Best of
Social-Science

2005

Black Rednecks and White Liberals


Thomas Sowell - 2005
    As late as the 1940s and 1950s, he argues, poor Southern rednecks were regarded by Northern employers and law enforcement officials as lazy, lawless, and sexually immoral. This pattern was repeated by blacks with whom they shared a subculture in the South. Over the last half century poor whites and most blacks have moved up in class and affluence, but the ghetto remains filled with black rednecks. Their attempt to escape, Sowell shows, is hampered by their white liberal friends who turn dysfunctional black redneck culture into a sacrosanct symbol of racial identity. In addition to Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the book takes on subjects ranging from Are Jews Generic? to The Real History of Slavery.

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America


Jonathan Kozol - 2005
    Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.

The FairTax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS


Neal Boortz - 2005
    In the face of the outlandish American tax burden, talk-radio firebrand Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder are leading the charge to phase out our current, unfair system and enact the FairTax Plan, replacing the federal income tax and withholding system with a simple 23 percent retail sales tax on new goods and services. This dramatic revision of the current system, which would eliminate the reviled IRS, has already caught fire in the American heartland, with more than six hundred thousand taxpayers signing on in support of the plan.As Boortz and Linder reveal in this first book on the FairTax, this radical but eminently sensible plan would end the annual national nightmare of filing income tax returns, while at the same time enlarging the federal tax base by collecting sales tax from every retail consumer in the country. The FairTax, they argue, would transform the fearsome bureaucracy of the IRS into a more transparent, accountable, and equitable tax collection system. Among other benefits, it will:Make America's tax code truly voluntary, without reducing revenueReplace today's indecipherable tax code with one simple sales taxProtect lower-income Americans by covering the tax on basic necessitiesEliminate billions of dollars in embedded taxes we don't even know we're payingBring offshore corporate dollars back into the U.S. economyEndorsed by scores of leading economists and supported by a huge and growing grassroots movement, the FairTax Plan could revolutionize the way America pays for itself. In this straight-talking book, Neal Boortz and John Linder show you how it would work—and how you can help make it happen.

Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment


João Biehl - 2005
    This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the “dictionary” she is compiling; and to trace the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form.As Biehl painstakingly relates Catarina’s words to a vanished world and elucidates her condition, we learn of subjectivities unmade and remade under economic pressures, pharmaceuticals as moral technologies, a public common sense that lets the unsound and unproductive die, and anthropology’s unique power to work through these juxtaposed fields. Vita’s methodological innovations, bold fieldwork, and rigorous social theory make it an essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought and ethics in the contemporary world.

Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses


Theodore Dalrymple - 2005
    In these twenty-six pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the break-down of Islam to the legalization of drugs. The book includes "When Islam Breaks Down," named by David Brooks of the New York Times as the best journal article of 2004.Informed by years of medical practice in a wide variety of settings, Dr. Dalrymple's acquaintance with the outer limits of human experience allows him to discover the universal in the local and the particular, and makes him impatient with the humbug and obscurantism that have too long marred our social and political discourse.His essays are incisive yet undogmatic, beautifully composed and devoid of disfiguring jargon. Our Culture, What's Left of It is a book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization.

War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires


Peter Turchin - 2005
    Turchin argues that the key to the formation of an empire is a society’s capacity for collective action. He demonstrates that high levels of cooperation are found where people have to band together to fight off a common enemy, and that this kind of cooperation led to the formation of the Roman and Russian empires, and the United States. But as empires grow, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, conflict replaces cooperation, and dissolution inevitably follows. Eloquently argued and rich with historical examples, War and Peace and War offers a bold new theory about the course of world history.

Race Against Time


Stephen Lewis - 2005
    Lewis's determination to bear witness to the desperate plight of so many in Africa and elsewhere is balanced by his unique, personal, and often searing insider's perspective on our ongoing failure to help.Lewis recounts how, in 2000, the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York introduced eight Millennium Development Goals, which focused on fundamental issues such as education, health, and cutting poverty in half by 2015. In audacious prose, alive with anecdotes ranging from maddening to hilarious to heartbreaking, Lewis shows why and how the international community is falling desperately short of these goals.This edition includes an afterword by Lewis, covering events after the lectures were delivered in fall 2005.

Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity


Hartmut Rosa - 2005
    He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time.According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.

Parenting for a Peaceful World


Robin Grille - 2005
    It reveals how children adapt to and are influenced by different parenting styles and how safeguarding their emotional development is the key to creating a more peaceful, harmonious, and sustainable world.Practical advice for raising a well-adjusted child includes tips on:Supporting your child's developing emotional intelligenceUnderstanding how your childhood has influenced your own emotional make-upHelping you achieve your full parenting potentialParenting for a Peaceful World is for parents, child health professionals, teachers, and adults seeking to heal and grow.Robin Grille is an internationally renowned author, speaker, educator, psychologist, and psychotherapist specializing in child development, parenting issues, and family relationships.

Living the Extraordinary Life: Nine Principles to Discover It


Charles F. Stanley - 2005
    But Jesus himself did not teach his followers in sets of dos and don'ts; he taught them foundational principles to live by. These life principles, Charles Stanley says, are the simple truths that act as a compass for our souls.You will learn: Your life is a Masterpiece Waiting on God is not passive Disappointments are inevitable, but discouragement is a choice You were created with eternity in your heart God assumes full responsibility for your needs when you obey HimUsing examples from his own personal experiences, Biblical personalities, and case studies, Dr. Stanley demonstrates how these key life principles impact life in the 21st century-and how they make us, as Christians, different from those who live their lives according to preference, rather than principles.

Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences


Leonard Sax - 2005
    Back then, most experts believed that differences in how girls and boys behave are mainly due to differences in how they were treated by their parents, teachers, and friends.It's hard to cling to that belief today. An avalanche of research over the past twenty years has shown that sex differences are more significant and profound than anybody guessed. Sex differences are real, biologically programmed, and important to how children are raised, disciplined, and educated. In Why Gender Matters, psychologist and family physician Dr. Leonard Sax leads parents through the mystifying world of gender differences by explaining the biologically different ways in which children think, feel, and act. He addresses a host of issues, including discipline, learning, risk taking, aggression, sex, and drugs, and shows how boys and girls react in predictable ways to different situations. For example, girls are born with more sensitive hearing than boys, and those differences increase as kids grow up. So when a grown man speaks to a girl in what he thinks is a normal voice, she may hear it as yelling. Conversely, boys who appear to be inattentive in class may just be sitting too far away to hear the teacher—especially if the teacher is female. Likewise, negative emotions are seated in an ancient structure of the brain called the amygdala. Girls develop an early connection between this area and the cerebral cortex, enabling them to talk about their feelings. In boys these links develop later. So if you ask a troubled adolescent boy to tell you what his feelings are, he often literally cannot say.Dr. Sax offers fresh approaches to disciplining children, as well as gender-specific ways to help girls and boys avoid drugs and early sexual activity. He wants parents to understand and work with hardwired differences in children, but he also encourages them to push beyond gender-based stereotypes. A leading proponent of single-sex education, Dr. Sax points out specific instances where keeping boys and girls separate in the classroom has yielded striking educational, social, and interpersonal benefits. Despite the view of many educators and experts on child-rearing that sex differences should be ignored or overcome, parents and teachers would do better to recognize, understand, and make use of the biological differences that make a girl a girl, and a boy a boy.

The Simple Truths of Service


Kenneth H. Blanchard - 2005
    Describes the story of "Johnny the Bagger", an inspirational story for businesses.

Shaping Success


Susan Garrett - 2005
    From puppy basics like recalls, rear end awareness, and distraction training to games for building motivation to a step-by-step program for training incredibly reliable contacts and weave poles, Shaping Success shares the training program of one of the world's most respected dog trainers, Susan Garrett. The book covers both controlling drive and building drive, and it includes an explanation of Susan's world-famous contact training and 2x2 weave pole training methods. Plus it's an entertaining and thought-provoking read that dog owners as well as serious dog trainers will enjoy

Modern Macroeconomics: Its Origins, Development and Current State


Brian Snowdon - 2005
    Thoroughly extended, revised and updated, it will become the indispensable text for students and teachers of macroeconomics in the new millennium. Full description

Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind


Eric R. Kandel - 2005
    Complete with commentaries by experts in the field, Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind reflects the author's evolving view of how biology has revolutionized psychiatry and psychology and how potentially could alter modern psychoanalytic thought.The author's unique perspective on both psychoanalysis and biological research has led to breakthroughs in our thinking about neurobiology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis -- all driven by the central idea that a fuller understanding of the biological processes of learning and memory can illuminate our understanding of behavior and its disorders. These wonderful essays cover - the mechanisms of psychotherapy and medications, showing that both work at the same level of neural circuits and synapses, and the implications of neurobiological research for psychotherapy;- the ability to detect functional changes in the brain after psychotherapy, which enables us, for the first time, to objectively evaluate the effects of psychotherapy on individual patients;- the need for animal models of mental disorders; for example, learned fear, to show how molecules and cellular mechanisms for learning and memory can be combined in various ways to produce a range of adaptive and maladaptive behaviors;- the unification of behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology into the new science of the mind, charted in two seminal reports on neurobiology and molecular biology given in 1983 and 2000;- the critical role of synapses and synaptic strength in both short- and long-term learning;- the biological and social implications of the mapping of the human genome for medicine in general and for psychiatry and mental health in particular;The author concludes by calling for a revolution in psychiatry, one that can use the power of biology and cognitive psychology to treat the many mentally ill persons who do not benefit from drug therapy.Fascinating reading for psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, social workers, residents in psychiatry, and trainees in psychoanalysis, Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind records with elegant precision the monumental changes taking place in psychiatric thinking. It is an invaluable reference work and a treasured resource for thinking about the future.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything


Steven D. Levitt - 2005
    Wade have on violent crime? Freakonomics will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.(front flap)

Treating Pornography Addiction: The Essential Tools for Recovery


Kevin B. Skinner - 2005
    Dr. Skinner discusses how pornography becomes a problem in the mind and how it becomes addictive. Then he teaches the reader how to rewrite the patterns in the mind. It closes with the key steps of recovery. Included in the book is a brief assessment tool "Assessing Pornography Addiction."

Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage


Kathryn J. Edin - 2005
    Now 27, she is the unmarried mother of three and is raising her kids in one of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods. Would she and her children be better off if she had waited to have them and had married their father first? Why do so many poor American youth like Millie continue to have children before they can afford to take care of them? Over a span of five years, sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas talked in-depth with 162 low-income single moms like Millie to learn how they think about marriage and family. Promises I Can Keep offers an intimate look at what marriage and motherhood mean to these women and provides the most extensive on-the-ground study to date of why they put children before marriage despite the daunting challenges they know lie ahead.Read an excerpt here: Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage, With a New Prefaceby Kathryn Edin and M... by University of California Press

The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton


Jerome Karabel - 2005
    Full of colorful characters (including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, James Bryant Conant, and Kingman Brewster), it shows how the ferocious battles over admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton shaped the American elite and bequeathed to us the peculiar system of college admissions that we have today. From the bitter anti-Semitism of the 1920s to the rise of the “meritocracy" at midcentury to the debate over affirmative action today, Jerome Karabel sheds surprising new light on the main events and social movements of the twentieth century. No one who reads this remarkable book will ever think about college admissions -- or America -- in the same way again.

Pocket Oxford English Dictionary


Catherine Soanes - 2005
    Particularly suitable for students of secondary-school level, it is also a handy dictionary for the home and office. It covers all the words you need for everyday use, and has excellent coverage of curriculum vocabulary. For the new edition the definitions are clearer than ever before and there is lots of help with those aspects of the language (such as spelling, pronunciation, and usage) which cause most difficulties.In particular, there are hundreds of new spelling notes to help with tricky words that are commonly misspelled, extra usage notes giving advice on good English, and more help with pronunciations of difficult words. A new open design ensures that this dictionary is even more accessible and easier to use than ever before.

John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics


Richard Parker - 2005
    From his acerbic analysis of America’s “private wealth and public squalor” to his denunciation of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, Galbraith consistently challenged “conventional wisdom” (a phrase he coined). He did so as a witty commentator on America’s political follies and as a versatile author of bestselling books—such as The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State—that warn of the dangers of deregulated markets, corporate greed, and inattention to the costs of our military power. Here, in the first full-length biography of Galbraith and his times, Richard Parker provides not only a nuanced portrait of this extraordinary man, but also an important reinterpretation of twentieth-century public policy and economic practices.“Whatever you may think of his ideas, John Kenneth Galbraith has led an extraordinary life. . . . Doing justice to this life story requires an outsize biography, one that not only tells Mr. Galbraith’s tale but sets it on the broader canvas of America’s political and economic evolution. And Richard Parker’s book does just that.”—Economist“Parker’s book is more than a chronicle of Galbraith’s life; it’s a history of American politics and policy from FDR through George W. Bush. . . . It will make readers more economically and politically aware.”—USA Today “The most readable and instructive biography of the century.”—William F. Buckley, National Review      “The story of this man’s life and work is wonderfully rendered in this magnum opus, and offers an antidote to the public ennui, economic cruelty, and government malfeasance that poison life in America today.”—James Carroll, Boston Globe

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?


