Best of
United-States

2006

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq


Stephen Kinzer - 2006
    Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the latest, though perhaps not the last, example of the dangers inherent in these operations.In Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer tells the stories of the audacious politicians, spies, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers. He also shows that the U.S. government has often pursued these operations without understanding the countries involved; as a result, many of them have had disastrous long-term consequences.In a compelling and provocative history that takes readers to fourteen countries, including Cuba, Iran, South Vietnam, Chile, and Iraq, Kinzer surveys modern American history from a new and often surprising perspective."Detailed, passionate and convincing . . . [with] the pace and grip of a good thriller." -- Anatol Lieven, The New York Times Book Review

Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World


David Brion Davis - 2006
    His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award--and he has been universally praised for his prodigious research, his brilliant analytical skill, and his rich and powerful prose. Now, in Inhuman Bondage, Davis sums up a lifetime of insight in what Stanley L. Engerman calls "a monumental and magisterial book, the essential work on New World slavery for several decades to come." Davis begins with the dramatic Amistad case, which vividly highlights the international character of the Atlantic slave trade and the roles of the American judiciary, the presidency, the media, and of both black and white abolitionists. The heart of the book looks at slavery in the American South, describing black slaveholding planters, the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, the daily life of ordinary slaves, the highly destructive internal, long-distance slave trade, the sexual exploitation of slaves, the emergence of an African-American culture, and much more. But though centered on the United States, the book offers a global perspective spanning four continents. It is the only study of American slavery that reaches back to ancient foundations (discussing the classical and biblical justifications for chattel bondage) and also traces the long evolution of anti-black racism (as in the writings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant, among many others). Equally important, it combines the subjects of slavery and abolitionism as very few books do, and it illuminates the meaning of nineteenth-century slave conspiracies and revolts, with a detailed comparison with 3 major revolts in the British Caribbean. It connects the actual life of slaves with the crucial place of slavery in American politics and stresses that slavery was integral to America's success as a nation--not a marginal enterprise. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage offers a compelling narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism. It is the ultimate portrait of the dark side of the American dream. Yet it offers an inspiring example as well--the story of how abolitionists, barely a fringe group in the 1770s, successfully fought, in the space of a hundred years, to defeat one of human history's greatest evils.

Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire


John Pilger - 2006
    World–renowned journalist John Pilger looks at five nations (Palestine, Diego Garcia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Africa) that have undergone long and painful struggles for freedom, yet are still waiting for its realization.

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice


Raymond Arsenault - 2006
    In the spring and summer of 1961, they put their lives on the line, riding buses through the American South to challenge segregation in interstate transport. Their story is one of the most celebrated episodes of the civil rights movement, yet a full-length history has never been written until now. In these pages, acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault provides a gripping account of six pivotal months that jolted the consciousness of America.The Freedom Riders were greeted with hostility, fear, and violence. They were jailed and beaten, their buses stoned and firebombed. In Alabama, police stood idly by as racist thugs battered them. When Martin Luther King met the Riders in Montgomery, a raging mob besieged them in a church. Arsenault recreates these moments with heart-stopping immediacy. His tightly braided narrative reaches from the White House--where the Kennedys were just awakening to the moral power of the civil rights struggle--to the cells of Mississippi's infamous Parchman Prison, where Riders tormented their jailers with rousing freedom anthems. Along the way, he offers vivid portraits of dynamic figures such as James Farmer, Diane Nash, John Lewis, and Fred Shuttlesworth, recapturing the drama of an improbable, almost unbelievable saga of heroic sacrifice and unexpected triumph.The Riders were widely criticized as reckless provocateurs, or outside agitators. But indelible images of their courage, broadcast to the world by a newly awakened press, galvanized the movement for racial justice across the nation. Freedom Riders is a stunning achievement, a masterpiece of storytelling that will stand alongside the finest works on the history of civil rights.

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis


Mark A. Noll - 2006
    Noll examines writings about slavery and race from Americans both white and black, northern and southern, and includes commentary from Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Canada. Though the Christians on all sides agreed that the Bible was authoritative, their interpretations of slavery in Scripture led to a full-blown theological crisis.

The Other Brother


Brandon Massey - 2006
    Until a man named Isaiah Battle comes into his life, claiming to be his illegitimate brother.

Angle of Yaw


Ben Lerner - 2006
    Angle of Yaw investigates the fate of public space, public speech, and how the technologies of viewing—aerial photography in particular—feed our culture an image of itself. And it’s a spectacular view.The man observes the action on the field with the tiny television he brought to the stadium. He is topless, painted gold, bewigged. His exaggerated foam index finger indicates the giant screen upon which his own image is now displayed, a model of fanaticism. He watches the image of his watching the image on his portable TV on his portable TV. He suddenly stands with arms upraised and initiates the wave that will consume him.Haunted by our current “war on terror,” much of the book was written while Lerner was living in Madrid (at the time of the Atocha bombings and their political aftermath), as the author steeped himself in the history of Franco and fascism. Regardless of when or where it was written, Angle of Yaw will further establish Ben Lerner as one of our most intriguing and least predictable poets.

The Road to Unafraid: How the Army's Top Ranger Faced Fear and Found Courage through Black Hawk Down and Beyond


Jeff Struecker - 2006
    initiative since Panama, and tells how God taught him faith from the front in fear-soaked times. As readers go on-mission with Struecker through his harrowing tales, they will learn how to face their own fears with faith in a mighty God. Just as he told one of his charges in Mogadishu: "The difference between being a coward and a hero is not whether you're scared, it's what you do while you're scared."

Roughneck Nine-One: The Extraordinary Story of a Special Forces A-Team at War


Frank Antenori - 2006
    In an already legendary conflict that will influence US Army doctrine for years to come, the Green Berets stopped an enemy unit that included battle tanks and more than 150 well-trained, well-equipped, and well-commanded soldiers. Any normal American light infantry unit finding itself outnumbered over five to one and outgunned on the ground by such a heavily armored force would have turned and run for cover. But Green Berets don't like to run and Nine One Don't Run was Antenori's team's motto from the very beginning. In a spectacular fight, they battled Iraqi tanks and personnel until only a handful of Iraqi survivors finally fled the battlefield.In the process, Nine One encountered hordes of news media, and at the peak of the fight, a US Navy F-14 dropped a 500-pound bomb in the middle of a group of supporting Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, killing and wounding dozens. This is the never-before-told, unsanitized, unedited story of the fight for the crossroads at Debecka, Iraq, and a unique inside look at a Special Forces A-Team as it recruits and organizes, trains for combat, and eventually fights a battle against a huge opposing force in Iraq.Roughneck Nine One is a powerful look inside a Special Forces A-Team and its dramatic and controversial battle against a huge opposing force, and a revealing story of the role of Special Forces in the ongoing war in Iraq.

Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America


James R. Green - 2006
    A wave of mass hysteria swept the country, leading to a sensational trial, that culminated in four controversial executions, and dealt a blow to the labor movement from which it would take decades to recover. Historian James Green recounts the rise of the first great labor movement in the wake of the Civil War and brings to life an epic twenty-year struggle for the eight-hour workday. Blending a gripping narrative, outsized characters and a panoramic portrait of a major social movement, Death in the Haymarket is an important addition to the history of American capitalism and a moving story about the class tensions at the heart of Gilded Age America.

Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States


Sharon Smith - 2006
    And she closely examines the role of the labor movement in the 2004 presidential election, tracing the shrinking electoral influence of organized labor and the failure of labor-management cooperation, “business unionism,” and reliance on the Democrats to deliver any real gains.Smith shows how a return to the fighting traditions of US labor history, with their emphasis on rank-and-file strategies for change, can turn around the labor movement.Subterranean Fire brings working-class history to light and reveals its lessons for today.Sharon Smith is the author of Women and Socialism, also published by Haymarket Books, as well as many articles on women’s liberation and the US working class. Her writings appear regularly in Socialist Worker newspaper and the International Socialist Review. She has also written for the journal Historical Materialism and is a contributor to Iraq Under Siege :The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War and Women and the Revolution by Ethel Mannin. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok


Glenn Greenwald - 2006
    Not liberal, not conservative. Politicians were all the same and it didn’t matter which party was in power. Extremists on both ends canceled each other out, and the United States would essentially remain forever centrist. Or so he thought. Then came September 11, 2001. Greenwald’s disinterest in politics was replaced by patriotism, and he supported the war in Afghanistan. He also gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt over his decision to invade Iraq. But, as he saw Americans and others being disappeared, jailed and tortured, without charges or legal representation, he began to worry. And when he learned his president had seized the power to spy on American citizens on American soil, without the oversight required by law, he could stand no more. At the heart of these actions, Greenwald saw unprecedented and extremist theories of presidential power, theories that flout the Constitution and make President Bush accountable to no one, and no law. How Would a Patriot Act? is one man’s story of being galvanized into action to defend America’s founding principles, and a reasoned argument for what must be done. Greenwald’s penetrating words should inspire a nation to defend the Constitution from a president who secretly bestowed upon himself the powers of a monarch. If we are to remain a constitutional republic, Greenwald writes, we cannot abide radical theories of executive power, which are transforming the very core of our national character, and moving us from democracy toward despotism. This is not hyperbole. This is the crisis all Americans—liberals and conservatives--now face. In the spirit of the colonists who once mustered the strength to denounce a king, Greenwald invites us to consider: How would a patriot act today?

