Timely and controversial, "A Bed for the Night" reveals how humanitarian organizations trying to bring relief in an ever more violent and dangerous world are often betrayed and misused, and have increasingly lost sight of their purpose. Humanitarian relief workers, writes David Rieff, are the last of the just. And in the Bosnias, the Rwandas, and the Afghanistans of this world, humanitarianism remains the vocation of helping people when they most desperately need help, when they have lost or stand at risk of losing everything they have, including their lives. Although humanitarianism's accom... View More...
This true story of an epic courtroom showdown, where two of the nation's largest corporations were accused of causing the deaths of children from water contamination, was a #1 national bestseller and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Described as "a page-turner filled with greed, duplicity, heartache, and bare-knuckle legal brinksmanship by The New York Times, A Civil Action is the searing, compelling tale of a legal system gone awry--one in which greed and power fight an unending struggle against justice. Yet it is also the story of how one man can ultimately make a differenc... View More...
America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure--wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation--reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first "law and order" president. With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestseller, Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes upends our national conversation on policing and democracy in a book of wide-ranging historical, social, and political analysis.Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Natio... View More...
The inspiring, true coming-of-age story of a ferociously determined young man who, armed only with his intellect and his willpower, fights his way out of despair. In 1993, Cedric Jennings was a bright and ferociously determined honor student at Ballou, a high school in one of Washington D.C.'s most dangerous neighborhoods, where the dropout rate was well into double digits and just 80 students out of more than 1,350 boasted an average of B or better. At Ballou, Cedric had almost no friends. He ate lunch in a classroom most days, plowing through the extra work he asked for, knowing that he was ... View More...
A sweeping yet intimate history of the diverse individuals who, together, make up America. Ronald Takaki uses letters, diaries & oral histories to share their stories. Workers, immigrants, shopkeepers, women, children & others, their lives often separated by ethnic borders, speak side by side as Takaki frames their voices with his own text. View More...
An essential, galvanizing narrative about making a difference here and abroad--a road map to becoming the most effective global citizens we can be. In their number one New York Times best seller Half the Sky, husband-and-wife team Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn brought to light struggles faced by women and girls around the globe, and showcased individuals and institu-tions working to address oppression and expand opportunity. A Path Appears is even more ambi-tious in scale: nothing less than a sweeping tap-estry of people who are making the world a better place and a guide to the ways t... View More...
As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment -- halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are not only the central histories of feminist -- usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color - organizing that continue to cultivate abolition but a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence. Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated from vibrant community based or... View More...
Much has been written and debated on lone mothers. However little has been discussed about non-resident fathers. Absent Fathers is part of a growing literature on men and masculinities and takes this debate further. Drawn from one of the best social policy units in the UK and results from the current ESRC Programme on Population and Household Change, it will provide a text for undergraduates in social policy and should also be important for professionals concerned with family breakdown and child support. View More...
Can Africa survive? Many of the nations of sub-Saharan African have all but ceased to exist as organized states: tyranny, diseases such as AIDS, civil war, ethnic conflict and border invasions threaten the complete disintegration of a region. Peter Schwab offers a clear, authoritative portrait of a continent on the brink. Globalization and an accompanying level of economic health have passed over Africa. Added to these factors is a patronizing attitude from the West that change in Africa must take place within Western parameters, a UN that lacks any real power, and a US foreign policy in Afric... View More...
The truth begins here Author and award-winning Journalist Jim Marrs has uncovered compelling new evidence regarding extraterrestrials-that alien life forms have not only visited our planet in the past, but are among us right now. Drawing on numerous eyewitness accounts, highly classified CIA reports, and his own meticulous research, Marrs marshals an impressive array of facts to confirm the reality of UFOs--as well as the depth of the government campaign to keep America in the dark. Here is information unavailable in any other single source, including: Intriguing insights into the 1947 Roswell... View More...
The acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' Love Song to the Nation," All About Love is a revelation about what causes a polarized society and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces."The word 'love' is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural ... View More...
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. "An urgent invitation to care for all children as our own." --Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family In this "moving condemnation of the U.S. penal system and its effect on families", award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein takes an intimate look at parents and children--over two million of them--torn apart by our current incarceration policy (Parents' Press). Described as "meticulously reported and sensitively written" by Salon, the book is "brimming with compelling case studies . . . and recommendations for change" (Orlando Sentinel).... View More...
A fascinating journey through history and culture, examining how makeup affects self-empowerment, how people have used it to define (and defy) their roles in society, and why we all need to care There is a history and a cultural significance that comes with wearing cat-eye-inspired liner or a bold red lip, one that many women feel to this day, even if we don't realize exactly why. Increasingly, people of all genders are wrestling with what it means to be a woman living in a patriarchy, and part of that is how looking like a woman--whatever that means--affects people's real lives. Through the s... View More...
