Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer culture, and their friendships and unions were accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law.

Through a close examination of literature, memoirs, letters, domestic magazines, and political debates, Marcus reveals how relationships between women were a crucial component of femininity. Deeply researched, powerfully argued, and filled with original readings of familiar and surprising sources, Between Women overturns everything we thought we knew about Victorian women and the history of marriage and family life. It offers a new paradigm for theorizing gender and sexuality--not just in the Victorian period, but in our own.

About the Author
Sharon Marcus is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is the author of Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London.

HQ1599.E5.M37

The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS

In 1993, Helen Epstein, a scientist working with a biotechnology company searching for an AIDS vaccine, moved to Uganda, where she witnessed firsthand the suffering caused by the epidemic. Now, in her unsparing and illuminating account of this global disease, she describes how international health experts, governments, and ordinary Africans have struggled to understand the rapid and devastating spread of the disease in Africa, and traces the changes wrought by new medical developments and emerging political realities. It is an account of scientific discovery and intrigue with implications far beyond the fight against one tragic disease.

The AIDS epidemic is partly a consequence of the rapid transition of African societies from an agrarian past to an impoverished present. Millions of African people have yet to find a place in an increasingly globalized world, and their poverty and social dislocation have generated an earthquake in gender relations that deeply affects the spread of HIV. But Epstein argues that there are solutions to this crisis, and some of the most effective ones may be simpler than many people assume. [Description provided by the publisher]

About the Author

Helen Epstein writes frequently on public health for various publications, including The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Magazine. She is currently a visiting research scholar at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University.

RA643.86.A35.E674

The Cambridge Companion to the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance (1918–1937) was the most influential single movement in African American literary history. Its key figures include W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes. The movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature, and had an enormous impact on later black literature world-wide. With chapters by a wide range of well-known scholars, this Companion is an authoritative and engaging guide to the movement. It first discusses the historical contexts of the Harlem Renaissance, both national and international; then presents original discussions of a wide array of authors and texts; and finally treats the reputation of the movement in later years. Giving full play to the disagreements and differences that energized the renaissance, this Companion presents the best of current wisdom as well as a set of new readings encouraging further exploration of this dynamic field. [Descriptive information provided by the publisher]

About the Author George Hutchinson is Chairman of the Department of English and Booth Tarkington Professor of Literary Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

PS153.N5.C345

Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence

In this gripping chronicle of America's struggle for independence, award-winning historian John Ferling transports readers to the grim realities of that war, capturing an eight-year conflict filled with heroism, suffering, cowardice, betrayal, and fierce dedication. As Ferling demonstrates, it was a war that America came much closer to losing than is now usually remembered. General George Washington put it best when he said that the American victory was "little short of a standing miracle." Almost a Miracle offers an illuminating portrait of America's triumph, offering vivid descriptions of all the major engagements, from the first shots fired on Lexington Green to the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, revealing how these battles often hinged on intangibles such as leadership under fire, heroism, good fortune, blunders, tenacity, and surprise. The author paints sharp-eyed portraits of the key figures in the war, including General Washington and other American officers and civilian leaders. Some do not always measure up to their iconic reputations, including Washington himself. Others, such as the quirky, acerbic Charles Lee, are seen in a much better light than usual. The book also examines the many faceless men who soldiered, often for years on end, braving untold dangers and enduring abounding miseries. The author explains why they served and sacrificed, and sees them as the forgotten heroes who won American independence. Ferling's narrative is also filled with compassion for the men who comprised the British army and who, like their American counterparts, struggled and died at an astonishing rate in this harsh war. Nor does Ferling ignore the naval war, describing dangerous patrols and grand and dazzling naval actions. Finally, Almost a Miracle takes readers inside the legislative chambers and plush offices of diplomats to reveal countless decisions that altered the course of this war. The story that unfolds is at times a tale of folly, at times one of appalling misinformation and confusion, and now and then one of insightful and dauntless statesmanship.

About the author John Ferling brings to this book nearly forty years of experience as a historian of early America. He is the author of nine books and numerous articles on the American Revolution and early American wars, and has appeared in four television documentaries devoted to the Revolution and the War of Independence. His book A Leap in the Dark won the Fraunces Tavern Book Award as the year's best book on the American Revolution. He and his wife live in metropolitan Atlanta.

E230.F47

Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans

The brutal and systematic “ethnic cleansing” of Chinese Americans in California and the Pacific Northwest in the second half of the nineteenth century is a shocking–and virtually unexplored–chapter of American history. Driven Out unearths this forgotten episode in our nation’s past. Drawing on years of groundbreaking research, Jean Pfaelzer reveals how, beginning in 1848, lawless citizens and duplicitous politicians purged dozens of communities of thousands of Chinese residents–and how the victims bravely fought back. In town after town, as races and classes were pitted against one another in the raw and anarchistic West, Chinese miners and merchants, lumberjacks and field workers, prostitutes and merchants’ wives, were gathered up at gunpoint and marched out of town, sometimes thrown into railroad cars along the very tracks they had built.

Here, in vivid detail, are unforgettable incidents such as the torching of the Chinatown in Antioch, California, after Chinese prostitutes were accused of giving seven young men syphilis, and a series of lynchings in Los Angeles bizarrely provoked by a Chinese wedding. From the port of Seattle to the mining towns in California’s Siskiyou Mountains to “Nigger Alley” in Los Angeles, the first Chinese Americans were hanged, purged, and banished. Chinatowns across the West were burned to the ground.