Philip E. Tetlock - 2005
    This book fills that need. Here, Philip E. Tetlock explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events, and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat.Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making.

Weird New York


Chris Gethard - 2005
    The Pilgrims probably landed here first, and recorded history got the geography wrong, because really, everything started here. We have the Yankees and the Mets, plus the Giants and the Jets, even if they are, for some weird reason, in New Jersey. And we have trout, lots of cows, the Catskills, the Baseball Hall of Fame, a really big waterfall, and we're the birthplace of Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore, for Pete's sake.But there's something else, something we've got so much more of. We've got a great big quantity of . . . weirdness. Yes, our level of bizarreness is so high that we enticed an out of stater to become a New Yorker and chronicle it all. With notepad in hand and apples in pocket for nourishment, author Chris Gethard scouted the state's highways and byways in search of the odd and the offbeat. He tracked down impossible-to-believe tales, only to discover odd grains of truth that give the stories just enough credibility to make one feel . . . slightly uneasy.So turn the pages and visit Long Island's Big Duck, travel down Moan and Groan Road in, of all places, a town called Hope, and sample the Jell-O Museum in Le Roy. Drive by the abandoned insane asylums that blanket the state?big surprise. By all means avoid the screaming and gunshots of House Road, but do coast up Spook Rock Road, say hi to Jumper and Grumpy at America's largest pet cemetery, and knock on Eunice Welsh's crypt (she might knock back). Be lured into the water, if you're really dumb, by the Lady of Lake Ronkonkoma, and next time you're in Staten Island, beware of Bigfoot?he's found his way out there.Yes, it's a grand state, and it's clear why we all sing "I Love New York" with such fervor. A brand-new entry in the best-selling Weird U.S. series, Weird New York is filled with all the good stuff your history teacher never taught you. So get on the road with Chris for a great adventure. We guarantee it'll make you love New York that much more.Chris Gethard served as the associate editor of Weird NJ magazine for over four years. While there he helped write and edit the book, Weird NJ, and co-authored its follow-up, Weird U.S. Chris is also an actor and comedian, has contributed writing to shows on Comedy Central, and has acted on a number of TV programs, including Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He is a performer and teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Manhattan.Chris grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, a few short blocks from the laboratory where Thomas Edison once put on public electrocutions of a variety of animals. Now he lives in Astoria, Queens, just a stone's throw from the Hell Gate section of the East River where over one thousand people perished in the General Slocum steamboat fire of 1904.

The Choice is Yours


John C. Maxwell - 2005
    The Choice is Yours helps readers recognize opportunities for making better decisions in 16 key aspects of life, such as "Attitude is a Choice" and "Character is a Choice." Other topics to be addressed in Maxwell's succinct style are: Commitment, Communication, Courage, Power, Initiative, Listening, Passion, Relationships, Responsibility, Self-discipline, Servanthood, Teachability, Morality, and Love.

The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live by


Dan P. McAdams - 2005
    McAdams suggests that the key to American identity lies in the stories we live by. And the most powerful life story in America today is the story of redemption. On a broad societal scale and in our own private lives, we want first and foremost to transform our suffering into a positive emotional state, to move from pain and peril to redemption. American identity is the redemptive self.Based on 10 years of research on the life stories of especially caring and productive American adults, The Redemptive Self explores the psychological and cultural dynamics of the stories Americans tell to make sense of who they are. Among the most eloquent tellers of redemptive stories are those midlife adults who are especially committed to their careers, their families, and making a positive difference in the world. These highly generative men and women embrace the negative things that happen to them, for it is by transforming the bad into good that they are able to move forward in life and ultimately leave something positive behind. Unconsciously, they find inspiration and sustenance in the rich store of redemptive tales that American culture offers - from the autobiographies of Massachusetts Puritans, Benjamin Franklin, and escaped African-American slaves to the stories of upward mobility, recovery, fulfillment, and release that come to us today from Hollywood, 12-step programs, self-help experts, religious stories, political speeches, business gurus, and Oprah.But can all American lives find redemption? Some people seem unable to make their lives into redemptive tales. Instead, their stories show contaminated plots and vicious cycles. Moreover, might there be a dark side to the redemptive stories Americans love? While these stories can sustain a productive and caring approach to life, they can also suggest a peculiarly American kind of arrogance and self-righteousness. For all their strengths, redemptive stories sometimes fail, and sometimes suggest important failings in the way Americans see themselves and the world. The Redemptive Self encourages us to examine our lives and our stories in full, to apprehend both the good and the bad in the stories we live by. By doing so, we may fashion better stories and better lives for the future.

Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings


Eithne Luibhéid - 2005
    Within the vast scholarship on this wave of immigration, however, little attention has been paid to queer immigrants of color. Focusing particularly on migration from Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, and the Philippines, Queer Migrations brings together scholars of immigration, citizenship, sexuality, race, and ethnicity to provide analyses of the norms, institutions, and discourses that affect queer immigrants of color, also providing ethnographic studies of how these newcomers have transformed established immigrant communities in Miami, San Francisco, and New York.

The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences


Robert Keith Sawyer - 2005
    The sciences of learning include cognitive science, educational psychology, computer science, anthropology, sociology, neuroscience, and other fields. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, first published in 2006, shows how educators can use the learning sciences to design more effective learning environments - including school classrooms and also informal settings such as science centers or after-school clubs, on-line distance learning, and computer-based tutoring software. The chapters in this handbook each describe exciting new classroom environments, based on the latest science about how children learn. CHLS is a true handbook in that readers can use it to design the schools of the future - schools that will prepare graduates to participate in a global society that is increasingly based on knowledge and innovation.

