Fascinated by the recurring theme of flight in Peruvian folklore, Shah sets out to discover whether the Incas really were able to "fly like birds" over the jungle, as a Spanish monk reported. Or was their soaring drug-induced? His journey, full of surreal experiences, takes him from the Andes mountains to the desert and finally, in the company of a Vietnam vet, up the Amazon deep into the jungle to discover the secrets of the Shuar, a tribe of legendary savagery.- Travel writing at its best, at once colorful, informative, and amusing. Doris Lessing said that Shah has a "genius for surreal traveling."- The cast of characters includes madmen and dreames, sorcerers and con men, headhunters and scholars--in short, the usual assortment for Shah.- Features an appendix on flora-based hallucinogens of Amazonia, including ayahuasca, "the vine of the dead."- Hardcover ISBN: 1-55970-613-9

    Meade guided his forces to victory in the Civil War's most pivotal battle. Commentators often dismiss Meade when discussing the great leaders of the Civil War. But in this long-anticipated book, Kent Masterson Brown draws on an expansive archive to reappraise Meade's leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg. Using Meade's published and unpublished papers alongside diaries, letters, and memoirs of fellow officers and enlisted men, Brown highlights how Meade's rapid advance of the army to Gettysburg on July 1, his tactical control and coordination of the army in the desperate fighting on July 2, and his determination to hold his positions on July 3 insured victory.Brown argues that supply deficiencies, brought about by the army's unexpected need to advance to Gettysburg, were crippling. In spite of that, Meade pursued Lee's retreating army rapidly, and his decision not to blindly attack Lee's formidable defenses near Williamsport on July 13 was entirely correct in spite of subsequent harsh criticism. Combining compelling narrative with incisive analysis, this finely rendered work of military history deepens our understanding of the Army of the Potomac as well as the machinations of the Gettysburg Campaign, restoring Meade to his rightful place in the Gettysburg narrative.

    Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes’s argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remains. Even in our supposedly disenchanted scientific age, the dead body still matters—for individuals, communities, and nations. A remarkably ambitious history, The Work of the Dead offers a compelling and richly detailed account of how and why the living have cared for the dead, from antiquity to the twentieth century.The book draws on a vast range of sources—from mortuary archaeology, medical tracts, letters, songs, poems, and novels to painting and landscapes in order to recover the work that the dead do for the living: making human communities that connect the past and the future. Laqueur shows how the churchyard became the dominant resting place of the dead during the Middle Ages and why the cemetery largely supplanted it during the modern period. He traces how and why since the nineteenth century we have come to gather the names of the dead on great lists and memorials and why being buried without a name has become so disturbing. And finally, he tells how modern cremation, begun as a fantasy of stripping death of its history, ultimately failed—and how even the ashes of the victims of the Holocaust have been preserved in culture.A fascinating chronicle of how we shape the dead and are in turn shaped by them, this is a landmark work of cultural history.

     Uncovers the rise and fall of the many different empires of Mexico and Central America – their political and military campaigns, their legends and myths, and their art, architecture and social history Ground plans and detailed photographs explore over 20 magnificent and vitally important World Heritage sites, including Teotihuacán, Tenochtitlán, Chichén Itzá, Palenque, Tikal and Monte Albán Surveys the region’s mythology, including tales of creation, earth and sky; legends of the gods, goddesses and heroes; and stories of fertility, harvest and the afterlife

    A native son of Mexico, grandson of immigrants from the United States and Spain, Fox worked his way from ranch hand and truck driver to the youngest CEO in the history of Coca-Cola. His political rise from precinct worker to world leader was equally swift. As president, Vicente Fox steered Mexico's fragile young democracy through turbulent times, ushering in six years of economic stability and reform in health care, education, and housing, with increased freedom of the press. His presidency also reduced poverty and tackled corruption. Vicente Fox embodies the American Dream in its broadest sense as a vision of the New World, as well as the story of Mexico. Elected as a political outsider with a message of honesty, change, and hope, he is truly a world hero of democracy. This vivid book interweaves his inspiring personal story with his bold ideas for the future of the planet. For the first time, President Fox reveals the ups and downs of his close but rocky relationships with world leaders from President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair to Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin and Hugo Ch?vez. In "Revolution of Hope," President Fox outlines a new vision of hope for the future of the Americas. He speaks out forcefully on hot global topics like immigration, the war in Iraq, racism, globalization, the role of the United Nations, free trade, religion, gender equity, indigenous rights and the moral imperative to heal the global divide between rich and poor nations. From the man who brought true democracy to Mexico, "Revolution of Hope" is a personal story of triumph and a political vision for the future.

    Samet reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II, bringing her expertise as a professor of English at West Point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life. She exposes the confusion about American identity that was expressed during and immediately after the war, and the deep national ambivalence toward war, violence, and veterans--all of which were suppressed in subsequent decades by a dangerously sentimental attitude toward the United States' "exceptional" history and destiny.Samet finds the war's ambivalent legacy in some of its most heavily mythologized figures: the war correspondent epitomized by Ernie Pyle, the character of the erstwhile G.I. turned either cop or criminal in the pulp fiction and feature films of the late 1940s, the disaffected Civil War veteran who looms so large on the screen in the Cold War Western, and the resurgent military hero of the post-Vietnam period. Taken together, these figures reveal key elements of postwar attitudes toward violence, liberty, and nation--attitudes that have shaped domestic and foreign policy and that respond in various ways to various assumptions about national identity and purpose established or affirmed by World War II.As the United States reassesses its roles in Afghanistan and the Middle East, the time has come to rethink our national mythology: the way that World War II shaped our sense of national destiny, our beliefs about the use of American military force throughout the world, and our inability to accept the realities of the twenty-first century's decades of devastating conflict.