Driven Out features riveting characters, both heroic and villainous, white and Asian. Charles McGlashen, a newspaper editor, spearheaded a shift in the tactics of persecution, from brutality to legal boycotts of the Chinese, in order to mount a run for governor of California. Fred Bee, a creator of the Pony Express, became the Chinese consul and one of the few attorneys willing to defend the Chinese. Lum May, a dry goods store owner, saw his wife dragged from their home and driven insane. President Grover Cleveland, hoping that China’s 400,000 subjects would buy the United States out of its economic crisis, persuaded China to abandon the overseas Chinese in return for a trade treaty. Quen Hing Tong, a merchant, sought an injunction against the city of San Jose in an important precursor to today’s suits against racial profiling and police brutality.


F870.C5.P484

An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, and Sexuality

Intimate apparel, a term in use by 1921, has played a crucial role in the development of the "naughty but nice" feminine ideal that emerged in the twentieth century. Jill Fields's engaging, imaginative, and sophisticated history of twentieth-century lingerie tours the world of women's intimate apparel and arrives at nothing less than a sweeping view of twentieth-century women's history via the undergarments they wore. Illustrated throughout and drawing on a wealth of evidence from fashion magazines, trade periodicals, costume artifacts, Hollywood films, and the records of organized labor, An Intimate Affair is a provocative examination of the ways cultural meanings are orchestrated by the "fashion-industrial complex," and the ways in which individuals and groups embrace, reject, or derive meaning from these everyday, yet highly significant, intimate articles of clothing. (Descriptive information provided by the publisher)

GT2073.F54

The Evolution of American Investigative Journalism

Beginning with America's first newspaper, investigative reporting has provided journalism with its most significant achievements and challenging controversies. Yet it was an ill-defined practice until the 1960s when it emerged as a potent voice in newspapers and on television news programs. In The Evolution of American Investigative Journalism, James L. Aucoin provides readers with the first comprehensive history of investigative journalism, including a thorough account of the founding and achievements of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE).

About the Author James L. Aucoin is Associate Professor of Communications at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. He is the author of Water in Nebraska: Uses, Politics, Policies.

PN4888.I56.A83

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists. He works at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God and scripture.

Dr. Collins believes that faith in God and faith in science can coexist within a person and be harmonious. In The Language of God he makes his case for God and for science. He has heard every argument against faith from scientists, and he can refute them. He has also heard the needless rejection of scientific truths by some people of faith, and he can counter that, too. He explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes readers for a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry, and biology can all fit together with belief in God and the Bible. The Language of God is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of faith: Why are we here? How did we get here? What does life mean? (Descriptive information provided by the publisher)

BL240.3.C66

Black Fathers in Contemporary American Society: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Strategies for Change

The majority of African American children live in homes without their fathers, but the proportion of African American children living in intact, two-parent families has risen significantly since 1995. Black Fathers in Contemporary American Society looks at father absence from two sides, offering an in-depth analysis of how the absence of African American fathers affects their children, their relationships, and society as a whole, while countering the notion that father absence and family fragmentation within the African American community is inevitable. Editors Obie Clayton, Ronald B. Mincy, and David Blankenhorn lead a diverse group of contributors—encompassing a range of disciplines and ideological perspectives—who all agree that father absence among black families is one of the most pressing social problems today. In part I, the contributors offer possible explanations for the decline in marriage among African American families. William Julius Wilson believes that many men who live in the inner city no longer consider marriage an option because their limited economic prospects do not enable them to provide for a family. Part II considers marriage from an economic perspective, emphasizing that it is in part a wealth-producing institution. Maggie Gallagher points out that married people earn, invest, and save more than single people, and that when marriage rates are low in a community, it is the children who suffer most. In part III, the contributors discuss policies to reduce absentee fatherhood. Wornie Reed demonstrates how public health interventions, such as personal development workshops and work-related skill-building services, can be used to address the causes of fatherlessness. Wade Horn illustrates the positive results achieved by fatherhood programs, especially when held early in a man’s life. In the last chapter, Enola Aird notes that from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of African American children living in two-parent, married couple homes rose from 34.8 to 38.9 percent—a significant increase indicating the possible reversal of the long-term shift toward black family fragmentation.

Black Fathers in Contemporary American Society provides an in-depth look at a problem affecting millions of children while offering proof that the trend of father absence is not irrevocable.

HQ756.B55

Female Circumcision: The Interplay of Religion, Culture and Gender in Kenya

A Kenyan woman theologian examines arguments for and against the controversial practice of female circumcision. Based on interviews with 50 Kenyan women representing Christianity, Islam, African Initiated Churches, and traditional religion, Wangila emphasizes the importance of understanding the gender relationships and cultural beliefs behind the practice and the important role played by religion. Wangila calls for eradication of the practice to carefully designed educational efforts sensitive to religious and cultural beliefs.

