Best of
Social-Issues

2014

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption


Bryan Stevenson - 2014
    The case exemplifies how the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching — a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.

Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do about It


Kate Harding - 2014
    Congressman Todd Akin’s “legitimate” gaffe. The alleged rape crew of Steubenville, Ohio. Sexual violence has been so prominent in recent years that the feminist term “rape culture” has finally entered the mainstream. But what, exactly, is it? And how do we change it? In Asking for It, Kate Harding answers those questions in the same blunt, bullshit-free voice that’s made her a powerhouse feminist blogger. Combining in-depth research with practical knowledge, Asking for It makes the case that twenty-first century America—where it’s estimated that out of every 100 rapes only 5 result in felony convictions—supports rapists more effectively than victims. Harding offers ideas and suggestions for addressing how we as a culture can take rape much more seriously without compromising the rights of the accused.

Agents of the Apocalypse: A Riveting Look at the Key Players of the End Times


David Jeremiah - 2014
    David Jeremiah does what no prophecy expert has done before. He explores the book of Revelation through the lens of its major players--the exiled, the martyrs, the elders, the victor, the king, the judge, the 144,000, the witnesses, the false prophet, and the beast.One by one, Dr. Jeremiah delves into their individual personalities and motives, and the role that each plays in biblical prophecy. Then he provides readers with the critical clues and information needed to recognize their presence and power in the world today.The stage is set, and the curtain is about to rise on Earth's final act. Will you be ready?Complete and unabridged.

The World of PostSecret


Frank Warren - 2014
    A ton of secrets, one postcard at a time.

Getting Life: An Innocent Man's 25-Year Journey from Prison to Peace


Michael Morton - 2014
    He lost his wife, his son, and his freedom. This is the story of how Michael Morton finally got justice—and a second chance at life.On August 13, 1986, just one day after his thirty-second birthday, Michael Morton went to work at his usual time. By the end of the day, his wife Christine had been savagely bludgeoned to death in the couple’s bed—and the Williamson County Sherriff’s office in Texas wasted no time in pinning her murder on Michael, despite an absolute lack of physical evidence. Michael was swiftly sentenced to life in prison for a crime he had not committed.He mourned his wife from a prison cell. He lost all contact with their son. Life, as he knew it, was over.It would take twenty-five years—and thousands of hours of effort on the part of Michael’s lawyers, including the team at the New York-based Innocence Project—before DNA evidence was brought to light that would ultimately set Michael free. The evidence had been collected only days after the murder—but was never investigated.Drawing on his recollections, court transcripts, and more than one thousand pages of personal journals he wrote in prison, Michael recounts the hidden police reports about an unidentified van parked near his house that were never pursued; the treasure trove of evidence, including a bandana with the killer’s DNA on it, that was never introduced in court; the call from a neighboring county reporting the attempted use of his wife’s credit card (a message that was received, recorded, and never returned by local police); and ultimately, how he battled his way through the darkness to become a free man once again.Getting Life is an extraordinary story of unfathomable tragedy, grave injustice, and the strength and courage it takes to find forgiveness.

A Million Ways Home


Dianna Dorisi Winget - 2014
    But Poppy is working on a plan to help Grandma Beth so their life together can go back to normal. But when she witnesses an armed robbery, "back to normal" slips even further out of her reach. To keep Poppy safe, the budget-strapped police devise an unusual "witness protection program," wherein Poppy will stay with Detective Brannigan's mother. Soon Poppy is feeling almost at home, even making sort-of friends with a girl named Lizzie and definitely friending Gunner, a beautiful dog with an uncertain fate. But it's still not home. So while she and Lizzie navigate a rocky friendship and plot to save Gunner's life, Poppy also tries to figure out a new plan to save Grandma Beth and their home, all while avoiding a dangerous robber who might be searching for her. But what if Grandma Beth can never come home and the robber is put behind bars? What will happen to Poppy then?

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights


Katha Pollitt - 2014
    Wade ruling, "abortion" is still a word that is said with outright hostility by many, despite the fact that one in three American women will have terminated at least one pregnancy by menopause. Even those who support a woman's right to an abortion often qualify their support by saying abortion is a "bad thing," an "agonizing decision," making the medical procedure so remote and radioactive that it takes it out of the world of the everyday, turning an act that is normal and necessary into something shameful and secretive. Meanwhile, with each passing day, the rights upheld by the Supreme Court are being systematically eroded by state laws designed to end abortion outright.In this urgent, controversial book, Katha Pollitt reframes abortion as a common part of a woman's reproductive life, one that should be accepted as a moral right with positive social implications. In Pro, Pollitt takes on the personhood argument, reaffirms the priority of a woman's life and health, and discusses why terminating a pregnancy can be a force for good for women, families, and society. It is time, Pollitt argues, that we reclaim the lives and the rights of women and mothers.

Arrangement in Black and White


Fred Misurella - 2014
    But their conflicts are more than racial. Margy's from Iowa, an artist, the product of an abusive mother and neglectful father. Everet's from Connecticut, a civil rights lawyer on the rise toward greater recognition, and their lives take a tense turn when he decides to run for political office just as Margy moves forward in her own career. Arrangement in Black and White captures the conflicts that give edge and interest to all meaningful love stories, yet it does so with an eye toward modern women, interracial politics, and the human inability to balance passion with social, public life. It is a powerful story for contemporary readers.

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap


Matt Taibbi - 2014
    Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world's wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends--growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration--come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime--but it's impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

The Language of Hoofbeats


Catherine Ryan Hyde - 2014
    New to a small town, Jackie and Paula envision a quiet life for their kids: a young adopted son and two teenage foster children, including the troubled Star. However, they quickly butt heads with their neighbor, Clementine, who disapproves of their lifestyle and is incensed when Star befriends her spirited horse, Comet. Haunted by past tragedy and unable to properly care for Comet, Clem nevertheless resents the bond Star soon shares with the horse. When Star disappears with Comet, the neighbors are thrown together—far too close together. But as the search for the pair wears on, both families must learn to put aside their animosity and confront the choices they’ve made and the scars they carry. Plumbing the depths of regret and forgiveness, The Language of Hoofbeats explores the strange alchemy that transforms a group of people into a family.

Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?


Philip Yancey - 2014
    But the good news isn't sounding so good these days, at least to some. More and more surveys show that people view Christians as bearers of bad news, judgment, and intolerance.In Vanishing Grace, bestselling author Philip Yancey acknowledges the problem and then explores how we can respond with both grace and truth. He offers a discerning look at what contributes to a hostility toward Christians, and identifies three groups--pilgrims, artists, and activists--who can show us a different way.With a reporter's eye and a compassionate heart, Yancey suggests practical ways in which we can live as salt and light within a society that is radically changing. What can we learn from those who shun church but consider themselves spiritual? Can the good news, once spoiled, ever sound good again?As Yancey writes, "Like a sudden thaw in the middle of winter, grace happens at unexpected moments. It stops us short, catches the breath, disarms. . . . Yet not everyone has tasted of that amazing grace, and not everyone believes in it. In a time of division and discord, grace seems in vanishing supply. Why? And what can we do about it?"In the wake of recent events--Las Vegas, Charlottesville, Charleston, Ferguson, Islamic terrorism--people both inside and outside the church are thirsty for grace. Vanishing Grace calls us to see their thirst, and ours, in a hopeful new light as we listen, love, and offer a grace that is truly good news.

A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity


Nicholas D. Kristof - 2014
    Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn brought to light struggles faced by women and girls around the globe, and showcased individuals and institu­tions working to address oppression and expand opportunity. A Path Appears is even more ambi­tious in scale: nothing less than a sweeping tap­estry of people who are making the world a better place and a guide to the ways that we can do the same—whether with a donation of $5 or $5 mil­lion, with our time, by capitalizing on our skills as individuals, or by using the resources of our businesses. With scrupulous research and on-the-ground reporting, the authors assay the art and science of giving, identify successful local and global initia­tives, and share astonishing stories from the front lines of social progress. We see the compelling, in­spiring truth of how real people have changed the world, upending the idea that one person can’t make a difference. We meet people like Dr. Gary Slutkin, who devel­oped his landmark Cure Violence program to combat inner-city conflicts in the United States by applying principles of epidemiology; Lester Strong, who left a career as a high-powered television anchor to run an organization bringing in older Americans to tu­tor students in public schools across the country; MIT development economist Esther Duflo, whose pioneering studies of aid effectiveness have revealed new truths about, among other things, the power of hope; and Jessica Posner and Kennedy Odede, who are transforming Kenya’s most notorious slum by ex­panding educational opportunities for girls. A Path Appears offers practical, results-driven advice on how best each of us can give and reveals the lasting benefits we gain in return. Kristof and WuDunn know better than most how many urgent challenges communities around the world face to­day. Here they offer a timely beacon of hope for our collective future.

Persuasive Pro Life: How to Talk about Our Culture's Toughest Issue


Trent Horn - 2014
    Either we think the subject is too impolite, or we don't want to be branded an intolerant fanatic, or we're afraid we won't represent the pro-life side well enough. With a little knowledge and a few practical and proven techniques, you can become a bold and effective advocate for life.Drawing on over a decade as a pro-life organizer, Horn cuts through the diversions of the "pro-choice" side in order to accurately frame the legal, historical, and medical issue surrounding abortion. He demonstrates with vivid personal examples from years of campus activism the importance of being charitable in all abortion discussions. We must be not just warriors for the pro-life cause, he says, but ambassadors for it.The struggle over abortion has never been hotter, and the stakes could not be higher. Read Persuasive Pro-Life today and never again be afraid to speak up for the precious and fundamental right to life.

Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better


Maya Schenwar - 2014
    Through the stories of prisoners and their families, as well as her own family's experience of her sister's incarceration, Schenwar shows how the institution that locks up 2.3 million Americans and decimates poor communities of color is shredding the ties that, if nurtured, could foster real collective safety. The destruction does not end upon exiting the prison walls: the 95 percent of prisoners who are released emerge with even fewer economic opportunities and fewer human connections on the outside than before. Locked Down, Locked Out shows how incarceration takes away the very things that might enable people to build better lives. Looking toward a future beyond imprisonment, Schenwar profiles community-based initiatives that foster antiracist, anticlassist, prohumanity approaches to justice. These programs successfully deal with problems both individual harm and larger social wrongs through connection rather than isolation, moving toward a safer future for all of us."“This book has the power to transform hearts and minds, opening us to new ways of imagining what justice can mean for individuals, families, communities, and our nation as a whole. I turned the last page feeling nothing less than inspired.”–Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow“Maya Schenwar’s stories about prisoners, their families (including her own), and the thoroughly broken punishment system are rescued from any pessimism such narratives might inspire by the author’s brilliant juxtaposition of abolitionist imaginaries and radical political practices.”–Angela Davis, author of Are Prisons Obsolete?“A tour de force! Schenwar has written a must-read, damning account of the twisted philosophy and practice of incarceration…Until society changes its approach toward its ‘offenders,’ until we leaven punishment with forgiveness, reconciliation, and restorative justice, we are all guilty as charged.”—Dennis J. Kucinich, US Congressman (1997–2013) and presidential candidate

Walking the Bridgeless Canyon: Repairing the Breach Between the Church and the LGBT Community


Kathy Baldock - 2014
    Their friendship challenged Baldocks cultural and religious beliefs about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.In Walking the Bridgeless Canyon: Repairing the Breach between the Church and the LGBT Community, Baldock uncovers the historical, cultural, medical, and political filters of discrimination through which the LGBT community is seen. With the foundation firmly established, she examines the most controversial filter of all: what the Bible says about same-sex behavior.Ten years of research, as well as relationships with thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, led to answering important questions:How did history, culture, science, and politics intertwine to create social discrimination against the gay and transgender community?When and why did the conservative Christian community turn their focus on the gay and transgender community?Should Christian fellowship be extended to gay and transgender people? Should civil marriages, or even Christian marriages, be granted to them?What is happening within the LGBT Christian movement today?Baldock carefully constructs a timeline as she untangles the details of various influences and influencers. Along the way, she shares fascinating stories and testimonies enriching the historical journey. Finally, for those who are wondering how they might enter into productive and respectful conversations about the intersection of faith and sexual orientation or gender identity, this book offers the resources and tools needed to make informed and wise, Christ-centered choices.

The Case for Reparations


Ta-Nehisi Coates - 2014
    

The Muslims are Coming!: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror


Arun Kundnani - 2014
    Another sixty officers surrounded the building on that October morning, the culmination of a two-year undercover investigation that had infiltrated the imam’s Detroit mosque. The FBI quickly claimed that Luqman Abdullah was “the leader of a domestic terrorist group.” And yet, caught on tape, he had refused to help “do something” violent, as it might injure innocents, and no terrorism charges were ever lodged against him.Jameel Scott thought he was exercising his rights when he went to challenge an Israeli official’s lecture at Manchester University. But the teenager’s presence at the protest with fellow socialists made him the subject of police surveillance for the next two years. Counterterrorism agents visited his parents, his relatives, his school. They asked him for activists’ names and told him not to attend demonstrations. They called his mother and told her to move the family to another neighborhood. Although he doesn’t identify as Muslim, Jameel had become another face of the presumed homegrown terrorist.The new front in the War on Terror is the “homegrown enemy,” domestic terrorists who have become the focus of sprawling counterterrorism structures of policing and surveillance in the United States and across Europe. Domestic surveillance has mushroomed—at least 100,000 Muslims in America have been secretly under scrutiny. British police compiled a secret suspect list of more than 8,000 al-Qaeda “sympathizers,” and in another operation included almost 300 children fifteen and under among the potential extremists investigated. MI5 doubled in size in just five years.Based on several years of research and reportage, in locations as disparate as Texas, New York, and Yorkshire, and written in engrossing, precise prose, this is the first comprehensive critique of counterradicalization strategies. The new policy and policing campaigns have been backed by an industry of freshly minted experts and liberal commentators. The Muslims Are Coming! looks at the way these debates have been transformed by the embrace of a narrowly configured and ill-conceived antiextremism.

Right Color, Wrong Culture: The Type of Leader Your Organization Needs to Become Multiethnic (Leadership Fable)


Bryan Loritts - 2014
    You journey with Gary and Peter as they challenge those around them to reach beyond what is comfortable and restructure their leadership team. Known for his passion to build diversity in organizations, Bryan Loritts equips you to identify the right person needed in order for your organizations to become multi-ethnic.

Changing Our Mind: A call from America's leading evangelical ethics scholar for full acceptance of LGBT Christians in the Church


David P. Gushee - 2014
    Gushee, “For us, it’s the LGBT issue.” In Changing Our Mind, Gushee takes the reader along his personal and theological journey as he changes his mind about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender inclusion in the Church. With 19 books to his name, Gushee is no stranger to the public arena. He is the author of the “Evangelical Declaration Against Torture” and drafted the “Evangelical Climate Initiative. “For decades now, David Gushee has earned the reputation as America's leading evangelical ethicist. In this book, he admits that he has been wrong on the LGBT issue.” writes Brian D. McLaren, author and theologian. With the support of activists, authors and theologians like Matthew Vines, Phyllis Tickle, James V. Brownson and Mark Achtemeier, Gushee writes clearly and carefully about people dear to him and his study of Scripture. Brian D. McLaren says it best: “Not only is David Gushee's work deep, thoughtful and brilliant; and not only is David philosophically and theologically careful and astute; he is also refreshingly clear and understandable by ‘common people’ who know neither philosophical nor theological mumbo jumbo.”

Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Bryan LorittsJohn Bryson - 2014
    Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Much has transpired in the half-century since, and progress has been made in the issues that were close to Dr. King’s heart. Thankfully, the burning crosses, biting police dogs, and angry mobs of that day are long gone. But in their place, passivity has emerged. A passivity that must be addressed.That’s the aim of Letters to a Birmingham Jail. A collection of essays written by men of various ethnicities and ages, this book encourages us to pursue Christ exalting diversity. Each contribution recognizes that only the cross and empty tomb of Christ can bring true unity, and each notes that the gospel demands justice in all its forms. This was a truth that Dr. King fought and gave his life for, and this is a truth that these modern day "drum majors for justice" continue to beat.

Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal


Aviva Chomsky - 2014
    With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends. Blending history with human drama, Chomsky explores what it means to be undocumented in a legal, social, economic, and historical context. The result is a powerful testament of the complex, contradictory, and ever-shifting nature of status in America.

The Undesirables: Inside Nauru


Mark Isaacs - 2014
    Nobody knew. The intention was clear: this was the No Advantage policy. Take them to a distant island, lock them away, punish them, forget about them. Criminals were given a sentence to serve; these men were not even given that. Lost hope ebbed out of the men in uncontrollable sobs and tears. Queue jumper, boat person, illegals. Asylum seekers are contentious front-page news but obtaining information about Australia’s regional processing centres is increasingly difficult. We learn only what the government wants us to know.Mark Isaacs worked for the Salvation Army inside the Nauru Detention Centre soon after it re-opened in 2012. He provided humanitarian aid to the men interned in the camp. What he saw there moved him to speak out.The Undesirables chronicles his time on Nauru detailing daily life and the stories of the men held there; the self-harm, suicide attempts, and riots; the rare moments of joy; the moments of deep despair.Mark's eyewitness account humanises a political debate usually ruled by misleading rhetoric.About the authorMark Isaacs became impassioned by the asylum seeker debate after a visit to Villawood Detention Centre while writing for Oxfam. Months later, in October 2012, Mark was employed by the Salvation Army to work at the regional processing centre in Nauru. While there, Mark established the Recreations program and Oceans program for asylum seekers. He eventually resigned from the Salvation Army in June 2013 and spoke out publicly against the government's No Advantage policy.

Guardian of the Republic: An American Ronin's Journey to Faith, Family and Freedom


Allen West - 2014
    Colonel, U.S. Representative, “Dad,” and Scourge of the Far Left. He rose from humble beginnings in Atlanta where his father instilled in him a code of conduct that would inform his life ever after.  Throughout his years leading troops, raising a loving family, serving as Congressman in Florida’s 22nd district, and emerging as one of the most authentic voices in conservative politics, West has never compromised the core values on which he was raised: family, faith, tradition, service, honor, fiscal responsibility, courage, freedom. Today, these values are under attack as never before, and as the far Left intensifies its assaults, few have been as vigorous as West in pushing back.  He refuses to let up, calling out an Obama administration that cares more about big government than following the Constitution, so-called black “leaders” who sell out their communities in exchange for pats on the head, and a segment of the media that sees vocal black conservatives as threats to be silenced. Now more than ever, the American republic needs a guardian: a principled, informed conservative who understands where we came from, who can trace the philosophical roots of our faith and freedom, and who has a plan to get America back on track. West isn’t afraid to speak truth to power, and in this book he’ll share the experiences that shaped him and the beliefs he would die to defend.From the Hardcover edition.

The Exact Location of Home


Kate Messner - 2014
    Electronics are, after all, much more predictable than most people--especially his father, who he hasn't seen in over a year. When his dad's latest visit is canceled with no explanation and his mom seems to be hiding something, Zig turns to his best friend Gianna and a new gizmo--a garage sale GPS unit--for help. Convinced that his dad is leaving clues around town to explain his absence, Zig sets out to find him. Following one clue after another, logging mile after mile, Zig soon discovers that people aren't always what they seem . . . and sometimes, there's more than one set of coordinates for home.

Malala, a Brave Girl from Pakistan/Iqbal, a Brave Boy from Pakistan: Two Stories of Bravery


Jeanette Winter - 2014
    Two stories of bravery in one beautiful book!Meet two brave young heroes of Pakistan who stood up for the right to freedom and education in this inspirational nonfiction picture book from acclaimed author-illustrator Jeanette Winter.One country: Pakistan. Two children: Iqbal Masih and Malala Yousafzai. Each was unafraid to speak out. He, against inhumane child slavery in the carpet trade. She, for the right of girls to attend school. Both were shot by those who disagreed with them—he in 1995, she in 2012. Iqbal was killed instantly; Malala miraculously survived and continues to speak out around the world.The stories of these two courageous children whose bravery transcended their youth are an inspiration to all.

The Sound of Sch: A Mental Breakdown, A Life Journey


Danielle Lim - 2014
    The story takes place between 1961 and 1994, backdropped by a fast-globalising Singapore where stigmatisation of persons afflicted with mental illness nevertheless remains deep-seated. Unflinchingly raw and honest in its portrayal of living with schizophrenia, The Sound of Sch is a moving account of human resiliency and sacrifice in the face of brokenness.

Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery: Where War Comes Home


Robert M. Poole - 2014
    Gifted writer and reporter Robert Poole opens the story with preparations for Memorial Day, Arlington's biggest event, when thousands of families come to visit those buried in the 624-acre cemetery, legions of Rolling Thunder motorcyclists patrol the streets with fluttering POW flags, and service members place miniature flags before each of Arlington's graves. What emerges is a portrait of our national cemetery as a living, breathing community, and a narrative about how improvised explosive devices, suicide bombs, and enemies who blend in with local populations have changed the nature and aftermath of conflict. Several of the newest recruits for Section 60 have been brought there by suicide or post-traumatic stress disorder, a war injury newly described but dating to ancient times. Using Section 60 as a window into the latest wars, Poole recounts stories of courage and sacrifice by fallen heroes, and explores the ways in which soldiers' comrades, friends, and families honor and remember those lost to war-carrying on with life in the aftermath of wartime tragedy. Section 60 is a moving tribute to those who have fought and died for our country, and to those who love them.