A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial


H.L. Mencken - 2006
    MenckenFiercely intelligent, scathingly honest, and hysterically funny, H.L. Mencken’s coverage of the Scopes Monkey Trial so galvanized the nation that it eventually inspired a Broadway play and the classic Hollywood movie Inherit the Wind.Mencken’s no-nonsense sensibility is still exciting: his perceptive rendering of the courtroom drama; his piercing portrayals of key figures Scopes, Clarence Darrow, and William Jennings Bryan; his ferocious take on the fundamentalist culture surrounding it all—including a raucous midnight trip into the woods to witness a secret “holy roller” service.Shockingly, these reports have never been gathered together into a book of their own—until now.A Religious Orgy In Tennessee includes all of Mencken’s reports for The Baltimore Sun, The Nation, and The American Mercury. It even includes his coverage of Bryan’s death just days after the trial—an obituary so withering Mencken was forced by his editors to rewrite it, angering him and leading him to rewrite it yet again in a third version even less forgiving than the first. All three versions are included, as is a complete transcript of the trial’s most legendary exchange: Darrow’s blistering cross-examination of Bryan.With the rise of “intelligent design,” H.L. Mencken’s work has never seemed more unnervingly timely—or timeless.

A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror


Alfred W. McCoy - 2006
    McCoy locates the deep roots of recent scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in a long-standing, covert program of interrogation. A Question of Torture investigates the CIA's practice of "sensory deprivation" and "self-inflicted pain," in which techniques including isolation, hooding, hours of standing, and manipulation of time assault the victim's senses and destroy the basis of personal identity. McCoy traces the spread of these practices across the globe, from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, and argues that after 9/11, psychological torture became the weapon of choice in the CIA's global prisons, reinforced by "rendition" of detainees to "torture-friendly" countries. Finally, McCoy shows that information extracted by coercion is worthless, making a strong case for the FBI's legal methods of interrogation.Scrupulously documented and grippingly told, A Question of Torture is a devastating indictment of inhumane practices that have damaged America's laws, military, and international standing.

What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It


Trish Wood - 2006
    Includes 8 pages of photographs and 1 map.

I Shock Myself: The Autobiography of Beatrice Wood


Beatrice Wood - 2006
    With candour and insight, she recollects nearly ten decades of world-shaking events, heart breaking romances, and artistic achievement.

House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power


James Carroll - 2006
    James Carroll proves a controversial thesis: the Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more. To argue his case, he marshals a trove of often chilling evidence. He recounts how "the Building" and its denizens achieved what Eisenhower called "a disastrous rise of misplaced power" — from the unprecedented aerial bombing of Germany and Japan during World War II to the "shock and awe" of Iraq. He charts the colossal U.S. nuclear buildup, which far outpaced that of the USSR, and has outlived it. He reveals how consistently the Building has found new enemies just as old threats — and funding — evaporate. He demonstrates how Pentagon policy brought about U.S. indifference to an epidemic of genocide during the 1990s. And he shows how the forces that attacked the Pentagon on 9/11 were set in motion exactly sixty years earlier, on September 11, 1941, when ground was broken for the house of war.Carroll draws on rich personal experience (his father was a top Pentagon official for more than twenty years) as well as exhaustive research and dozens of extensive interviews with Washington insiders. The result is a grand yet intimate work of history, unashamedly polemical and personal but unerringly factual. With a breadth and focus that no other book could muster, it explains what America has become over the past sixty years.

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy


John J. Mearsheimer - 2006
    Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, was one of the most controversial articles in recent memory. Originally published in the "London Review of Books "in March 2006, it provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. Now in a work of major importance, Mearsheimer and Walt deepen and expand their argument and confront recent developments in Lebanon and Iran. They describe the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argues that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. Mearsheimer and Walt provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America's posture throughout the Middle East--in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America's national interest nor Israel's long-term interest. The lobby's influence also affects America's relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror. Writing in "The New York Review of Books," Michael Massing declared, "Not since "Foreign Affairs "magazine published Samuel Huntington's 'The Clash of Civilizations?' in 1993 has an academic essay detonated with such force." The publication of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy "is certain to widen the debate and to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Momentum Is Your Friend: The Metal Cowboy and His Pint-Sized Posse Take on America


Joe Kurmaskie - 2006
    Joe “Metal Cowboy” Kurmaskie actually took his two kids along. For a 4,000-mile bicycle ride across America, Joe’s seven-year-old son, Quinn, rides a tagalong bike attached to his dad’s; and behind that is five-year-old Enzo in a bike trailer. Our hero the Metal Cowboy answers the question “What are you, crazy?” with a resounding and cheerful “Yes.” Unassisted—with no support crew except his boys’ comic relief and the periodic kindness of strangers—he pedals hundreds of pounds of gear and offspring over mountain passes, across the wide plains, through thunderstorms, and into the heart of what it means to be a dad.Along the way they encounter everything that makes up America—small-town kindness and inner-city heart, wild horses and highway roadkill, a?bitter Vietnam vet and a hopeful young inventor, grizzly bears and bison roaming free, cyclists and monstrous RVs, a very peppy cheerleader and a visitation from the ghost of the author’s father, horrible traffic and serene dirt roads, a monastery and a distillery, baseball, and yes, lots of pie.By the time they reach Washington, DC, two months after leaving Portland, Oregon, they’ve bonded in a rare way. Kurmaskiewrites, “We share a secret, the three of us; one permanent summer in our hearts now, where we’re never apart.”

Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico


Jake Kosek - 2006
    Rather than reproduce traditional understandings of nature and environment, Jake Kosek shifts the focus toward material and symbolic “natures,” seemingly unchangeable essences central to formations of race, class, and nation that are being remade not just through conflicts over resources but also through everyday practices by Chicano activists, white environmentalists, and state officials as well as nuclear scientists, heroin addicts, and health workers. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival research, he shows how these contentious natures are integral both to environmental politics and the formation of racialized citizens, politicized landscapes, and modern regimes of rule.Kosek traces the histories of forest extraction and labor exploitation in northern New Mexico, where Hispano residents have forged passionate attachments to place. He describes how their sentiments of dispossession emerged through land tenure systems and federal management programs that remade forest landscapes as exclusionary sites of national and racial purity. Fusing fine-grained ethnography with insights gleaned from cultural studies and science studies, Kosek shows how the nationally beloved Smokey the Bear became a symbol of white racist colonialism for many Hispanos in the region, while Los Alamos National Laboratory, at once revered and reviled, remade regional ecologies and economies. Understories offers an innovative vision of environmental politics, one that challenges scholars as well as activists to radically rework their understandings of relations between nature, justice, and identity.

Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security


Christopher Cooper - 2006
    In this troubling expose of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block of "The Wall Street Journal" show that the flaws go much deeper than out-of-touch federal bureaucrats or overwhelmed local politicians.Drawing on exclusive interviews with federal, state, and local officials, Cooper and Block take readers inside the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during Hurricane Katrina--the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, the individuals who saw that the system was broken but were unable to fix it. America's top emergency response officials had long known that a calamitous hurricane was likely to hit New Orleans, but that seems to have had little effect on planning or execution. "Disaster" demonstrates that the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain. Washington is ill equipped to handle large-scale emergencies, be they floods or fires, natural events or terrorist attacks, and Cooper and Block make a strong case for overhauling of the nation's emergency response system. This is a book that no American can afford to ignore."

Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different


Gordon S. Wood - 2006
    The life of each; Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Paine is presented individually as well as collectively, but the thread that binds these portraits together is the idea of character as a lived reality. They were members of the first generation in history that was self-consciously self-made men who understood that the arc of lives, as of nations, is one of moral progress.

My American Kundiman


Patrick Rosal - 2006
    Here, though, the poet's electric narratives and portraits extend beyond the working class streets of urban New Jersey. Modeling poems on the kundiman, a song of unrequited love sung by Filipinos for their country in times of oppression, he professes his conflicted feelings for America, while celebrating and lamenting his various heritageswhether by chatting up St. Patrick, riffing on race relations, or channeling Lapu Lapu in a rejoinder to Magellan. Passionate, provocative, and irrepressible throughout, My American Kundiman further establishes Rosal as a poet to be reckoned with.

A Century of War - Lincoln, Wilson, & Roosevelt


John V. Denson - 2006
    Of the 50 million killed in World War II, nearly 70 percent were innocent civilians, many as a result of the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America.The horror of the twentieth century could hardly have been predicted in the nineteenth century, which saw the eighteenth century end with the American Revolution bringing about the creation of the first classical liberal government in the world. What bought it about? How can it be prevented in the future? These are the concerns that animate this work.Denson recounts how the wars that destroyed American liberty came about through a series of deceitful political ploys. He discusses how Lincoln worked to provoke the South into firing the first shot, and how he used that shot as the pretext for total war. Wilson learned from this experience in working to get the US involved in World War I, which established a precedent for the planning state. FDR similarly engaged in political maneuvering to prepare a reluctant public for war.Denson provides a close examination of the rise of executive dictatorship, and demonstrates how far from the founders' vision of government we have come. It explains how world peace can only come through the practice of free trade and free markets, and why large government can only create conflict both domestic and international.The Denson book is a wonderful presentation of a position that was more mainstream in the 1930s and the 1990s: the unity of libertarian economics with a pro-peace foreign policy position. This position is far too rare in American life. This eye-opening treatment of history will go a long way toward restoring this proper libertarian perspective in American life.

