Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers—perhaps even the majority of people—he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically regain a sense of social accountability. Development as Freedom is essential reading.

    Debates around vaccines' necessity -- along with questions around their side effects -- have gone mainstream, blending with geopolitical conflicts, political campaigns, celebrity causes, and "natural" lifestyles to win a growing number of hearts and minds. Today's anti-vaccine positions find audiences where they've never existed previously.Stuck examines how the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy are, more than anything, about people feeling left out of the conversation. A new dialogue is long overdue, one that addresses the many types of vaccine hesitancy and the social factors that perpetuate them. To do this, Stuck provides a clear-eyed examination of the social vectors that transmit vaccine rumors, their manifestations around the globe, and how these individual threads are all connected.

    Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability to defend one's interests and if necessary to impose one’s will by any means available. In relations between peoples, the question of power determines maneuverability in bargaining, the extent to which a people survive as a physical and cultural entity. When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society, that in itself is a form of underdevelopment.Before a bomb ended his life in the summer of 1980, Walter Rodney had created a powerful legacy. This pivotal work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, had already brought a new perspective to the question of underdevelopment in Africa. his Marxist analysis went far beyond the heretofore accepted approach in the study of Third World underdevelopment. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an excellent introductory study for the student who wishes to better understand the dynamics of Africa’s contemporary relations with the West.

    They were just some of the thousands of young men, known as “Lost Boys,” who had been orphaned or otherwise separated from their families in the chaos of a brutal conflict that has ravaged Sudan since 1983. The Lost Boys of Sudan focuses on four of these refugees. Theirs, however, is a typical story, one that repeated itself wherever the Lost Boys could be found across America.Jacob Magot, Peter Anyang, Daniel Khoch, and Marko Ayii were among 150 or so Lost Boys who were resettled in Atlanta. Like most of their fellow refugees, they had never before turned on a light switch, used a kitchen appliance, or ridden in a car or subway train—much less held a job or balanced a checkbook. We relive their early excitement and disorientation, their growing despondency over fruitless job searches, adjustments they faced upon finally entering the workforce, their experiences of post-9/11 xenophobia, and their undying dreams of acquiring an education.As we immerse ourselves in the Lost Boys’ daily lives, we also get to know the social services professionals and volunteers, celebrities, community leaders, and others who guided them—with occasional detours—toward self-sufficiency. Along the way author Mark Bixler looks closely at the ins and outs of U.S. refugee policy, the politics of international aid, the history of Sudan, and the radical Islamist underpinnings of its government. America is home to more foreign-born residents than ever before; the Lost Boys have repaid that gift in full through their example of unflagging resolve, hope, and faith.

    Steven Hatch first came to Liberia in November 2013, to work at a hospital in Monrovia. Six months later, several of the physicians Dr. Hatch had mentored and served with were dead or barely clinging to life, and Ebola had become a world health emergency. Hundreds of victims perished each week; whole families were destroyed in a matter of days; so many died so quickly that the culturally taboo practice of cremation had to be instituted to dispose of the bodies. With little help from the international community and a population ravaged by disease and fear, the war-torn African nation was simply unprepared to deal with the catastrophe.A physician’s memoir about the ravages of a terrible disease and the small hospital that fought to contain it, Inferno is also an explanation of the science and biology of Ebola: how it is transmitted and spreads with such ferocity. And as Dr. Hatch notes, while Ebola is temporarily under control, it will inevitably re-emerge—as will other plagues, notably the Zika virus, which the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency. Inferno is a glimpse into the white-hot center of a crisis that will come again.