GN659.K4.W34

Underground Railroad in New Jersey And New York

Tells the story of the network that guided escaped slaves to freedom, its operation, its important figures, and its specific history in New York and New Jersey. Pinpoints major routes in the states, with maps and information for locating them today. (Descriptive information provided by the publisher)

E450.S985

Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas

SUPREME DISCOMFORT originated from a much-commented-upon profile of Clarence Thomas that appeared in an August 2002 issue of The Washington Post Magazine. In it, Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher, both Post staffers, both black, crafted a haunting portrait of an isolated and bitter man, savagely reviled by much of the black community, not entirely comfortable in white society, internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and rural poverty in Georgia to elite educational institutions to the pinnacle of judicial power. He has clearly never recovered from the searing experience of his Senate confirmation hearings and the "he said/she said" drama of the accusations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill.

SUPREME DISCOMFORT tracks the personal odyssey of perhaps the least understood man in Washington, from his poor childhood in Pin Point and Savannah, Georgia, to his educational experiences in a Catholic seminary and Holy Cross, to his law school years at Yale during the black power era, to his rise within the Republican political establishment. It offers a window into a man who straddles two different worlds and is uneasy in both—and whose divided personality and conservative political philosophy will deeply influence American life for years to come.

KF8745.T48.M47

Picturing a Different West: Vision, Illustration and the Tradition of Cather and Austin

Picturing a Different West addresses Willa Cather and Mary Austin as central figures in a women s tradition of the pictured West. Both Cather and Austin moved west in their youth and spent much of their lives there. Cather lived on the Great Plains, while Austin resided in California and the Southwest. Cather s travels repeatedly took her to the Southwest, and she wrote three novels with Southwestern settings. Starting with the masculine tradition of Western art that was prevalent when Austin and Cather launched their careers, Janis P. Stout shows how the authors challenged and revised that tradition. Rather than a West of adventure, violence, and conquest, open only to rugged and daring men, the authors envisioned a new West not conventionally feminine so much as an androgynous space of freedom for women and men alike. Their vision of an alternative West and their alternative ways of thinking about and portraying gender are inseperable.

Placing Cather and Austin alongside contemporaries Elsie Clews Parsons, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Laura Gilpin, Stout emphasizes the visual nature of Austin s and Cather s personal experiences of the West and Southwest, their awareness of the prevailing visual representations of the West, and the visual nature of their books about the West, with respect to both prose style and illustrations. In closing, Stout demonstrates the continuance of their tradition in illustrated western books by Leslie Marmon Silko and by Margaret Randall and Barbara Byers.

PS3505.A87.Z862

Language, Symbols, and the Media: Communication in the Aftermath of the World Trade Center Attack

Offers insights into the impact and influence of 9/11 upon our cultural, social and political life. As historians and other analysts work towards greater understanding of the event that triggered our "war on terror," the role and function of language and communications will take on greater urgency. (Descriptive information provided by the publisher)

P96.W36.L36

Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema (Wisconsin Film Studies)

Julia Roberts played a prostitute, famously, in Pretty Woman. So did Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, Jane Fonda in Klute, Anna Karina in Vivre sa vie, Greta Garbo in Anna Christie, and Charlize Theron, who won an Academy Award for Monster. This engaging and generously illustrated study explores the depiction of female prostitute characters and prostitution in world cinema, from the silent era to the present-day industry. From the woman with control over her own destiny to the woman who cannot get away from her pimp, Russell Campbell shows the diverse representations of prostitutes in film.

Marked Women classifies fifteen recurrent character types and three common narratives, many of them with their roots in male fantasy. The “Happy Hooker,” for example, is the liberated woman whose only goal is to give as much pleasure as she receives, while the “Avenger,” a nightmare of the male imagination, represents the threat of women taking retribution for all the oppression they have suffered at the hands of men. The “Love Story,” a common narrative, represents the prostitute as both heroine and anti-heroine, while “Condemned to Death” allows men to manifest, in imagination only, their hostility toward women by killing off the troubled prostitute in an act of cathartic violence.

The figure of the woman whose body is available at a price has fascinated and intrigued filmmakers and filmgoers since the very beginning of cinema, but the manner of representation has also been highly conflicted and fiercely contested. Campbell explores the cinematic prostitute as a figure shaped by both reactionary thought and feminist challenges to the norm, demonstrating how the film industry itself is split by fascinating contradictions. (Descriptive information provided by the publisher)

PN1995.9.P76.C36

Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita

In Dirt for Art's Sake, Elisabeth Ladenson recounts the most visible of modern obscenity trials involving scandalous books and their authors. What, she asks, do these often-colorful legal histories have to tell us about the works themselves and about a changing cultural climate that first treated them as filth and later celebrated them as masterpieces? Ladenson's narrative starts with Madame Bovary (Flaubert was tried in France in 1857) and finishes with Fanny Hill (written in the eighteenth century, put on trial in the United States in 1966); she considers, along the way, Les Fleurs du Mal, Ulysses, The Well of Loneliness, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, and the works of the Marquis de Sade.

Over the course of roughly a century, Ladenson finds, two ideas that had been circulating in the form of avant-garde heresy gradually became accepted as truisms, and eventually as grounds for legal defense. The first is captured in the formula "art for art's sake"--the notion that a work of art exists in a realm independent of conventional morality. The second is realism, vilified by its critics as "dirt for dirt's sake." In Ladenson's view, the truth of the matter is closer to "dirt for art's sake"--the idea that the work of art may legitimately include the representation of all aspects of life, including the unpleasant and the sordid.

