Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution


Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi - 2016
    A teeming world is evoked vividly through the relationships, memories, and inner lives of these political prisoners, many of whom were eventually executed.Told through a series of linked memories by the narrator, Akbar, whose striking candor is infused with a mordant sense of humor, the story takes the reader beyond mere political struggles and revelations, to a vibrant alternative history, written, as it were, by the losers.The characters whose stories Akbar recounts are brought to life within the mundane rhythms of a bleak institution, in its simple pleasures as well as its frequent horrors, and in the unexpected connections that emerge between the world inside and a past before imprisonment.Rather than exalting the heroic, or choosing to focus merely on despair or redemption, Remembering Akbar reveals eloquently how life unfolds when death is starkly imminent. It is a deeply moving story of great camaraderie, biting humor, and soulful remembrance.

The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis of Chinese Culture


Bo Yang - 1981
    This edition includes a selection of Bo Yang's speeches, writings and media interviews, as well as a sample of the reactions his comments have provoked.

Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground


Michael Moynihan - 1998
    The book focuses on the scene surrounding the extreme heavy metal subgenre black metal in Norway in the early 1990s, with a focus on the string of church burnings and murders that occurred in the country around 1993.

Evolutionary Socialism: A Critisism and Affirmation


Eduard Bernstein - 1899
    Eduard Bernstein (January 6, 1850 – December 18, 1932) was a German social democratic theoretician and politician, a member of the SPD, and the founder of evolutionary socialism and revisionism.This book was his attempt to lay out the tasks and possibilities of social democracy.

Azadi


Arundhati Roy - 2020
    Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism.Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could.In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times.The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.

The Necessity of Atheism


David Marshall Brooks - 1933
    And all religious beliefs are "crutches" hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of freethought cannot do better and without the aid of encumbrances.

An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariati


Ali Rahnema - 1997
    This book provides a new understanding of a man who played a significant part in the Iranian revolution and an analysis of a current of political Islam that has influenced movements throughout the Middle East.This full-length political biography looks at Ali Shari`ati's life and thought in the context of the complex and contradictory cultural, social, and political conditions of the Iranian society that shaped him.

Last Words


George Carlin - 2009
    Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, blending his signature acerbic humor with never-before-told stories from his own life. Carlin’s early conflicts, his long struggle with substance abuse, his turbulent relationships with his family, and his triumphs over catastrophic setbacks all fueled the unique comedic worldview he brought to the stage. From the heights of stardom to the low points few knew about, Last Words is told with the same razor-sharp honesty that made Carlin one of the best-loved comedians in American history.

The Evolution of Medicine: Join the Movement to Solve Chronic Disease and Fall Back in Love with Medicine


James Maskell - 2016
    Furthermore, the current epidemic of chronic illness demands a new care standard that can break down the existing structural barriers to full resolution. It requires functional medicine. The Evolution of Medicine provides step-by-step instruction for building a successful "community micropractice," one that engages both the patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership focused on the body as a whole rather than isolated symptoms. This invaluable handbook will awaken health professionals to exciting new career possibilities. At the same time, it will alleviate the fear of abandoning a conventional medical system that is bad for doctors, patients, and payers, as well as being ineffectual in the treatment of chronic ailments. Welcome to a new world of modern medical care, delivered in a community setting. It's time to embrace the Evolution of Medicine and reignite your love for the art of healing.

To the Gate of Hell: A Memoir of a Panzer Crewman


Armin Bottger - 2012
    In his very personal account, Bttger relates in a sober and realistic manner the fighting and experiences on and behind the front. He details his involvement in battles across Europe in honest terms. He describes vividly the cruelty and senselessness of war, along with the injustices and irritations of army life. The author was by no means a hero: he admits that he volunteered for the Wehrmacht to avoid sitting his school leaving exams (but obtain his Abitur leaving certificate). He also concedes that he lied about his health in an attempt to avoid being sent to the Eastern Front and was determined to stay alive at all cost.The book features almost 200 photographs taken by the author during the war and includes images taken in action.

The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning


Maggie Nelson - 2011
    The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the twentieth-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away?Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel. In a journey through high and low culture (Kafka to reality TV), the visual to the verbal (Paul McCarthy to Brian Evenson), and the apolitical to the political (Francis Bacon to Kara Walker), Nelson offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.

On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation


Oliver Stone - 2011
    He has written more than two dozen books on world history and politics and seven novels (translated into over a dozen languages) as well as scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review and lives in London.OLIVER STONE has directed, among other films, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, W., World Trade Center, Alexander, Any Given Sunday, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, Heaven and Earth, JFK, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio, Wall Street, Platoon, Salvador, and the documentaries Looking for Fidel, Comandante, Persona Non Grata, South of the Border, and the upcoming The Untold History of the United States series for Showtime.

Machiavelli, Volume I


Niccolò Machiavelli - 1989
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Freedom: Credos from the Road


Ralph Barger - 2005
    He is patriotic—a veteran who loves his country. He is independent—choosing his own path on his motorcycle, living life on his own terms. He is outspoken—he has boldly criticized injustices in American law and society despite the backlash this has evoked from the establishment. Yet the element that he finds most important, most sacred, most American, is freedom.In Freedom, Sonny articulates many of the principles he employs in his own life. Whether he is regarded as a leader, a rebel, a revolutionary, a criminal, or a soldier, Sonny's outlook has been influenced not just by school but by the military, prison, and his experiences riding with the world's most notorious motorcycle club. It was on these various journeys that he learned the lessons that are most important in his life and the qualities he respects when he sees them in others:IndependenceCustomize Yourself; Originals Don't Come Off an Assembly LineToughnessTemper the Steel to Forge a Strong BladeFairness Treat Me Good, I'll Treat You Better; Treat Me Bad, I'll Treat You WorsePresented in the form of fifty credos, this book gives Sonny Barger's perspective on how to live a life that embodies the most fundamental of American virtues: freedom.

ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age


André Gunder Frank - 1998
    In a bold challenge to received historiography and social theory he turns on its head the world according to Marx, Weber, and other theorists, including Polanyi, Rostow, Braudel, and Wallerstein. Frank explains the Rise of the West in world economic and demographic terms that relate it in a single historical sweep to the decline of the East around 1800. European states, he says, used the silver extracted from the American colonies to buy entry into an expanding Asian market that already flourished in the global economy. Resorting to import substitution and export promotion in the world market, they became Newly Industrializing Economies and tipped the global economic balance to the West. That is precisely what East Asia is doing today, Frank points out, to recover its traditional dominance. As a result, the "center" of the world economy is once again moving to the "Middle Kingdom" of China. Anyone interested in Asia, in world systems and world economic and social history, in international relations, and in comparative area studies, will have to take into account Frank's exciting reassessment of our global economic past and future.