    Scourges that have plagued human beings since the ancients still threaten to unleash themselves; new maladies are brewing that have yet to make their appearance in the headlines; lethal germs employed as weapons of warfare and terrorism have reemerged as a worldwide menace. Regardless of their mode of attack, microbes exist to multiply, thrive, and find new hosts; they cross national boundaries and social classes, attacking without prejudice. Now medical historian and pediatrician Howard Markel, author of Quarantine! (“Engrossing . . . Meticulously documented” —Sherwin Nuland, The New Republic), tells the story of six epidemics that broke out during the two great waves of immigration to the United States—from 1880 through 1924, and from 1965 to the present—and shows how federal legislation closed the gates to newcomers for almost forty-one years out of fear that these new people would alter the social, political, economic, and even genetic face of the nation. Markel writes about tuberculosis today, the most serious public health threat facing the contemporary world. He writes about bubonic plague and how it came to this country in the early twentieth century; about trachoma in the years before World War I; about Ellis Island and how an East European rabbi was diagnosed and treated for the dreaded eye infection; about typhus fever and an epidemic on the Texas-Mexico border in the aftermath of Pancho Villa’s revolution; and about AIDS, the Haitian exodus, and the early years of the AIDS epidemic.Markel explains how immigration in the twenty-first century is characterized by porous borders, rapid travel, and scattered destinations. While more than 75 percent of all immigrants during the first great wave of immigration came through New York Harbor, transportation today allows travel to all parts of the United States from the farthest reaches of the globe, giving public health physicians little opportunity to definitively diagnose infectious diseases that can incubate silently in a traveler, making the spread of epidemics far more than a theoretical concern.Markel looks at our nation’s response to the pathogens present in our midst and examines our foolhardy attempts at isolation and our vacillation between demanding a public health system so punitive that it worsens matters rather than protects and settling for one that is too lax; how we are fascinated with all things infectious and then hardly give microbes a second thought; how the United States, a country that since its inception has prided itself on being a nation of immigrants, continues its tradition of blaming newcomers for its physical and social ills; and how globalization, social upheaval, and international travel render us all potential inhabitants of the so-called Hot Zone. Finally, Markel puts forth a plan for a globally funded public health program that could stop the spread of epidemics, help eradicate certain diseases, and protect us all.

    Now known mostly as a disease of the tropics, malaria led to the demise of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago and ravaged Europe for years afterwards. At the start of the 17th century, Jesuit priests developed quinine, an alkaloid made out of the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree from the Andes. When quinine arrived in Europe, the Protestant powers resisted the medicine fearing that it was a Popish poison. Quinine’s reputation improved, however, when King Charles II was cured of malaria through its offices. Through the centuries, wars were fought to control the supply-through the building of the Panama Canal and into WWII--until Americans synthesized quinine for the first time in 1944.Rocco describes the ravages of the disease, the search for a cure, and the quest to steal and smuggle cinchona seeds out of South America. The Miraculous Fever Tree deftly illuminates the religious and scientific rivalries, intrepid exploration and colonization evinced by the search for quinine.

    The McRaes, like so many white people, seemed oblivious to the violent injustices of apartheid. As the author grew up, the political differences between father and son widened and when Don refused to join up for National Service, risking imprisonment or exile overseas, the two were torn apart. It wasn't until years later that the author discovered that the father with whom he had fought so bitterly had later in his life transformed himself into a political hero. Risking everything one dark and rainy night Ian McRae travelled secretly into the black township of Soweto to meet members of Nelson Mandela's then banned African National Congress to discuss ways to bring power to black South Africa. He had no political ambitions; he was just a man trying to replace the worst in himself with something better.Under Our Skin is a memoir of these tumultuous years in South Africa's history, as told through the author's family story. It offers an intimate and penetrating perspective on life under apartheid, and tells a story of courage and fear, hope and desolation and love and pain, especially between a father and his son.

    A dark tale of fate, revenge and violence in a country where wrong is the new right.When the president of South Africa murders his wife in a fit of drunken rage he charges his most trusted henchman, the bloodthirsty Steve Bungu, with orchestrating a cover-up that pivots on blackmailing Joe Louw, a retired cop of impeccable ethics, to mount a fake investigation that'll clear the crooked head of state.In a seemingly unconnected case, Investigator Disaster Zondi (Mixed Blood, Dust Devils) who, because of his criticism of the corrupt post-apartheid regime, has been banished to the fringes of law enforcement, is given the thankless task of traveling to the remote Kalahari Desert to arrest Magnus Kruger, a notorious white supremacist who rules over an Afrikaner-only enclave, for the slaying of a young black man.As Louw and Zondi peel away layers of lies, hatred and festering secrets they reveal the connections that bind them, connections that reach back deep into the nightmare of South Africa's apartheid past.

    In Something Torn and New, Ngugi explores Africa's historical, economic, and cultural fragmentation by slavery, colonialism, and globalization. Throughout this tragic history, a constant and irrepressible force was Europhonism: the replacement of native names, languages, and identities with European ones. The result was the dismemberment of African memory. Seeking to remember language in order to revitalize it, Ngugi's quest is for wholeness. Wide-ranging, erudite, and hopeful, Something Torn and New is a cri de coeur to save Africa's cultural future.

