The Riverside Chaucer


Geoffrey Chaucer - 1986
    The most authentic edition of Chaucer's Complete Works available.- The fruit of years of scholarship by an international team of experts- A new foreword by Christopher Cannon introduces students to recent developments in Chaucer Studies- A detailed introduction covers Chaucer's life, works, language, and verse- Includes on-the-page glosses, explanatory notes, textual notes, bibliography, and a glossary

Discovering Our Past: A Brief Introduction to Archaeology


Wendy Ashmore - 1988
    Derived from the authors' Archaeology: Discovering Our Past, this book follows the same organizing principle but in less detail.

Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal


Laura M. Ahearn - 2001
    Laura M. Ahearn shows that young Nepalese people are applying their newly acquired literacy skills to love-letter writing, fostering a transition that involves not only a shift in marriage rituals, but also a change in how villagers conceive of their own ability to act and attribute responsibility for events. These developments have potential ramifications that extend far beyond the realm of marriage and well past the Himalayas.The love-letter correspondences examined by Ahearn also provide a deeper understanding of the social effects of literacy. While the acquisition of literary skills may open up new opportunities for some individuals, such skills can also impose new constraints, expectations, and disappointments. The increase in female literacy rates in Junigau in the 1990s made possible the emergence of new courtship practices and facilitated self-initiated marriages, but it also reinforced certain gender ideologies and undercut some avenues to social power, especially for women. Scholars, and students in such fields as anthropology, women's studies, linguistics, development studies, and South Asian studies will find this book ethnographically rich and theoretically insightful. Laura M. Ahearn is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University.

The Marx-Engels Reader


Karl Marx - 1971
    This revised and enlarged edition of the leading anthology provides the essential writings of Marx and Engels--those works necessary for an introduction to Marxist thought and ideology.

Society: The Basics (MySocLab Series)


John J. Macionis - 1991
    Macionis', "Society: The Basics, 10th edition "is designed to help students see the relevance of the sociological theories and ideas that inform their own lives. Four main themes are found throughout the text: Seeing Sociology in Everyday LifeSocial DiversityGlobal ComparisonsCritical Thinking The new edition has an innovate new design, contemporary and compelling student applications, plus a wealth of author-written and author-managed supplemental material. This revision elevates "Society's "high standard of excellence, ensuring that it remains one of the foremost introductory sociology resources for students and instructors alike.

The Histories


Herodotus
    But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants. With its kaleidoscopic blend of fact and legend, the "Histories" offers a compelling Greek view of the world of the fifth century BC.

The Ecological Indian: Myth and History


Shepard Krech III - 1999
    But how truthful is this larger-than-life image? According to anthropologist Shepard Krech, the first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence, self-interest, flexibility, and ability to make mistakes of human beings anywhere. As Nicholas Lemann put it in The New Yorker, "Krech is more than just a conventional-wisdom overturner; he has a serious larger point to make. . . . Concepts like ecology, waste, preservation, and even the natural (as distinct from human) world are entirely anachronistic when applied to Indians in the days before the European settlement of North America." "Offers a more complex portrait of Native American peoples, one that rejects mythologies, even those that both European and Native Americans might wish to embrace."—Washington Post

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America


Andrés Reséndez - 2016
    Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the “mouth of hell” of eighteenth-century silver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos. Reséndez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery, more than epidemics, that decimated Indian populations across North America. New evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, Indian captives, and Anglo colonists, sheds light too on Indian enslavement of other Indians — as what started as a European business passed into the hands of indigenous operators and spread like wildfire across vast tracts of the American Southwest. The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African-American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed truly to see.

Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Forest


Mark J. Plotkin - 1993
    Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now Western medicine, faced with health crises such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, has begun to look to the healing plants used by indigenous peoples to develop powerful new medicines. Nowhere is the search more promising than in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, home to a quarter of all botanical species on this planet—as well as hundreds of Indian tribes whose medicinal plants have never been studied by Western scientists. In Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin recounts his travels and studies with some of the most powerful Amazonian shamans, who taught him the plant lore their tribes have spent thousands of years gleaning from the rain forest.For more than a decade, Dr. Plotkin has raced against time to harvest and record new plants before the rain forests' fragile ecosystems succumb to overdevelopment—and before the Indians abandon their own culture and learning for the seductive appeal of Western material culture. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice relates nine of the author's quests, taking the reader along on a wild odyssey as he participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of curare, the lethal arrow poison that kills in minutes; tries the hallucinogenic snuff epena that enables the Indians to speak with their spirit world; and earns the respect and fellowship of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he shares both their endurance and their reverence for the rain forest. Mark Plotkin combines the Darwinian spirit of the great writer-explorers of the nineteenth century—curious, discursive, and rigorously scientific—with a very modern concern for the erosion of our environment and the vanishing culture of native peoples.