City of Darkness: Revisited


Ian Lambot - 2014
    Designed and edited by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot, the team behind City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City, this new publication questions those myths and explores the reality behind the Walled City’s extraordinary architecture and development. Through photographs, drawings and documents, many previously unpublished, plus an extended article by Hong Kong-based writer and journalist Fionnuala McHugh, the full story is revealed.

Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison


Nell Bernstein - 2014
    But when Will got into it on the court, he and his rival were sprayed in the face at close range by a chemical similar to Mace, denied a shower for twenty-four hours, and then locked in solitary confinement for a month.One in three American children will be arrested by the time they are twenty-three, and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centers that defy everything we know about how to rehabilitate young offenders. In a clear-eyed indictment of the juvenile justice system run amok, award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein shows that there is no right way to lock up a child. The very act of isolation denies delinquent children the thing that is most essential to their growth and rehabilitation: positive relationships with caring adults.Bernstein introduces us to youth across the nation who have suffered violence and psychological torture at the hands of the state. She presents these youths all as fully realized people, not victims. As they describe in their own voices their fight to maintain their humanity and protect their individuality in environments that would deny both, these young people offer a hopeful alternative to the doomed effort to reform a system that should only be dismantled.Burning Down the House is a clarion call to shut down our nation’s brutal and counterproductive juvenile prisons and bring our children home.

The Carry Home


Gary Ferguson - 2014
    He trekked 500 miles through Yellowstone to write Walking Down the Wild and spent a season in the field at a wilderness therapy program for Shouting at the Sky. He journeyed 250 miles on foot for Hawks Rest and followed through the seasons the first fourteen wolves released into Yellowstone National Park for The Yellowstone Wolves. But nothing could prepare him for the experience he details in his new book.The Carry Home is both a moving celebration of the outdoor life shared between Ferguson and his wife Jane, who died tragically in a canoeing accident in northern Ontario in 2005, and a chronicle of the mending, uplifting power of nature. Confronting his unthinkable loss, Ferguson set out to fulfill Jane’s final wish: the scattering of her ashes in five remote, wild locations they loved and shared. The act of the carry home allows Ferguson the opportunity to ruminate on their life together as well as explore deeply the impactful presence of nature in all of our lives.Theirs was a love borne of wild places, and The Carry Home offers a powerful glimpse into how the natural world can be a critical prompt for moving through cycles of immeasurable grief, how bereavement can turn to wonder, and how one man rediscovered himself in the process of saying goodbye.

Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline


Malu Halasa - 2014
    Itshowcases the work of over fifty artists and writers whoare challenging the culture of violence in Syria. Theirliterature, poems and songs, cartoons, political postersand photographs document and interpret the momentouschanges that have shifted the frame of reality so drasticallyin Syria.Moving and inspiring, Syria Speaks is testament to thecourage, creativity and imagination of the Syrian people.A unique anthology providing a window into Syrian art andwriting since the uprising. Contributors includeinternationally renowned artists and writers, such asAli Ferzat, Samar Yazbek, Khaled Khalifa and Robin Yassin-Kassab.The book includes 108 colour illustrations.

Fangless


Elias Zapple - 2014
    Yes, that's right, fangless! Teased by his friends, taunted by his big brother and almost disowned by his parents, Nicu will do anything he can to get his fangs and beat the bullies.

What If I Say the Wrong Thing?: 25 Habits for Culturally Effective People


Vernā Myers - 2014
    Written to make this information bite-size and accessible, you'll find quick answers to typical What should I do? questions, like: What if I say the wrong thing, what should I do? What if I am work and someone makes a sexist joke, what should I say? Purchase copies for everyone at your organization to make sure everyone knows the culturally effective way to approach diversity situations. With this book they can be prepared and practiced at moving diversity forward!

The Men of Otherworld: Collection One


Yasmine Galenorn - 2014
    In this collection: The Hunger: What really happened to Rozurial and Fraale when Zeus and Hera showed up at their house? Blood Ties: Roman's brother is coming to town, and it's not a happy family reunion. Ink Bonds: Trillian's love for Camille drives him to seek her out, even a world away. Chasing Sharah: Chase and Sharah have the most unexpected first date ever. The Purr-Fect Weekend: Shade relishes the idea of a weekend alone with Delilah, until cat-astrophe turns it into one long fuzzy disaster. These are the stories that can't fit into the actual novels.

Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God's Design for Marriage


Sean McDowell - 2014
    Thoughtful guidance for Christians wondering how to approach conversations about God's design for marriage in a culture rushing to embrace same-sex marriage.

Malice Toward None


Jack E. Levin - 2014
    Levin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of George Washington: The Crossing, presents a beautifully designed chronicle—complete with maps, portraits, and other Civil War illustrations—detailing President Abraham Lincoln’s historic Second Inaugural Address.As humble and faithful as the president who delivered it, Lincoln’s landmark Second Inaugural Address still resonates today. The speech was an attempt to unite a fractured people in a time when our nation was at its most divided, nearing the end of the Civil War. As you navigate this beautiful book, you’ll start to understand the significance and poetic power of this speech while you come closer to the man behind it.As an added bonus, Jack Levin’s son, #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Levin, has written an illuminating preface about the importance of Lincoln’s speech and its lasting impact on history. Filled with historic paintings and illustrations from the period, this book is a dramatic rendering of a momentous American occasion.

Secrets Under the Olive Tree


Nevien Shaabneh - 2014
    She knows all too well what it means to be an outcast in a country she calls home. Layla is also an outsider within her village and family. Whispers surround her growing up, ones that mask the secrets her family has kept for generations. Secrets continue to plague Layla's adolescence and young adult life after the move to America, as the monsters of her past threaten to break the relationships she most cherishes. Layla uncovers the unholiest of secrets on her path to redemption and discovers the truth of her family's history.

Who We Be: The Colorization of America


Jeff Chang - 2014
    A four-letter word. The greatest social divide in American life, a half-century ago and today. During that time, the U.S. has seen the most dramatic demographic and cultural shifts in its history, what can be called the colorization of America.But the same nation that elected its first Black president on a wave of hope—another four-letter word—is still plunged into endless culture wars. How do Americans see race now? How has that changed—and not changed—over the half-century? After eras framed by words like "multicultural" and "post-racial," do we see each other any more clearly?Who We Be remixes comic strips and contemporary art, campus protests and corporate marketing campaigns, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trayvon Martin into a powerful, unusual, and timely cultural history of the idea of racial progress. In this follow-up to the award-winning classic Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, Jeff Chang brings fresh energy, style, and sweep to the essential American story.

This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible


Charles E. Cobb Jr. - 2014
    at the peak of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. “Just for self defense,” King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend’s Montgomery, Alabama home as “an arsenal.”Like King, many ostensibly “nonviolent” civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to self-protection—yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr. describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s. In the Deep South, blacks often safeguarded themselves and their loved ones from white supremacist violence by bearing—and, when necessary, using—firearms. In much the same way, Cobb shows, nonviolent civil rights workers received critical support from black gun owners in the regions where they worked. Whether patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their homes, or firing back at attackers, these courageous men and women and the weapons they carried were crucial to the movement’s success.Giving voice to the World War II veterans, rural activists, volunteer security guards, and self-defense groups who took up arms to defend their lives and liberties, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed lays bare the paradoxical relationship between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the Second Amendment. Drawing on his firsthand experiences in the civil rights movement and interviews with fellow participants, Cobb provides a controversial examination of the crucial place of firearms in the fight for American freedom.

All My Belongings


Cynthia Ruchti - 2014
    His Kervorkian-copycat methods of euthanasia ruined her childhood, covering it in shame. She won t let him steal her future, too. After changing her name to Becka, she assumes a new life and new job caring for the ailing mother of a handsome young businessman, Isaac Hughes. Becka struggles to sort out her feelings for her new boss just as her patient passes away under unusual circumstances. Suddenly, her past catches up with her and the unnerving details of her heritage make Becka look like a murder suspect. Worse, all sense of home and all hope for love vanish.Even if she could clear her name, a phone call from prison wraps a suffocating shroud around her heart. Her father is out and he needs her help. Can Becka open her new life to the man who has prematurely taken so many? Or will her father s legacy make it impossible to open her heart at all?

The Doorman


Zack Love - 2014
    But below the surface he is sure of nothing but his angst-ridden doubts. And when he realizes that his doorman may be God, or sent by God, he will question things like never before. This novelette is a story of New York doormen, tormented love, empty office life, and the theological questions that arise in response to the horrors of evil.

Oriented to Faith: Transforming the Conflict over Gay Relationships


Tim Otto - 2014
    If the world is to "know that we are Christians by our love," the church needs to discover better ways to live out the deep unity we share in Christ as we engage with politics and our world. In Oriented to Faith, Tim Otto tells the story of his struggle with being gay and what that taught him about the gospel. With an authentic and compelling personal voice, Tim invites us to explore how God is at work in the world, even amidst the most difficult circumstances, redeeming and transforming the church through this difficult debate. With gentle wisdom and compassionate insight, Tim invites all followers of Jesus to consider how we might work with God through these tensions so that all can be transformed by God's good news in and through Christ. "Tim Otto is the rare voice in the church's conversation about human sexuality who gives me hope that despite all the pain and confusion, we who bear with one another may learn what it means to be Christian." --Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author of Strangers at My Door "Tim Otto brings a unique, wise, and honest perspective to the church's polarized debate on homosexuality. His strong love for the church and concern for its unity underlie this challenge to stay connected with Christians holding varying convictions on how best to love LGBTQ sisters and brothers. Tim has been a valued consultant in our fellowship's journey to hear one another well as we work from different perspectives on this divisive issue." --Sally Schreiner Youngquist, community leader of Reba Place Fellowship, Evanston, IL "Current debates about sexuality and religion are tearing communities of faith apart. Tim Otto has wrestled with the issues at stake, both theologically and personally, over many decades. He has something surprising, hopeful, and challenging to say to folks on all sides. Oriented to Faith invites us into a fuller imagination of what it might mean to be the beloved community. Throughout this book, Tim is a gentle and masterful host for the honest and tender conversations that families and churches must have today." --Mark Scandrette, author of Practicing the Way of Jesus Tim Otto is a pastor at the Church of the Sojourners, a live-together Christian community in San Francisco. He holds a Masters of Theological Studies from Duke Divinity School and a BS in Nursing from the University of San Francisco. Tim worked on the first AIDS ward in the United States as a registered nurse for fourteen years. He is coauthor of Inhabiting the Church: Biblical Wisdom for a New Monasticism.

