Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century


Carolyn Nordstrom - 2004
    She captures the human face of the front lines, revealing both the visible and the hidden realities of war in the twenty-first century. Shadows of War is grounded in ethnographic research carried out at the epicenters of political violence on several continents. Its pages are populated not only with the perpetrators and victims of war but also with the scoundrels, silent heroes, and average families who live their lives in the midst of explosive violence. War reconfigures our most basic notions of humanity, Nordstrom demonstrates. This book, of crucial importance at the present moment, shows that war is enmeshed in struggles over the very foundations of the sovereign state, the crafting of economic empires both legal and illegal, and innovative searches for peace. Nordstrom describes the multi-trillion-dollar international financial networks that support warfare. She traces the entangled routes by which illegal drugs, precious gems, weapons, basic food supplies, and pharmaceuticals are moved by an international cast of businesspeople, profiteers, and black-market operators. Shadows of War demonstrates how the experiences of both the architects of war and of ordinary people are deleted from media accounts and replaced with stories about soldiers, weapons, and territory. For the first time, this book retrieves from the shadows the faces of those whose stories seldom reach the light of international recognition.

An American Addiction


Noam Chomsky - 2001
    In a clear, concise and sometimes bitterly funny lecture, Noam Chomsky shows us who is getting the money, who is producing and exporting the drugs, and what the war on the ground is really about. In the ongoing debate over whether Colombia will become the 'next Vietnam,' Chomsky's analysis will provide a great introduction to the Colombian elite, the role of the US media, how 'development' works. Imagine Traffic starring Chomsky instead of Michael Douglas.Noam Chomsky teaches at MIT and lives in Boston.

The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves


Andrew Levy - 2005
    He was neighbor and kin to the Washingtons and Lees and a friend and peer to Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. But on September 5, 1791, Carter severed his ties with this glamorous elite at the stroke of a pen. In a document he called his Deed of Gift, Carter declared his intent to set free nearly five hundred slaves in the largest single act of liberation in the history of American slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation.How did Carter succeed in the very action that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson claimed they fervently desired but were powerless to effect? And why has his name all but vanished from the annals of American history? In this haunting, brilliantly original work, Andrew Levy traces the confluence of circumstance, conviction, war, and passion that led to Carter’s extraordinary act.At the dawn of the Revolutionary War, Carter was one of the wealthiest men in America, the owner of tens of thousands of acres of land, factories, ironworks–and hundreds of slaves. But incrementally, almost unconsciously, Carter grew to feel that what he possessed was not truly his. In an era of empty Anglican piety, Carter experienced a feverish religious visionthat impelled him to help build a church where blacks and whites were equals. In an age of publicly sanctioned sadism against blacks, he defied convention and extended new protections and privileges to his slaves. As the war ended and his fortunes declined, Carter dedicated himself even more fiercely to liberty, clashing repeatedly with his neighbors, his friends, government officials, and, most poignantly, his own family.But Carter was not the only humane master, nor the sole partisan of freedom, in that freedom-loving age. Why did this troubled, spiritually torn man dare to do what far more visionary slave owners only dreamed of? In answering this question, Andrew Levy teases out the very texture of Carter’s life and soul–the unspoken passions that divided him from others of his class, and the religious conversion that enabled him to see his black slaves in a new light.Drawing on years of painstaking research, written with grace and fire, The First Emancipator is a portrait of an unsung hero who has finally won his place in American history. It is an astonishing, challenging, and ultimately inspiring book.From the Hardcover edition.

Modern Management


Samuel C. Certo - 1992
    For courses in Principles of Management, this title takes a traditional, balanced approach to the four functions of management.

The Blind Man


D.H. Lawrence - 2014
    The arrival of an old friend of the woman brings into the open feelings and fears previously suppressed.

Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing


John R. Trimble - 1975
    A storehouse of practical writing tips, written in a lively, conversational style.

Nuremberg Diary


Gustave Mark Gilbert - 1947
    G.M. Gilbert, the prison psychologist, had an unrivaled firsthand opportunity to watch and question the Nazi war criminals. With scientific dispassion he encouraged Göering, Speer, Hess, Ribbentrop, Frank, Jodl, Keitel, Streicher, and the others to reveal their innermost thoughts. In the process Gilbert exposed what motivated them to create the distorted Aryan utopia and the nightmarish worlds of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. Here are their day-to-day reactions to the trial proceedings; their off-the-record opinions of Hitler, the Third Reich, and each other; their views on slave labor, death camps, and the Jews; their testimony, feuds, and desperate maneuverings to dissociate themselves from the Third Reich's defeat and Nazi guilt. Dr. Gilbert's thorough knowledge of German, deliberately informal approach, and complete freedom of access at all times to the defendants give his spellbinding, chilling study an intimacy and insight that remains unequaled.