Far More Terrible for Women: Personal Accounts of Women in Slavery


Patrick Minges - 2006
    I's put you to live with Rufus for dat purpose. Now, if you doesn't want whippin' at de stake, you do what I wants." I thinks 'bout Massa buyin' me off de block and savin' me from bein' separated from my folks, and 'bout bein' whipped at de stake. Dere it am. What am I to do? So asks Rose Williams of Bell County, Texas, whose long-ago forced cohabitation remains as bitter at age 90 as when she was "just a ingnoramus chile" of 16. In all her years after freedom, she never had any desire to marry. Firsthand accounts of female slaves are few. The best-known narratives of slavery are those of Frederick Douglass and other men. Even the photos most people have seen are of male slaves chained and beaten. What we know of the lives of female slaves comes mainly from the fiction of authors like Toni Morrison and movies like Gone With the Wind. Far More Terrible for Women seeks to broaden the discussion by presenting 27 narratives of female ex-slaves. Editor Patrick Minges combed the WPA interviews of the 1930s for those of women, selecting a range of stories that give a taste of the unique challenges, complexities, and cruelties that were the lot of females under the "peculiar institution."Patrick Minges worked for 17 years for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. He teaches in Stokes County Schools and at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem. He is also the author of Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855-1867 and Black Indian Slave Narratives.

Geographies of New Orleans: Urban Fabrics Before the Storm


Richard Campanella - 2006
    "Geographies of New Orleans" integrates hundreds of historical sources with custom-made maps, graphs, photos, and satellite images to explore the intricate urban fabrics of one of the world's most fascinating cities from its fragile deltaic terrain to its striking built environment, from its diverse ethnic makeup to its devastation by Hurricane Katrina.

Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime


Dylan Rodríguez - 2006
    The dramatic rise and consolidation of America’s prison system has devastated lives and communities. But it has also transformed prisons into primary sites of radical political discourse and resistance as they have become home to a growing number of writers, activists, poets, educators, and other intellectuals who offer radical critiques of American society both within and beyond the prison walls. In Forced Passages, Dylan Rodríguez argues that the cultural production of such imprisoned intellectuals as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Angela Davis, Leonard Peltier, George Jackson, José Solis Jordan, Ramsey Muniz, Viet Mike Ngo, and Marilyn Buck should be understood as a social and intellectual movement in and of itself, unique in context and substance. Rodríguez engages with a wide range of texts, including correspondence, memoirs, essays, poetry, communiqués, visual art, and legal writing, drawing on published works by widely recognized figures and by individuals outside the public’s field of political vision or concern. Throughout, Rodríguez focuses on the conditions under which imprisoned intellectuals live and work, and he explores how incarceration shapes the ways in which insurgent knowledge is created, disseminated, and received. More than a series of close readings of prison literature, Forced Passages identifies and traces the discrete lineage of radical prison thought since the 1970s, one formed by the logic of state violence and by the endemic racism of the criminal justice system. Dylan Rodríguez is assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Muslims in American History: A Forgotten Legacy


Jerald F. Dirks - 2006
    The book pays homage to one such forgotten legacy--the role of Muslims in American history. By offering a review based on various scholarly sources, the book broadens the understanding of American public with regard to the substantial role played by Muslims throughout American history.

Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830


Clare A. Lyons - 2006
    Lyons uncovers a world where runaway wives challenged their husbands' patriarchal rights and where serial and casual sexual relationships were commonplace. By reading popular representations of sex against actual behavior, Lyons reveals the clash of meanings given to sex and illuminates struggles to recast sexuality in order to eliminate its subversive potential. Sexuality became the vehicle for exploring currents of liberty, freedom, and individualism in the politics of everyday life among groups of early Americans typically excluded from formal systems of governance--women, African Americans, and poor classes of whites. Lyons shows that men and women created a vibrant urban pleasure culture, including the eroticization of print culture, as eighteenth-century readers became fascinated with stories of bastardy, prostitution, seduction, and adultery. In the post-Revolutionary reaction, white middle-class men asserted their authority, Lyons argues, by creating a gender system that simultaneously allowed them the liberty of their passions, constrained middle-class women with virtue, and projected licentiousness onto lower-class whites and African Americans.Lyons's analysis shows how class and racial divisions fostered new constructions of sexuality that served as a foundation for gender. This gendering of sexuality in the new nation was integral to reconstituting social hierarchies and subordinating women and African Americans in the wake of the Revolution.

The Teeth of the Lion: The Story of the Beloved and Despised Dandelion


Anita Sanchez - 2006
    Through a series of short essays, written in accessible language and a thoroughly engaging style, Anita Sanchez takes the reader on a journey through the natural history of the dandelion and its long association with humans. Joan Jobson's illustrations add important details and subtle accents that enhance this journey. Well-adapted ecologically to spread into and thrive within disturbed sites - such as the lawns, playgrounds, roadsides, and parking lots in which they are most often encountered today, and viewed as weeds - dandelions also have had a lengthy, welcomed association with humans as medicine, food, and objects of ritual, magic, and folklore. The Teeth of the Lion will be a source of enjoyable, fascinating, memorable information of interest to all users. It will provide naturalists, wildflower enthusiasts, gardeners, interpreters, teachers, landscapers, and homeowners a better understanding of one of the most common, well-known, and perhaps under-appreciated plants to be found anywhere.

The Devil's Pitchfork


Mark Terry - 2006
    Department of Homeland Security. A specialist in biological and chemical weapons, he's in a breathtaking race to find the terrorist thieves and destroy Chimera M13. There's little evidence, except for the recording of a familiar voice that reminds him of an army buddy who's dead. Questioning his sanity and failing to keep his panic attacks at bay, Stillwater has no choice but to follow his instincts while scientists work on a vaccine in Washington, D.C. He just might have a chance in hell of ending the madness -- if only the government's most experienced immunological researcher hadn't become infected.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism


Michelle Goldberg - 2006
    Before the 2004 election, and during the ensuing months when many Americans were trying to understand how an administration marked by cronyism, disregard for the national budget, and poorly disguised self-interest had been reinstated, Goldberg traveled through the heartland of a country in the grips of a fevered religious radicalism: the America of our time. From the classroom to the mega-church to the federal court, she saw how the growing influence of dominionism-the doctrine that Christians have the right to rule nonbelievers-is threatening the foundations of democracy.In Kingdom Coming, Goldberg demonstrates how an increasingly bellicose fundamentalism is gaining traction throughout our national life, taking us on a tour of the parallel right-wing evangelical culture that is buoyed by Republican political patronage. Deep within the red zones of a divided America, we meet military retirees pledging to seize the nation in Christ's name, perfidious congressmen courting the confidence of neo-confederates and proponents of theocracy, and leaders of federally funded programs offering Jesus as the solution to the country's social problems.With her trenchant interviews and the telling testimonies of the people behind this movement, Goldberg gains access into the hearts and minds of citizens who are striving to remake the secular Republic bequeathed by our founders into a Christian nation run according to their interpretation of scripture. In her examination of the ever-widening divide between believers and nonbelievers, Goldberg illustrates the subversive effect of this conservative stranglehold nationwide. In an age when faith rather than reason is heralded and the values of the Enlightenment are threatened by a mystical nationalism claiming divine sanction, Kingdom Coming brings us face to face with the irrational forces that are remaking much of America.

Louis Zukofsky: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)


Louis Zukofsky - 2006
    This is the first collection to draw on the full range of Zukofsky's poetry-containing short lyrics, versions of Catullus, and generous selections from "A", his 24-part"poem of a life"-and provides a superb introduction to a modern master of whom the critic Guy Davenport has written: "Every living American poet worth a hoot has stood aghast before the steel of his integrity." The most formally radical poet to emerge among the second wave of American modernists, Louis Zukofsky continues to influence younger poets attracted to the rigor, inventiveness, and formal clarity of his work. Born on New York's Lower East Side in 1904 to emigrant parents, Zukofsky achieved early recognition when he edited an issue of Poetry devoted to the Objectivist poets, including George Oppen and Charles Reznikoff. In addition to an abundance of short lyrics and a sound-based version of the complete poems of Catullus, he worked for most of his adult life on the long poem "A" of which he said: "In a sense the poem is an autobiography: the words are my life." Zukofsky's work has been described as difficult although he himself said: "I try to be as simple as possible." In the words of editor Charles Bernstein, "This poetry leads with sound and you can never go wrong following the sound sense... Zukofsky loved to create patterns, some of which are apparent and some of which operate subliminally... Each word, like a stone dropped in a pond, creates a ripple around it. The intersecting ripples on the surface of the pond are the pattern of the poem." Here for the first time is a selection designed to introduce the full range of Zukofsky's extraordinary poetry.