If My Heart Could Talk: A Story of Family, Faith, and Miracles


Dodie Osteen - 2014
    Today, she continues to stand by her son, Pastor Joel Osteen, and the rest of their family as they lead Lakewood. In this revealing memoir, Dodie shares that her path, though glorious, has not always been easy. She shows an intimate look at such life-altering experiences as contracting polio as a child, raising 5 children, battling cancer, and losing her husband, all with the beautiful heart and sense of humor she displays to thousands at Lakewood and nationwide at Night of Hope events. While recounting her journey, Dodie offers readers meaningful life lessons applicable to their own lives.

Singing Home the Whale


Mandy Hager - 2014
    After he discovers a young abandoned orca, his life is further thrown into chaos when he rallies to help protect it against hostile locals.The boy and the whale develop a special bond, linked by Will’s love of singing. With echoes of the classic book and film The Whale Rider, this is a strong, exciting and beautifully written story and a compelling exploration of many global concerns.

Vainglory: The Forgotten Vice


Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung - 2014
    Lady Gaga singing “Applause” to worshipful fans at one of her sold-out concerts. And you and me in our Sunday best in the front row at church. What do we have in common?Chances are, says Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, that we all suffer from vainglory -- a keen desire for attention and approval. Although contemporary culture has largely forgotten about vainglory, it was on the original list of seven capital vices and is perhaps more dangerous than ever today.In Vainglory: The Forgotten Vice DeYoung tells the story of this vice, moving from its ancient origins to its modern expressions. She defines vainglory, gives examples from popular culture, explores motivational sources, and discusses other vices associated with it such as hypocrisy and boasting. After exposing the many ways in which vainglory can rear its ugly head, she explores personal spiritual practices that can help us resist it and community practices that can help us handle glory well.

The Middle Child


Angela Marsons - 2014
     Alex, the youngest, is a bitter, unforgiving woman who refuses to face the events of her childhood. She hides in a bottle and destroys any chance of happiness that comes her way. Her life is spiralling dangerously out of control but she doesn't have the strength to stop it. Catherine, the eldest, has strived to achieve everything her mother said she would not. She has everything she ever wanted but appears to be more like her mother than she thought. One single act brings her carefully constructed world tumbling down around her. Beth, the middle child, suffered the worst of them all. She has no memory of the cruelty and remained with their mother until she died. But eventually the memories must return. When they are brought together as strangers, the sisters must embark on a painful journey to the past to discover themselves and each other. But will all of them make it back safe?

Scarlet Ibis


Gill Lewis - 2014
    'Just you and me in that little boat, watching the scarlet ibis flying back to the Caroni Swamp.'Scarlet's used to looking after her brother, Red. He's special - different. Every night she tells him his favourite story - about the day they'll fly far away to the Caroni Swamp in Trinidad, where thousands of birds fill the sky. But when Scarlet and Red are split up and sent to live with different foster families, Scarlet knows she's got to do whatever it takes to get her brother back ...A wonderfully moving new novel from the author of Sky Hawk and White Dolphin.

The Love That Made Mother Teresa: How Her Secret Visions and Dark Nights Can Help You Conquer the Slums of Your Heart


David Scott - 2014
    But she was a woman with a will whose strength has been matched by few souls in history. Mother Teresa broke death’s stranglehold on the poor of Calcutta, and she showed us how to conquer the sin and darkness in what she called the “slums of the hearts of modern man.” Part biography and part spiritual reading, these pages bring to light little-known stories from Mother Teresa’s life that will help you to grow in your love of God. You will learn her approach to reading Scripture, what enabled her to persevere through agonizing nights, and the remarkable — some would say mystical — events that led her to start the Missionaries of Charity. In considering Mother Teresa, her private visions, and her secret sufferings, David Scott has discovered scores of early episodes and chance encounters that point to later, larger meanings. These remarkable patterns, he suggests, show that Mother Teresa’s life was choreographed from above, as if a divine script had been written for her from before her birth. In these pages, you will meet for the first time the Mother Teresa who challenged the ancient Goddess of Death and became the first saint of our global village. You will read as she describes, in long-secret letters, the dark night of her soul. The woman you will meet is one that God himself sent to you as a clear sign that despite pain and suffering in our lives and in our world, God’s good love will prevail . . . beginning in the slums of our hearts. We are all called to holiness, and the saints are sent to us as “real life” examples of God’s love. With Mother Teresa as your guide, you’ll learn how to follow God’s call and find holiness in a world marked by the shadow of death and growing indifference to God. Indeed, you’ll learn how to be an everyday missionary of Christ’s love in the ordinary activities of your daily life.

Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education


Jennifer De Leon - 2014
    In her essay “Only Daughter,” author Sandra Cisneros remarks, “After four years in college and two more in graduate school, and still no husband, my father shakes his head even now and says I wasted all that education.” Wise Latinas is a collection of personal essays addressing the varied landscape of the Latina experience in higher education. For some Latinas, college, where they are vastly underrepresented, is the first time they are immersed in American culture outside their homes—and where the values of two cultures often clash. Wise Latinas is in part a response to this widening gap.Featuring acclaimed writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Norma Cantú, and Julia Alvarez, to name a few, Wise Latinas shows that there is no one Latina college experience. With thoughtful and engaging pieces, Wise Latinas provides a platform for Latina writers to share their experiences in higher education and gives a voice to the many Latina women who have taken risks; embraced the new, confronted change; and maintained (and in some cases found) their roots.

Tell It to the World: International Justice and the Secret Campaign to Hide Mass Murder in Kosovo


Eliott Behar - 2014
    When they pulled it to shore and opened the cargo hold they found it filled with human bodies. The truck, and the bodies, then disappeared.The full picture would only emerge years later, when the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia investigated and prosecuted the chief architects of the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. It exposed a stunning secret campaign to murder Kosovo Albanians and systematically hide the evidence by transporting their bodies hundreds of kilometres away.Eliott Behar, a former war crimes prosecutor at the Tribunal, tells the true story of what unfolded through the eyewitnesses, victims, and perpetrators who testified in The Hague. Tell It to the World takes you inside the international criminal justice system, attesting to the strength and resilience of the human spirit and the darkness into which we can descend.

Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms


Nicholas Johnson - 2014
    From Frederick Douglass’s advice to keep “a good revolver” handy as defense against slave catchers to the armed self-protection of Monroe, North Carolina, blacks against the KKK chronicled in Robert Williams’s Negroes with Guns, it is clear that owning firearms was commonplace in the black community.     Nicholas Johnson points out that this story has been submerged because it is hard to reconcile with the dominant narrative of nonviolence during the civil rights era. His book, however, resolves that tension by showing how the black tradition of arms maintained and demanded a critical distinction between private self-defense and political violence.      Johnson also addresses the unavoidable issue of young black men with guns and the toll that gun violence takes on many in the inner city. He shows how complicated this issue is by highlighting the surprising diversity of views on gun ownership in the black community. In fact, recent Supreme Court affirmations of the right to bear arms resulted from cases led by black plaintiffs.     Surprising and informative, this well-researched book strips away many stock assumptions of conventional wisdom on the issue of guns and the black freedom struggle.

Drug War Capitalism


Dawn Paley - 2014
    They feed political campaigns, increase the arms trade, and function as long-term fixes to capitalism's woes, cracking open new territories to privatization and foreign direct investment.Combining on-the-ground reporting with extensive research, Dawn Paley moves beyond the usual horror stories, beyond journalistic rubbernecking and hand-wringing, to follow the thread of the Drug War story throughout the entire region of Latin America and all the way back to US boardrooms and political offices. This unprecedented book chronicles how terror is used against the population at large in cities and rural areas, generating panic and facilitating policy changes that benefit the international private sector, particularly extractive industries like petroleum and mining. This is what is really going on. This is drug war capitalism.Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist who has been reporting from South America, Central America, and Mexico for over ten years. Her writing has been published in the Nation, the Guardian, Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail, Ms. magazine, the Tyee, Georgia Straight, and NACLA, among others.In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.

Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation


Patrick M Wood - 2014
    It is Technocracy.With meticulous detail and an abundance of original research, Patrick M. Wood uses Technocracy Rising to connect the dots of modern globalization in a way that has never been seen before so that the reader can clearly understand the globalization plan, its perpetrators and its intended endgame.In the heat of the Great Depression during the 1930s, prominent scientists and engineers proposed a utopian energy-based economic system called Technocracy that would be run by those same scientists and engineers instead of elected politicians. Although this radical movement lost momentum by 1940, it regained status when it was conceptually adopted by the elitist Trilateral Commission (co-founded by Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller) in 1973 to be become its so-called "New International Economic Order."In the ensuing 41 years, the modern expression of Technocracy and the New International Economic Order is clearly seen in global programs such as Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, Green Economy, Councils of Governments, Smart Growth, Smart Grid, Total Awareness surveillance initiatives and more.Wood contends that the only logical outcome of Technocracy is Scientific Dictatorship, as already seen in dystopian literature such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932) and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1948), both of whom looked straight into the face of Technocracy when it was still in its infancy.With over 250 footnotes, an extensive bibliography and clarity of writing style, Wood challenges the reader to new levels of insight and understanding into the clear and present danger of Technocracy, and how Americans might be able to reject it once again.

DESIRE Series Omnibus Box Set


Kailin Gow - 2014
    However, her world turns upside down when an enchanting, desirable boy Torrid appears in her life" - Xandra, TV News Anchor at TV Zemst 5 out of 5 Stars - "I haven't seen any Paranormal Dystopians before, so this book felt so refreshing and unique. I devoured this book entirely too quickly, and the sequel is not out when it should be :( (apologies for the whining, this book was really that good)" - Amy, The Bookmark 5 out of 5 Stars - "I know I say this alot but WOW. Desire was so much more than the dystopian YA romance...A must read that all YA fans will love." - Laura, YA Indie Princess 5 out of 5 Stars - "When I picked up desire I was expecting the usual dystopian fare but what I got instead was an intriquing world that immediately fascinated me!" - Kristi, Book Faery 5 out of 5 Stars - "Desire introduces you to a strange new world where your whole life is planned out for you at age 18. Even if you want one thing for yourself whatever is planned out is what you must do...or else." - Melissa, The Bookshelf A Dystopian world where everyone's future is planned out for them at age 18...whether it is what a person desires or not. Kama is about to turn 18 and she thinks her Life s Plan will turn out like her boyfriend's and friend's as they desired. But when she glimpse a young man who can communicate with her with his thoughts and knows her name...a young man with burning blue eyes and raven hair, who is dressed like no other in her world, she is left to question her Life's Plan and her destiny. Knowing the truth can destroy everyone... Recommended for age 16 and up.

Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees


Yen Le Espiritu - 2014
    Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, this book retheorizes the connections among history, memory, and power and refashions the fields of American studies, Asian American studies, and refugee studies not around the narratives of American exceptionalism, immigration, and transnationalism but around the crucial issues of war, race, and violence--and the history and memories that are forged in the aftermath of war. At the same time, the book moves decisively away from the damage-centered approach that pathologizes loss and trauma by detailing how first- and second-generation Vietnamese have created alternative memories and epistemologies that challenge the established public narratives of the Vietnam War and Vietnamese people. Explicitly interdisciplinary, Body Counts moves between the humanities and social sciences, drawing on historical, ethnographic, cultural, and virtual evidence in order to illuminate the places where Vietnamese refugees have managed to conjure up social, public, and collective remembering.

Twenty-Two Cents: Muhammad Yunus and the Village Bank


Paula Yoo - 2014
    Includes an afterword and author's sources"--

Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks


Walter Brueggemann - 2014
    and the catastrophic crisis of 9/11 in A.D. 2001.Brueggemann identifies a characteristic ideology of "exceptionalism" -- chosenness, entitlement, privilege -- which must be countered by prophetic realism and truth-telling. Denial must give way to honest grief. And, finally, widespread despair must be overcome by a buoyant hope. This sequence of ideology-realism, denial-grief, and despair-hope corresponds to Brueggemann's unpacking of the books of Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Isaiah.Thoughtful readers will find provocative fare aplenty in Brueggemann's "Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks.

Stolen Voices: Part 1 of 3: A sadistic step-father. Two children violated. Their battle for justice.


Terrie Duckett - 2014
    He broke their dreams. But they came back stronger.‘Terrie and Paul are two of the bravest people I have ever met. I have only shared the briefest glimpse into the true horrors this brother and sister have endured, but I rarely come across cases this bad. After the unspeakable abuse and shocking betrayals, two incredible human beings came through – to inspire us all.’Sara Payne OBE, co-founder of Phoenix SurvivorsTerrie and Paul’s step-father had been living with them for six months when the abuse and grooming began. What started as innocent conversations and goodnight kisses quickly developed into something far darker and depraved.Everyday Terrie was assaulted and abused; her rapes were photographed, filmed and shared. Paul was regularly taunted and mercilessly beaten. But despite the bruises and the scars, and the desperate pleas for help, no one saw their pain.But through it all they stuck together, battling for their childhoods for over a decade and masterminding creative ways to outwit their stepfather and buy themselves fleeting moments of joy.In March 2013, thirty years on, Terrie and Paul made the brave decision to give up their right to anonymity to tell of the years of abuse they endured at the hands of their recently convicted step-father and raise awareness for the ongoing battle for justice for victims of child abuse. A powerful testament of what can be achieved through courage and love, this is their inspiring story.

The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America


Naomi Murakawa - 2014
    incarceration rate in the second half of the 20th century, and the racial transformation of the prison population from mostly white at mid-century to 65% black and Latino in the present day, is a trend that cannot easily be ignored. Many believe this shift began with the "tough on crime" policies advocated by Republicans and southern Democrats beginning in the late 1960s, which sought longer prison sentences, more frequent use of the death penalty, and the explicit or implicit targeting of politically marginalized people.In The First Civil Right, Naomi Murakawa inverts the conventional wisdom by arguing that the expansion of the federal carceral state--a system that disproportionately imprisons blacks and Latinos--was, in fact, rooted in the civil-rights liberalism of the 1940s and early 1960s, not in the period after.Murakawa traces the development of the modern American prison system through several presidencies, both Republican and Democrat. Responding to calls to end the lawlessness and violence against blacks at the state and local levels, the Truman administration expanded the scope of what was previously a weak federal system. Later administrations from Johnson to Clinton expanded the federal presence even more.Ironically, these steps laid the groundwork for the creation of the vast penal archipelago that now exists in the United States. What began as a liberal initiative to curb the mob violence and police brutality that had deprived racial minorities of their 'first civil right'--physical safety--eventually evolved into the federal correctional system that now deprives them, in unjustly large numbers, of another important right: freedom.The First Civil Right is a groundbreaking analysis of root of the conflicts that lie at the intersection of race and the legal system in America.

Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England


Siobhan Senier - 2014
    This pathbreaking anthology includes both classic and contemporary literary works from ten New England indigenous nations: the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Mohegan, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Schaghticoke, and Wampanoag.  Through literary collaboration and recovery, Siobhan Senier and Native tribal historians and scholars have crafted a unique volume covering a variety of genres and historical periods. From the earliest petroglyphs and petitions to contemporary stories and hip-hop poetry, this volume highlights the diversity and strength of New England Native literary traditions. Dawnland Voices introduces readers to the compelling and unique literary heritage in New England, banishing the misconception that “real” Indians and their traditions vanished from that region centuries ago.

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War


James Risen - 2014
    Endless war corrupts absolutely.Ever since 9/11 America has fought an endless war on terror, seeking enemies everywhere and never promising peace. In Pay Any Price, James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany of the hidden costs of that war: from squandered and stolen dollars, to outrageous abuses of power, to wars on normalcy, decency, and truth. In the name of fighting terrorism, our government has done things every bit as shameful as its historic wartime abuses — and until this book, it has worked very hard to cover them up.Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. FDR authorized the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans. Presidents Bush and Obama now must face their own reckoning. Power corrupts, but it is endless war that corrupts absolutely.

Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors


Carolyn Finney - 2014
    Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the great outdoors and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces. Drawing on a variety of sources from film, literature, and popular culture, and analyzing different historical moments, including the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Finney reveals the perceived and real ways in which nature and the environment are racialized in America. Looking toward the future, she also highlights the work of African Americans who are opening doors to greater participation in environmental and conservation concerns.

Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality


David Boies - 2014
     Redeeming the Dream is the story of how David Boies and Theodore B. Olson—who argued against each other all the way to the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore—joined forces after that titanic battle to forge the unique legal argument that would carry the day. As allies and not foes, they tell the fascinating story of the five-year struggle to win the right for gays to marry, from Proposition 8’s adoption by voters in 2008, to its defeat before the highest court in the land in Hollingsworth v. Perry in 2013.   Boies and Olson guide readers through the legal framing of the case, making crystal clear the constitutional principles of due process and equal protection in support of marriage equality while explaining, with intricacy, the basic human truths they set out to prove when the duo put state-sanctioned discrimination on trial.  Redeeming the Dream offers readers an authoritative, dramatic, and up-close account of the most important civil rights issue—fought and won—since Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia.

Charlie's Pond


C.L. Heckman - 2014
    It will leave you speechless, cheering, and reaching for the tissues.~~ "... painfully real, adroitly crafted and written in a flowing narrative that makes you feel every blow..." Author Jim Goforth "C.L. Heckman does an admirable job with a dark and touchy subject that takes place in more families than we want to know." Author JK Accinni "Knowing that Sam existed on some level in real life, helped me form a connection to her." Author Hunter S. Jones Samantha Mallon, a typical young girl from the country, is growing up in a less-than-normal home. The one person she used to confide in, her brother, Charlie, has now become her biggest fear. As the tempers in her family flare, Sam must tread lightly, or suffer the consequences.A black eye, broken nose, and bruised ego are finally enough to convince her to break away from the life that the Mallons have molded for her. Stepping out of her shy demeanor for just a moment, she sparks up a new friendship with a girl at school, and begins to enjoy being a teenager. Carefree and outgoing Jill introduces Sam into the world of teenage spirit --including the always good girl, the unattainable bad boy and the ugly jealous frienemy. Sweating from nerves and shaking in her own insecurities, Sam manages to spark the interest of Jake, a regular teenage heartthrob, who just may teach her the meaning of love -- an emotion absent from her house growing up. However, a drunken party and a physical altercation turn Sam's world completely upside down, and begin a string of violence that starts to destroy the positive life she has tried to build. When Sam is an innocent bystander to Charlie's horrific display of rage on a less-than-friendly face, she remains conflicted. Will she stand up against the man she once looked up to, her brother, her childhood best friend, or will she keep the secret safe behind closed lips, forever trapped by fear?

Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion


Tansy E. Hoskins - 2014
    Moving between Karl Lagerfeld and Karl Marx, the book explores consumerism, class and advertising to reveal the interests which benefit from exploitation.

Blood in the Fields: Ten Years Inside California's Nuestra Familia Gang


Julia Reynolds - 2014
    Born in the prisons of California in the late 1960s, Nuestra Familia expanded to control drug trafficking and extortion operations throughout the northern half of the state, and left a trail of bodies in its wake. Award-winning journalist Julia Reynolds tells the gang’s story from the inside out, following young men and women as they search for a new kind of family, quests that usually lead to murder and betrayal. Blood in the Fields also documents the history of Operation Black Widow, the FBI’s questionable decade-long effort to dismantle the Nuestra Familia, along with its compromised informants and the turf wars it created with local law enforcement agencies. Reynolds used her unprecedented access to gang members, both in and out of prison, as well as undercover wire taps, depositions, and court documents to weave a gripping, comprehensive history of this brutal criminal organization and the lives it destroyed.

Natural Beauty


Leslie DuBois - 2014
    Stressed. Out of control. Those words could describe not only Mahogany’s hair but her love-life. When she realizes that she has spent the last seven years being someone she’s not in order to please her man, she decides it’s time to take control and find out who she really is. Join Mahogany’s journey of self-discovery … through her hair. This novella blends fact and fiction as it relates real-life advice and tips for the newly natural sister.