    For six years Linda Melvern has worked on the story of this horrendous crime, and this book, a classic piece of investigative journalism, is the result. Its new and startling information has the making of an international scandal.The book contains a full narrative account of how the genocide unfolded and describes its scale, speed and intensity. And the book provides a terrible indictment, not just of the UN Security Council, but even more so of governments and individuals who could have prevented what was happening but chose not to do so.Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews, the author also tells the story of the unrecognized heroism of those who stayed on during the genocide - volunteer UN peacekeepers, their Force Commander the Canadian Lt.-General Romeo A. Dallaire, and Philippe Gaillard, the head of a delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, helped by medical teams from Medecins Sans Frontieres.The international community, which fifty years ago resolved that genocide never happened again, not only failed to prevent it happening in Rwanda, but, as this book shows, international funds intended to help the Rwandan economy actually helped to create the conditions that made the genocide possible. Documents held in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, as well as hitherto unpublished evidence of secret UN Security Council deliberations in New York, reveal a shocking sequence of events.What happened in Rwanda shows that despite the creation of an organisation set up to prevent a repetition of genocide - for the UN is central to this task - it failed to do so, even when the evidence was indisputable. At a time when increasing attention is being given to the need for UN reform, this book provides evidence to urgently accelerate and focus that process. Only by understanding how and why the genocide happened can there be any hope that this new century will break with the dismal record of the last.

    India is home to almost 3 million HIV cases, but AIDS is still stigmatized and shrouded in denial. Discrimination against HIV-affected individuals in hospitals, schools, and even among families is common, just as discussion about HIV and participation in prevention or treatment programs are not. In this riveting book, sixteen of India's most well-known writers go on the road to uncover the reality of AIDS in India and tell the human stories behind the epidemic.Kiran Desai travels to the coast of Andhra Pradesh, where the sex workers are considered the most desirable; Salman Rushdie meets members of Mumbai's transgender community; William Dalrymple encounters the devadasis, women who have been “married” to a temple goddess and thus are deemed acceptable for transactional sex. Eye-opening, hard-hitting, and moving, AIDS Sutra presents a side of India rarely seen before.

    "A book that would serve well for reports, but it is also a fascinating read."—SLJ. Best Books of 1995 (SLJ)Notable Children's Trade Books in Social Studies 1996 (NCSS/CBC)1995 Young Adult Editors’ Choices (BL)1995 Top of the List Non Fiction (BL)1996 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)Notable Children’s Books of 1996 (ALA)

    Shattering once and for all the myth that ancient tribal hatreds lay at the heart of the continent's troubles, Berkeley instead holds accountable the "Big Men" who came to power during this period, describing the very rational methods behind their apparent madness. Weaving together insightful historical analysis and his own keen observations of ordinary men, women, and children struggling in the midst of terrible violence, Berkeley insists that what the world often sees as uniquely "African" interethnic troubles are in fact rooted in the international politics of colonialism and the Cold War. The Graves Are Not Yet Full provides a convincing explanation for the last half-century's cycle of revolution and genocide in Africa, detailing the stirring history of these nations' quests for peace and independence over the last seventeen years. Berkeley's incisive analysis does much to bring recent African history into sharp focus while at the same time illuminating just what it is that allows societies-wherever they may be-to accept, and sometimes embrace, violence.

    More people die each year from an opioid overdose than in automobile accidents. The statistics are staggering. 'DO NO HARM' spotlights experts, journalists, and public health crusaders who are combating the special interests of Big Pharma and informing the world on how an aggressive pharmaceutical mass marketing campaign for the new drug OxyContin misled doctors and the public into our current crisis of death and addiction.Wiland highlights the stories of those hit hardest by prescription opioid addiction and overdose death, and sheds light on how whole communities have been ravaged by the spread of addiction. Despite regional health experts, local government, law enforcement, journalists, and the DEA's efforts to combat the epidemic, people continue to die at an alarming rate from prescription drug overdoses.The chapters of this book chronicle this epidemic in all its complexity from many perspective including the plight of the millions of Americans who suffer from opioid addiction. People, young and old on the rocky road to recovery, tell their harrowing stories, current victories and on-going struggles with the disease.