The Condemned


Noah Cicero - 2006
    The Second to Be Published by the acclaimed author .. A series of unforgettable images of the Lives, Loves and Hates of many inhabitants of Youngstown Ohio.. Beautiful, Maddening.. Obscenely Funny!

Cindy Sherman


Cindy Sherman - 2006
    Famous for posing as the subject of her own photos, Sherman's work addresses the role of the artist, the impact of the media upon the art world and the position of women in society. Organized in a roughly chronological path by theme, Cindy Sherman provides a comprehensive review of the artist's complete works, including her Bus Riders, Murder Mystery, and Untitled Film Stills series, and photographs on topics ranging from surrealist pictures, fairy tales, rear screen projections, the Old Masters, centerfolds, pink robes, clowns, dolls, and Hollywood. Fascinating archival material includes a notebook of personal snapshots that Sherman kept from an early age, on which she would circle herself and label each one: "That's Me." This monograph is the catalogue for an international exhibition that will be held in Paris, Denmark, Austria, and Berlin from 2006 through 2007.

My Walk with Bob


Bruce Boone - 2006
    Gay and Lesbian Studies. Memoir. This collection of conversations and ruminations during walks around the city was first published in 1979 by Black Star Series, San Francisco. It was immediately recognized as a core text by a group of young writers known collectively as the New Narrative school, associated with Robert Gluck's workshops and other events held at Small Press Traffic. The anecdotal stories reveal what it was like to be gay and interested in intelligent literature in 1970's San Francisco. Dennis Cooper calls it "a seminal and perfect work," and for Camille Roy it is "a founding document, and the brilliant record of an opening in writing."

Just Americans: How Japanese Americans Won a War at Home and Abroad


Robert Asahina - 2006
    A minority group in America is harassed for its ties to a foreign country. A worldwide conflict tests our resolve in combat abroad and our commitment to justice, equality, and liberty at home…Within months after Pearl Harbor, 110,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly “evacuated” from the West Coast, losing their jobs, their property, and their homes. In less than a year, they were “relocated” and incarcerated in desolate camps throughout the West, Southwest, and South. Yet, incredibly, thousands of young men from the camps joined the Army, to defend the country that had denied them their rights. This is the dramatic story of the segregated Japanese American 100th Battalion/442d Regimental Combat Team—and what they did to affirm their full citizenship. As Gen. Jacob L. Devers put it, in World War II the soldiers of the 100th/442d had “more than earned the right to be called just Americans, not Japanese Americans."During the fall of 1944, the combat team made headlines when it rescued the “lost battalion” of the 36th “Texas” Division. At the same time, with the 1944 elections looming, the Roosevelt Administration was debating whether to close the camps. And while the soldiers of the 100th/442d were sacrificing their lives in Europe, the Supreme Court was deciding the infamous Korematsu and Endo cases, which challenged the notion that “military necessity” justified the “relocation.”Through interviews with surviving veterans, archival research, maps, and photos, Robert Asahina has reconstructed these fateful events of October-November 1944. From breathless battle scenes, masterfully handled in all their detail; to the unbreakable bonds of friendship in the field; to heart- wrenching stories of loss and discrimination on the mainland and in Hawaii, Just Americans tells the story of what Gen. George C. Marshall called the “most decorated unit in American military history for its size and length of service.” It is also the story of soldiers in combat who were fighting a greater battle at home—a struggle that continues for minority groups today—over what it means to be an American.

Sara


Tony Hayden - 2006
    Her father, a rural county deputy, battles his own demons and a despotic sheriff in a desperate search to find his only child. Mike Haller must untangle a web of lies and secrets woven into the fabric of this small mountain town to discover the road that leads to his missing daughter.Tony Hayden has laced together a story of struggle, hope and the untethered brutality of men without boundary that forces the reader up a dark mountain path to the edge of a shallow grave that hides no secrets.

Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War


Robert L. Beisner - 2006
    history, presiding over American foreign policy during a pivotal era--the decade after World War II when the American Century slipped into high gear. During his vastly influential career, Acheson spearheaded the greatest foreign policy achievements in modern times, ranging from the Marshall Plan to the establishment of NATO.In this acclaimed biography, Robert L. Beisner paints an indelible portrait of one of the key figures of the last half-century. In a book filled with insight based on research in government archives, memoirs, letters, and diaries, Beisner illuminates Acheson's major triumphs, including the highly underrated achievement of converting West Germany and Japan from mortal enemies to prized allies, and does not shy away from examining his missteps. But underlying all his actions, Beisner shows, was a tough-minded determination to outmatch the strength of the Soviet bloc--indeed, to defeat the Soviet Union at every turn. The book also sheds light on Acheson's friendship with Truman--one, a bourbon-drinking mid-Westerner with a homespun disposition, the other, a mustachioed Connecticut dandy who preferred perfect martinis.Over six foot tall, with steel blue, merry, searching eyes and a wolfish grin, Dean Acheson was an unforgettable character--intellectually brilliant, always debonair, and tough as tempered steel. This lustrous portrait of an immensely accomplished and colorful life is the epitome of the biographer's art.

The Devil's Sandbox: With the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry at War in Iraq


John R. Bruning - 2006
    The Devil’s Sandbox is the story of the 2nd Battalion of Oregon’s 162nd Infantry Regiment (2/162) and provides readers an intimate look at the reality of National Guardsmen at war. This book explores not only portraits of battle, but forward-looking civil affairs projects aimed at rebuilding the nation of Iraq and the American community coping without many of its people - its accountants, lawyers, and mechanics - as a result of extended combat.

Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne


Callie Angell - 2006
    Angell illustrates and describes the 189 people who were captured by Warhol's lens, discussing their relationships with him. These people include superstars, artists, musicians, and others.

Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life


Kingsley M. Bray - 2006
    His war record was unmatched by any of his peers, and his rout of Custer at the Little Bighorn reverberates through history. Yet so much about him is unknown or steeped in legend.Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life corrects older, idealized accounts—and draws on a greater variety of sources than other recent biographies—to expose the real Crazy Horse: not the brash Sioux warrior we have come to expect but a modest, reflective man whose courage was anchored in Lakota piety. Kingsley M. Bray has plumbed interviews of Crazy Horse’s contemporaries and consulted modern Lakotas to fill in vital details of Crazy Horse’s inner and public life.Bray places Crazy Horse within the rich context of the nineteenth-century Lakota world. He reassesses the war chief’s achievements in numerous battles and retraces the tragic sequence of misunderstandings, betrayals, and misjudgments that led to his death. Bray also explores the private tragedies that marred Crazy Horse’s childhood and the network of relationships that shaped his adult life.To this day, Crazy Horse remains a compelling symbol of resistance for modern Lakotas. Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life is a singular achievement, scholarly and authoritative, offering a complete portrait of the man and a fuller understanding of his place in American Indian and United States history.

Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War


Tom Wheeler - 2006
    Among the many modern marvels that gave the North an advantage was the telegraph, which Lincoln used to stay connected to the forces in the field in almost real time.No leader in history had ever possessed such a powerful tool to gain control over a fractious situation. An eager student of technology, Lincoln (the only president to hold a patent) had to learn to use the power of electronic messages. Without precedent to guide him, Lincoln began by reading the telegraph traffic among his generals. Then he used the telegraph to supplement his preferred form of communication—meetings and letters. He did not replace those face-to-face interactions. Through this experience, Lincoln crafted the best way to guide, reprimand, praise, reward, and encourage his commanders in the field.Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails tells a big story within a small compass. By paying close attention to Lincoln's "lightning messages," we see a great leader adapt to a new medium. No reader of this work of history will be able to miss the contemporary parallels. Watching Lincoln carefully word his messages—and follow up on those words with the right actions—offers a striking example for those who spend their days tapping out notes on computers and BlackBerrys.An elegant work of history, Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails is an instructive example of timeless leadership lessons.

Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life


Kathan Brown - 2006
    Art. Essays. MAGICAL SECRETS ABOUT THINKING CREATIVELY: THE ART OF ETCHING AND THE TRUTH OF LIFE by Kathan Brown is a new volume in the Magical Secrets series published by Crown Point Press in San Francisco. What are Magical Secrets? They are ways of setting yourself up for thinking creatively, for a sudden understanding, something like a miracle. Kathan Brown learned the Magical Secrets in this book by helping artists of extraordinary acclaim make etchings. She founded Crown Point Press, now probably the world's most influential etching publisher, in 1962. In this book, you'll meet sixteen artists who will be remembered by future generations. Kathan Brown knows them well, and with pictures and graceful, inviting prose she shares with you their ways of working, thinking, and being.

Maud Muller


John Greenleaf Whittier - 2006
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations


Craig Nelson - 2006
    He invented the phrase, "The United States of America." He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era's intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled. He had run afoul of Washington, broke with Robespierre and narrowly escaped the guillotine, and was all but exiled from his native England.

Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America


Karenna Gore Schiff - 2006
    Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was born a slave and fought against lynching; Mother Jones, an Irish immigrant who organized coal miners and campaigned against child labor; Alice Hamilton, who pushed for regulation of industrial toxins; Frances Perkins, who developed key New Deal legislation; Virginia Durr, who fought the poll tax and segregation; Septima Clark, who helped to register black voters; Dolores Huerta, who organized farm workers; Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, an activist for reproductive rights; and Gretchen Buchenholz, one of the nation’s leading child advocates. Gore Schiff delivers an intimate and accessible account of the nine trail-blazing women who deserve not only to be honored but to have their example serve as beacons.

Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly


Peter Cole - 2006
    A brilliant union organizer and a humorous orator, Benjamin Fletcher (1890–1949) was a tremendously important and well-loved African American member of the IWW during its heyday. Fletcher helped found and lead Local 8 of the IWW's Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union, unquestionably the most powerful interracial union of its era, taking a principled stand against all forms of xenophobia and exclusion. For years, acclaimed historian Peter Cole has carefully researched the life of Ben Fletcher, painstakingly uncovering a stunning range of documents related to this extraordinary man. It includes a detailed biographical sketch of his life and history, reminiscences by fellow workers who knew him, a chronicle of the IWW's impressive decade-long run on the Philadelphia waterfront in which Fletcher played a pivotal role, and nearly all of his known writings and speeches, thus giving Fletcher's timeless voice another opportunity to inspire a new generation of workers, organizers, and agitators. This revised and expanded second edition includes new materials such as facsimile reprints of two extremely rare pamphlets on racism from the early twentieth century, more information on his prison years and personal life, additional recollections from friends, greater consideration of Fletcher from a global perspective, and much more.

Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution


William R. Newman - 2006
    But in Atoms and Alchemy, William R. Newman—a historian widely credited for reviving recent interest in alchemy—exposes the speciousness of these views and challenges widely held beliefs about the origins of the Scientific Revolution. Tracing the alchemical roots of Robert Boyle’s famous mechanical philosophy, Newman shows that alchemy contributed to the mechanization of nature, a movement that lay at the very heart of scientific discovery. Boyle and his predecessors—figures like the mysterious medieval Geber or the Lutheran professor Daniel Sennert—provided convincing experimental proof that matter is made up of enduring particles at the microlevel. At the same time, Newman argues that alchemists created the operational criterion of an “atomic” element as the last point of analysis, thereby contributing a key feature to the development of later chemistry.  Atomsand Alchemy thus provokes a refreshing debate about the origins of modern science and will be welcomed—and deliberated—by all who are interested in the development of scientific theory and practice.

Defending Gary: Unraveling the Mind of the Green River Killer


Mark Prothero - 2006
    He's too calm. He's too polite! He can't possibly have murdered forty-nine women. They can't be serious! They must have screwed up! I didn't realize then, but I was right. Gary Ridgway hadn't killed forty-nine women. He'd killed even more than that." Soon, Mark Prothero faced the question: "How could you possibly defend the most prolific serial killer in United States history, the infamous Green River Killer? If anyone deserved to be executed for his crimes, didn't he?"Mark Prothero, co-lead defense attorney who helped save Gary Ridgway from the death sentence, has heard that question many times. Now he's written a book that reveals the true, inside story of exactly how an idealistic public defender, high school swim coach, husband, and dad could bring himself to spend many months of close confinement with a man who brutally murdered at least 75 young women, often in the act of sex. Defending Gary shows how Prothero could reconcile these monstrous acts knowing the reality of this unassuming fellow Gary Ridgway, a mild-mannered, church-going, devoted husband, father, and former Navy man, with an IQ of around 82 and a longtime job as a truck-painter from Auburn, Washington, near Seattle.

American Speeches: Political Oratory from the Revolution to the Civil War


Ted Widmer - 2006
    A historian and former presidential speechwriter presents an unprecedented two-volume collection of the greatest speeches in American history.

Stet


James Chapman - 2006
    The novel is narrated in an extravagant third-person voice which emulates the sound and attitude of the classic "Russian Novel." Opinionated, discursive, soulful, the voice establishes the basis of the society in which Stet lives: a place where everybody judges, everybody feels he has the right to criticize, and the State even encourages "self-criticism." Failing that, the State may even criticize you to death. The novel imagines a world where we do not live by our judgments of others, nor by our fear of what other people think of us. Stet, a classic Russian "holy fool," does not criticize anybody, and does not defend himself, but simply works at his art without acknowledging any barriers. He does not compromise because it doesn't occur to him to compromise. The result is that he is treated brutally by friends and enemies, and is judged in every imaginable way. Yet he lives and dies as a happy man. The mystery of this is the mystery of the novel. James Chapman's Stet, the story of a Russian filmmaker who draws "pictures on the only storyboard in Russia that expresses and does not communicate," is a novel of relentless beauty and bleakness.... Written in a mesmerizing, meticulous prose, Chapman's novel is a bitter examination of the artist's place in society.... His narrator is a mind-blowing mishmash of third person, second person, first person plural; he revels in narrative intrusions and direct addresses to the reader. No object is safe from the examination of this narrator--not a teacup nor a hole in a shirt nor the sun. Inanimate or animate, tangible or abstract, even the most inconsequential object is shown to have some meaning overall, some contribution to the grand scheme, though this grand scheme is persistently met with pessimism and doubt. In a time of few truly important novels, when most so-called literary fiction is light or escapist, Stet is undoubtedly literature. For its breadth of ideas and emotional resonance, its uncompromised artistry and its great beauty, its inventiveness and experimental playfulness, Stet is a major accomplishment which deserves the gift that the work of its title character is denied: an audience. --Scott Bryan Wilson, Rain Taxi

The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work


Rey Chow - 2006
    For Rey Chow, the world has, in the age of atomic bombs, become a world target, to be attacked once it is identified, or so global geopolitics, dominated by the United States since the end of the Second World War, seems repeatedly to confirm. How to articulate the problematics of knowledge production with this aggressive targeting of the world? Chow attempts such an articulation by probing the significance of the chronological proximity of area studies, poststructuralist theory, and comparative literature—fields of inquiry that have each exerted considerable influence but whose mutual implicatedness as postwar U.S. academic phenomena has seldom been theorized. Central to Chow’s discussions is a critique of the predicament of self-referentiality—the compulsive move to interiorize that, in her view, constitutes the collective frenzy of our age—in different contemporary epistemic registers, including the self-consciously avant-garde as well as the militaristic and culturally supremacist. Urging her readers to think beyond the inward-turning focus on EuroAmerica that tends to characterize even the most radical gestures of Western self-deconstruction, Chow envisions much broader intellectual premises for future transcultural work, with reading practices aimed at restoring words and things to their constitutive exteriority.

Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography


Stephen Trimble - 2006
    Their images fill this book, and their stories bring to life their pictures from the 125 years that photographers have explored the Canyon. Stephen Trimble interviewed 21 of the finest contemporary Grand Canyon photographers, and these profiles bring to life the relationship between artist and landscape, between dedicated artists and an American icon they have helped to create. A fascinating narrative history of photography at Grand Canyon places these contemporary photographers in context. Lasting Light celebrates what all of us learn every time we peer through a viewfinder at this enduring treasure we call Grand Canyon.The Early & Middle Years: Timothy O’Sullivan, Jack Hillers, Robert Brewster Stanton, Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, Eliot Porter, Ansel Adams, Josef Muench, Ernst Haas, Philip Hyde, Bob Clemenz, Dick Dietrich, David MuenchThe Contemporaries: Jerry Jacka, Robert McDonald, John Running, Jack Dykinga, James Cowlin, John Blaustein, Gary Ladd, Sue Bennett, Tom Bean, Alfredo Conde & Sherri Curtis, Liz Hymans, Tom Till, Larry Ulrich, Michael Collier, Stephen Trimble, Mark Klett, Michael “Nick” Nichols, Randy Prentice, Tom Brownold, George H.H. Huey, Dugald Bremner, Kate ThompsonExtending the View: David Edwards, Larry Lindahl, Raechel Running, Marc Muench, Christine Keith, Geoff Gourley, Kyle George, Paul Leatherbury, Mike Buccheit, Jay Showers

American Speeches: Political Oratory from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton


Ted Widmer - 2006
    Buckley, "powerful ignition points for hot flashes of indignation, contempt, rage, veneration and yearning." This volume (the second of an unprecedented two-volume collection) gathers the unabridged texts of 83 eloquent and dramatic speeches delivered by 45 American public figures between 1865 and 1997, beginning with Abraham Lincoln's last speech on Reconstruction and ending with Bill Clinton's heartfelt tribute to the Little Rock Nine. During this period American political oratory continued to evolve, as a more conversational style, influenced by the intimacy of radio and television, emerged alongside traditional forms of rhetoric.Included are speeches on Reconstruction by Thaddeus Stevens and African-American congressman Robert Brown Elliott, Frederick Douglass's brilliant oration on Abraham Lincoln, and Oliver Wendell Holmes's "touched with fire" Memorial Day Address. Speeches by Robert Ingersoll and William Jennings Bryan capture the fervor of 19th-century political conventions, while Theodore Roosevelt and Carl Schurz offer opposing views on imperialism. Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell denounce the cruelty of lynching and the injustice of Jim Crow; Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Carrie Chapman Catt advocate the enfranchisement of women; and Woodrow Wilson and Henry Cabot Lodge present conflicting visions of the League of Nations.Also included are wartime speeches by George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower; an address on the atomic bomb by J. Robert Oppenheimer; Richard Nixon's "Checkers Speech;" Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet;" Barry Goldwater's speech to the 1964 Republican convention; Mario Savio urging Berkeley students to stop "the machine;" Barbara Jordan defending the Constitution during Watergate; and an extensive selection of speeches by Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.Each volume contains biographical and explanatory notes, and an index LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