Ladenson also considers cinematic adaptations of these novels, among them Vincente Minnelli's Madame Bovary, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and the 1997 remake directed by Adrian Lyne, and various attempts to translate de Sade's works and life into film, which faced similar censorship travails. Written with a keen awareness of ongoing debates about free speech, Dirt for Art's Sake traces the legal and social acceptance of controversial works with critical acumen and delightful wit. (Descriptive information provided by the publisher)

PQ295.C47.L33

The Age Of Innocence (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

When The Age of Innocence appeared in 1920, it was read by a public still disturbed by World War I. While the highly structured New York life the novel describes could offer its readers return to safety, ultimately such safety also comes with a price. Edith Wharton tells her story through the voice of her main male character, indicating that women are not the only ones who have to pay that price. They, too, can be victims of overpowering and destructive social norms. And when Wharton's male character throws open the window sash because he literally needs to breathe fresh air rather than the air in his own stifling home, we realize it can be suffocating following not just the rules of the early 1900s but those of our own times as well. (Descriptive information provided by the publsiher)

PS3545.H16.E35

Religion and Film: An Introduction

Studies of religion and film have long been dominated by the question of a film's fidelity to a religious text or worldview, or its value as a tool in ministry and mission. Religion and Film seeks to redress this balance, and will have strong appeal to students as well as general readers interested in all aspects of the inter-relationship of religion and the cinema. Drawing on cultural studies approaches, and focusing on such films as La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc, Lagaan, My Son the Fanatic, The Wicker Man and The Passion of the Christ, Melanie Wright looks at varied screen representations of religion; at films shaped by strong convictions about the place of religion in society; and at the roles that people play as consumers of film. (Descriptive information provided by the publisher)

PN1995.9.R4.W75

Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences

Nervous, inexperienced, confused. For most, losing your virginity is one of life's most significant moments, always to be remembered. Of course, experiences vary, but Laura Carpenter asks: Is there an ideal way to lose it? What would constitute a "positive" experience? What often compels the big step? And, further, what does "going all the way" really mean for young gays and lesbians?

In this first comprehensive study of virginity loss, Carpenter teases out the complexities of all things virgin by drawing on interviews with both young men and women who are straight, gay or bisexual. Virginity Lost offers a rare window into one of life's most intimate and significant sexual moments. The stories here are frank, poignant and fascinating as Carpenter presents an array of experiences that run the gamut from triumphant to devastating.

Importantly, Carpenter argues that one's experience of virginity loss can have a powerful impact on one's later sexual experiences. Especially at a time of increased debate about sexual abstinence versus safe sex education in public schools, this important volume will provide essential information about the sex lives of young people. (Descriptive information proved by the publisher)

Laura Carpenter is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Pagan studies is maturing and moving beyond the context of new religious movements to situate itself within the study of world religions. Introductio

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, perhaps her most recognizable work, is a story of manners, courtship, and marriage. Elizabeth Bennet, the witty heroine of the novel, is Austen's most vibrant and vital literary character. This updated volume presents a perceptive introduction by series editor Harold Bloom and a collection of full-length essays by respected scholars tell image students whose views on this charming classic. (Description provided by the publisher)

PR4034.P72.J36

Introduction to Pagan Studies

Pagan studies is maturing and moving beyond the context of new religious movements to situate itself within the study of world religions. Introduction to pagan studies is the first and only text designed to introduce the study of contemporary paganism as a world religion. It examines the intellectual, religious, and social spheres of paganism through common categories in the study of religion, which include beliefs, practices, theology, ritual, history, and the role of texts and scriptures. The book is accessible to readers of all backgrounds and religions and assumes no prior knowledge of paganism.

This text will also serve as a general introduction to pagan studies for nonspecialist scholars of religion. It will be of interest to academics and related disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies as well as students taking courses in religious studies, pagan studies, nature religion, new religious movements, and religion in America. This book will also be useful to nonacademic practitioners of paganism interested in current scholarship.

BP605.N46.D38

Frantz Fanon: A Portrait

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) was born in Martinique, and in 1943 left to fight in Europe with Free French forces. After 1945 he studied medicine and psychiatry in Lyons and began to write. His first analysis of the effects of racism and postcolonialism, Black Skin, White Masks, appeared in 1952 and would become a foundational text for the liberation movements of the 1960s and later for postcolonial studies. In 1952 he moved to Algeria and practiced at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital in French Algeria until 1957. From that year he worked full time for the Algerian independence movement, including a brief appointment as the movement’s ambassador in Ghana.

One of Fanon’s few surviving contemporaries, Alice Cherki worked closely with Fanon at the psychiatric hospital in Blida and then later for the Algerian cause in Tunisia. This book is a record of "an epoch, a life, and a body of work often viewed as inadmissible." Cherki offers a unique assessment of Fanon’s complex personality, illuminating both his psychiatric practice—of which she says, "Fanon possessed a tremendous intuition about the unconscious and a great erudition in psychoanalytic theory"—and the sources of his political activism, of his intellectual career as a pivot of the quickly changing world. (Description provided by the publisher)

CT2628.F35.C4713

The Cinema of Globalization: A Guide to Films About the New Economic Order

Tom Zaniello's fascinating new guide to films about globalization -- its origins, its relationship with colonialism, neocolonialism, the growth of migratory labor, and movements to counter or protest its adverse effects -- offers readers and viewers the opportunity to both discover new films and see well-known works in a new way.

