Contributors hail from multiple geographical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist issues and highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces: within families and communities; in anticolonial and antiracist struggles; in debates over spirituality and the divine; within radical, feminist, and queer spaces; in academia and on the street; and between each other.Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the restoration of Arab Jews to Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belonging when the country in which they live wages wars in the lands of their ancestors. Arab and Arab American Feminisms opens up new possibilities for placing grounded Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives at the center of gender studies, Middle East studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.

Los Angeles in Maps


Glen Creason - 2010
    Los Angeles inhabits a place of the mind as much as it does a physical geographic space. A land of palm trees and movie stars, sunshine and glamour, the city exists in the imagination as a paradise; of course, the reality is much bigger than this. Through seventy reproductions of seminal and historic documents, Los Angeles in Maps presents the evolution of this almost mythical place. Maps featured include historic Spanish explorers’ charts from as early as 1791, as well as more recent topographic surveys, tourist guides, real estate maps, bird’s-eye views, and more. Like the course of the Los Angeles River, the book winds through essential terrain: the discovery of oil, the rise of Hollywood, the streetcar system, Los Angeles Harbor, earthquakes, sprawl, and splendor.

Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City


Antero Pietila - 2010
    The Federal Housing Administration continued discriminatory housing policies even into the 1960s, long after civil rights legislation. This all-American tale is told through the prism of Baltimore, from its early suburbanization in the 1880s to the consequences of white flight after World War II, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The events are real, and so are the heroes and villains. Mr. Pietila's narrative centers on the human side of residential real estate practices, whose discriminatory tools were the same everywhere: restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting, predatory lending.

Took the Children Away


Archie Roach - 2010
    The song was awarded two ARIA Awards, as well as an international Human Rights Achievement Award, the first time this had been awarded to a songwriter because of a song. The album it came from featured in Rolling Stone magazine's Top 100 Albums for 1992. From the lyrics of this iconic song a very special book for children of all ages has been created. Featuring he heart wrenching lyrics of Archie Roach and the classic artwork of his late wife and soul-mate Ruby Hunter, this book is destined to become a masterpiece. Renowned Queensland artist, Peter Hudson has adorned the book with his stunning lands capes of South West Victoria - Archie's traditional lands.

Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change


Henry Bernstein - 2010
    They impact various groups and classes of people differently. A high food price may benefit some rich peasants who produce and sell food surplus, but it may disadvantage landless rural laborers. A project on irrigation may benefit those who own the land, but not the landless tenants. Nowadays, official documents by governments and development agencies tend to lump different groups of people into vague categories like rural poor . This might be useful in some cases, but in large part this thinking can harm the poorest of the poor. Using Marx s theory of capitalism, "Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change" argues that class dynamics should be the starting point of any analysis of agrarian change. It provides an accessible introduction to agrarian political economy while showing clearly how the argument for bringing class back in provides an alternative to inherited conceptions of the agrarian question. It illustrates what is at stake in different ways of thinking about class dynamics and the effects of agrarian change in today s globalized world.

Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride


Frank X Walker - 2010
    The son of a slave, Murphy’s legendary career riveted the attention of the nation and established him as one of the greatest jockeys of all time. Walker’s poetry breathes life into the voices of Murphy and his family, the neglected history of African Americans in thoroughbred racing, and racial tensions in the post-Civil War South.Published in 2010 by Old Cove Press

What's with Paul and Women?


Jon Zens - 2010
    In What's With Paul & Women? Jon Zens exposes the fallacies of this interpretation, and opens up the meaning of 1 Timothy 2:9-15 using insights gleaned from the Artemis-saturated Ephesian culture where Timothy was left to stand against false teaching (1:3). Going beyond 1 Timothy 2, this book covers the major issues in gender inequality with three Appendices: one on the Ephesian social world in which 1 Timothy was written, another on 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 and an extensive review of John Piper's What's the Difference? Manhood & Womanhood Defined According to the Bible. If 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 have puzzled you, What's With Paul & Women? will help in your quest to discern the mind of the Lord as the gender debate continues.

Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation


Derald Wing Sue - 2010
    This book insightfully looks at the various kinds of microaggressions and their psychological effects on both perpetrators and their targets. Thought provoking and timely, Dr. Sue suggests realistic and optimistic guidance for combating--and ending--microaggressions in our society.Praise for Microaggressions in Everyday Life:"In a very constructive way, Dr. Sue provides time-tested psychological suggestions to make our society free of microaggressions. It is a brilliant resource and ideal teaching tool for all those who wish to alter the forces that promote pain for people." --Melba J. T. Vasquez, PhD, ABPPPresident, American Psychological Association"Microaggressions in Everyday Life offers an insightful, scholarly, and thought-provoking analysis of the existence of subtle, often unintentional biases, and their profound impact on members of traditionally disadvantaged groups. The concept of microaggressions is one of the most important developments in the study of intergroup relations over the past decade, and this volume is the definitive source on the topic." --John F. Dovidio, PhD Professor of Psychology, Yale University"Derald Wing Sue has written a must-read book for anyone who deals with diversity at any level. Microaggressions in Everyday Life will bring great rewards in understanding and awareness along with practical guides to put them to good use." --James M. Jones, PhD Professor of Psychology and Director of Black American Studies, University of Delaware"This is a major contribution to the multicultural discourse and to understanding the myriad ways that discrimination can be represented and its insidious effects. Accessible and well documented, it is a pleasure to read." --Beverly Greene, PhD, ABPP Diplomate in Clinical Psychology and Professor of Psychology, St. John's University

Meditations on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings


James "Yaki" Sayles - 2010
    This exercise is also about us, and about some of the things that We need to understand and to change in ourselves and our world."A a�aJames Yaki Sayles One of those who eagerly picked up Fanon in the 60s, who carried out armed expropriations and violence against white settlers, Sayles reveals how, behind the image of Fanon as race thinker, there is an underlying reality of antiracist communist thought.

Resistance to Tyranny: A Primer


Joseph P. Martino - 2010
    It is intended to answer questions the reader might not think of asking, and to direct the reader to sources of more detailed information. Topics covered include justifying revolt, conditions for success, possible government responses, strategy & tactics, the overt and covert organizations, weapons, equipment, survival skills, land navigation, camouflage, boobytraps, weapons caching, training, secure camps, safe houses, communications, encryption & codes, gaining public support, sniping, sabotage, raids, intelligence and counter-intelligence. It is intended for scholarly information purposes only.

Secret Agent Father


Laura Scott - 2010
    The four-year-old is his child, and--like father, like son--little Cody has landed himself in the middle of a dangerous situation. Shelby Jacobson, Cody's aunt, tells Alex that Cody is the only one who can identify his mother's killer. So now the killer is after them both. With his newfound family in danger, Alex will do anything to keep Cody--and Cody's beautiful aunt--safely by his side.

Walking Gently on the Earth: Making Faithful Choices about Food, Energy, Shelter and More


Lisa Graham McMinn - 2010
    Tragically, though, from the Fall to today, we as humans have lived in ways that keep living things--including fellow human beings--from surviving at all, much less flourishing. But we can change that. Sociologist and author Lisa McMinn and Megan Anna Neff invite you to rediscover, through new eyes, the beauty and goodness of our earth, and to make faithful choices that will help it prosper. Each chapter uniquely begins with a prelude by Megan Anna that highlights an African perspective or practice, helping us glean the wisdom of another culture and reminding us of the interconnectedness of everything on the earth. Lisa's fluid, passionate writing then offers both the truth about the state of the earth and inspiration to get back to shalom--a peace that allows all things to thrive. Covering such topics asfarming practicesslave laborconsumer powerclimate changealternative energy sourcesand family sizeLisa clearly demonstrates the effects of our choices and makes it easy for us to choose with discernment, with lists of resources and organizations at the end of each chapter. Infused throughout is a deep celebration of the earth God made and declared "excellent in every way" (Genesis 1:31). Come and read. Then go and live with intention, using the power of your choices to walk gently on an earth that is beautiful and broken, that it might come to flourish once again.

