Book picks similar to
Kurdistan and the Kurds by Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou


wtr-pol
yezidism
anthropology
history-and-biography

Passion of Michel Foucault


James Miller - 1993
    It chronicles every stage of Foucault’s personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity.

Bandits


Eric J. Hobsbawm - 1969
    Some are known only to their own countrymen; others, like Robin Hood, Rob Roy and Jesse James, are famous throughout the world. Setting the historical figures against the ballads, legends and films they have inspired, the author's examples range across the last four hundred years and come from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America


Michael Taussig - 1980
    The devil is a stunningly apt symbol of the alienation experienced by peasants as they enter the ranks of the proletariat, and it is largely in terms of that experience that I have cast my interpretation. The historical and ethnographic context lead me to ask: What is the relationship between the image of the devil and capitalist development? What contradictions in social experience does the fetish of the spirit of evil mediate? Is there a structure of connections between the redeeming power of the antichrist and the analytic power of Marxism?

Man Makes Himself


V. Gordon Childe - 1936
    Starting more than 340,000 years ago, when man's ability to make a fire and fashion stone tools helped him to survive among the wild beasts, it traces his development as a food producer, the emergence of cities and states, the rise of foreign trade, and the urban revolution. Contents include: Chronological Table for Egypt and Mesopotamia, Human and Natural History, Organic Evolution and Cultural Progress, Time Scales, Food Gatherers, the Neolithic Revolution, Prelude to the Second Revolution, the Urban Revolution, the Revolution in Human Knowledge, the Acceleration and Retardation of Progress.

Nation and Narration


Homi K. BhabhaGeoffrey Bennington - 1990
    From Gillian Beer's reading of Virginia Woolf, Rachel Bowlby's cultural history of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Francis Mulhern's study of Leaviste's 'English ethics'; to Doris Sommer's study of the 'magical realism' of Latin American fiction and Sneja Gunew's analysis of Australian writing, Nation and Narration is a celebration of the fact that English is no longer an English national consciousness, which is not nationalist, but is the only thing that will give us an international dimension.

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature


Mary Midgley - 1978
    In Beast and Man Mary Midgley, one of our foremost intellectuals, stresses continuities. What makes people tick? Largely, she asserts, the same things as animals. She tells us humans are rather more like other animals than we previously allowed ourselves to believe, and reminds us just how primitive we are in comparison to the sophistication of many animals. A veritable classic for our age, Beast and Man has helped change the way we think about ourselves and the world in which we live.

The Hidden Injuries of Class


Richard Sennett - 1972
    The authors conclude that in the games of hierarchical respect, no class can emerge the victor; and that true egalitarianism can be achieved only by rediscovering diverse concepts of human dignity. Examining personal feelings in terms of a totality of human relations, and looking beyond the struggle for economic survival, The Hidden Injuries of Class takes an important step forward in the sociological critique of everyday life.

Indians in Unexpected Places


Philip J. Deloria - 2004
    That's why some images of Indians can be so unexpected and disorienting: What is Geronimo doing sitting in a Cadillac? Why is an Indian woman in beaded buckskin sitting under a salon hairdryer? Such images startle and challenge our outdated visions, even as the latter continue to dominate relations between Native and non-Native Americans.Philip Deloria explores this cultural discordance to show how stereotypes and Indian experiences have competed for ascendancy in the wake of the military conquest of Native America and the nation's subsequent embrace of Native "authenticity." Rewriting the story of the national encounter with modernity, Deloria provides revealing accounts of Indians doing unexpected things—singing opera, driving cars, acting in Hollywood—in ways that suggest new directions for American Indian history.Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a time when, according to most standard American narratives, Indian people almost dropped out of history itself—Deloria argues that a great many Indians engaged the very same forces of modernization that were leading non-Indians to reevaluate their own understandings of themselves and their society. He examines longstanding stereotypes of Indians as invariably violent, suggesting that even as such views continued in American popular culture, they were also transformed by the violence at Wounded Knee. He tells how Indians came to represent themselves in Wild West shows and Hollywood films and also examines sports, music, and even Indian people's use of the automobile—an ironic counterpoint to today's highways teeming with Dakota pick-ups and Cherokee sport utility vehicles.Throughout, Deloria shows us anomalies that resist pigeonholing and force us to rethink familiar expectations. Whether considering the Hollywood films of James Young Deer or the Hall of Fame baseball career of pitcher Charles Albert Bender, he persuasively demonstrates that a significant number of Indian people engaged in modernity—and helped shape its anxieties and its textures—at the very moment they were being defined as "primitive."These "secret histories," Deloria suggests, compel us to reconsider our own current expectations about what Indian people should be, how they should act, and even what they should look like. More important, he shows how such seemingly harmless (even if unconscious) expectations contribute to the racism and injustice that still haunt the experience of many Native American people today.

