Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Valences of the Dialectic


Book overview

A comprehensive analysis of the philosophy of the dialectic by the doyen of cultural criticism. One of the most accomplished literary and cultural critics in the world, Fredric Jameson returns to the philosophy of the dialectic in a grand and nuanced study of the concept and those who have developed it. The question of the dialectic remains at the center of contemporary theoretical debates: Is it Hegelian and idealistic? To what degree is it central to Marxism? Is a materialist dialectic really possible? How damaging are the "poststructuralist" critiques of the dialectic by Deleuze, Laclau, and Mouffe?Valences of the Dialecticaddresses these questions, and studies individual thinkers both dialectical and anti-dialectical, from Hegel and Fichte to Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, Deleuze, and Lacan.

No preview available - 2008 - 320 pages

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade


Book overview

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy has been lauded by the New York Times, Financial Times, and reviewers worldwide. Translated in fourteen languages, Travels has received numerous awards for its frank and nuanced discussion of global economic realities. Now updated and revised--including a discussions of environmental issue--this fascinating book illustrates crucial lessons in the debate on globalization.

The major themes and conclusions from the first edition are intact, but in response to questions from readers and students around the world, the second edition now includes:

  • Updates on the people, businesses, and politics involved in the production of the T-shirt.
  • Discussions of environmental issues related to both international trade and the T-shirt's life story.
  • A look at the maturing of the anti-globalization movement, and the recent shift in public opinion against internationalism.

Limited preview - Edition: 2 - 2009 - 336 pages - Business & Economics

Governing through crime: how the war on crime transformed American democracy


Book overview

Across America today gated communities sprawl out from urban centers, employers enforce mandatory drug testing, and schools screen students with metal detectors. Social problems ranging from welfare dependency to educational inequality have been reconceptualized as crimes, with an attendant focus on assigning fault and imposing consequences. Even before the recent terrorist attacks, non-citizen residents had become subject to an increasingly harsh regime of detention and deportation, and prospective employees subjected to background checks. How and when did our everyday world become dominated by fear, every citizen treated as a potential criminal?

In this startlingly original work, Jonathan Simon traces this pattern back to the collapse of the New Deal approach to governing during the 1960s when declining confidence in expert-guided government policies sent political leaders searching for new models of governance. The War on Crime offered a ready solution to their problem: politicians set agendas by drawing analogies to crime and redefined the ideal citizen as a crime victim, one whose vulnerabilities opened the door to overweening government intervention. By the 1980s, this transformation of the core powers of government had spilled over into the institutions that govern daily life. Soon our schools, our families, our workplaces, and our residential communities were being governed through crime.
This powerful work concludes with a call for passive citizens to become engaged partners in the management of risk and the treatment of social ills. Only by coming together to produce security, can we free ourselves from a logic of domination by others, and from the fear that currently rules our everyday life.

Limited preview - 2007 - 330 pages - Law

When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry


Book overview

In 2003, well over half a million jailed Americans will leave prison and return to society. Largely uneducated, unskilled, often without family support, and with the stigma of a prison record hanging over them, many if not most will experience serious social and psychological problems after release. Fewer than one in three prisoners receive substance abuse or mental health treatment while incarcerated, and each year fewer and fewer participate in the dwindling number of vocational or educational pre-release programs, leaving many all but unemployable. Not surprisingly, the great majority is rearrested, most within six months of their release. What happens when all those sent down the river come back up--and out?

As long as there have been prisons, society has struggled with how best to help prisoners reintegrate once released. But the current situation is unprecedented. As a result of the quadrupling of the American prison population in the last quarter century, the number of returning offenders dwarfs anything in America's history. What happens when a large percentage of inner-city men, mostly Black and Hispanic, are regularly extracted, imprisoned, and then returned a few years later in worse shape and with dimmer prospects than when they committed the crime resulting in their imprisonment? What toll does this constant "churning" exact on a community? And what do these trends portend for public safety? A crisis looms, and the criminal justice and social welfare system is wholly unprepared to confront it.

Drawing on dozens of interviews with inmates, former prisoners, and prison officials, Joan Petersilia convincingly shows us how the current system is failing, and failing badly. Unwilling merely to sound the alarm, Petersilia explores the harsh realities of prisoner reentry and offers specific solutions to prepare inmates for release, reduce recidivism, and restore them to full citizenship, while never losing sight of the demands of public safety.

As the number of ex-convicts in America continues to grow, their systemic marginalization threatens the very society their imprisonment was meant to protect. America spent the last decade debating who should go to prison and for how long. Now it's time to decide what to do when prisoners come home.

Limited preview - 2003 - 278 pages - Political Science


Reviews

Book Review - When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner ...
Editorial Review - ccja-acjp.ca
The recent publication of When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry by Joan Petersilia presents the issue of reentry in an historical and ...

Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us


Book overview

How do you judge the quality of a school, a district, a teacher, a student? By the test scores, of course. Yet for all the talk, what educational tests can and can’t tell you, and how scores can be misunderstood and misused, remains a mystery to most. The complexities of testing are routinely ignored, either because they are unrecognized, or because they may be—well, complicated.

Inspired by a popular Harvard course for students without an extensive mathematics background, Measuring Up demystifies educational testing—from MCAS to SAT to WAIS, with all the alphabet soup in between. Bringing statistical terms down to earth, Daniel Koretz takes readers through the most fundamental issues that arise in educational testing and shows how they apply to some of the most controversial issues in education today, from high-stakes testing to special education. He walks readers through everyday examples to show what tests do well, what their limits are, how easily tests and scores can be oversold or misunderstood, and how they can be used sensibly to help discover how much kids have learned.


Limited preview - 2008 - 353 pages - Education

Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur


Book overview

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book—the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times—is among his most important achievements.

Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.


Limited preview - 2009 - 768 pages - History

1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War


Book overview

This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side—where the archives are still closed—is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials.

Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society. The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great Powers—Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—in shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.


Limited preview - 2008 - 524 pages - History

Whores, Harlots and Wanton Women

A candid examination of illicit and taboo sexuality throughout history, as seen through letters, poems and diary extracts. What did women who were attracted to other women do before our open, accepting and politically correct age? Were women brave enough to express their love for one another, either emotionally or physically? Did our ancestors ever indulge in 'illicit' sex? Or did their God-fearing mindset cause them to suppress their less than acceptable desires? And just how did prostitutes of the past pleasure their clients?

Whores, Harlots and Wanton Women traces each step in the history of illicit and taboo sex bringing the history of the forbidden alive in a chatty social history. With letters, poems and diary extracts from those in the grip of passion or those disgusted by the exploits of some, the journey from antiquity to modern day is insightful, fascinating and sometimes shocking. The attitudes and peculiarities in society and the often, bizarre paradoxes are explored to reveal a colorful and highly entertaining picture of life on the edge of society. [Description provided by the publisher]

The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity


Book overview

Stanford University student and Cuban American tennis prodigy Ramon Fernandez is outraged when a nearby mega-store hikes its prices the night of an earthquake. He crosses paths with provost and economics professor Ruth Lieber when he plans a campus protest against the price-gouging retailer--which is also a major donor to the university. Ruth begins a dialogue with Ramon about prices, prosperity, and innovation and their role in our daily lives. Is Ruth trying to limit the damage from Ramon's protest? Or does she have something altogether different in mind? As Ramon is thrust into the national spotlight by events beyond the Stanford campus, he learns there's more to price hikes than meets the eye, and he is forced to reconsider everything he thought he knew. What is the source of America's high standard of living? What drives entrepreneurs and innovation? What upholds the hidden order that allows us to choose our careers and pursue our passions with so little conflict? How does economic order emerge without anyone being in charge? Ruth gives Ramon and the reader a new appreciation for how our economy works and the wondrous role that the price of everything plays in everyday life. The Price of Everythingis a captivating story about economic growth and the unseen forces that create and sustain economic harmony all around us.

Limited preview - 2008 - 203 pages - Education

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty


Book overview

Student engagement is the underlying stumbling block to student learning yet essential to student success. Providing a solution to this perennial problem, Student Engagement Techniques presents over 100 much-needed specific tips, techniques, and strategies to engage students in the college classroom. Modeled after the highly successful Classroom Assessment Techniques and Collaborative Learning Techniques, the book emphasizes practical techniques and strategies that have been devised by experienced classroom teachers from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions.

Limited preview - 2009 - 416 pages - Education

Discovering Research Methods in Psychology: A Student's Guide


Book overview

Discovering Research Methods in Psychology: A Student's Guide presents an accessible introduction to the research methodology techniques that underpin the field of psychology
  • Offers a unique narrative approach to introducing the complexities of psychological research methods to first year students
  • Introduces the reader to the three main types of research methods used in psychology – observation, experimentation and survey methods
  • Provides clear summaries of 21st-century published studies that reflect diversity and best illustrate issues in research methodology
  • Includes an emphasis on topics of most interest to students, from those with a personal perspective such as romantic relationships, prejudice and career decisions, to clinical topics including eating disorders, heavy drinking and paranoia
  • Features a comprehensive glossary of all research terminology used in the narrative


No preview available - 2009 - 344 pages

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

More book information

Global Warming (Global Issues)


Book overview

It is an undisputed fact that the Earths climate is changing, and although the scientific community continues to debate the exact correlation between human activity and climatic change, there is now almost universal consensus that humankind directly impacts Earths climatean idea referred to as global warming.