A History of the Yoruba People


Stephen Adebanji Akintoye - 2010
    With a population of nearly 40 million spread across Western Africa - and diaspora communities in Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America - Yoruba are one of the most researched groups emanating from Africa. Yet, to date, very few have grappled fully with the historical foundations and development of this group which has contributed to shaping the way African communities are analyzed from prehistoric to modern times. This commendable book deploys four decades of historiography research with current interpretations and analyses to present the most complete and authoritative volume to date. This exceptionally lucid account gathers and imparts a wealth of research and discourses on Yoruba studies for a wider group of readership than ever before.

Big Oil And Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families and Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics and Terror Network


Dean Henderson - 2010
    "...an extraordinary expose of the powers and events that are exacting a heavy toll on us, the people". Nexus New Times Magazine

Reading is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women's Prisons


Megan Sweeney - 2010
    Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures.

Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson


Blair L.M. Kelley - 2010
    Right to Ride chronicles the litigation and local organizing against segregated rails that led to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 and the streetcar boycott movement waged in twenty-five southern cities from 1900 to 1907. Kelley tells the stories of the brave but little-known men and women who faced down the violence of lynching and urban race riots to contest segregation.Focusing on three key cities--New Orleans, Richmond, and Savannah--Kelley explores the community organizations that bound protestors together and the divisions of class, gender, and ambition that sometimes drove them apart. The book forces a reassessment of the timelines of the black freedom struggle, revealing that a period once dismissed as the age of accommodation should in fact be characterized as part of a history of protest and resistance.

The Lunch Thief


Anne C. Bromley - 2010
    Once a week she tucks in a slice of herspecial lemon pound cake. Rafael saw Kevin, a new kid in his class, sneakhis lunch bag from underneath his desk and tuck it in his backpack. Buthow can he do something about the theft without picking a fight? Inspiredby his mother's advice to “Use your mouth before your fists,” Rafael bideshis time, but other kids' lunches are disappearing,too. On an errandwith his mom, Rafael sees Kevin carrying a bundle of laundry into amotel room, and his mom tells him Kevin's family might be one ofthe families who lost their homes in the recent wildfires. Rafaelrethinks his anger. The next day, instead of accusing Kevin, Rafaelinvites him to share his lunch, letting Kevin know he's been caught, butoffering friendship as well as lunch.

The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism


Dan BergerScott Rutherford - 2010
    The Hidden 1970s explores the distinctiveness of those years, a time when radicals tried to change the world as the world changed around them.This powerful collection is a compelling assessment of left-wing social movements in a period many have described as dominated by conservatism or confusion. Scholars examine critical and largely buried legacies of the 1970s. The decade of Nixon's fall and Reagan's rise also saw widespread indigenous militancy, prisoner uprisings, transnational campaigns for self-determination, pacifism, and queer theories of play as political action. Contributors focus on diverse topics, including the internationalization of Black Power and Native sovereignty, organizing for Puerto Rican independence among Latinos and whites, and women's self-defense. Essays and ideas trace the roots of struggles from the 1960s through the 1970s, providing fascinating insight into the myriad ways that radical social movements shaped American political culture in the 1970s and the many ways they continue to do so today.

In Your Ear: Selected Writings from Oakland Word


Kenji C. LiuVickie Vértiz - 2010
    Featuring a range of voices from the workshops, there are myriad themes in this collection--childhood, life transitions, immigration, injustice, romance, bereavement, war legacies, spirituality, and the simple joys of life. Playful, serious, contemplative, and humorous, these stories give glimpses of Oakland you won't find anywhere else. Oakland Word's mission is to provoke dialogue and encourage creativity, literacy, and self-sufficiency by providing opportunities for underrepresented youth and adults to write, publish and perform works about their lives.

Twelve Days in May


Jerald W. Berry - 2010
    "Jerry" Berry served in Vietnam with the 3rd Battalion, 506thAirborne Infantry (Paratrooper), 101st Airborne Division in 1967- 68. Originallyassigned as a rifleman, he became the battalion Public Information Officer(PIO), combat photographer/reporter, shortly into his tour.Berry retired from his thirty-year career as Staff Wildlife Biologist with theU.S. Forest Service in 1997. As historian for the 3-506th, he maintains a website(currahee.org) for his fellow Currahees. He currently resides in Libby,Montana with his wife, Donna.Other books by Berry include The Stand Alone Battalion, PsychologicalWarfare Leaflets of the Vietnam War, and My Gift to You.