Johnny Cornflakes


Denise George - 2010
    The narrative offers hope even in difficult places, challenges our attitudes toward others and shows how God can work in the most unexpected ways through the most unlikely, unloved people.Denise George is an internationally popular writer and speaker best known for creative Biblical application. Denise is married to Dr. Timothy George, executive editor of Christianity Today and founding Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama."A tale of pathos and need, of joy and pain, of poverty and glorious abundance."Dr Calvin Miller ~ author, poet, artist."The deep things in this simple story tug hard at the heart."J I Packer ~ Board of Governors' Professor of Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada

Born to Hate Reborn to Love: A Spiritual Odyssey from Head to Heart


Klaus Kenneth - 2001
    Repelled and repulsed by those who ostensibly represented the Christian faith in his juvenescence, Klaus Kenneth naturally looked elsewhere for the solution to his lonely and tortured existence. In his sincere search for escape from rejection and abuse, Klaus found himself on an odyssey that took him around the world several times, lured him into a vortex of pleasure and power, and initiated him into the great philosophies and religious traditions of our times. Having tried it all, and reaching the very brink of the abyss of despair and the desire for nonexistence, Klaus encounters the One whom he had never thought to look for, the One that he had always discounted: the great I AM, the God of Love and healing, the God of regeneration and eternal life.Klaus KennethKlaus Kenneth was born in a small village west of Prague (Czech Republic), and lives with his wife in Switzerland. In addition to German, his mother tongue, he is fluent in English and French. Desirous to share his remarkable story, Klaus spends most of his time on tour in Europe and the USA, bearing witness to his unexpected discovery of Hope and Love.Published here for the first time in English, Born to Hate, Reborn to Love is already a best seller in several other languages.

Prehistoric Investigations: From Denisovans to Neanderthals; DNA to stable isotopes; hunter-gathers to farmers; stone knapping to metallurgy; cave art to stone circles; wolves to dogs


Christopher Seddon - 2016
    In addition to fieldwork and traditional methods, paleoanthropologists and archaeologists now draw upon genetics and other cutting-edge scientific techniques. In fifty chapters, Prehistoric Investigations tells the story of the many thought-provoking discoveries that have transformed our understanding of the distant past.

Tupac: A Thug Life


Sam Brown - 2005
    Crucial to his cross-cultural appeal is the mass of contradictions that defined his complex personality: the macho rapper who glorified the “thug life”; the erudite and sensitive young man who hoped for a political and spiritual awakening among his peers; the sexually insatiable star who served a prison term for the abuse of a female fan; the prison-born son of a Black Panther who recorded a moving tribute to all women. Divided into five sections, this extensively illustrated book explores Tupac’s troubled childhood in Oakland and his relationship with his mother; his recording career and growing fame; his burgeoning film career, including reviews from all of his major film appearances and a rare selection of stills; his still-unsolved 1996 murder and the welter of conspiracy theories that emerged in the aftermath; and the ever-growing Cult of Tupac: his legacy, posthumous releases, and enduring influence on the rap soundscape.

A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations


Robert Bryce - 2020
    Today, some three billion people are still living in places where per-capita electricity use is less than what's used by an average American refrigerator. How we close the enormous gap between the electricity rich and the electricity poor will affect everything from women's rights and healthcare to warfare and climate change.In A Question of Power, Robert Bryce tells the human story of electricity and explains why some countries have successfully electrified while so many others remain stuck in the dark. He shows how our cities, our money--our very lives--depend on reliable flows of electricity.Electricity has fueled a new epoch in the history of civilization. A Question of Power explains how that happened and what it means for our future.

The Rain and the Night


Wilton Sankawulo - 1979
    The spiritual leader of Fuama, Gayflor, opts to lead the army on this campaign.

Laboring: Stories of a New York City Hospital Midwife


Ellen Cohen - 2013
    In this compelling first-person narrative she transports you into her world at the bedside in the maternity wards where childbirth dramas take place. In the challenging environment of urban clinics and crowded labor rooms the midwife strives to bring personalized care, dignity and a sense of empowerment to every patient. Like an updated U.S. version of "Call the Midwife," the British best seller and television series, this book describes some of the most unforgettable births, the most heartwarming -- and the rare heartbreaking -- experiences of her career. Memorable patients include Mia, a mentally ill woman whose stomach ache turns out to be a baby; teenager Shaniqua who breezes through birth despite her youth; and Jeremiah, a little boy born HIV-infected who captures the love of the entire staff. Through these stories, readers will gain insight into many variations in pregnancy and birth, and learn what is special about the midwifery approach to care. You may be surprised to learn how similar Cohen's patients' childbirth experiences were to your own, and where they differed.