PN1995.9.G59.Z36

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

Family physician, research psychologist, and acclaimed author of Why Gender Matters, Leonard Sax reveals the truth about what's driving the decline of American boys--and what parents can do about it.


Something scary is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, they are less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. As for young men, it turns out the film Failure to Launch is not far from the truth. Fully one-third of men ages 22-34 are still living at home with their parents--about a 100 percent increase in the past twenty years. Boys nationwide are increasingly dropping out of school; fewer are going to college; and for the first time in American history, women are outnumbering men at undergraduate institutions three to two.

Parents, teachers, and mental health professionals are worried about boys. But until now, no one has come up with good reasons for their decline--and, more important, with workable solutions to reverse this troubling trend. Now, family physician and research psychologist Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on his vast clinical experience to propose an entirely original view of why boys and young men are failing in school and at home. He argues that a combination of social, cultural, and biological factors is creating an environment that is literally toxic to boys, ranging from environmental estrogens to the over-prescription of ADHD drugs. And he presents practical solutions--from new ways of controlling boys' use of video games, to innovative (and workable) education reforms.


About the author: Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., is a family physician, research psychologist, and acclaimed author of Why Gender Matters. He is founder and executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education in Montgomery County, Maryland (NASSPE). Dr. Sax's scholarly work has been published in a wide variety of prestigious journals, including American Psychologist, Behavioral Neuroscience, and Journal of the American Medical Association. He is a popular speaker and has been a featured guest on CNN, PBS, Fox News, NPR's "Talk of the Nation," "The Today Show," and many other programs. He lives in Montgomery County, Maryland. (All information description provided by the publisher)

LC1390.S29

The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Classmates from Revolution to Exile

From the author of Chasing Che, the remarkable tale of a group of boys at the heart of Cuba's political and social history. The Boys from Dolores illuminates the elite island society from which Fidel Castro and his brother Raul emerged.

The Colegio de Dolores was a Jesuit boarding school in Santiago, Cuba's rich and ancient second city, where Fidel and Raul were educated in the 1930s and '40s. Patrick Symmes begins his story here, tracking down dozens of Fidel's schoolmates glimpsed in a single period photograph. And it is through their stories--their time at the Colegio; the catastrophic effects of the revolution on their lives; their fates since--that Symmes opens a door onto a Cuba, and a time in Castro’s life, that have been deliberately obscured from us. Here too is the elusive Raúl Castro, a cipher destined to rule Cuba in Fidel’s place.We see Castro in his formative youth, an adolescent ruling the classrooms of the Colegio and running in the streets of Santiago. Symmes traces the years in which the revolution was conceived, won, and lost, describing the changes it wrought in Santiago and in the lives of Fidel’s own classmates: we follow them through the maelstrom of the 1960s, as most fight to leave Cuba and a few stay behind. And here, in Santiago today, Symmes finds Castro’s most lasting achievement, the creating and sustaining of a myth-soaked revolutionary idealism amid the harshest realities of daily life.Wholly original in its approach, The Boys from Dolores is a powerfully evocative, eye-opening portrait of Cuba--and of the Castro brothers--in the twentieth century.

About the author: Patrick Symmes is the author of Chasing Che and writes for Harper’s, Outside, New York, and Condé Nast Traveler. He lives in New York City.

F1788.S96

After the Reich: The Brutal History of The Allied Occupation

From an expert in German history--a masterful exploration of the horrific aftermath of World War II for the citizens of a ruined nation.

When the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, the Allied powers converged on Germany and divided it into four zones of occupation. A nation in tatters, in many places literally flattened by bombs, was suddenly subjected to brutal occupation by vengeful victors. Rape was rampant. Hundreds of thousands of Germans and German-speakers died in the course of brutal deportations from Eastern Europe. By the end of the year, Germany was literally starving to death. Over a million German prisoners of war died in captivity, where they were subjected to inadequate rations and often tortured. All told, an astounding 2.25 million German civilians died violent deaths in the period between the liberation of Vienna and the Berlin airlift.

A shocking account of a massive and vicious military occupation, After the Reich offers a bold reframing of the history of World War II and its aftermath. Historian Giles MacDonogh has unearthed a record of brutality which has been largely ignored by historians or, worse, justified as legitimate retaliation for the horror of the Holocaust.

Drawing on a vast array of contemporary firstperson accounts, MacDonogh has finally given a voice to tens of millions of civilians who, lucky to survive the war, found themselves struggling to survive a hellish peace. (Description provided by the purblisher)

About the author: Giles MacDonogh is the author of several books on German history, including The Last Kaiser: A Life of Wilhelm II and Frederick the Great as well as histories of Berlin and Prussia. A graduate of Oxford University, MacDonogh has written for the Financial Times, the Times (London), the Guardian, and the Evening Standard. He lives in London with his family.