The Never Knights Trilogy


Kailin Gow - 2014
     NEVER SAY NEVER (Book 1) New Adult Contemporary What girl wouldn't want to be surrounded by the sexy guys from the hottest teen rock sensation in the country? 18-year-old Never "Neve" Knight, not only is surrounded by the hottest boys to hit the music charts, but she is the band's lead singer. As the band's lead singer and manager, Never formed and shaped the band to where it is today, a band on the rise and on the brink of being signed by a label. As one of the guys, she knew each of the band members since they were all snot-nose ten-year-olds. While her boys were the cutest guys and they would protect her like knights, she couldn't date any one of them and ruin the chance at being signed with the record label of her dreams. That changes when one of the band members suddenly drops out of the band, and in walks Danny Blue, with his dreamy blue eyes, hot body, and British accent. Suddenly, Never's solid world has turned to mush, and her rule for not dating one of her band members is seriously challenged. Can she keep her head straight and get her band signed with a label without losing her heart? Can Never change her tune of saying "never to dating a band member" to "never say never"? Never Say Never is a rock-filled sexual awakening novel about friendship, first love, forbidden love, taking risks, staying true to yourself, college life, becoming an adult, and following your dreams. NEVER LAND (BOOK 2) Welcome to Never Land, the land of Never and the world of rock, the world of new experiences and sensations, a world where music runs through the veins of the dedicated, and love is taken and given with consequences. Never (Neve) Knight, the lead singer and manager of a band filled with the hottest guys in rock finally gets the dream that she wanted: a label signing her band The Never Knights. It is what she always wanted, a band of her own and playing her own kind of music. Getting her band to where it was came at a high price, including giving up the man who makes her heart race and her blood pound, the man who caused her to nearly lose her band. As she gets ready to go on her world tour, fate brings her close to Danny Blue again, and she's not sure if she can give him up a second time even if it means losing the band. NEVER ENDING (BOOK 3) Never Knight, the daughter of a rock legend, and the only young woman in a band of hot sexy guys saw her world come crumbling down right when she was at the top. In an impossible love with her sexy British guitarist Danny Blue, against her own rule of not dating anyone in her own band, she gets the rudest awakening in her life as she gets thrown into a vicious game played by all. Danny Blue, sexy rock star, who had hidden most of his life away from his eccentric billionaire father s past, is torn between wanting Neve and doing what s right for the band and for his family. Can he give up his desire and endless hunger for Neve to save the band or would his growing love for her destroy everything they ve been fighting for? Or will everything he has drive Neve into the arms of another or away forever? Never Ending is the final book of the Never Knights Trilogy which explodes with emotions, wit, and all the drama of a Hollywood story in an heart-wrenching conclusion.

Bourbon Street: A History


Richard Campanella - 2014
    A fascinating investigation into the mile-long urban space that is Bourbon Street, Richard Campanella's comprehensive cultural history spans from the street's inception during the colonial period through three tumultuous centuries, arriving at the world-famous entertainment strip of today.Clearly written and carefully researched, Campanella's book interweaves world events--from the Louisiana Purchase to World War II to Hurricane Katrina--with local and national characters, ranging from presidents to showgirls, to explain how Bourbon Street became an intriguing and singular artifact, uniquely informative of both New Orleans's history and American society.While offering a captivating historical-geographical panorama of Bourbon Street, Campanella also presents a contemporary microview of the area, describing the population, architecture, and local economy, and shows how Bourbon Street operates on a typical night. The fate of these few blocks in the French Quarter is played out on a larger stage, however, as the internationally recognized brands that Bourbon Street merchants and the city of New Orleans strive to promote both clash with and complement each other.An epic narrative detailing the influence of politics, money, race, sex, organized crime, and tourism, Bourbon Street: A History ultimately demonstrates that one of the most well-known addresses in North America is more than the epicenter of Mardi Gras; it serves as a battleground for a fundamental dispute over cultural authenticity and commodification.

American Boys: The True Story of the Lost 74 of the Vietnam War


Louise Esola - 2014
    War and protest rattled the nation while the troops marched on. The warships set sail. For coming-of-age American boys, death seemed one hill away. By then, nearly 300 of them were coming home in boxes each week. They were young men caught in a war machine, one of chance, circumstance, and misfortune. In a tragedy of just the same, lost in the turmoil of what would become America’s most unpopular war, lies a story buried 1,100 fathoms deep in the blue waters off Vietnam. In the middle of a dark night off the coast of Vietnam on June 3, 1969, the USS Frank E. Evans is rammed by a ship ten times her size, sending her forward half to the bottom of the South China Sea and into oblivion. Seventy-four Americans are killed in this mysterious collision. Three brothers from a small town in Nebraska are gone, as is the son of a chief who barely survived. Only one body is ever found. The truth is confined to a footnote of the Vietnam War. Buried in obscurity even today, as the 74 names of those killed are not on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C. In American Boys, journalist Louise Esola has uncovered and assembled a powerful rebuttal, putting the ship and her men in the time and place that was Vietnam. Groundbreaking and astonishing in scope and intimate details, American Boys is a story of heartbreak and perseverance. It’s the story of a shattering injustice, of love and healing, and of a great generation of those who fought and lost yet vowed to never forget, though their nation has. In praise of American Boys"Louise Esola has shed new light on a tragic chapter of the Vietnam War. She has dug deeply into an accident at sea that took the lives of 74 young American sailors and has told their stories brilliantly! American Boys is worth your attention."--Joseph L. Galloway, co-author of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young “With Louise Esola’s powerful storytelling, American Boys uncovers a lost chapter of history full of grace and determination. A compelling read.”--Gregory A. Freeman, bestselling author of Sailors to the End: The Deadly Fire on the USS Forrestal and the Heroes Who Fought It “Louise Esola has done a remarkable job of research in putting together this forgotten story of 74 young men who lost their lives on the USS Frank E. Evans during the Vietnam War. Ms. Esola, writing with conviction and compassion, does a long-neglected service to the memories of those killed in the line of duty. As a Vietnam War veteran myself, I salute Louise Esola and all those who have given their time and energy to keep alive the memories of the fallen.”--Bestselling author and Vietnam veteran Nelson DeMille“With stellar reporting and strong writing, Louise Esola has rescued a largely forgotten incident of the Vietnam War: the sinking of the destroyer Frank E. Evans in 1969. “American Boys” traces the sailors from hometowns across America to their service aboard the ill-fated ship, giving the sailors the respect that their country has denied them. “American Boys” could easily become a classic story of men and war.” --Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times“American Boys is that rare offering, and deserves its own commendation as a piece of powerful research into a segment of Vietnam history that many have tried to bury over the decades…one that deserves to not be forgotten.” --Midwest Book Review"This is the story of one of the greatest--still unresolved--tragedies of the Vietnam War, one the U.S. Navy has pretended had nothing to do with it. American Boys explores the realities of Vietnam naval operations and, in evocative prose and stunning detail, it reports the sinking of the American destroyer Frank E. Evans, along with the decades-long struggle of survivors and families to get the Navy to acknowledge the truth of the matter. This book should be read and those Evans sailors commemorated."--John Prados, bestselling author of Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 “Louise Esola’s finely-wrought account of a Vietnam-era disaster at sea and its unending impact on the drowned sailors’ loved ones will echo in your mind long after you’ve put it down. This beautiful, heart-breaking book should be required reading at the Pentagon and the White House.”--Jack Cheevers, author of “Act of War: Lyndon Johnson, North Korea, and the Capture of the Spy Ship Pueblo.” “American Boys is an important story, beautifully told. Long after you finish this book, you will remember the men of the USS Frank E. Evans, and understand why the fight to include the names of its 74 lost crew members continues.”--Kristen Graham, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist with the Philadelphia Inquirer

Our Shawnee


Precious Barnett - 2014
    They tackle diverse topics such as experiences in the juvenile justice system, learning to fly an airplane, the stresses of unstable housing, the lasting impacts of small acts of kindness and support, the challenges of life after a severe head trauma, and the untimely deaths of loved ones. Alongside their accounts are stories of friends and family members whom they have interviewed. The vibrancy of their voices and the substance of their stories are testaments to their resilience, courage, and writing talent--and to the richness of lives in often-overlooked parts of Louisville. 232 8"x9" pages, with gorgeous full color throughout.

Melting Away: A Ten-Year Journey through Our Endangered Polar Regions


Camille Seaman - 2014
    As an expedition photographer aboard small ships in the Arctic and Antarctic, she has chronicled the accelerating effects of global warming on the jagged face of nearly fifty thousand icebergs. Seaman's unique perspective of the landscape is entwined with her Native American upbringing: she sees no two icebergs as alike; each responds to its environment uniquely, almost as if they were living beings. Through Seaman's lens, each towering chunk of ice—breathtakingly beautiful in layers of smoky gray and turquoise blue—takes on a distinct personality, giving her work the feel of majestic portraiture. Melting Away collects seventy-five of Seaman's most captivating photographs, lifeaffirming images that reveal not only what we have already lost, but more importantly what we still have that is worth fighting to save.

Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm


Mark Sayers - 2014
    It is the reinvocation of two great heresies, one rooted in an attempt to reach for godlikeness, the other bowing before the sea monster of the chaotic deep.Today’s leader must answer many challenging questions including:What does it mean to lead in a cultural storm?How do I battle the darkness in my own heart?Is there such a thing as a perfect leader?Weaving a history of leadership through the Enlightenment, Romanticism, tumultuous 19th-century Paris, and eventually World War II, cultural commentator Mark Sayers brings history and theology together to warn of the dangers yet to come, calling us to choose a better way.

The Miracle of the Kurds: A Remarkable Story of Hope Reborn in Northern Iraq


Stephen Mansfield - 2014
    In this riveting account, Mansfield movingly tells the stories of the people who have fashioned one of the greatest economic and cultural resurrections in human history.They are the largest people group in the world without a homeland of their own. Despised and persecuted the world over, they even call themselves "the people without a friend." Saddam Hussein tried to wipe them from the face of the earth, killing several hundred thousand of them in the attempt. Their sufferings have become legend.They are the Kurds, descendants of the ancient Medes best known today from the pages of the Bible -- inhabitants of what the world now calls Northern Iraq. Yet today the Kurds are rebuilding so brilliantly from war and oppression that even their enemies call it "a miracle." Six star hotels stand where bombs once fell, shopping malls and gleaming schools rise where massacres once occurred. National Geographic and Conde Nast have listed modern "Kurdistan" as a "must-see" tourist destination.

Broken Branch Falls


Tara Tyler - 2014
    When he and his friends step out of their nerdy stereotype and pull a prank of their own on the dragons at the first football game, it literally backfires, bringing a High Council vote to dismantle not only Gingko High, but the whole town, too!The Book of Ages–hidden handbook of the High Council, filled with knowledge and power–may be Gabe’s only hope. With the help of friends old and new, can Gabe complete his quest to find the Book in time to save Broken Branch Falls? Or will he remain an outcast forever?

STOP the Bully


Karen Tyrrell - 2014
    

When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus


Alan Cross - 2014
    Why, in a land filled with Christian churches, was there such racial oppression and division? Why didn't white evangelicals do more to bring racial reconciliation to the South during the 19th and 20th centuries? These questions are asked and answered through an exploration of history, politics, economics, philosophy, and social and theological studies that uncovers the hidden impetus behind racism and demonstrates how we can still make many of the same errors today--just perhaps in different ways. The investigation finally leads us in hopeful directions involving how to live out the better way of Jesus with an eye on heaven in a world still burdened and broken under the sins of the past.