All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated


Nell Bernstein - 2005
    One in thirty-three American children goes to sleep without access to a parent because that parent is in jail. Despite these staggering numbers, the children of prisoners remain largely invisible to society. Following in the tradition of the bestseller Random Family, journalist Nell Bernstein shows, through the deeply moving stories of real families, how the children of the incarcerated are routinely punished for their parents' status; ignored, neglected, stigmatized, and endangered, with minimal effort made to help them cope. Topics range from children's experiences at the time of their parent's arrest, to laws and politics that force even low-level offenders to forfeit their parental rights, to alternative sanctions that take into account prisoners' status as mothers and fathers. All Alone in the World defines a crucial aspect of criminal justice and, in doing so, illuminates a critical new realm of human rights.

Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers


Eric (Rico) Gutstein - 2005
    Rethinking Mathematics offers teaching ideas, lesson plans, and reflections by practitioners and mathematics educators. This is real-world math-math that helps students analyze problems as they gain essential academic skills. This book offers hope and guidance for teachers to enliven and strengthen their math teaching. It will deepen students' understanding of society and help prepare them to be critical, active participants in a democracy. Blending theory and practice, this is the only resource of its kind.

Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System


Christophe Jaffrelot - 2005
    Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) rose from a community of "untouchables," to become a major figure in modern Indian history. Christophe Jaffrelot's biography reconsiders Dr. Ambedkar's life and thought and his unique combination of pragmatism and idealism. Establishing himself as a scholar, activist, journalist, and educator, Ambedkar ultimately found himself immersed in Indian politics and helped to draft the nation's constitution as law minister in Nehru's first cabinet. Ambedkar's ideas remain an inspiration to India's Dalit community.

The Norton Psychology Reader


Gary F. Marcus - 2005
    Editor Gary Marcus has carefully selected brief readings, mostly from popular trade books, that are both relevant and interesting to the introductory student.

War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death


Norman Solomon - 2005
    This guide to disinformation analyzes American military adventures past and present to reveal striking similarities in the efforts of various administrations to justify, and retain, public support for war. War Made Easy is essential reading. It documents a long series of deliberate misdeeds at the highest levels of power and lays out important guidelines to help readers distinguish a propaganda campaign from actual news reporting. With War Made Easy, every reader can become a savvy media critic and, perhaps, help the nation avoid costly and unnecessary wars.

A Seat At The Table


Huston Smith - 2005
    Their intimate, impassioned dialogues yield profound insights into one of the most striking cases of tragic irony in history: the country that prides itself on religious freedom has resolutely denied those same rights to its own indigenous people. With remarkable erudition and curiosity--and respectfully framing his questions in light of the revelation that his discovery of Native American religion helped him round out his views of the world's religions--Smith skillfully helps reveal the depth of the speakers' knowledge and experience. American Indian leaders Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Winona LaDuke (Anishshinaabeg), Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), Frank Dayish, Jr. (Navajo), Charlotte Black Elk (Oglala Lakota), Douglas George-Kanentiio (Mohawk-Iroquois), Lenny Foster (Dine/Navajo), Tonya Gonnella Frichner (Onondaga), Anthony Guy Lopez (Lakota-Sioux), and Oren Lyons (Onondaga) provide an impressive overview of the critical issues facing the Native American community today. Their ideas about spirituality, politics, relations with the U.S. government, their place in American society, and the continuing vitality of their communities give voice to a population that is all too often ignored in contemporary discourse. The culture they describe is not a relic of the past, nor a historical curiosity, but a living tradition that continues to shape Native American lives.

Making Sense of Heritability


Neven Sesardić - 2005
    He critically examines the view--very widely accepted by scientists, social scientists and philosophers of science--that heritability estimates have no causal implications and are devoid of any interest and subjects the arguments to close philosophical scrutiny. His conclusion is that anti-heritability arguments are based on conceptual confusions and misunderstandings of behavioral genetics.

Consequences of Oppression: Hell on Earth


Pen Black - 2005
    Consequences of oppression: hell on earth is an uncut, undiluted and un apolegetic look at the plight of black america.The gloves have come off and pen black is our modern day crusader Consequences of oppression is raw, it's real and it's a needed wake-up call to an endangered race.In this book he attacks the problems created, sustained and by a system in place, a present oppressor and even blacks themselves.

Anthropology in Theory: Issues in Epistemology


Henrietta L. Moore - 2005
    The 57 articles collected in this volume---together with the editors' introduction---provide an overview of the key debates in anthropological theory over the past century.Provides the most comprehensive selection of readings and insightful overview of anthropological theory availableIdentifies crucial conceptual signposts and new theoretical directions for the disciplineDiscusses broader debates in the social sciences: debates about society and culture; structure and agency; identities and technologies; subjectivities and translocality; and meta-theory, ontology and epistemology

How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic


George A. Reisch - 2005
    in the 1930s. It follows its de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. The volume will be of interest to philosophers and historians of science, as well as scholars of Cold War studies.

Trade-Offs: An Introduction to Economic Reasoning and Social Issues


Harold Winter - 2005
    But economists also analyze issues that, to others, do not typically fall within the realm of economic reasoning, such as organ transplants, cigarette addiction, smoking in public, and product safety. Trade-Offs is an introduction to the economic approach to analyzing these controversial public policy issues.Harold Winter provides readers with the analytical tools needed to identify and understand the trade-offs associated with these topics. By considering both the costs and benefits of potential policy solutions, Winter stresses that real-world policy decision making is best served by an explicit recognition of as many trade-offs as possible.Intellectually stimulating yet accessible and entertaining, Trade-Offs will be appreciated by students of economics, public policy, health administration, political science, and law, as well as by anyone who follows current social policy debates.

Conjure in African American Society


Jeffrey E. Anderson - 2005
    New Age spiritualism, Afro-Caribbean syncretic faiths, and modern psychological understandings of magic have all contributed to a recent revival of conjure.By critically examining the many influences that have shaped conjure over time, Anderson effectively redefines magic as a cultural power, one that has profoundly touched the arts, black Christianity, and American society overall.

Affirmative Action Hoax: Diversity, the Importance of Character, and Other Lies


Steven Farron - 2005
    First passed off as compensation for discrimination, then as a means to achieve “diversity,” it is nothing less than official, government-mandated discrimination against whites.Professor Steven Farron of Witwatersrand University in South Africa, has written the definitive account of this pernicious policy, which whites have chosen to impose on themselves. Drawing on extensive academic experience and exhaustive research, he has written a uniquely undeceived and devastating analysis that will leave neither partisan nor critic unmoved.

