The Big Truck that Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster


Jonathan M. Katz - 2013
    Jonathan M. Katz, the only full-time American news correspondent in Haiti, was inside his house when it buckled along with hundreds of thousands of others. In this visceral, authoritative first-hand account, Katz chronicles the terror of that day, the devastation visited on ordinary Haitians, and how the world reacted to a nation in need.More than half of American adults gave money for Haiti, part of a monumental response totaling $16.3 billion in pledges. But three years later the relief effort has foundered. It’s most basic promises—to build safer housing for the homeless, alleviate severe poverty, and strengthen Haiti to face future disasters—remain unfulfilled. The Big Truck That Went By presents a sharp critique of international aid that defies today’s conventional wisdom; that the way wealthy countries give aid makes poor countries seem irredeemably hopeless, while trapping millions in cycles of privation and catastrophe. Katz follows the money to uncover startling truths about how good intentions go wrong, and what can be done to make aid “smarter.”With coverage of Bill Clinton, who came to help lead the reconstruction; movie-star aid worker Sean Penn; Wyclef Jean; Haiti’s leaders and people alike, Katz weaves a complex, darkly funny, and unexpected portrait of one of the world’s most fascinating countries. The Big Truck That Went By is not only a definitive account of Haiti’s earthquake, but of the world we live in today.

The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates


Bruce Markusen - 2006
    Still, though I followed their season closely, I never fully understood their impact."—Allen Barra, The New York SunIn 1947, major league baseball experienced its first measure of integration when the Brooklyn Dodgers brought Jackie Robinson to the National League. While Robinson's breakthrough opened the gates of opportunity for African Americans and other minority players, the process of integration proved slow and uneven. It was not until the 1960s that a handful of major league teams began to boast more than a few Black and Latino players. But the 1971 World Championship team enjoyed a full and complete level of integration, with half of its twenty-five-man roster comprised of players of African American and Latino descent. That team was the Pittsburgh Pirates, managed by an old-time Irishman.In The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, veteran baseball writer Bruce Markusen tells the story of one of the most likable and significant teams in the history of professional sports. In addition to the fact that they fielded the first all-minority lineup in major league history, the 1971 Pirates are noteworthy for the team's inspiring individual performances, including those of future Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Bill Mazeroski, and their remarkable World Series victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles. But perhaps their greatest legacy is the team's influence on the future of baseball, inspiring later championship teams such as the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics to open their doors fully to all talented players, regardless of race, particularly in the new era of free agency.

Voyages


Cathy A. Small - 1997
    This book includes one of the sanest and most convincing arguments that I have read for experimentation in the writing of ethnography, which is supported by the text itself as an exemplar of a modest, theoretically unpretentious experiment that works very well indeed." George E. Marcus, Rice University"While a few Californians may be aware of the Tongan immigrant population in their midst, most Americans are unaware that the United States is a major terminus for the people of Tonga, an island nation in the South Pacific. Small examines Tongan migration to the United States in a 'transnational' perspective, stressing that many of the new migrant populations seem successfully to manage dual lives, in both the old country and the new. To that end, she describes life in contemporary Tongan communities and in U.S. settings." Library JournalThis book documents the momentous social phenomena of mass migration from agricultural ex-colonies and ex-protectorates to the industrial world. Cathy A. Small provides the poignant perspective of one extended family and one village in the Kingdom of Tonga, an independent island nation in the South Pacific which has lost one third of its population to migration since the mid-1960s. Moving between Tonga and California, Small chronicles the experiences of a family from the village of 'Olunga. Some members stayed and some migrated to California, in successive waves in the 1960s-1990s. Through their lives, she presents a striking picture of Tongan culture in the United States. Returning to 'Olunga with family members and their American-born children, Small shows what happened to village life and to kin relationships thirty years after migration began.

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject


Saba Mahmood - 2004
    Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Saba Mahmood's compelling exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are indelibly linked within the context of such movements.Not only is this book a sensitive ethnography of a critical but largely ignored dimension of the Islamic revival, it is also an unflinching critique of the secular-liberal principles by which some people hold such movements to account. The book addresses three central questions: How do movements of moral reform help us rethink the normative liberal account of politics? How does the adherence of women to the patriarchal norms at the core of such movements parochialize key assumptions within feminist theory about freedom, agency, authority, and the human subject? How does a consideration of debates about embodied religious rituals among Islamists and their secular critics help us understand the conceptual relationship between bodily form and political imaginaries? Politics of Piety is essential reading for anyone interested in issues at the nexus of ethics and politics, embodiment and gender, and liberalism and postcolonialism.

The Game of Their Lives: The Untold Story of the World Cup's Biggest Upset


Geoffrey Douglas - 1996
    The Americans were outsiders to the sport, the underdogs of the event, a 500-to-1 long shot. But they were also proud and loyal men -- to one another, to their communities, and certainly to their country. Facing almost no time to prepare, opponents with superior training, and skepticism from the rest of the world, this ragtag group of unknowns was inspired to a stunning victory over England and one of the most thrilling upsets in the history of sports.Written by critically acclaimed author Geoffrey Douglas, and now a film directed by David Anspaugh (Hoosiers), The Game of Their Lives takes us back to a time before million-dollar contracts and commercial endorsements, and introduces us to the athletes -- the Americans -- who showed the world just how far a long shot could really go.