Every Third Woman in America: How Legal Abortion Transformed Our Nation


David A. Grimes - 2014
    Wade was enacted in 1973. The legalization of abortion resulted in prompt and dramatic health improvements for women, children, and families, but an entire generation of Americans has grown up unaware of the harsh and unnecessary tragedies of back-alley abortions. Current attacks on safe, legal abortion at the state level are designed to return women to those desperate, dangerous days before abortion was legalized. One of the world's leading abortion scholars, Dr. Grimes chronicles the public-health story of legal abortion in America and the harms women face at the mercy of state laws restricting access to care. He shares the stories of his patients seeking abortion and how they and their families benefited.

Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures


Betsy Leondar-Wright - 2014
    But in searching for solutions to these predictable and intractable troubles, progressive social movement groups overlook class culture differences. In Missing Class, Betsy Leondar-Wright uses a class-focused lens to show that members with different class life experiences tend to approach these problems differently. This perspective enables readers to envision new solutions that draw on the strengths of all class cultures to form the basis of stronger cross-class and multiracial movements.The first comprehensive empirical study of US activist class cultures, Missing Class looks at class dynamics in 25 groups that span the gamut of social movement organizations in the United States today, including the labor movement, grassroots community organizing, and groups working on global causes in the anarchist and progressive traditions. Leondar-Wright applies Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of cultural capital and habitus to four class trajectories: lifelong working-class and poor; lifelong professional middle class; voluntarily downwardly mobile; and upwardly mobile.Compellingly written for both activists and social scientists, this book describes class differences in paths to activism, attitudes toward leadership, methods of conflict resolution, ways of using language, diversity practices, use of humor, methods of recruiting, and group process preferences. Too often, we miss class. Missing Class makes a persuasive case that seeing class culture differences could enable activists to strengthen their own groups and build more durable cross-class alliances for social justice.

Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation


Jennifer Harvey - 2014
    She calls for moving away from the reconciliation paradigm that currently dominates interracial relations and embracing instead a reparations paradigm.Harvey presents an insightful historical analysis of the painful fissures that emerged among activist Christians toward the end of the Civil Rights movement, and she shows the necessity of bringing "white" racial identity into clear view in order to counter today's oppressive social structures.A deeply constructive, hopeful work, Dear White Christians will help readers envision new racial possibilities, including concrete examples of contemporary reparations initiatives. This book is for any who care about the gospel call to justice but feel stuck trying to get there, given the ongoing prevalence of deep racial divisions in the church and society at large.W atch a 2015 interview with the author:

Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America


Bob Herbert - 2014
    After filing his last column in 2011, he set off on a journey across the country to report on Americans who were being left behind in an economy that has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. The portraits of those he encountered fuel his new book, Losing Our Way. Herbert’s combination of heartrending reporting and keen political analysis is the purest expression since the Occupy movement of the plight of the 99 percent.     The individuals and families who are paying the price of America’s bad choices in recent decades form the book’s emotional center: an exhausted high school student in Brooklyn who works the overnight shift in a factory at minimum wage to help pay her family’s rent; a twenty-four-year-old soldier from Peachtree City, Georgia, who loses both legs in a misguided, mismanaged, seemingly endless war; a young woman, only recently engaged, who suffers devastating injuries in a tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis; and a group of parents in Pittsburgh who courageously fight back against the politicians who decimated funding for their children’s schools.     Herbert reminds us of a time in America when unemployment was low, wages and profits were high, and the nation’s wealth, by current standards, was distributed much more equitably. Today, the gap between the wealthy and everyone else has widened dramatically, the nation’s physical plant is crumbling, and the inability to find decent work is a plague on a generation. Herbert traces where we went wrong and spotlights the drastic and dangerous shift of political power from ordinary Americans to the corporate and financial elite. Hope for America, he argues, lies in a concerted push to redress that political imbalance. Searing and unforgettable, Losing Our Way ultimately inspires with its faith in ordinary citizens to take back their true political power and reclaim the American dream.From the Hardcover edition.

Barely Legal Series


Kailin Gow - 2014
    Helping her best friend Serena Singleton start a new life free from a dark past, made her feel she was helping herself move forward. Laura, whose family ran in the same circle as billionaire composer Sebastian Sorensen and lived a life many would envy, had secrets of her own, and it had been years since she’d lived free of the same addiction that consumed her friend Serena. When Laura moved to Los Angeles to work at a law firm who hired her to start even without her passing the bar, she meets the mysterious and sexy Peter Townshend, whose irresistible charm and take charge personality brings out a part of her she had hidden for years. Hidden behind a wall of secrets and giving her his orders, she only has his seductive voice to guide her to do his bidding. He knows all her buttons. He knows all about her. He knows she’s been a bad girl. He knows good girls do bad things sometimes…even things that are… Barely Legal. Genre: New Adult Contemporary Romance Suspense Series recommended for 18+. This is a Kailin Romance book that is recommended for 18 and up due to mature subject matter and adult content. Kailin Romance books are new adult, adult or erotica fiction by Kailin Gow.

Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It


Lisa Bloom - 2014
    Bloom now exposes the injustice, conducting new in-depth interviews with key trial participants and digging deeper into the evidence. Suspicion Nation outlines the six biggest mistakes made by the state of Florida that guaranteed it would lose this “winnable case,” and the laws and biases that created the conditions for this tragedy.The only nonwhite juror tells her story of painful isolation in the jury room. Rachel Jeantel, the state's star witness, reveals how poorly the state prepared her to testify and what went through her mind on the stand. The medical examiner reveals scientific evidence he wasn’t allowed to present. And a new examination of Trayvon's school suspensions raises questions about racial profiling, all in a country divided over issues of race, gun laws, and violence.Suspicion Nation is a riveting courtroom drama that shines a bright light on a case we only thought we knew.

The Female Assumption: A Mother's Story, Freeing Women From the View that Motherhood is a Mandate


Melanie Holmes - 2014
    50 years after the 2nd Women's Movement, it's time to free females from the assumption that motherhood is the ultimate expression of womanhood. It is a meaningful path--and there are many more! Women have been redefining the female experience for centuries, but their voices keep vanishing. Following in the footsteps of Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Tillie Olsen, Madelyn Cain and other mothers who have written about the realities of women's lives and motherhood, Holmes endeavors to shine a 21st century bright light on this topic and encourages everyone to dispense with outdated scripts that refer to motherhood as a foregone conclusion rather than 1 path among many that can lead to a meaningful happy life. No one should tell another person that the love in their life is greater or less than someone else's. Join Holmes in her quest to change the way we view women's lives.

Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader


Michael Edmonds - 2014
    You’ll witness the final hours of three workers murdered on the project’s first day, hear testimony by black residents who bravely stood up to police torture and Klan firebombs, and watch the liberal establishment betray them. These vivid primary sources, collected by the Wisconsin Historical Society, provide both first-hand accounts of this astounding grassroots struggle as well as a broader understanding of the Civil Rights movement. The selected documents are among the 25,000 pages about the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society. The manuscripts were collected in the mid-1960s, at a time when few other institutions were interested in saving the stories of common people in McComb or Ruleville, Mississippi. Most have never been published before.

Our Heroes: How Kids Are Making a Difference


Janet Wilson - 2014
    In addition to the ten main profiles, sidebars feature many more children. Included is eleven-year-old Andrew Adansi-Bonnah from Ghana, who raised thousands of dollars for refugee children in Somalia after seeing their desperate situation covered in the news. Another child profiled is twelve-year-old Mimi Ausland from the United States, nicknamed "Dr. Doolittle" by her family. After learning about the shortage of food for shelter animals, she started a website to collect donations of dog and cat food; her site is now one of the most visited animal-rescue websites in the world. These children never set out to be heroes or to become famous, but they are role-models for us all.

Read All about It: A Kit Classic Volume 1


Valerie Tripp - 2014
    She even comes up with an idea to help her family earn more money. And helping her uncle makes it possible for Kit to save a little money, too. Will Kit's savings be enough to pay for something important?

In the Company of Cowards


Michael Mori - 2014
    Watching on was the man who had fought for four long years for Hicks's right to go home: Major Michael Mori.Having grown up as an all-American boy, Mori joined the US Marine Corps as an eighteen-year-old, determined to give his life order and to serve the country he held dear. After training and serving as a military lawyer, he accepted a position as a defence counsel for the military commissions set up in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And then David Hicks's case file landed on his desk.A firm believer in the importance of due process, Mori grew increasingly alarmed by how the military and the US and Australian governments were handling the Hicks case, and others like it. Why was a distinction being made between 'unlawful combatants' and 'prisoners of war'? Why was the Australian government refusing to intervene for one of its people? And what specific crime – if any – had Hicks allegedly committed that deserved years of incarceration without trial?What followed was a long struggle for justice, and one man's gradual disillusionment with the institution that he had signed up to fight for. Michael Mori rallied the support of the Australian people as he exposed an unfair system, changing the way we saw our government and the War on Terror.

How to Change Minds About Our Changing Climate: Let Science Do the Talking the Next Time Someone Tries to Tell You...


Seth Darling - 2014
    But the next time a skeptic puts you on the spot, will you know what to say to end the argument?How to Change Minds About Our Changing Climate dismantles all the most pernicious misunderstandings using the strongest explanations science has to offer. Armed with airtight arguments, you’ll never be at a loss for words again—no matter how convincing or unexpected the misconception you’re faced with. And with our planet’s future in our hands, the time to change minds is now: The sooner we can agree, once and for all, that climate change is a significant threat to our well-being, the sooner we can start to do something about it.

Shifting Colours


Fiona Sussman - 2014
    EDITION. Set against the tumultuous background of apartheid South Africa, a powerful and moving debut about family, sacrifice, and discovering what it means to belong… Celia Mphephu knows her place in the world. A black servant working in the white suburbs of 1960s Johannesburg, she’s all too aware of her limitations. Nonetheless, she has found herself a comfortable corner: She has a job, can support her faraway family, and is raising her youngest child, Miriam. But as racial tensions explode, Celia’s world shifts. Her employers decide to flee the political turmoil and move to England—and they ask to adopt Miriam and take her with them. Devastated at the prospect of losing her only daughter, yet unable to deny her child a safer and more promising future, Celia agrees, forever defining both their futures. As Celia fights against the shattering violence of her time, Miriam battles the quiet racism of England, struggling to find her place in a land to which she doesn’t belong—until the call of her heritage inexorably draws her back to Africa to discover the truth behind her mother’s choices and uncover a heartbreaking secret from long ago…READERS GUIDE INSIDE

Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District


Hannibal B. Johnson - 2014
    This “Negro Wall Street” bustled with commercial activity. In 1921, jealously, land lust, and racism swelled in sectors of white Tulsa, and white rioters seized upon what some derogated as “Little Africa,” leaving death and destruction in their wake. In an astounding resurrection, the community rose from the ashes of what was dubbed the Tulsa Race Riot with renewed vitality and splendor, peaking in the 1940s. In the succeeding decades, changed social and economic conditions sparked a prodigious downward spiral. Today’s Greenwood District bears little resemblance to the black business mecca of yore. Instead, it has become part of something larger: an anchor to a rejuvenated arts, entertainment, educational, and cultural hub abutting downtown Tulsa.