Film Art: An Introduction


David Bordwell - 2003
    It begins with an overview of film production, moves on to a consideration of the formal elements and techniques, covers film criticism and concludes with a brief section highlighting the key moments in film history. Illustrated with over 500 frame enlargements, many in colour, "Film Art" has been updated to include analysis of some of the most interesting films of recent years including "Raging Bull" and "Desperately Seeking Susan".

The Study of Language


George Yule - 1985
    It introduces the analysis of the key elements of language--sounds, words, structures and meanings, and provides a solid foundation in all of the essential topics. The third edition has been extensively revised to include new sections on important contemporary issues in language study, including language and culture, African American English, sign language, and slang. A comprehensive glossary provides useful explanations of technical terms, and each chapter contains a range of new study questions and research tasks, with suggested answers.

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History


Michel-Rolph Trouillot - 1995
    Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history.

In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000-Year History of American Indians


Jake Page - 2003
    Yet the true story begins much earlier, and its final recent chapter adds a major twist. Jake Page, one of the Southwest's most distinguished writers and a longtime student of Indian history and culture, tells a radically new story, thanks to an explosion of recent archaeological findings, the latest scholarship, and an exploration of Indian legends. Covering no less than 20,000 years, "In the Hands of the Great Spirit" will forever change how we think about the oldest and earliest Americans.Page writes gracefully and sympathetically, without sentimentality. He explores every controversy, from the question of cannibalism among tribes, to the various theories of when and how humans first arrived on the continent, to what life was actually like for Indians before the Europeans came. Page dispels the popular image of a peaceful and idyllic Eden, and shows that Indian societies were fluid, constantly transformed by intertribal fighting, population growth, and shifting climates.Page uses Indian legends and stories as tools to uncover tribal origins, cultural values, and the meaning of certain rituals and sacred lands. He tells the story of contact with Europeans, and the multipower conflicts of the Seven Years War, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812, from the Indians' point of view. He explains the complex and shifting role of the U.S. government as expressed through executive decisions and through the role of the courts. Finally, he tells the fascinating story ofthe late-twentieth-century upsurge in Indian population and resources, which began as a social movement and exploded once casinos came into fashion.Author and editor of over a dozen books on American Indian life and culture, Page is a masterful teller of this incredible story. "In the Hands of the Great Spirit" will forever change the familiar story of recent centuries, replacing it with a far more sweeping and meaningful story of tribes and peoples who have suffered enormously yet endure and enrich the American experience.

The Rule of Saint Benedict


Benedict of Nursia
    Benedict has for centuries been the guide of religious communities. St. Benedict's rules of obedience, humility, and contemplation are not only prerequisites for formal religious societies, they also provide an invaluable model for anyone desiring to live more simply. While they presuppose a certain detachment from the world, they provide guidance and inspiration for anyone seeking peace and fulfillment in their home and work communities. As prepared by the Benedictine monk and priest Timothy Fry, this translation of The Rule of St. Benedict can be a life-transforming book. With a new Preface by Thomas Moore, author of The Care of the Soul."God is our home but many of us have strayed from our native land. The venerable authors of these Spiritual Classics are expert guides--may we follow their directions home."--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Nest in the Wind: Adventures in Anthropology on a Tropical Island


Martha C. Ward - 2004
    She managed a medical research project, ate dog, became pregnant, and responded to spells placed on her. Thirty years later she returned to Pohnpei to learn what had happened there since her first visit. Were islanders still casual about sex? Were they still obsessed with titles and social rank? Was the island still lush and beautiful? Had the inhabitants remained healthy?" This second edition of Ward's best-selling account is a rare, longitudinal study that tracks people, processes, and a place through decades of change. It is also an intimate record of doing fieldwork that immerses readers in the sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and the sensory richness of Pohnpei. Ward addresses the ageless ethnographic questions about family life, politics, religion, traditional medicine, magic, and death together with contemporary concerns about postcolonial survival, the discontinuities of culture, and adaptation to the demands of a global age. Her discoveries illuminate the evolution of a culture possibly distant from yet important to people living in other parts of the world.