A Soldier's Promise: The Heroic True Story of an American Soldier and an Iraqi Boy


Daniel Hendrex - 2006
    Their mission was to plug the bottleneck at the border checkpoint, where foreign fighters and weapons smugglers were filtering through daily to join the increasingly menacing insurgency growing rapidly in the region. It was at this checkpoint, amid relentless attacks, that Daniel and his men found the most effective ally of the war effort in the most unlikely of sources. In December 2003 a skinny Iraqi kid about fourteen years old approached one of the soldiers at the border and said simply, "Arrest me." Jamil, as he was called, claimed to have valuable information about the insurgency, but First Sergeant Hendrex was skeptical -- especially when the boy announced that the man he wanted to turn in was his own father. The story that unfolds is one of heartbreaking tragedy, remarkable courage, and unprecedented resiliency, as this child of the insurgency takes it upon himself to fight back with the help of the U.S. Army...and loses everything in the process -- his country, his home, and his family.But through the power of his own conviction and his finely honed survival skills, Jamil (who was quickly nicknamed Steve-O by the soldiers of Dragon Company) sought refuge with the U.S. military in exchange for information. He risked everything he knew for a chance at freedom -- a choice few men, let alone children, have to make in their lifetimes. And after Steve-O helped save countless lives, First Sergeant Hendrex made it his personal mission to repay his debt and get the boy to safety."A Soldier's Promise" is an incredible story of sacrifice and courage by an Iraqi boy and the U.S. soldiers who protected him from certain death by bringing him to the United States. It's an astonishing tale of two countries and two very different kinds of people joining together against terror and tyranny, and of the young man who, against all odds, gave Dragon Company what they desperately needed -- hope.

Albuquerque Then and Now


Mo Palmer - 2006
    Named to honor a Spanish Duke, Albuquerque is New Mexico’s largest city and the new star of the best-selling Then and Now series.• Albuquerque has been home to Navajo Indians, a U.S. Army outpost during the Mexican-American war, a thriving wool and lumber center, and a key stop on the Atlantic-Pacific railroad line.• Side-by-side then-and-now photographs showcase landmarks like Kistler’s department store (demolished to make way for new construction), the Old Bernalillo County Courthouse (rumored to be haunted), and the beautiful California Mission-style Alvarado Hotel, considered the finest railroad hotel of its time (it had electricity!).• Images of San Felipe de Neri Church, the first building erected in the settlement, show how much Albuquerque has changed and how much it has stayed the same. The original adobe chapel has been enlarged and rebuilt many times, but its thick adobe walls remain.• From Old Town across the tracks to New Town, you’ll discover a thriving, modern city filled with remarkable architecture and culture.

For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States


Diane L. Beers - 2006
    Those two words conjure diverse but powerful images and reactions. Some nod in agreement, while others roll their eyes in contempt. Most people fall somewhat uncomfortably in the middle, between endorsement and rejection, as they struggle with the profound moral, philosophical, and legal questions provoked by the debate. Today, thousands of organizations lobby, agitate, and educate the public on issues concerning the rights and treatment of nonhumans.For the Prevention of Cruelty is the first history of organized advocacy on behalf of animals in the United States to appear in nearly a half century. Diane Beers demonstrates how the cause has shaped and reshaped itself as it has evolved within the broader social context of the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society.Until now, the legacy of the movement in the United States has not been examined. Few Americans today perceive either the companionship or the consumption of animals in the same manner as did earlier generations. Moreover, powerful and lingering bonds connect the seemingly disparate American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of the nineteenth century and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals of today. For the Prevention of Cruelty tells an intriguing and important story that reveals society’s often changing relationship with animals through the lens of those who struggled to shepherd the public toward a greater compassion.

Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq


James M. Fallows - 2006
    After events confirmed many of his predictions, Fallows went on to write some of the most acclaimed, award-winning journalism on the planning and execution of the war, much of which has been assigned as required reading within the U.S. military.In Blind Into Baghdad, Fallows takes us from the planning of the war through the struggles of reconstruction. With unparalleled access and incisive analysis, he shows us how many of the difficulties were anticipated by experts whom the administration ignored. Fallows examines how the war in Iraq undercut the larger ”war on terror” and why Iraq still had no army two years after the invasion. In a sobering conclusion, he interviews soldiers, spies, and diplomats to imagine how a war in Iran might play out. This is an important and essential book to understand where and how the war went wrong, and what it means for America.

Holiday World


Pat Koch - 2006
    Koch had a dream one of family, fun, and Christmastime year-round. And so he created Santa Claus Land, the nation s first theme park, in Santa Claus, located in the gentle rolling hills of southern Indiana. Now, six decades later, Koch s legacy lives on at Holiday World and Splashin Safari. Still owned and operated by the Koch family, Holiday World and Splashin Safari are consistently voted the friendliest and cleanest parks in the country, and their wooden roller coasters are rated in the top ten list among coaster enthusiasts. The Koch family members treat visitors to the park as family and welcome everyone into what has become a true extension of their home."

The Gathering Storm


Barbara Warren - 2006
    Stephanie, suspicious of her father’s motives, declines her father’s invitation. After his departure, Stephanie discovers the diamond necklace she borrowed from her aunt is missing. Racing through a raging thunderstorm, Stephanie drives to the lodge to reclaim the stolen item. But when she arrives, Stephanie finds her father dead, her aunt’s diamond necklace gone, and a pair of handcuffs fitted just for her. Stephanie’s claims of innocence fail to sway the local sheriff, who produces several pieces of evidence linking her to the murder. With a shaky alibi and a vindictive stepmother, Stephanie turns to a lodge employee for help. But will Brad Wilson’s assistance lead Stephanie to the real killer or prove to be her undoing? Like a gathering storm on a warm summer evening, Stephanie’s world darkens until she’s forced to turn to the one true source of knowledge. But what she learns about her father, family, and her own inner demons is more horrifying than the lies she’s come to believe. The truth can set you free. It can also kill you.

American Taxation, American Slavery


Robin L. Einhorn - 2006
    American Taxation, American Slavery tackles this problem in a new way. Rather than parsing the ideological pronouncements of charismatic slaveholders, it examines the concrete policy decisions that slaveholders and non-slaveholders made in the critical realm of taxation. The result is surprising—that the enduring power of antigovernment rhetoric in the United States stems from the nation’s history of slavery rather than its history of liberty.            We are all familiar with the states’ rights arguments of proslavery politicians who wanted to keep the federal government weak and decentralized. But here Robin Einhorn shows the deep, broad, and continuous influence of slavery on this idea in American politics. From the earliest colonial times right up to the Civil War, slaveholding elites feared strong democratic government as a threat to the institution of slavery. American Taxation, American Slavery shows how their heated battles over taxation, the power to tax, and the distribution of tax burdens were rooted not in debates over personal liberty but rather in the rights of slaveholders to hold human beings as property. Along the way, Einhorn exposes the antidemocratic origins of the popular Jeffersonian rhetoric about weak government by showing that governments were actually more democratic—and stronger—where most people were free.            A strikingly original look at the role of slavery in the making of the United States, American Taxation, American Slavery will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of American government and politics.

My Name Is Sally Little Song


Brenda Woods - 2006
    But when Master decides to sell Sally and her brother, the family escapes to seek shelter with a tribe of Seminoles who are rumored to adopt runaway slaves. After a perilous journey, Sally’s family finds and joins the tribe. But while her father and brother easily adjust to Indian ways, Sally can’t seem to find her place. Combining the poetry of Sally’s songs with the heartracing tension of the family’s escape, author Brenda Woods delivers a breathtaking story of a girl caught between worlds.

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations: Shaping The Moral, Spiritual, Cultural, And Political. And Economic Decline Of The United States Of America


John Coleman - 2006
    John Coleman's latest book, The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations: Shaping the Moral, Cultural, Political, and Economic Decline of the United States of America. The Tavistock Institute is located in the City of London and at Sussex University in England. Dr. John Coleman, the author of 15 books, the best known of which is Conspirators Hierarchy, The Committee of 300, was one of the the first writers to bring the world's attention to the existence of Tavistock, hitherto unknown to press and pundits alike, in a monograph published in 1969. Since his initial 1969 revelations concerning the pivotal role that Tavistock plays in shaping political, social, educational, and economic 'opinions', especially in the United States, more than a few writers of global conspiracy have attempted to place laurels upon their shoulders for revelations about Tavistock's key influence as the Mother of all Propaganda Ministries, while ignoring the fact that this pioneering work was first published by John Coleman. Dr. Coleman's new book, however, leaves no doubt as to who is the master and who are the students when it comes to the subject of Tavistock.