DD257.M23

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2007: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers

In the last five years, the United States has lost 2.6 million jobs — the most in any five-year period since the Great Depression. In the 2006 edition of his legendary job-hunting book, WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? Richard Nelson Bolles offers hope and presents an inspiring and detailed plan for finding your place in this uncertain job market. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? has been the best-selling job-hunting book in the world for more three decades, in good times and bad, and it continues to be a fixture on best-seller lists, from Amazon.com to Business Week. It has well over eight million copies in print and has been translated into 12 languages around the world. With an extended preface that addresses job loss, vacancies, and outsourcing and updated references on how to use the Internet in your job-hunt throughout, the 2006 PARACHUTE addresses the top concerns of today ’s job-hunters. In the words of Fortune magazine: "Parachute remains the gold standard of! career guides." (Description provided by the publisher)

HF5382.7.B64

The Terrorist Identity: Explaining the Terrorist Threat

Who would strap a bomb to his chest, walk into a crowded subway station and blow himself up? Only by examining how a terrorist understands his own identity and actions can this question be answered. The authors of The Terrorist Identity explore how the notion of self-concept combined with membership in terrorist and extremist groups, can shape and sustain the identity of a terrorist as well as their subsequent justification for violence and the legitimacy of their actions.

The book provides an understanding of identity that draws on concepts from psychology, criminology, and sociology. Notably, the book examines several case studies of various terrorist groups, including: the Provisional Irish Republican Army, Hamas, the Shining Path, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and racist Skinheads. By making the construct of identity central to this analysis The Terrorist Identity explains how violent and extremist collective behavior emerges culturally, how it informs the identity of group members socially, and how participants assume their place in these groups completely even at the expense of life-threatening harm to others or to themselves. (Description provided by the publisher)

HV6431.A755

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations.

A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood. (Description provided by the publisher)

HC21.C63

Moby-dick (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

Herman Melville was already considered to be a successful author when he wrote Moby-Dick in just under two years. Yet despite his earlier success, the novel was widely misunderstood by its 19th-century readers, who expected a more traditional adventure novel. Today Moby-Dick is considered to be an undisputed classic, and many believe it to be the epitome of the great American novel. With an unforgettable cast of characters, inluding the mad Captain Ahab, Melville skillfully documents the Pequod crew's tragic hunt for the great white whale. The full-length essays presented in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Updated Edition provide expert commentary on the huge canvas of symbols themes, and subjects presented in this novel, as well as an introduction, a chronology, a bibliography, and an index, that will help students navigate confidently through Melville's masterpiece. (Description provided by the publisher)

PS2384.M62.H385

The Poetry of Nursing: Poems And Commentaries of Leading Nurse-Poets

Judy Schaefer has compiled this anthology of contemporary nurse-poets' work, which is accompanied by their commentaries about their poetry, their work, and their lives. She has gathered contributions from some of the best-known nurse-poets as well as from those who deserve to be. The Poetry of Nursing will add significantly to the ever-growing body of literature that connects medicine, nursing, and the humanities. (Description provided by publisher)

PS591.N8.P64

Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

In a mere nineteen months, from May 1940 to December 1941, the leaders of the world's six major powers made a series of related decisions that decided the course and outcome of World War II, cost the lives of millions, and profoundly shaped the course of human destiny from that point forward. How were these decisions made? What were the options facing these leaders as they saw them? What intelligence, right and wrong, did they have? What was the impact of personality, what that of larger forces? In a brilliant work with haunting contemporary relevance, Ian Kershaw tells the connected stories of these ten fateful decisions from the shifting perspectives of the protagonists, and in so doing rescues them from the sense of inevitability that now envelops them and restores to them a feeling of vivid drama and contingency-the feeling that things could have turned out very differently indeed. (Description provided by publisher)

D741.K43

Under Pressure and Overwhelmed: Coping with Anxiety in College

Several recent studies have found that anxiety is increasing among college students. In today's competitive college environment, students frequently find themselves overwhelmed with worry and anxiety as they struggle to make the grade academically, fit in socially, "discover who they are," and ponder their futures. This book helps students (and their parents and counselors) deal effectively with predictable anxieties associated with college. The authors offer suggestions and techniques, based on extensive research on the treatment of anxiety, to help students cope more effectively with the common sources of anxiety. In addition, the book describes the most common and debilitating disorders of anxiety (such as panic attacks, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder) that affect more than 10% of Americans and most frequently have their onset during the college years. The initial section of the book begins by describing the scope of the problem of anxiety as it relates to college students. The next section discusses the nature of anxiety reactions, noting the contribution of factors such as biological predisposition and developmental factors. Finally, the third section provides general strategies for managing anxiety such as doing relaxation exercises, challenging negative thoughts and perspectives, and facing fears. Vignettes about college students dealing with anxiety are included throughout. (Dewcription provided by publisher)

LA229.V94

This Was New Jersey: As Seen by Photographer Harry C. Dorer

Harry C. Dorer roamed New Jersey for four decades from 1920 until 1954 with his boxy Speed Graphic camera, capturing for a weekly newspaper the images of what is now a vanished landscape. From the state's cities and villages to its rural areas to the then-mysterious Pine Barrens and the fishing fleets at the Jersey Shore, Dorer amassed hundreds of images that revealed the region's rapidly changing countryside, customs, and social dynamics.