The Geography of Opportunity: Race and Housing Choice in Metropolitan America


Xavier de Souza Briggs - 2005
    The truth, however, is that local communities have a long history of ambivalence toward new arrivals and minorities. Persistent patterns of segregation by race and income still exist in housing and schools, along with a growing emphasis on rapid metropolitan development (sprawl) that encourages upwardly mobile families to abandon older communities and their problems. This dual pattern is becoming increasingly important as America grows more diverse than ever and economic inequality increases. Two recent trends compel new attention to these issues. First, the geography of race and class represents a crucial litmus test for the new "regionalism"—the political movement to address the linked fortunes of cities and suburbs. Second, housing has all but disappeared as a major social policy issue over the past two decades. This timely book shows how unequal housing choices and sprawling development create an unequal geography of opportunity. It emerges from a project sponsored by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University in collaboration with the Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Brookings Institution. The contributors—policy analysts, political observers, social scientists, and urban planners—document key patterns, their consequences, and how we can respond, taking a hard look at both successes and failures of the past. Place still matters, perhaps more than ever. High levels of segregation shape education and job opportunity, crime and insecurity, and long-term economic prospects. These problems cannot be addressed effectively if society assumes that segregation will take care of itself. Contributors include William Apgar (Harvard University), Judith Bell (PolicyLink), Angela Glover Blackwell (PolicyLink), Allegra Calder (Harvard), Karen Chapple (Cal-Berkeley), Camille Charles (Penn), Mary Cunningham (Urban Institute), Casey Dawkins (Virginia Tech), Stephanie DeLuca (Johns Hopkins), John Goering (CUNY), Edward Goetz (U. of Minnesota), Bruce Katz (Brookings), Barbara Lukermann (U. of Minnesota), Gerrit Knaap (U. of Maryland), Arthur Nelson (Virginia Tech), Rolf Pendall (Cornell), Susan J. Popkin (Urban Institute), James Rosenbaum (Northwestern), Stephen L. Ross (U. of Connecticut), Mara Sidney (Rutgers), Phillip Tegeler (Poverty and Race Research Action Council), Tammy Tuck (Northwestern), Margery Austin Turner (Urban Institute), William Julius Wilson (Harvard).

A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq


Paul William Roberts - 2005
    This is his exposi of the politics behind the recent war -- and the brutal reality the Iraqis experienced but the rest of the world didn't see. In Baghdad when the bombs started falling, Roberts witnesses the "shock and awe" campaign firsthand, mourns the loss of his friend's entire family, and escapes to Jordan, only to return two weeks later behind the American army. A scathing indictment of the Bush administration's new imperialism, "A War Against Truth recounts Robert's experiences in the newly "liberated" Iraq, where he meets looters selling priceless artifacts, interviews Tariq Aziz in hiding, is interrogated by U.S. intelligence.

Reforming Punishment: Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonment


Craig Haney - 2005
    Today the U.S. imprisons more people than any other nation. Prisons cause prisoners to make adaptations so they can take the long-term exposure to pain and these adaptations cause personal and social problems, both while offenders are imprisoned and after the offenders are released. Haney presents evidence that problems in prisons - which include overcrowding, violence, and sexual assault - are the result of poor design, lack of funding, and an outdated understanding of individual punishment that does not acknowledge the context in which crimes are perpetrated.

Why People Die by Suicide


Thomas E. Joiner - 2005
    Drawing on extensive clinical and epidemiological evidence, as well as personal experience. Thomas Joiner brings a comprehensive understanding to seemingly incomprehensible behaviour. Among the many people who have considered, attempted, or died by suicide, he finds three factors that mark those most at risk of death: the feeling of being a burden on loved ones; the sense of isolation; and, chillingly, the learned ability to hurt oneself

In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument


Bernard Williams - 2005
    Widely respected as a moral philosopher, Williams began to write about politics in a sustained way in the early 1980s. There followed a stream of articles, lectures, and other major contributions to issues of public concern--all complemented by his many works on ethics, which have important implications for political theory.This new collection of essays, most of them previously unpublished, addresses many of the core subjects of political philosophy: justice, liberty, and equality; the nature and meaning of liberalism; toleration; power and the fear of power; democracy; and the nature of political philosophy itself. A central theme throughout is that political philosophers need to engage more directly with the realities of political life, not simply with the theories of other philosophers. Williams makes this argument in part through a searching examination of where political thinking should originate, to whom it might be addressed, and what it should deliver.Williams had intended to weave these essays into a connected narrative on political philosophy with reflections on his own experience of postwar politics. Sadly he did not live to complete it, but this book brings together many of its components. Geoffrey Hawthorn has arranged the material to resemble as closely as possible Williams's original design and vision. He has provided both an introduction to Williams's political philosophy and a bibliography of his formal and informal writings on politics.Those who know the work of Bernard Williams will find here the familiar hallmarks of his writing--originality, clarity, erudition, and wit. Those who are unfamiliar with, or unconvinced by, a philosophical approach to politics, will find this an engaging introduction. Both will encounter a thoroughly original voice in modern political theory and a searching approach to the shape and direction of liberal political thought in the past thirty-five years.

Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour


Michael Billig - 2005
    Both a significant work of scholarship and a novel contribution to the understanding of the humourous, this is a seriously engaging book' - David Inglis, University of Aberdeen This delightful book tackles the prevailing assumption that laughter and humour are inherently good. In developing a critique of humour the author proposes a social theory that places humour - in the form of ridicule - as central to social life. Billig argues that all cultures use ridicule as a disciplinary means to uphold norms of conduct and conventions of meaning. Historically, theories of humour reflect wider visions of politics, morality and aesthetics. For example, Bergson argued that humour contains an element of cruelty while Freud suggested that we deceive ourselves about the true nature of our laughter. Billig discusses these and other theories, while using the topic of humour to throw light on the perennial social problems of regulation, control and emancipation.

Strangers in a Strange Land: Humans in an Urbanizing World


Douglas S. Massey - 2005
    Despite this, most humans live in dense urban environments. "As biological organisms," Massey writes, "we are indeed strangers in a strange land."Strangers in a Strange Land is part of the Contemporary Societies series.

Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America


William H. Colby - 2005
    It has given us hope against cancer and AIDS, allowed heart and brain surgeries that have saved untold numbers of lives, and delivered us from the pain and crippling legacy of injury. Medical technology, it seems, is a never-ending string of miracles.But it is also a double-edged sword. More often than not, death today happens because of a decision to stop doing something, or to not do it at all. As the tragic life and death of Terri Schiavo so poignantly illustrated, universal definitions of life, death, nature, and many other concepts are elusive at best. Unplugged addresses the fundamental questions of the right-to-die debate, and discusses how the medical advances that bring so much hope and healing have also helped to create today's dilemma.This compelling book explores recent high-profile cases, including that of Mrs. Schiavo, and illuminates the complex legal, ethical, medical, and deeply personal issues of a debate that ultimately affects us all. Compassionate and beautifully written, the book helps readers understand the implications of current laws and proposed legislation, various medical options (including hospice), and the typical end-of-life decisions we all must face in order to make informed decisions for ourselves and our loved ones.The hardcover edition of Unplugged was chosen by The Library Journal as one of the Best Consumer Health Books of 2006.

