In these conversations with Tariq Ali, recorded in Edward Said's Riverside Drive apartment in New York in June 1994, about a decade before he finally lost his battle with cancer, Said brings his considerable intellect and deep personal engagement to bear on some of the most troubling and volatile issues of our time as he ranges back over his own dislocated existence, his initiation into politics, his involvement with the Palestine cause, his approach to the study of culture and his pervasive love of literature and music. Intimate, personal, thought-provoking and absorbing, these conversations capture Said as political activist, cultural historian, professor of literature and music aficionado -- and confirm his position as one of the most passionate and thoughtful intellections of our time.

    the 'Radical' Reformers]. They sought to enlist the cooperation of rulers in the work of reforming the Church. However, neither regarded the relationship between Church and rulers as a comfortable or unproblematic one. They were torn between the overriding imperative of uncompromising obedience to the will of God as revealed in Scripture, and their sense of the urgent need to maintain order and authority in Church and polity.The two texts translated here, Luther's On Secular Authority and Calvin's 'On Civil Government', constitute their most sustained attempts to find the proper balance between these two commitments, demanding a consideration of the nature of justice, the justification and scope of civil authority, the liberty of Christian subjects, and the place of the Church in the world.Despite their mutual respect, there were wide divergences between them. Luther's On Secular Authority was later cited en bloc in favor of religious toleration, whereas Calvin envisaged secular authority as an agency for the compulsory establishment of the external conditions of Christian (as well as civil) virtue and the suppression of dissent.The introduction, glossary, chronology, and notes on further reading contained in this volume help located the texts in the broader context of the authors.

    With subjects ranging from history to baseball to crime novels, A Jacques Barzun Reader is a feast for any reader.

    . . . In its general theoretical argument on the relations of culture to economy, but also in its specialized concentration, Noise has much that is of importance to critical theory today.” SubStance“For Attali, music is not simply a reflection of culture, but a harbinger of change, an anticipatory abstraction of the shape of things to come. The book’s title refers specifically to the reception of musics that sonically rival normative social orders. Noise is Attali’s metaphor for a broad, historical vanguardism, for the radical soundscapes of the western continuum that express structurally the course of social development.” EthnomusicologyJacques Attali is the author of numerous books, including Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order and Labyrinth in Culture and Society.

    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.