Bringing together more than 300 of Dorer's photographs, this stunning collection is no ordinary look at New Jersey's past. Dorer's always incisive eye provides a visual record of the state's history that is unsettling, shocking, enchanting, and endearing. Above all, his photographs are a vivid reminder of how much the state has changed.

TR820.D67

Walter Sickert: A Life

The painter Walter Sickert was a man of contradictions: a radical reactionary, a reclusive socialite, a traditionalist and an innovator, a philanderer who believed in the sanctity of marriage, an internationalist grounded in the heart of the English school. In this superb biography, Matthew Sturgis provides the first fully documented account of Sickert’s long and colorful life, drawing on new sources to capture the spirit of a man whose influence remains visible in the work of artists today. (Description provided by the publisher)

ND497.S48.S78

Punishment and Inequality in America

Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought.

Punishment and Inequality in America dispels many of the myths about the relationships among crime, imprisonment, and inequality. While many people support the increase in incarceration because of recent reductions in crime, Western shows that the decrease in crime rates in the 1990s was mostly fueled by growth in city police forces and the pacification of the drug trade. Getting "tough on crime" with longer sentences only explains about 10 percent of the fall in crime, but has come at a significant cost. Punishment and Inequality in America reveals a strong relationship between incarceration and severely dampened economic prospects for former inmates. Western finds that because of their involvement in the penal system, young black men hardly benefited from the economic boom of the 1990s. Those who spent time in prison had much lower wages and employment rates than did similar men without criminal records. The losses from mass incarceration spread to the social sphere as well, leaving one out of ten young black children with a father behind bars by the end of the 1990s, thereby helping perpetuate the damaging cycle of broken families, poverty, and crime.

The recent explosion of imprisonment is exacting heavy costs on American society and exacerbating inequality. Whereas college or the military were once the formative institutions in young men’s lives, prison has increasingly usurped that role in many communities. Punishment and Inequality in America profiles how the growth in incarceration came about and the toll it is taking on the social and economic fabric of many American communities.

Bruce Western is professor of sociology at Princeton University.

HV9471.W47

Delinquency, Development, and Social Policy (Current Perspectives in Psychology)

In this book, David E. Brandt examines the legal, psychological, and cultural issues relevant to understanding antisocial behavior in adolescence. Based on his own research and a broad analysis of recent work in the field, Brandt identifies the factors that are common in cases of delinquency.

The discussion considers the long-term effects of social issues such as poverty as well as psychological issues such as the high levels of stress and anxiety suffered during childhood by many delinquents. He shows how a failure to meet the developmental needs of children—at both the family level and at a broader social and political level—is at the core of the problem of juvenile delinquency. Brandt concludes with an inquiry into how best to prevent delinquency. Programs that address the developmental needs of children, Brandt argues, are more effective than policing, juvenile courts, or incarceration.

David Brandt is professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY.

RJ506.J88.B74

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.”

Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. Legacy of Ashes is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after 9/ll.

About the author: Tim Weiner is a reporter for The New York Times. He has written on American intelligence for twenty years, and won the Pulitzer Prize for his work on secret national security programs. He has traveled to Afghanistan and other nations to investigate CIA covert operations firsthand. This is his third book.

JK468.I6.W44

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

It's difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand how the nation endured. These are the people at the heart of Amity Shlaes's insightful and inspiring history of one of the most crucial events of the twentieth century.

In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how through brave leadership they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation. Some of those figures were well known, at least in their day—Andrew Mellon, the Greenspan of the era; Sam Insull of Chicago, hounded as a scapegoat. But there were also unknowns: the Schechters, a family of butchers in Brooklyn who dealt a stunning blow to the New Deal; Bill W., who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in the name of showing that small communities could help themselves; and Father Divine, a black charismatic who steered his thousands of followers through the Depression by preaching a Gospel of Plenty.

Authoritative, original, and utterly engrossing, The Forgotten Man offers an entirely new look at one of the most important periods in our history. Only when we know this history can we understand the strength of American character today. (Description provided by the publisher)

E806.S52

A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy

A Year Without "Made in China" chronicles this fascinating and frustrating journey, and provides you with a thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining account of life in a vast and slippery global economy of infinite complexity. Drawing on her years as an award-winning journalist, Bongiorni fills this book with engaging stories and anecdotes of her family's attempt to outrun China's reach, and does a remarkable job of taking a decidedly big-picture issue—China's emerging status in the global economy—and breaking it down to a personal level.

Bongiorni's real-world adventure is filled with small human dramas. You'll learn how her boycott of China meant scrambling to keep her rebellious husband in line and disappointing her young son in stand-offs over Chinese-made toys. You'll also discover how shopping trips for mundane items like birthday candles as well as high-end designer clothing became grinding ordeals, while broken appliances brought on mini crises.

A Year Without "Made in China" reveals how this manufacturing colossus is quietly changing our lives, but it also addresses the realities of globalization and, more importantly, where the world economy is heading. With low wages and government subsidies fueling China's rapid production of consumer goods, countries and companies around the world will soon face the inconvenient fact that they must rely on this economic giant in order to survive—and this book offers a rare glimpse of what that could be like.