Environmental Sociology: From Analysis to Action


Leslie King - 2005
    This environmental sociology reader emphasizes utilizing the sociological imagination to examine the race, class, gender, and other power dimensions that intersect environmental issues. It includes excerpts from recently published pieces that use various sociological perspectives, especially critical frameworks, to examine a wide range of topics-from the globalization of hazardous wastes and industries to mountaintop removal for mining to the construction of nature in a television sitcom. This second edition, like the first, aims to engage undergraduate students, and includes nine new selections chosen from recent work. A section on social constructionism has been added, and the section on science, risk, and health has been expanded to mirror the increased interest in that field. The new edition also includes a chapter on climate change and new selections in the section on 'Thinking about Change/Working for Change, ' which helps students see how individuals can affect the future of the planet through their actions.

Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory


Rüdiger F. Pohl - 2005
    At the beginning of each chapter, leading researchers in the field introduce the background to phenomena such as illusions of control, overconfidence and hindsight bias. This is followed by an explanation of the experimental context in which these illusions can be investigated and a theoretical discussion drawing conclusions about the wider implications of these fallacy and bias effects. Written with researchers and instructors in mind, this tightly edited, reader-friendly text provides both an overview of research in the area and many lively pedagogic features such as chapter summaries, further reading lists and suggestions for classroom demonstrations.

Weird Pennsylvania: Your Travel Guide to Pennsylvania's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets


Matt Lake - 2005
    Praise for Weird Pennsylvania:“Fun, amazing, and arrestingly illustrated.?  —Booklist“…a real fine read and can serve as a travel guide for a trek among the unusual, odd and scary parts of our “weird? state.?  —Pennsylvania Magazine

Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage


Stephanie Coontz - 2005
    But the same things that have made it so have also made a good marriage more fulfilling than ever before. In this enlightening and hugely entertaining book, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the sexual torments of Victorian couples to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is-and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was only 200 years ago that marriage began to be about love and emotional commitment, and since then the very things that have strengthened marriage as a personal relationship have steadily weakened it as a social institution. Marriage, A History brings intelligence, wit, and some badly needed perspective to today's marital debates and dilemmas.

Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective


Istvan Hont - 2005
    "Jealousy of trade" refers to a particular conjunction between politics and the economy that emerged when success in international trade became a matter of the military and political survival of nations. Today, it would be called "economic nationalism," and in this book Istvan Hont connects the commercial politics of nationalism and globalization in the eighteenth century to theories of commercial society and Enlightenment ideas of the economic limits of politics.The book begins with an analysis of how the notion of "commerce" was added to Hobbes's "state of nature" by Samuel Pufendorf. Hont then considers British neo-Machiavellian political economy after the Glorious Revolution. From there he moves to a novel interpretation of the political economy of the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly of David Hume and Adam Smith, concluding with a conceptual history of nation-state and nationalism in the French Revolution.Jealousy of Trade combines political theory with intellectual history, illuminating the past but also considering the challenges of today.

Dying Planet: Mars in Science and the Imagination


Robert Markley - 2005
    Focusing on perceptions of the red planet in scientific works and science fiction, Dying Planet analyzes the ways Mars has served as a screen onto which humankind has projected both its hopes for the future and its fears of ecological devastation on Earth. Robert Markley draws on planetary astronomy, the history and cultural study of science, science fiction, literary and cultural criticism, ecology, and astrobiology to offer a cross-disciplinary investigation of the cultural and scientific dynamics that have kept Mars on front pages since the 1800s.Markley interweaves chapters on science and science fiction, enabling him to illuminate each arena and to explore the ways their concerns overlap and influence one another. He tracks all the major scientific developments, from observations through primitive telescopes in the seventeenth century to data returned by the rovers that landed on Mars in 2004. Markley describes how major science fiction writers—H. G. Wells, Kim Stanley Robinson, Philip K. Dick, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Judith Merril—responded to new theories and new controversies. He also considers representations of Mars in film, on the radio, and in the popular press. In its comprehensive study of both science and science fiction, Dying Planet reveals how changing conceptions of Mars have had crucial consequences for understanding ecology on Earth.

Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent


Daphne Patai - 2005
    Theory, as the many theoretical ism's (among them postcolonialism, postmodernism, and New Historicism) are now known, once seemed so exciting but has become ossified and insular. This iconoclastic collection is an excellent companion to current anthologies of literary theory, which have embraced an uncritical stance toward Theory and its practitioners. Written by nearly fifty prominent scholars, the essays in Theory's Empire question the ideas, catchphrases, and excesses that have let Theory congeal into a predictable orthodoxy. More than just a critique, however, this collection provides readers with effective tools to redeem the study of literature, restore reason to our intellectual life, and redefine the role and place of Theory in the academy.

Figments and Fragments of Mahayana Buddhism in India: More Collected Papers


Gregory Schopen - 2005
    In these articles, Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.

Encyclopedia of Anthropology


H. James Birx - 2005
    Also included are relevant articles on geology, paleontology, biology, evolution, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology. The contributions are authored by over 250 internationally renowned experts, professors, and scholars from some of the most distinguished museums, universities, and institutes in the world. Special attention is given to human evolution, primate behavior, genetics, ancient civilizations, sociocultural theories, and the value of human language for symbolic communication.

Mind and Religion: Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religion


Harvey Whitehouse - 2005
    One leading theory, Harvey WhitehouseOs modes of religiosity theory, demonstrates how two distinct modes of organizing and transmitting religious traditions emerge from different ways of activating universal memory systems. In Mind and Religion, top scholars from biology to religious studies question, test, evaluate and challenge WhitehouseOs sweeping thesis. The result is an up-to-date snapshot of the cognitive science of religion field for classes in psychology, anthropology, or history of religion.

Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture


Eiko Ikegami - 2005
    The people of premodern Japan built on earlier aesthetic traditions in part for their own sake, but also to find space for self-expression in the increasingly rigid and tightly controlled Tokugawa political system. In so doing, they incorporated the world of the beautiful within their social life which led to new modes of civility. They explored horizontal and voluntary ways of associating while immersing themselves in aesthetic group activities. Combining sociological insights in organizations with prodigious scholarship on cultural history, this book explores such wide-ranging topics as networks of performing arts, tea ceremony and haiku, the politics of kimono aesthetics, the rise of commercial publishing, the popularization of etiquette and manners, the vogue for androgyny in kabuki performance, and the rise of tacit modes of communication.

Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance


R. Danielle Egan - 2005
    Over the last decade there has been a steadily expanding interest in exotic dance, from its role as an "art form" to its benefits as a means of exercise. While the breadth of discussion generated on this topic has expanded, the fundamental debate remains the same: are female strippers empowering themselves or allowing themselves to be exploited?With her follow-up to Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire, M. Lisa Johnson moves beyond the old debates and gives the reader a glimpse of what exotic dancing is like through the eyes of the stripper. The essays in Flesh for Fantasy cover everything from workplace policies and conditions, legal restrictions, customer behavior, and the struggle to overcome the stereotypes associated with the profession.

The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge


Michael McKeon - 2005
    Treating that relation as a crucial instance of the modern division of knowledge, Michael McKeon narrates its pre-history along with that of its essential component, domesticity.This narrative draws upon the entire spectrum of English people's experience. At the most "public" extreme are political developments like the formation of civil society over against the state, the rise of contractual thinking, and the devolution of absolutism from monarch to individual subject. The middle range of experience takes in the influence of Protestant and scientific thought, the printed publication of the private, the conceptualization of virtual publics—society, public opinion, the market—and the capitalization of production, the decline of the domestic economy, and the increase in the sexual division of labor. The most "private" pole of experience involves the privatization of marriage, the family, and the household, and the complex entanglement of femininity, interiority, subjectivity, and sexuality.McKeon accounts for how the relationship between public and private experience first became intelligible as a variable interaction of distinct modes of being—not a static dichotomy, but a tool to think with. Richly illustrated with nearly 100 images, including paintings, engravings, woodcuts, and a representative selection of architectural floor plans for domestic interiors, this volume reads graphic forms to emphasize how susceptible the public-private relation was to concrete and spatial representation. McKeon is similarly attentive to how literary forms evoked a tangible sense of public-private relations—among them figurative imagery, allegorical narration, parody, the author-character-reader dialectic, aesthetic distance, and free indirect discourse. He also finds a structural analogue for the emergence of the modern public-private relation in the conjunction of what contemporaries called the "secret history" and the domestic novel.A capacious and synthetic historical investigation, The Secret History of Domesticity exemplifies how the methods of literary interpretation and historical analysis can inform and enrich one another.

Saskatchewan: A New History


Bill Waiser - 2005
    Writing with clarity, candor, and compassion, Waiser describes in detail his province and its people through the stimulating, often tumultuous years since joining Confederation in 1905.A gift to the province from the University of Saskatchewan, written in commemoration of the province's centennial celebrations in 2005, Saskatchewan: A New History tells, above all, the engaging stories of the people of Saskatchewan. Their wisdom, foresight, bravery, toil, and eternal optimism gave birth to one hundred years of extraordinary history.Waiser leaves no stone unturned as he records the events and stories of the people who experienced them: from the province's earliest days, when anything seemed possible; through the years of the Great Depression, when the prospect of greatness seemed all but lost; to the second half of the century, when an intense, at times bitter, debate raged over how best to govern Saskatchewan. Relying on the most up-to-date historical research available, he offers new perspectives on traditional views and tackles previously neglected, often difficult, concepts and events."What is most striking about these images, aside from the richness of their color and the skillful use of light, are the happy, smiling faces. He could see things like no one else with a camera. He had an uncanny skill to set the scene. He caught people in everyday life and everyday activities and people wanted to have their picture taken by him."Generously illustrated with carefully selected archival images and two sixteen-page color inserts of commissioned photographs by Saskatoon's John Perret, Saskatchewan: A New History also pays a stunning visual tribute to the historical, urban, and natural splendour of Saskatchewan and its people.Includes: two 16-page color photo inserts by John Perret, 205 Black and White photographs and illustrations, 20 reference tables, 15 maps . . . and more.Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-Fiction nominee, 2005Saskatchewan Book Award for Scholarly Writing nominee, 2005

The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria


Andrew Apter - 2005
    Andrew Apter's The Pan-African Nation tells the full story of this cultural extravaganza, from Nigeria's spectacular rebirth as a rapidly developing petro-state to its dramatic demise when the boom went bust. According to Apter, FESTAC expanded the horizons of blackness in Nigeria to mirror the global circuits of its economy. By showcasing masks, dances, images, and souvenirs from its many diverse ethnic groups, Nigeria forged a new national culture. In the grandeur of this oil-fed confidence, the nation subsumed all black and African cultures within its empire of cultural signs and erased its colonial legacies from collective memory. As the oil economy collapsed, however, cultural signs became unstable, contributing to rampant violence and dissimulation. The Pan-African Nation unpacks FESTAC as a historically situated mirror of production in Nigeria. More broadly, it points towards a critique of the political economy of the sign in postcolonial Africa.

An Unplanned Life: A Memoir


George Mckee Elsey - 2005
    As an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, Elsey helped brief the president and his senior associates on war events. He and his map room colleagues acted as the secretariat for Roosevelt’s cabled exchanges with Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Chiang Kai-shek; filed records of “summit conferences”; and stored in safes plans for future operations. He also traveled with the president in order to code and decode the classified messages that flowed between the presidential train or ship and the White House.Elsey’s duties continued with Harry Truman’s succession to the presidency. He decoded the famous message from Secretary of War Henry Stimson reporting the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and carried it to President Truman. In 1947, he shed his Naval Reserve uniform and joined the White House’s civilian staff as assistant to the special counsel to the president. In 1949, he became administrative assistant to the president, and, in 1952, he became a member of the Mutual Security Agency staff. During those years, he grew very close to Harry Truman, and thus, a major portion of An Unplanned Life relates to his experiences then.In the first postwar winter, Elsey was frequently the only staff member who accompanied President Truman on the USS Williamsburg. In September 1946, Elsey submitted a report to Truman on U.S.-Soviet relations, which came to be well known as the “Clifford-Elsey Report.” Providing Truman with notes for some two hundred of his “back-of-the-train” informal talks, Elsey played a part in the best remembered feature of the “Whistle-Stop Campaign” that resulted in “the political upset of the century.” In addition to his years at the White House, Elsey also touches on his post–White House years—his time in private industry, his months with Clark Clifford when Clifford was trying unsuccessfully to extricate America from Vietnam, and his long association with the American Red Cross. An Unplanned Life is a fascinating look at the life of an extraordinary individual who played an important and unprecedented part in two different presidents’ decisions and affected the course of our nation. Anyone with an interest in history will find this memoir fascinating and invaluable.