America's War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty


Marty Klein - 2006
    Bush says that, In our free society, people have the right to choose how they live their lives. But our government and the Religious Right are successfully censoring what you read, hear, and see; limiting your access to contraception; legislating good moral values; and brainwashing your kids that God hates premarital sex. The Right has politicized private life, expanding the zone of public sexuality. This guarantees policies that will worsen social problems and increase personal anxiety, providing proof that sexuality is fundamentally negative--so citizens demand more sex-negative policies. With examples ripped from today's headlines, with brutal honesty and a wicked sense of humor, Marty Klein names names, challenges political hypocrisy, and shows the financial connections between government and conservative religious groups that are systematically taking away your rights. And, in the process, changing American society--forever.

Gold Train Tramp/Red Rock Redhead


Dirk Fletcher - 2006
    His assignment—head off the thieves and protect $200,000 in gold en route from the East to a bank in Sacramento. But with the lovely Helena at his side playing detective (as well as some other more exciting games), he'd have a hard time keeping his mind on his mission.RED ROCK REDHEAD: When Spur rode into Arizona Territory, bosomy beauty Bonnie Smith's passionate greeting almost made him forget the mission that had brought him there in the first place. He'd been sent to the town of Hanging Rocks to find the Navajos responsible for a recent massacre of two ranch families. But after Spur began his investigation, he discovered that the Navajo weren't the only killers...

American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination


Kristian Williams - 2006
    But, as The Progressive’s Anne-Marie Cusac observed, “Abu Ghraib shock[s] us because our soldiers abroad seem to have acted out behaviors that we condone, yet don’t face up to, at home.” On the heels of Our Enemies in Blue, Kristian Williams’ controversial chronicle of policing, the writer/activist gives us American Methods, once again upsetting the notion that the use of “excessive force” by the state is aberrant rather than altogether American.American Methods reveals torture not as a recent or rogue phenomenon, but a veteran tool of the American state. As Williams suggests, torture is not, as claimed, a means of interrogation used only by others, elsewhere. Instead, it is a tried-and-true weapon of social control and terror, right here in the US.Unlike other recent books, American Methods locates “war on terror” scandals in the systems of inequities and dominance that nurture them. Williams pays close attention to the distinct character of American torture and its gender and racial contours—particularly its emphasis on sexual violence, emasculation, and spectacle. His discussion ranges over much of the globe and a quarter-century: from US support of torture-regimes in Central America in the 1980s to today’s more favored approach—outsourcing torture to “friendly governments.” Returning to our shores, Williams observes the banality of violence in American prisons, precincts, and society. Ultimately, he offers devastating conclusions about the centrality of rape, racism, and conquest to both the state and our national culture.Kristian Williams' writings have appeared in CounterPunch, Columbia Journalism Review, and We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism. A member of Rose City Copwatch in Portland, Oregon, Williams also authored Our Enemies in Blue (2004).

The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism


Aaron Sachs - 2006
    Today, his enormous legacy to American thought is virtually unknown. In The Humboldt Current, Aaron Sachs seeks to reverse this obscurity by tracing Humboldt’s pervasive influence on American history, specifically looking at the lives and careers of four explorers: J. N. Reynolds, the founder of the 1838–1842 U.S. Exploring Expedition; Clarence King, the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey; George Wallace Melville, chief engineer on the disastrous 1879 Jeannette expedition to the North Pole; and John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. In Sachs’s view, all four of these men were alienated Romantics who used Humboldt’s notion of “unity in diversity” as a way of critiquing their increasingly industrialized society. Moreover, as Sachs argues, their examples laid the groundwork for an ecological tradition even more radical than the one that has come down to us today. Sachs’s treatment of Humboldt’s legacy also includes discussions of the writers and artists most in his debt: Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, Poe, and Frederic Church. Reminiscent of Louis Menand’s bestselling The Metaphysical Club, The Humboldt Current is a colorful, superbly written and carefully researched work that offers a fundamental reinterpretation of nineteenth century American history.

Our History is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution


Armando Choy - 2006
    They became combatants in the clandestine struggle and 1956-58 revolutionary war that brought down a U.S.-backed dictatorship and opened the door to the socialist revolution in the Americas. Each became a general in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.PHere they talk about the historic place of Chinese immigration to Cuba, as well as more than five decades of revolutionary action and internationalism, from Cuba to Angola, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Through their stories the social and political forces that gave birth to the Cuban nation and still shape our epoch unfold. We see how millions of ordinary men and women like them changed the course of history, becoming different human beings in the process.P"These books are the kind of books historians are always hoping for, but that very rarely see the light of day. Their value for average readers and for scholars cannot be overstressed, for several reasons, the most important being the historical process of reconnecting Cuba and Africa at a time when such reconnecting continues to be fiercely discouraged by the powers-that-be . . . . In a subdued, almost humble, way, these books can be seen as collective praise for what Cuba has been able to do, not just for specific African countries, but for the majority of humanity resisting the unrelenting assaults of the capitalist system"-Jacques Depelchin writing in African Studies Review on OurHistory Is Still Being Written and From the Escambray to the Congo.PIntroduction by Mary-Alice Waters, 24-page photo section and other photos, maps, glossary, index. Appendix: Cuito Cuanavale: A victory for the whole of Africa (speeches by Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela).

Until Our Hearts Are On the Ground: Aboriginal Mothering, Oppression, Resistance and Rebirth


Jeannette Corbiere Lavell - 2006
    Memee LavellHarvard and Jeannette Corbiere Lavell have brought together a multitude of voices to speak on the issues facing Aborigi- nal mothers in contemporary society. Beginning with an ex- amination of the experience of childbirth-the initiation into motherhood-the contributing authors illustrate its potential as a source of empowerment and revitalization for our nations. Through their own unique perspectives, the women bring us to an understanding of the variety of Aboriginal mothering prac- tices, the impacts of colonization and government legislation on Aboriginal mothers, and literary representations of Aborigi- nal mothering. Together, these women have worked to reveal not only the connection between the longstanding historical oppression experienced by Aboriginal women and the dire contemporary circumstances of many Aboriginal communities, but also the power of Aboriginal mothers to revitalize and transform our communities. They are truly the givers of new life.

Cadenza For The Schneidermann Violin Concerto (Fugue State Press Classical)


Joshua Cohen - 2006
    This brilliant first novel is a portrait of an artist at the end of an art form. The elderly Jewish-Hungarian composer Schneidermann, who survived a musical education, survived the war, survived Europe, survived the neglect of all his music, finally and suddenly vanishes during a movie matinee on the Upper West Side of New York. The novel begins with Schneidermann's friend--his last friend, his only friend--the violin virtuoso Laster, onstage at Carnegie Hall. He has finished playing the first movement of Schneidermann's last composition, his Violin Concerto. At this point he is supposed tobegin his cadenza...his solo. Instead, he drops his instrument and lifts his voice, delivering the text of this novel unto the audience, held captive through night into morning only by the spiel.

Don't Tread on Me: A 400-Year History of America at War, from Indian Fighting to Terrorist Hunting


H.W. Crocker III - 2006
    military win—and Congress lose—the Vietnam War?• Was it right to depose Saddam Hussein—and is it wrong to worry about a possible Iraqi civil war? The answer to these questions is a resounding yes, says author H. W. Crocker III in this stirring and contrarian new book. In Don’t Tread on Me, Crocker unfolds four hundred years of American military history, revealing how Americans were born Indian fighters whose military prowess carved out first a continental and then a global empire—a Pax Americana that has been a benefit to the world. From the seventeenth century on, he argues, Americans have shown a jealous regard for their freedom—and have backed it up with an unheralded skill in small-unit combat operations, a tradition that includes Rogers’ Rangers, Merrill’s Marauders, and today’s Special Forces.He shows that Americans were born to the foam too, with a mastery of naval gunnery and tactics that allowed America’s Navy, even in its infancy, to defeat French and British warships and expand American commerce on the seas. Most of all, Crocker highlights the courage of the dogface infantry, the fighting leathernecks, and the daring sailors and airmen who have turned the tide of battle again and again. In Don’t Tread on Me, still forests are suddenly pierced by the Rebel Yell and a surge of grey. Teddy Roosevelt’s spectacles flash in the sunlight as he leads his Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill. American doughboys rip into close-quarters combat against the Germans. Marines drive the Japanese out of their island fortresses using flamethrowers, grenades, and guts. GIs slug their way into Hitler’s Germany. The long twilight struggle against communism is fought in the snows of Korea and the steaming jungles of Vietnam. And today, U.S. Navy SEALs and U.S. Army Rangers battle Islamist terrorists in the bleak mountains of Afghanistan, just as their forebears fought Barbary pirates two hundred years ago. Fast-paced and riveting, Don’t Tread on Me is a bold look at the history of America at war. Also available as an eBook

Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the Us


Steven Emerson - 2006
    The Project assists the White House, the FBI, the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and other government departments with counterterrorism activities. Together with a staff of experts, Executive Director Steven Emerson has compiled this thorough factual overview of the Islamist terrorist threat to the United States. Unlike The 9/11 Commission Report, which was focused mainly on the retrospective analysis of al Qaeda activities leading up to the attack of September 11, 2001, Jihad Incorporated provides an in-depth examination of radical terrorist organizations and their financial support networks operating in the United States and abroad. Divided into three sections, the work first sets the stage for the current situation by reviewing the lessons learned from previous terrorist plots and attacks both within our borders and against American interests abroad. Emerson and colleagues profile key players in the terrorist network and describe their various criminal activities before and since 9/11. The second section analyzes organizations in the Middle East besides al Qaeda that have established ties in the United States: Hamas, Hizballah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and radical groups in Pakistan. The third section analyzes the subtle, wide-ranging support system for terrorist activities that exists within our own borders: charities and foundations that secretly solicit for terror; the complex corporate web of companies, charities, and nonprofit corporations known as the SAAR Network; mosques that provide cover for terrorists; the use of the Internet for terrorist communication; and lobbying efforts by Muslim American organizations to influence the top echelons of the federal government. In a dangerous age, this is an important book for all Americans to read.