See for yourself how the most populous nation on Earth influences almost every aspect of our daily lives and why this situation is both limiting and expanding our options when it comes to the products a majority of us take for granted. (Description provided by the publisher)

HF1604.Z4.U643

Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (Studies in Crime and Public Policy)

5.4 million Americans--1 in every 40 voting age adults-- are denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, 1 in 4 black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement--both for election outcomes, and for public policy more generally? Locked Out exposes one of the most important, yet little known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, the authors' path-breaking analysis will inform all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals. (Description provided by the publisher)

JK1846.M26

Experience As Philosophy: On the Work of John J. McDermott

The philosopher John J. McDermott comes out of the long and rich American tradition that takes the aim of philosophical inquiry to be interpretation of the open meanings of experience, so that we might all live fuller and richer lives. Here, leading philosophers explore McDermott’s singular interpretations of the questions of our shared existence. How are we to understand the nature of American culture and to carry forward its important contributions? What is the personal importance of embodiment, of living in the realization of death? How does our physical and personal environment nourish our bodies and spirits? What does the deliberate pursuit of a morality offer us? How do we educate those who follow us to use our shared past to address civic and spiritual problems? What are the possibilities for community? (Description provided by the publisher)

Edited by James Campbell and Richard E. Hart. Hart is Cyrus H. Holley Professor of Applied Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Bloomfield College.

B945.M4544.E97

The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture

Janet Jackson’s infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Superbowl precipitated a nationwide controversy. To judge by the hysterical reaction, one would think that nothing so shocking had ever been seen on television. Yet, remarkably, during the conservative 1950s, similar breast-baring accidents on television (by Faye Emerson and Jayne Mansfield) raised barely a stir. Is America on the verge of another puritanical era? Is this new Puritanism the result of something more than just concerns for public decency?

Frederick S. Lane (Burlington, VT) is the author of Obscene Profits and The Naked Employee, among other books dealing with the media, society, and law. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes, NPR’s Marketplace, the BBC, and many other television and radio programs as an expert on legal and First Amendment issues. (Description provided by the publisher)

HN59.2.L37

Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America

Based on nearly a decade of painstaking research in archives and census records, Buried in the Bitter Waters provides irrefutable evidence that racial cleansing occurred again and again on American soil, and fundamentally reshaped the geography of race. In this groundbreaking book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elliot Jaspin has rewritten American history as we know it. (Description provided by publisher)

E185.61.J37

Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning

Description provided by publisher: Aristotle believed semen to be the purest of all bodily secretions, a vehicle for the spirit or psyche that gives form to substance. For Proust’s narrator in Swann’s Way, waking to find he has experienced a nocturnal emission, it is the product of “some misplacing of my thigh.” The heavy metal band Metallica used it to adorn an album cover. Beyond its biological function, semen has been applied with surprising frequency to metaphorical and narratological purposes.

In Images of Bliss, Murat Aydemir undertakes an original and extensive analysis of images of male orgasm and semen. In a series of detailed case studies—Aristotle’s On the Generation of Animals; Andres Serrano’s use of bodily fluids in his art; paintings by Holbein and Leonardo; Proust’s In Search of Lost Time; hard-core pornography (both straight and gay); and key texts from the poststructuralist canon, including Lacan on the phallus, Bataille on expenditure, Barthes on bliss, and Derrida on dissemination—Aydemir traces the complex and often contradictory possibilities for imagination, description, and cognition that both the idea and the reality of semen make available. In particular, he foregrounds the significance of male ejaculation for masculine subjectivity. More often than not, Aydemir argues, the event or object of ejaculation emerges as the instance through which identity, meaning, and gender are not so much affirmed as they are relentlessly and productively questioned, complicated, and displaced.

Combining close readings of diverse works with subtle theoretical elaboration and a keen eye for the cultural ideals and anxieties attached to sexuality, Images of Bliss offers a convincing and long overdue critical exploration of ejaculation in Western culture.

Murat Aydemir is assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Amsterdam.

Critical Companion to Chaucer: A Literary Reference to His Life And Work

Celebrated as the father of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer has influenced writers and delighted readers throughout the ages. Best known as the author of The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer brings to life the England of his day, in verse replete with humanity, grace, and strength. Critical Companion to Chaucer explores Chaucer's many works, with their unique blend of humor, vibrancy, and eloquence.

This comprehensive, single-volume reference contains hundreds of entries, including: an in-depth biography of Chaucer; synopses and critical assessments of Chaucer's major and minor works, as well as portraits of his characters; details on Chaucer's use of Middle English and his biblical and mythological references; information about historical figures of the time, such as John of Gaunt, and historical events, such as the Black Death; analyses of the culture, times, and places in which Chaucer lived and wrote; and useful and thorough appendices, including a bibliography, a chronology of Chaucer's life, a map of the Canterbury highway, and extensive resources for further reading. (The information in this post is taken directly from Blackwell Publishing, http://bookshop.blackwell.com/jsp/welcome.jsp?source=rss&isbn=0816061939

PR1903.R673

Bloomfield Revisited (NJ) (Images of America)

A collaboration of Frederick Branch and Jean Kuras has made Bloomfield Revisited come to life. Branch, who has called Bloomfield home for as long as he can remember, has been a member of the historical society since its organization in the 1960s. Kuras is president of the historical society. In their second book on Bloomfield, Branch and Kuras add vintage photographs, many previously unpublished, and much research to the story of this historic town.

F144.B4.B73