Peace Pipe Dreams: The Truth about Lies about Indians


Darrell Dennis - 2014
    Under some circumstances). With a large dose of humour and irreverence, he untangles some of the truths and myths about First Nations: Why do people think Natives get free trucks, and why didn’t he ever get one? Why does the length of your hair determine whether you’re good or bad? By what ratio does the amount of rain in a year depend on the amount of cactus liquor you consume?In addition to answering these burning questions, Dennis tackles some tougher subjects. He looks at European-Native interactions in North America from the moment of first contact, discussing the fur trade, treaty-signing and the implementation of residential schools. Addressing misconceptions still widely believed today, Dennis explains why Native people aren’t genetically any more predisposed to become alcoholics than Caucasians; that Native religion doesn’t consist of worshipping rocks, disappearing into thin air, or conversing with animals; and that tax exemptions are so limited and confusing that many people don’t even bother.Employing pop culture examples, personal anecdote and a cutting wit, Darrell Dennis deftly weaves history with current events to entertain, inform and provide a convincing, readable overview of First Nations issues and why they matter today.

Mind Estranged: My Journey from Schizophrenia and Homelessness to Recovery


Bethany Yeiser - 2014
    While slowly losing her sanity, she traveled the world. She returned to the U.S. unable to work or study—and soon found herself homeless, delusional, and controlled by voices that talked to her and gave her orders in her mind.Bethany’s memoir enables the reader to enter into the mind of a person with schizophrenia, homeless and roaming the streets. While living in the shadows of society, her illness drove her to refuse all contact with her family and friends, and eventually led to her arrest and hospitalization. Against all odds, she recovered from schizophrenia, returned to college, and graduated with honors.Henry A. Nasrallah, MD, a professor of psychiatry who treated Bethany, writes, “Bethany is living proof that recovery from schizophrenia is possible with good medical care, solid family support and the courage to keep fighting the tormenting voices that ordered her every move and controlled her every thought. MIND ESTRANGED is also a powerful message of encouragement and support for any human being facing an overwhelming challenge at some point in life.”

Shattered Pieces (Redemptive Love Book 2)


Doris H. Dancy - 2014
    Not even his handsome face, a Harvard Law degree, or limitless wealth can bypass the shattered heart and broken soul of the man-child still held captive by the abuse, accusations, and mistreatment he experienced as a child. Breaking hearts and taking numbers is his MO... a dangerous game of cat and mouse that could very well be his demise. As his life spirals out of control, Zack desperately seeks something to grab... to cling to... as he struggles hopelessly to avoid an inevitable fall... but will he find what he needs in time?

Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education


Ali Michael - 2014
    Even just asking questions about race can be scary, because we are afraid of what our questions might reveal about our ignorance or bias. Raising Race Questions invites teachers to use inquiry as a way to develop sustained engagement with challenging racial questions and to do so in community so that they learn how common their questions actually are. It lays out both a process for getting to questions that lead to growth and change, as well as a vision for where engagement with race questions might lead. Race questions are not meant to lead us into a quagmire of guilt, discomfort, or isolation. Sustained race inquiry is meant to lead to antiracist classrooms, positive racial identities, and a restoration of the wholeness of spirit and community that racism undermines.Book Features: New insights on race and equity in education, including the idea that a multicultural curriculum is not sufficient for building an antiracist classroom. Case studies of expert and experienced White teachers who still have questions about race. Approaches for talking about race in the K-12 classroom. Strategies for facilitating race conversations among adults. A variety of different resources useful in the teacher inquiry groups described in the book. Research with teachers, not on teachers, including written responses from each teacher whose classroom is featured in the book.

Title is Untitled: First Night, No Light


Santosh Avvannavar - 2014
    We must understand they don’t need our sympathy, what they need is our commitment to stand by them. The initiative and courage to do the same as shown by the authors is inspirational. A book that shakes you out of your slumber and pushes you to be the change I would recommend the book as a must read for a safer future. - Kabir Sadanand - Actor, Director, FUGLY (Mumbai)Overview of 'Title is Untitled'To look at things like we’ve never looked at before – we present a unique book of facts blended with fiction to spread more awareness in our society. Facts about various problems in the present urban and rural societies of India are presented wrapped in fiction, like case studies to elaborate them.Women of our country are often victims to most issues like rape, marital rape, prostitution, child marriage, child trafficking and others. Not to ignore the men who are also victims to women framing them in false cases of impotency and domestic violence. There are eleven chapters presented in this book which deal with different such cases – both men and women – and try to create a little awareness in our educated society.The first chapter is a classic example of how many women are treated in our country, married off to older men or their own relatives at a very young age, hence deprived of education. Many women like Kamali are sold off in the name of marriage, only to be wronged and raped by their so-called husbands. The next two chapters showcase the myriad lusts and desires of women, only to be avenged later. Cheats and frauds are not gender-biased and this is reflected in ‘Ek Tha Kapoor’. We’d also like to take you back to 1957 in a superb case study of how people were wrongly framed during the freedom movement of India. Many such cases are still pending in the court of law.The next three chapters provide some humour to the serious reader and let you loosen yourself while you read about relevant issues like Beggary and obtaining fake degrees. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy! Hence the dose of humour for your palate. The last chapter is bound to leave you in tears when you read about Ganga and how she had been trafficked into a brothel like thousands of other teen girls.The question is – can we do something for them? We can at least be aware of the steps that lead to these sins and spread the awareness. We can try to stop people who sell young girls to brothels. We can stop marital rape in our own homes.Will we do so? Or just read the book and keep it in the shelf with a sigh?

The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can't Tell Us What to Do


Ronald A. Lindsay - 2014
    This is especially true in developed nations, where in some societies nonbelievers now outnumber believers. Unless religion collapses completely, or undergoes a remarkable resurgence, countries across the globe must learn to carefully and effectively manage this societal mix of religious and irreligious. For in a world already deeply riven by sectarian conflict, this unprecedented demographic shift presents yet another challenge to humanity. Writing in an engaging, accessible style, philosopher and lawyer Ronald A. Lindsay develops a tightly crafted argument for secularism—specifically, that in a religiously pluralistic society, a robust, thoroughgoing secularism is the only reliable means of preserving meaningful democracy and rights of conscience. Contrary to certain political pundits and religious leaders who commonly employ the term secularism as a scare word, Lindsay uses clear, concrete examples and jargon-free language to demonstrate that secularism is the only way to ensure equal respect and protection under the law—for believers and nonbelievers alike. Although critical of some aspects of religion, Lindsay neither presents an antireligious tirade nor seeks to convert anyone to nonbelief, reminding us that secularism and atheism are not synonymous. Rather, he shows how secularism works to everyone’s benefit and makes the definitive case that the secular model should be feared by none—and embraced by all.<!--?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /-->

Healing Our World: The Compassion of Libertarianism


Mary J. Ruwart - 2014
    Through its win-win approach, Healing Our World illustrates how the rules of social interaction which we learned as children hold the secret to universal harmony and abundance.

Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory


Lynnell L. Thomas - 2014
    In this timely book, the Americanist and New Orleans native Lynnell L. Thomas delves into the relationship between tourism, cultural production, and racial politics. She carefully interprets the racial narratives embedded in tourism websites, travel guides, business periodicals, and newspapers; the thoughts of tour guides and owners; and the stories told on bus and walking tours as they were conducted both before and after Katrina. She describes how, with varying degrees of success, African American tour guides, tour owners, and tourism industry officials have used their own black heritage tours and tourism-focused businesses to challenge exclusionary tourist representations. Taking readers from the Lower Ninth Ward to the White House, Thomas highlights the ways that popular culture and public policy converge to create a mythology of racial harmony that masks a long history of racial inequality and structural inequity.

Pete Seeger vs. The Un-Americans: A Tale of the Blacklist


Edward Renehan - 2014
    Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans: A Tale of the Blacklist reveals never before known aspects of Seeger's experience during those deark days, including the backstory to his prosecution for Contempt (orchestrated by, of all people, Robert Kennedy).The story is one of great personal honor and commitment to principle. As Bob Dylan has commented in a most under-stated way: "Pete [was] blacklisted during the McCarthy era and had a hard time, but he never stopped." Eleanor Roosevelt wrote admiringly: "Pete Seeger, the folksinger … lives not far from me near Beacon, NY, and is loved by many people, young and old, who have enjoyed his music. … He has refused to take the Fifth Amendment because he felt that could be construed as an admission of guilt, and chose instead to invoke the freedoms of the First Amendment. His case is now in the higher courts."In refusing to answer questions posed by the House Select Committee on Un-American Activities (1955), and at the same time refusing to take the Fifth Amendment, Seeger consciously put himself in harm's way of prosecution for Contempt - a brave act also embarked upon by such notables as playwright Arthur Miller, economist Otto Nathan, and the Hollywood Ten. Seeger's eventual 1961 prosecution resulted in guilty verdicts on ten counts, and a one year prison sentence - a finding overturned on a technicality in the Court of Appeals one year later. Summed up, the threat of prison hung over Seeger's head for a good seven years, from 1955 to 1962.The impact upon Seeger's career was, for a time, quite devestating. He went from selling millions of records and touring top venues with his hit group The Weavers, to playing solo at summer camps and colleges for fees sometimes as low as $25. He and his family subsisted on a shoestring budget. The one thing he was able to put in the bank was his integrity.The story is also one of survival, endurance and eventual triumph. During the sixties - once McCarthyite hysteria subsided - Seeger's career revived and bloomed. He recorded with Columbia Records for a decade, routinely played to sell-out crowds at venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to London's Royal Albert Hall, and looked on as such Seeger-penned songs as "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "If I Had a Hammer" became hits respectively for the Kingston Trio, the Byrds and Peter, Paul & Mary.By the end of his life, Seeger had been honored by the Kennedy Center, had received the Presidential Medal in the Arts, had been inducted (as an influence) into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, and had been the subject of a PBS American Masters documentary: "Pete Seeger - The Power of Song." Upon the occassion of his 90th birthday, 18000 people gathered in Madison Square Garden for a celebration concert organized by Bruce Springsteen, including performances by Joan Baez, John John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, Arlo Guthrie, Tim Robbins, Richie Havens and many others. (Speaking at the birthday celebration, Springsteen summed things up when he said: "Pete - You outlasted the bastards.")