This text examines the philosophy of law within a political, social, & economic framework. Readers are introduced to operative legal concepts, everyday law practices, substantive procedures, & the intricacies of the American legal system. View More...
Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for General NonfictionIn Amity and Prosperity, the prizewinning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold tells the story of the energy boom's impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia and one woman's transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist. Stacey Haney is a local nurse working hard to raise two kids and keep up her small farm when the fracking boom comes to her hometown of Amity, Pennsylvania. Intrigued by reports of lucrative natural gas leases in her neighbors' mailboxes, she strikes a deal with a Texas-based energy company. ... View More...
The authors have improved on their widely used first edition by providing updated examples, adding material on how to do ANOVA using statistical packages for microcomputers, linking the use of ANOVA to regression analysis, and enchancing their discussion on using ANOVA for experimentally gathered data. View More...
One of the headlines of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night four years later, when Donald Trump was announced the winner, it became clear that the white American male voter is alive and well and angry as hell. Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America's angry white men - from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students. In Angry White Men, he presents a compre... View More...
Jean-Paul Sartre's book is a brilliant portrait of both anti-Semite and Jew, written by a non-Jew and from a non-Jewish point of view. Nothing of the anti-Semite either in his subtle form as a snob, or in his crude form as a gangster, escapes Sartre's sharp eye, and the whole problem of the Jew's relationship to the Gentile is examined in a concrete and living way, rather than in terms of sociological abstractions. View More...
A history of the anti-vaccination movement, from its nineteenth-century antecedents to today's anti-vax activism, offering strategies for refuting its claims.Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement, featuring celebrity activists (including Kennedy scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and actress Jenny McCarthy) and the propagation of anti-vax claims through books, documentaries, and social media. In Anti-Vaxxers, Jonathan Berman explores the phenomenon of the anti-vaccination movement, rec... View More...
A leading scholar in the United States on Chinese archaeology challenges long-standing conceptions of the rise of political authority in ancient China. Questioning Marx's concept of an "Asiatic" mode of production, Wittfogel's "hydraulic hypothesis," and cultural-materialist theories on the importance of technology, K. C. Chang builds an impressive counterargument, one which ranges widely from recent archaeological discoveries to studies of mythology, ancient Chinese poetry, and the iconography of Shang food vessels. View More...
Told by children and adults, these stories offer a sometimes disturbing testimony about the circumstances of life in the contemporary United States. These personal accounts speak of a variety of social concerns, from youth crime and domestic violence to public education and health care. View More...
The condition and characteristics of the black family have been subjects of intense debate since at least the 1960s, when the Moynihan Report and the culture of poverty theses held sway. Since then a consistent theme has been that black families are pathological. Despite the fact that research has been inconclusive and contradictory, political debate and policy have been strongly influenced by the pathology theme. This volume presents alternative approaches toward understanding the special characteristics of black families. Extending a special issue of The Review of Black Political Economy, th... View More...
In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between glo... View More...
Ever wonder why your kids, parents, and even coworkers think and feel so differently than you do on core issues? Rick and Kathy Hicks contend and demonstrate that many of our core values are shaped largely by what was going on in our culture and world when we were about ten years old. By recognizing the factors that give rise to our own values and those of other generations, we can achieve greater mutual understanding and reconciliation with our children, peers, and coworkers, rather than finding ourselves in conflict. An effective tool for bridging the generation gap. View More...
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "An important and valuable study that will define research agendas for years to come. It is also hugely fun to read."--Boston Globe Why do people raised in the same families often differ more dramatically in personality than those from different families? What made Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Voltaire uniquely suited to challenge the conventional wisdom of their times? This pioneering inquiry into the significance of birth order answers both these questions with a conceptual boldness that has made critics compare it with the work of Freud an... View More...
"At least as good as Mario Puzo, with shades of David Mamet or even Arthur Miller."--New York Daily News Paul Castellano headed New York's immensely powerful Gambino crime family for more than ten years. On December 16, 1985, he was gunned down in a spectacular shooting on Manhattan's fashionable East Side. At the time of his death, Paul Castellano was under indictment. So were most of the major Mafia figures in New York. Why? Because in 1983 the FBI had hidden a microphone in the kitchen of Castellano's Staten Island mansion. The 600 hours of recorndings led to eight criminal trials. And thi... View More...
Heaven's Gate, a secretive group of celibate "monks" awaiting pickup by a UFO, captured intense public attention in 1997 when its members committed collective suicide. As a way of understanding such perplexing events, many have seen those who join cults as needy, lost souls, unable to think for themselves. This book, a compelling look at the cult phenomenon written for a wide audience, dispels such simple formulations by explaining how normal, intelligent people can give up years of their lives-and sometimes their very lives-to groups and beliefs that appear bizarre and irrational. Looking clo... View More...