Strivings of the Negro People (From The Atlantic Archives)


W.E.B. Du Bois - 2010
    from Harvard. He was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to a free black woman of Dutch and African ancestry. When his father deserted the family, individuals rallied to help the gifted boy get the education that was to propel him to the forefront of the American civil-rights movement. An author, historian, sociologist, and civil-rights activist, Du Bois taught history and economics at Atlanta University, helped found the NAACP, wrote or edited 36 books and published more than 100 articles, and engaged in numerous controversies. This essay was written three decades after the end of the Civil War, at a time when Du Bois was working on a sociological treatise titled “The Study of the Negro Problems,” in which he proposed that rising black crime was a result of the strain of the new freedom, coupled with a lack of jobs and education. When he died, at age 95, Du Bois was celebrated by the African American community for his lifelong search for solutions to racism.The author begins this essay with what he calls “the unasked question” he continually encountered: “How does it feel to be a problem?” Meaning: how does it feel to be black in America after the end of the Civil War? He describes his unique personal history growing up in a small New England community, then attempts to explain, to the largely white, educated readers of The Atlantic Monthly, how it feels to be a victim of “that vast despair” called prejudice. As a black American, he says, one is “always looking at oneself through the eyes of others.” Du Bois dares to describe the corroding influence of racial hatred on white Americans, as well as black. The “Negro problem is a test of the great republic,” he writes. He spent his long life searching for solutions to America’s racial dilemma. In this essay, written at the beginning of a career that would witness Brown v. Board of Education and end on the day before Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, Du Bois begins to ponder those solutions.

The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present (Modern Library Chronicles)


Christine Stansell - 2010
    Stansell's comprehensive history tracks major and minor moments that highlight promise both realized and unmet. Beginning with the release of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and concluding with the connection of modern American feminism to global human rights, Stansell constructs a sweeping narrative that puts the accomplishments of specific players, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the oft-overlooked Maria Stewart, into a larger historical context, and also chronicles leaders, organizations, and acts of protest that defined feminism in the 20th century. She examines the partnership between abolition and suffrage that led to respective political victories and indentifies the missteps (like an early partnership with white supremacists) that compromised progress, creating a truly balanced history for future generations. The volume's breadth means some details and individuals are lost, but in plotting the points of a long overdue narrative, Stansell fulfills her promise.

Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity


Tim Wise - 2010
    I highly, highly, highly recommend it." --Tavis SmileyIn this powerful follow-up to Between Barack and a Hard Place, Tim Wise argues against “colorblindness” and for a deeper color-consciousness in both public and private practice. We can only begin to move toward authentic social and economic equity through what Wise calls "illuminated individualism"—acknowledging the diverse identities that have shaped our perceptions, and the role that race continues to play in the maintenance of disparities between whites and people of color in the United States today. This is the first book to discuss the pitfalls of “colorblindness” in the Obama era.

Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau


Brian Walker - 2010
    Best known for his wry and incisive takes on American life and politics, Garry Trudeau is among the world’s most widely read cartoonists. Trudeau began shaping Doonesbury as an undergraduate contributor to the Yale Daily News in 1968.Today, the strip is syndicated to a daily readership of nearly 100 million.Trudeau’s work has been anthologized before, but this is the first book to assess the art of the comic strip and the ways that Trudeau’s iconic style has evolved over the past four decades. Brian Walker, an expert on the history of comics, sheds light on Trudeau’s early influences as well as on his creative process, from research to pencil layouts to finished artwork. In addition to revealing how Doonesbury is crafted each week, the book also examines Trudeau’s magazine illustrations, animation drawings, posters, and product designs, as well as rare and previously unpublished works. Walker’s historical text is complemented by insightful commentary by Trudeau and his collaborators, Don Carleton, George Corsillo, and David Stanford, making this book appealing not only to Doonesbury’s many fans but also to those looking for an approach to the work of a master comic strip artist.