Frank Borzage: The Life And Films Of A Hollywood Romantic


Hervé Dumont - 2006
    This is the definitive reevaluation of one of the giants of filmdom.

Bullshit Artist: The 9/11 Leadership Myth


Ron Schalow - 2006
    Tough on terrorism? Strong on defense? Leadership? Not quite. Compared to George W. Bush's gutless and incompetent performance on 9/11, Brownie looks like General Patton. The President pulled a FEMA for 102 minutes while al Qaeda struck with impunity-but since W's actions on September 11 were largely ignored by the national media-most people weren't even aware of the little man's 7 minutes of ass sitting paralysis in an elementary school classroom until Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" exposed the frozen leader of the free world-let alone know about Bush's clueless loitering-cutting and running, and terrorist appeasing for the other 95 minutes of the attacks. Ron Schalow's "Bullshit Artist" provides a full account of the President's lollygagging, decision avoiding and hiding in the heartland on the tragic day-in Bush's own words and the tortuously twisty recollections of the White House brain trust-Card, Rove, Fleischer, Hughes, Rice, Cheney & Rumsfeld-plus the traditional bushel basket of excuses that ensue after every Bush failure. And Bush supporters like Bill Sammon, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, John Podhoretz, David Frum and Dick Morris also chime in to provide cover for the cowardly Commander-in-Chief-evidently more concerned about the image of their beloved politician than the security of the American people. Then, as if his flaccid failures on 9/11 weren't shameful enough, a delusional GW boasts of his defense prowess at least 19 times per day in the following years-whoring the terrorist attacks and 3,000 deaths on his watch to his immense political benefit-a Bullshit Artist at his best.www.bullshitartist.net

Human and Civil Rights: Essential Primary Sources


K. Lee Lerner - 2006
    International in scope, each title is devoted to one topic: Crime and Punishment, Environmental Issues, Family in Society, Gender Issues and Sexuality, Government, Politics, and Protest, Human and Civil Rights, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Medicine, Bioethics, and Health Social Policy, and Terrorism. This title contains approximately 175 full or excerpted documents---speeches, legislation, magazine and newspaper articles, essays, memoirs, letters, interviews, novels, songs, and works of art---as well as overview information that places each document in context. Entries are organized into chapters that feature a general overview of the chapter's subtopic. The following standard subheads are included in each entry: Date, Source, About the Author, Introduction, Primary Source Significance and Further Resources

The Seven Secrets of How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist


Jim Longuski - 2006
    The book illustrates the methods (the 7 secrets) with anecdotes, quotations and biographical sketches of famous scientists, ideas from sci-fi, personal stories and insights, and occasionally a bit of space history. The author reveals that rocket science is just common sense applied to the extraordinarily uncommon environment of outer space and that rocket scientists are people, too.PRAISE FOR BOOKIt's really great!--Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module Pilot, First Manned Landing on the Moon"People of Earth...Attention!" Jim Longuski's book takes you on a journey of exploration to that nearly infinite space between the ears and behind the brows of that most mysterious of all creatures--the rocket scientist! Going well beyond the oft-used aphorisms, where no writer has gone before, he shows you how these gifted individuals think, feel, work, play, fantasize, rationalize, laugh and cry. From the glories of their epoch-making achievements to the tragedies of their magnificent failures, it is all here, told with insight, humor, objectivity and personal perspective. Without being preachy, lessons are offered that apply to anyone seeking to make professional or personal life just a little bit more successful and fun. I just couldn't set this book down!--Robert Cesarone, Rocket Scientist, Voyager Navigator, Space Communications ArchitectThis book is a must read for everyone--not just those who think they want to know how Rocket Scientists think. Do not be scared off by the title; it's a delightful and wonderfully useful easy read.--Dr. William J. O'Neil, Galileo Project Manager, 1990-1998, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

A Different Kind of War: The Un Sanctions Regime in Iraq


Hans C. von Sponeck - 2006
    It should be mandatory reading for all those politicians and their foreign-policy advisors who continue to consider sanctions an effective form of policy. The author not only offers us a critical, lucid, and well-informed survey of political developments in Iraq, but also a heart-rending account of the suffering of the Iraqi people. It was they who bore the brunt of the 13-year's sanctions, while the members of Saddam's regime continued to live in luxury and accumulate huge fortunes.H.-C. von Sponeck, the former -UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, - explores the UN's sanction policies against Iraq, their consequences, and the domestic conditions during this period. His extensive research is based on previously unpublished internal UN documents and discussions with UN decision makers (such as General Secretary Kofi Annan), Iraqi officials and politicians (including Saddam Hussein), and ordinary Iraqis. The author's findings question who really benefited from the program, what role the UN Security Council and its various member states played, and whether there were then and are today alternatives to the UN's Iraq policies.

Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood


Karen Ward Mahar - 2006
    In looking at the early film industry as an industry—a place of work—Mahar not only unravels the mystery of the disappearing female filmmaker but untangles the complicated relationship among gender, work culture, and business within modern industrial organizations.In the early 1910s, the film industry followed a theatrical model, fostering an egalitarian work culture in which everyone—male and female—helped behind the scenes in a variety of jobs. In this culture women thrived in powerful, creative roles, especially as writers, directors, and producers. By the end of that decade, however, mushrooming star salaries and skyrocketing movie budgets prompted the creation of the studio system. As the movie industry remade itself in the image of a modern American business, the masculinization of filmmaking took root.Mahar's study integrates feminist methodologies of examining the gendering of work with thorough historical scholarship of American industry and business culture. Tracing the transformation of the film industry into a legitimate "big business" of the 1920s, and explaining the fate of the female filmmaker during the silent era, Mahar demonstrates how industrial growth and change can unexpectedly open—and close—opportunities for women.

Naked Imperialism: America's Pursuit of Global Hegemony


John Bellamy Foster - 2006
    Even when U.S. interventions led to the overthrow of popular governments, as in Iran, Guatemala, or the Congo, or wholesale war, as in Vietnam, this fiction remained intact. During the 1990s and especially since September 11, 2001, however, it has crumbled. Today, the need for American empire is openly proclaimed and defended by mainstream analysts and commentators.John Bellamy Foster's Naked Imperialism examines this important transformation in U.S. global policy and ideology, showing the political and economic roots of the new militarism and its consequences both in the global and local context. Foster shows how U.S.-led global capitalism is preparing the way for a new age of barbarism and demonstrates the necessity for resistance and solidarity on a global scale.

Roadside Relics: America's Abandoned Automobiles


Will Shiers - 2006
    Automotive photographer Will Shiers has captured these dreams on film for over ten years, and this volume collects his images between two covers for the first time. Here are the beautiful husks Shiers has found in the United States fields and barns, shops, and salvage yards across States. Divided into five categories�General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Independents, and Special Vehicles�these wrecks and relics from 1910 to the 1970s come equipped with all the relevant information: history, model, location. And because few salvage yards today keep anything older than a 1980 vintage, many of these cars have been lost to the metal crusher. The most comprehensive and beautifully photographed collection of abandoned cars ever published, this volume preserves for all time the exquisite skeletons of American automotive might.

Silk Legacy


Richard Brawer - 2006
    He then turns around and gives her little more respect than he would a servant, demanding she stay home to care for “his” house and “his” children.Feeling betrayed Sarah defies him and joins women's groups, actively participating in rallies for woman suffrage, child welfare and reproductive freedom. For a while she succeeds in treading delicately between the demands of her husband and her desire to be an independent woman. Her balancing act falters when a strike shuts down Paterson’s 300 silk mills. With many friends working in the mills, Sarah is forced to choose sides in the battle between her Capitalist husband and his Socialist brother, a union leader who happens to be her best friend’s husband.Jealousy, infidelity, arrogance, greed—the characters’ titanic struggles will catapult you into the heights of their euphoria and the depths of their despair. Who will triumph and who will be humbled is not certain until the last page.