Climate Change: Turning Up the Heat


A. Barrie Pittock - 2005
    Barrie Pittock, one of the world's leading climate researchers, argues that we need to act urgently to avoid increasingly severe climate change. He looks at the controversy around global warming and other predicted changes, examining the scientific basis of the changes observed to date, how they relate to natural variations and why the evidence points to larger changes later this century. The effect of these changes on our natural systems and our lifestyles will be considerable and could include wild weather, shifts in global ocean circulation, decreases in crop yields and sea-level rises. But the impacts won't be distributed evenly: some countries will suffer more than others. Climate Change: Turning up the Heat explains how our attitudes to risk and uncertainty � constant companions in life � influence our decision making and, ultimately, how much we and future generations stand to lose from rapid climate change. It outlines the current concerns of the major international players and reviews the response to date, detailing national interests. Importantly, it shows there is real hope of managing climate change and minimising the risk of disaster if we step up efforts to develop and apply innovative technological and policy solutions.

On the Nature of Prejudice


John Dovidio - 2005
    A distinguished collection of international scholars considers Allport's impact on the field, reviews recent developments, and identifies promising directions for future investigation. Organized around Allport's central themes, this book provides a state-of-the-art, comprehensive view of where the field has been, where it is now, and where it is going.

Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art


Olav Velthuis - 2005
    On the basis of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, including interviews with art dealers in New York and Amsterdam, Olav Velthuis shows how contemporary art galleries juggle the contradictory logics of art and economics. In doing so, they rely on a highly ritualized business repertoire. For instance, a sharp distinction between a gallery’s museumlike front space and its businesslike back space safeguards the separation of art from commerce.Velthuis shows that prices, far from being abstract numbers, convey rich meanings to trading partners that extend well beyond the works of art. A high price may indicate not only the quality of a work but also the identity of collectors who bought it before the artist’s reputation was established. Such meanings are far from unequivocal. For some, a high price may be a symbol of status; for others, it is a symbol of fraud.Whereas sociological thought has long viewed prices as reducing qualities to quantities, this pathbreaking and engagingly written book reveals the rich world behind these numerical values. Art dealers distinguish different types of prices and attach moral significance to them. Thus the price mechanism constitutes a symbolic system akin to language.

Surviving Intimate Terrorism


Hedda Nussbaum - 2005
    This book tells the painful story of Hedda's 12 years with Steinberg, how she went from quiet book editor to notorious battered woman blamed for her daughter's death because she didn't "get out" soon enough. But, as the title suggests, Hedda not only survived the double abuse, but grew strong in the process and went on to become an advocate for other battered women - writing and speaking, teaching women how to stay out of and/or to survive intimate terrorism. In her Prologue, Ms. Nussbaum states the book's primary purpose: "I pray that my story be an inspiration to women to see the truth before it's too late and to use their inner strength to save their own lives and those of their children. If this book saves just one child or one mother, I will be content. If it saves even more, I will be fulfilled." Ms. Nussbaum is a former senior editor at Random House and the author of the children's books Plants Do Amazing Things and Animals Build Amazing Homes.

Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life: Democracy's Promise and Education's Challenge


Henry A. Giroux - 2005
    Not only is the legacy of democracy addressed through the work of John Dewey and others, but the democratic possibilities of schooling are analyzed through a range of issues extending from the politics of teacher authority to the importance of student voices. These issues have only become more vital in an era of neoliberalism and "smaller government," as Giroux discusses at length in this new updated edition.

Appropriate Christianity


Charles H. Kraft - 2005
    With eighteen contributing authors including Sherwood Lingenfelter, Paul E. Pierson, Paul H. DeNeui, and Paul G. Hiebert, this compilation is a must-read for the student of contextualization.Contents:Part I Introduction1. Why Appropriate? by Charles H. Kraft2. The Development of Contextualization Theory in Euroamerican Missiology by Charles H. Kraft3. The Missionary Encounter With Culture Since the Seventeenth Century by Wilbert R. Shenk4. The Function Of Appropriate Contextualization In Mission By Darrell L. Whiteman5. Why Isn’t Contextualization Implemented? by Charles H. Kraft Part II Appropriate Christianity6. Is Christianity a Religion or Faith? by Charles H. Kraft7. Contextualization in Three Crucial Dimensions by Charles H. Kraft8. From Systematic and Biblical to Missional Theology by Tite Tienou and Paul G. Heibert9. The Hebraic Covenant As a Model for Contextualization by Robert L. Gallagher10. Meaning Equivalence Contextualization by Charles H. Kraft11. Dynamic of Contextualization by Charles H. Kraft12. Five Perspectives of Contextually Appropriate Missional Theology by Charles E. Van Engen13. Toward a Contextually Appropriate Methodology in Mission Theology by Charles E Van Engen14. Appropriate Hermeneutics by Shawn B. Redford15. Contextualization and Time: Generational Appropriateness by Charles H. Kraft16. Power-Giving Leadership: Transformation For a Missional Church by Sherwood Lingenfelter Part III Proactive Missiology: The Challenge17. How Appropriate is in the Church Growth Paradigm in Today’s Mission Contexts? By Eddie Gibbs18. Variations on a Theme of Appropriate Contextualization: Music Lessons from Africa by Roberta R. King19. Appropriate Relationships by Charles H. Kraft20. Contextualizing the Relationship Dimension of the Christian Life by Katie J. Rawson21. Spiritual Power: A Missiological Issue by Charles H. Kraft22. Appropriate Contextualization of Spiritual Power by Charles H. Kraft23. Appropriate Approaches in Muslim Contexts by John Travis and Anna Travis24. A Typology of Approaches to Thai Folk Buddhists by Paul De Neui25. Renewal, Revival, and Contextualization by Paul E. Pierson26. Appropriate Witness to Postmodern: Re-Incarnating the Way of Jesus In 21st Century Western Culture by Jonathon Campbell27. Reciprocal Contextualization by Frecia C. Johnson Part IV Final Word28. The Incarnation as Matrix for Appropriate Theologies by Dean S. Gilliland