From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement


Paula Yoo - 2021
    autoworkers out of their jobs. Anti–Asian American sentiment simmers, especially in Detroit. A bar fight turns fatal, leaving a Chinese American man, Vincent Chin, beaten to death at the hands of two white men, autoworker Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz.Paula Yoo has crafted a searing examination of the killing and the trial and verdicts that followed. When Ebens and Nitz pled guilty to manslaughter and received only a $3,000 fine and three years’ probation, the lenient sentence sparked outrage. The protests that followed led to a federal civil rights trial—the first involving a crime against an Asian American—and galvanized what came to be known as the Asian American movement.Extensively researched from court transcripts, contemporary news accounts, and in-person interviews with key participants, From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry is a suspenseful, nuanced, and authoritative portrait of a pivotal moment in civil rights history, and a man who became a symbol against hatred and racism.

Vanishing Monuments


John Elizabeth Stintzi - 2020
    But when Alani gets a call from a doctor at the assisted living facility where their mother has been for the last five years, they learn that their mother's dementia has worsened and appears to have taken away her ability to speak. As a result, Alani suddenly find themselves running away again - only this time, they're running back to their mother.Staying at their mother's empty home, Alani attempts to tie up the loose ends of their mother's life while grappling with the painful memories that - in the face of their mother's disease - they're terrified to lose. Meanwhile, the memories inhabiting the house slowly grow animate, and the longer Alani is there, the longer they're forced to confront the fact that any closure they hope to get from this homecoming will have to be manufactured.This beautiful, tenderly written debut novel by Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers winner John Elizabeth Stintzi explores what haunts us most, bearing witness to grief over not only what is lost, but also what remains.

Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts


Samuel Totten - 1997
    The book assembles a group of international scholars to discuss the causes, results, and ramifications of these genocides: from the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire; to the Jews, Romani, and the mentally and physically handicapped during the Holocaust; and genocides in East Timor, Bangladesh, and Cambodia.The second edition has been fully updated and features new chapters on the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and the mass killing of the Kurds in Iraq, as well as a chapter on the question of whether or not the situation in Kosovo constituted genocide. It concludes with an essay concerning methods of intervention and prevention of future genocide.

Njal's Saga


Unknown
    It is populated by memorable and complex characters like Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a powerful warrior with an aversion to killing, and the not-so-villainous Mord Valgardsson. Full of dreams, strange prophecies, violent power struggles, and fragile peace agreements, Njal's Saga tells the compelling story of a fifty-year blood feud that, despite its distance from us in time and place, is driven by passions familiar to us all. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction, chronology, index of characters, plot summary, explanatory notes, maps, and suggestions for further reading.

My War Gone By, I Miss It So


Anthony Loyd - 1999
    It is the story of the unspeakable terror and the visceral, ecstatic thrill of combat, and the lives and dreams laid to waste by the bloodiest conflict that Europe has witnessed since the Second World War. Born into a distinguished military family, Loyd was raised on the stories of his ancestors' exploits and grew up fascinated with war. Unsatisfied by a brief career in the British Army, he set out for the killing fields in Bosnia. It was there--in the midst of the roar of battle and the life-and-death struggle among the Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnian Muslims--that he would discover humanity at its worst and best. Profoundly shocking, poetic, and ultimately redemptive, this is an uncompromising look at the brutality of war and its terrifyingly seductive power.

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age


Kevin G. Boyle - 2004
    Ossian Sweet moved his family to an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. When his neighbors attempted to drive him out, Sweet defended himself--resulting in the death of a white man and a murder trial for Sweet. There followed one of the most important (and shockingly unknown) cases in Civil Rights history. Also caught up in the intense courtroom drama were legal giant Clarence Darrow and the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Gideon's Trumpet


Anthony Lewis - 1964
    To most laymen this would seem to provide grounds for a new trial, but the fact is that until the Supreme Court heard Gideon's case, an indigent prisoner did not have the right to a lawyer in many state courts.The case of Gideon v. Wainwright changed all that. The Supreme Court decided to hear Gideon's plea, and it appointed Abe Fortas, a noted Washington lawyer, to represent him.On March 18, 1963, the Court announced its historic decision: the Justices unanimously overruled an earlier case and held that henceforth the "due process of law" guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment meant that poverty alone could not deprive a criminal defendant of the right to counsel. For Gideon this meant a new trial, and this time, with the help of a lawyer, he was acquitted.But Gideon's Trumpet is far more than the dramatic story of a single case whose reverberations will change the lives of thousands of other prisoners; it is also an inspiring examination and interpretation of the role of the Supreme Court itself. The reader learns much of the history of the Court, of the constitutional and criminal law in the United States, of the philosophies of law of various Justices, of changing historical interpretations of the Bill of Rights and its various amendments, and of the modus operandi of the Court day by day.Anthony Lewis writes about the complex and momentous issues involved in Gideon v. Wainwright with simplicity, clarity and precision, and his portrait of Gideon and his dogged fight for freedom is as poignant and, in the words of one distinguished reader, "as absorbing as the best fiction."

Macular Hole


Catherine Wagner - 2004
    That Wagner is in love with the world and its transactions--perceptions, superficial and otherwise; childbearing, painful and otherwise; gains, financial and otherwise--allows for a poetry that is full of song yet brazenly topical.