    With extensive research into recently discovered Mexican accounts, as well as forensic evidence, historian Phillip Tucker sheds new light on the famous battle, contending that the traditional myth is even more off-base than we thought.In a startling revelation, Tucker uncovers that the primary fights took place on the plain outside the fort. While a number of the Alamo's defenders hung on inside, most died while attempting to escape. Capt. Dickinson, with cannon atop the chapel, fired repeatedly into the throng of enemy cavalry until he was finally cut down. The controversy surrounding Davy Crockett still remains, though the recently authenticated diary of the Mexican Col. Jos� Enrique de la Pe�a offers evidence that he surrendered.Notoriously, Mexican Pres. Gen. Antonio L�pez de Santa Anna burned the bodies of the Texans who had dared stand against him. As this book proves in thorough detail, the funeral pyres were well outside the fort--that is, where the two separate groups of escapees fell on the plain, rather than in the Alamo itself.

    Fisher searches for the traces of these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carré, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others.

    It is Nine Nations. Each has its capital and its distinctive web of power and influence. Some are still close to being raw frontiers; others have four centuries of history. Each has a peculiar economy; each commands an emotional allegiance from its citizens. Some are made topographically distinct by mountains, deserts, rivers. Others are defined by attitudes, ways of making a living, music, and language. Few are contained by lines that now describe "Canada," "Mexico," "the United States." Each of these Nine Nations has its own desires. Most important, each nation has a distinct prism through which it views the rest of the world.

    Mumford has drawn on every aspect of life to explain the machine and to trace its social results. "An extraordinarily wide-ranging, sensitive, and provocative book about a subject upon whichphilosophers have so far shed but little light" (Journal of Philosophy).

    The men responsible included, from Cuba, the charismatic Fidel Castro, and his mysterious brother Raúl; from Argentina, the ideologue Che Guevara; from the Dominican Republic, the capricious psychopath Rafael Trujillo; and from Haiti, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, a buttoned-down doctor with interests in Vodou, embezzlement and torture.Alex von Tunzelmann's brilliant narrative follows these five rivals and accomplices from the beginning of the Cold War to its end, each with a separate vision for his tropical paradise, and each in search of power and adventure as the United States and the USSR acted out the world's tensions in their island nations. The superpowers thought they could use Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic as puppets, but what neither bargained on was that their puppets would come to life. Red Heat is an intimate account of the strong-willed men who, armed with little but words and ruthlessness, took on the most powerful nations on earth.

    The full extent of the violence was known only to the relatives of the victims. Monica Muñoz Martinez turns to the keepers of this history to tell this riveting and disturbing untold story.Operating in remote rural areas enabled the perpetrators to do their worst: hanging, shooting, burning, and beating victims to death without scrutiny. Families scoured the brush to retrieve the bodies of loved ones. Survivors suffered segregation and fierce intimidation, and yet fought back. They confronted assailants in court, worked with Mexican diplomats to investigate the crimes, pressured local police to arrest the perpetrators, spoke to journalists, and petitioned politicians for change.Martinez reconstructs this history from institutional and private archives and oral histories, to show how the horror of anti-Mexican violence lingered within communities for generations, compounding injustice by inflicting further pain and loss. Yet its memorialization provided victims with an important means of redress, undermining official narratives that sought to whitewash these atrocities. The Injustice Never Leaves You offers an invaluable account of why these incidents happened, what they meant at the time, and how a determined community ensured that the victims were not forgotten.

    His epitaph, which he composed, reads, "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia." Jefferson's tombstone does not bear a word of his political accomplishment - forty years as an officeholder, Virginia assemblyman, Continental congressman, ambassador to France, secretary of state, vice president, and president of the United States. He felt that these were honors the people had given him, and he wanted no credit for them. But the three accomplishments chiseled into the "coarse stone" he specified for his monument were his gifts to the people of the United States. They sum up Jefferson's vision of a nation of free people with the education and culture to preserve and enjoy their freedom. Here is his story.

    Archaeological excavations reveal numerous local and family shrines, where sacrifices and other rituals were carried out. Intrigued by this folk religion in all its variety and vitality, Dever writes about ordinary people in ancient Israel and their everyday religious lives. Did God Have a Wife? shines new light on the presence and influence of women's cults in early Israel and their implications for our understanding of Israel's official Book religion. Dever pays particular attention to the goddess Asherah, reviled by the authors of the Hebrew Bible as a foreign deity but, in the view of many modern scholars, popularly envisioned in early Israel as the consort of biblical Yahweh. His work also gives new prominence to women as the custodians of Israel's folk religion. fascinating study critically reviews virtually all of the archaeological literature of the past generation, while also bringing fresh evidence to the table. Though Dever digs deep into the past, his discussion is extensively illustrated, unencumbered by footnotes, and vivid with colourful insights. Meant for professional and general audiences alike, Did God Have a Wife? is sure to spur wide and passionate debate.

    It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.