Europe and the People Without History


Eric R. Wolf - 1982
    It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Argonauts of the Western Pacific


Bronisław Malinowski - 1961
    His pages have become an almost indispensable link between the knowing of exotic and remote people with theoretical knowledge about humankind. This volume--originally published in 1922--can be considered the founding document of economic anthropology, and remains the best one to read. It emphasizes the great significance of primitive economics by singling out the notable exchange system of the Trobriand Islands for special consideration. Although the main theme is economic, constant reference is made in this milestone of anthropological research and interpretation to social organization, life and meaning, the power of magic, and to mythology and folklore.

5 Days in May: The Coalition and Beyond


Andrew Adonis - 2013
    The talks ultimately resulted in failure for Labour amid recriminations on both sides and the accusation that the Lib Dems had conducted a dutch auction, inviting Labour to outbid the Tories on a shopping list of demands. Despite calls for him to give his own account of this historic sequence of events, Adonis has kept his own counsel until now. Published to coincide with the third anniversary of the general election that would eventually produce an historic first coalition government since the Second World War, 5 Days In May is a remarkable and important insider account of the dramatic negotiations that led to its formation. It also offers the author's views on what the future holds as the run-up to the next election begins. 5 Days in May presents a unique eyewitness account of a pivotal moment in political history.

Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth Commissions


Priscilla B. Hayner - 2002
    Hayner examines twenty major truth commissions established around the world paying special attention to South Africa, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala.

Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown


Javier Auyero - 2008
    So are its nearly five thousand sickened and frail inhabitants. How do poor people make sense of and cope with toxic pollution? Why do they fail to understand what is objectively a clear and present danger? How are perceptions and misperceptionsshared within a community?Based on archival research and two and a half years of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork in Flammable, this book examines the lived experiences of environmental suffering. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, residents allow themselves to doubt or even deny the hard facts of industrialpollution. This happens, the authors argue, through a labor of confusion enabled by state officials who frequently raise the issue of relocation and just as frequently suspend it; by the companies who fund local health care but assert that the area is unfit for human residence; by doctors who saythe illnesses are no different from anywhere else but tell mothers they must leave the neighborhood if their families are to be cured; by journalists who randomly appear and focus on the most extreme aspects of life there; and by lawyers who encourage residents to hold out for a settlement. Thesecontradictory actions, advice, and information work together to shape the confused experience of living in danger and ultimately translates into a long, ineffective, and uncertain waiting time, a time dictated by powerful interests and shared by all marginalized groups.With luminous and vivid descriptions of everyday life in the neighborhood, Auyero and Swistun depict this on-going slow motion human and environmental disaster and dissect the manifold ways in which it is experienced by Flammable residents.

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets


Sudhir Venkatesh - 2008
    Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entrée into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment. When Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. A first-year grad student, he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of the next decade inside the projects under JT's protection, documenting what he saw there. Over the next seven years, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack selling business, conducted PR within their community, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure. Gang Leader for a Day is an inside view into the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone. It is also the story of a complicated friendship between two young and ambitious men, a universe apart.

What My Heart Wants to Tell


Verna Mae Slone - 1979
    So He sent us His very strongest men and women." So begins the heartwarming story of Verna Mae and her father, Isom B. "Kitteneye" Slone, an extraordinary personal family history set in the hills around Caney Creek in Knott County, Kentucky.

The House of Lim: A Study of a Chinese Family


Margery Wolf - 1960
    An account of the many aspects of village life in China.

The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut


Nigel Barley - 1983
    When British anthropologist Nigel Barley set up home among the Dowayo people in northern Cameroon, he knew how fieldwork should be conducted. Unfortunately, nobody had told the Dowayo. His compulsive, witty account of first fieldwork offers a wonderfully inspiring introduction to the real life of a cultural anthropologist doing research in a Third World area. Both touching and hilarious, Barley's unconventional story—in which he survived boredom, hostility, disaster, and illness—addresses many critical issues in anthropology and in fieldwork.

Colonialism / Postcolonialism


Ania Loomba - 1998
    Colonialism/Postcolonialism is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to the historical and theoretical dimensions of colonial and postcolonial studies.Ania Loomba deftly introduces and examines:key features of the ideologies and history of colonialismthe relationship of colonial discourse to literaturechallenges to colonialism, including anticolonial discoursesrecent developments in postcolonial theories and historiesissues of sexuality and colonialism, and the intersection of feminist and postcolonial thoughtdebates about globalization and postcolonialismRecommended on courses across the academic disciplines and around the world, Colonialism/Postcolonialism has for some years been accepted as the essential introduction to a vibrant and politically charged area of literary and cultural study.With new coverage of emerging debates around globalization, this second edition will continue to serve as the ideal guide for students new to colonial discourse theory, postcolonial studies or postcolonial theory as well as a reference for advanced students and teachers.