No preview available - 2009 - 340 pages

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

More book information

Human Trafficking (Global Issues)


Book overview

Despite the fact that the United Nations officially abolished slavery and the slave trade almost 60 years ago, millions of human beings live in slavery today. Human traffickingthe official term for modern-day slaveryconsists of buying and selling people with the intent of exploiting them through forced labor or sexual acts.

No preview available - 2009 - 350 pages

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

References from web pages

Kathryn Cullen-dupont - Forthcoming in 2008: Gobal Issues: Human ...
Since then, the prominence of human trafficking in the news has only increased. In May 2007, for example, two Indonesian women escaped involuntary servitude ...
www.womenandhistory.com/work1.htm

More book information

Subverting Scriptures: Critical Reflections on the Use of the Bible


Focusing on writers who approach the Bible as a source that is both instructive and dangerous, Subverting Scriptures seeks to provide an academic analysis of cultural biblical saturation at a time when measured voices are necessary to counterbalance politically motivated religious rhetoric. Using as its point of departure the current political landscape – where the Bible is drawn on freely and unabashedly without critical reflection to legitimate and justify all manner of agendas – the contributors in this collection engage the Bible in new, imaginative, and critical ways, in the hopes of creating a new space for dialogue. [provided by the publisher]

Obscene, Indecent, Immoral and Offensive: 100+ Years of Censored, Banned, and Controversial Films


Book overview

This entertaining and insightful book is the first devoted exclusively to films that push the cinematic envelope with explicit language, nudity, sex, violence, or "adult" themes. Stephen Tropiano offers astute and accessible analysis of such films as The Birth of a Nation, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Baby Doll, Blackboard Jungle, Bonnie and Clyde, A Clockwork Orange, Natural Born Killers, Rosemary's Baby, Life of Brian, and The Passion of the Christ.

No preview available - 2009 - 364 pages - Performing Arts

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

More book information

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Diasporas in the Contemporary World

This comprehensive new book seeks to explain why Diaspora communities are increasing as never before. In an accessible and engaging introduction to the field, Milton Esman looks closely at the difference in the reception of Diaspora communities throughout the world, and the responses of those communities to their new nations. By focusing on ten examples of contemporary Diasporas from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, the book describes and illustrates the problems confronting immigrant communities as they attempt to protect their inherited culture, while coping with the demands and the opportunities they encounter in their adopted country. The book pays particular attention to the types of conflicts that arise from the development of Diaspora communities, and the consequences that these conflicts can have on the international community. {From the publisher]

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance


Book overview

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary? SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa? Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands? How much good do car seats do? What's the best way to catch a terrorist? Did TV cause a rise in crime? What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor? Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is - good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over - but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.

Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America (and What They Teach Us)


Book overview

A gripping and inspiring book,Civic Passions examines innovative leadership in periods of crisis in American history. Starting from the late nineteenth century, when respected voices warned that America was on the brink of collapse, Cecelia Tichi explores the wisdom of practical visionaries who were confronted with a series of social, political, and financial upheavals that, in certain respects, seem eerily similar to modern times. The United States--then, as now--was riddled with political corruption, financial panics, social disruption, labor strife, and bourgeois inertia. Drawing on a wealth of evocative personal accounts, biographies, and archival material, Tichi brings seven iconoclastic--and often overlooked--individuals from the Gilded Age back to life. We meet physician Alice Hamilton, theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, jurist Louis D. Brandeis, consumer advocate Florence Kelley, antilynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, economist John R. Commons, and child-welfare advocate Julia Lathrop. Bucking the status quo of the Gilded Age as well as middle-class complacency, these reformers tirelessly garnered popular support as they championed progressive solutions to seemingly intractable social problems. Civic Passions is a provocative and powerfully written social history, a collection of minibiographies, and a user's manual on how a generation of social reformers can turn peril into progress with fresh, workable ideas. Together, these narratives of advocacy provide a stunning precedent of progressive action and show how citizen-activists can engage the problems of the age in imaginative ways. While offering useful models to encourage the nation in a newly progressive direction, Civic Passions reminds us that one determined individual can make a difference.

Limited preview - 2009 - 382 pages - Biography & Autobiography

Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife


Book overview

In June 1942, Anne Frank received a red-and-white- checked diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in an Amsterdam attic to escape the Nazis. For two years, with ever-increasing maturity, Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling documents of modern history. She described life in vivid, unforgettable detail, explored apparently irreconcilable views of human nature--people are good at heart but capable of unimaginable evil--and grappled with the unfolding events of World War II, until the hidden attic was raided in August 1944.

But Anne Frank's diary, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as a historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenage Frank's skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters. And Prose addresses what few of the diary's millions of readers may know: this book is a "deliberate" work of art. During her last months in hiding, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she had hoped would be read by the public after the war.

Read it has been. Few books have been as influential for as long, and Prose thoroughly investigates the diary's unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughter's words; the controversy surrounding the diary's Broadway and film adaptations; and the claims of conspiracy theorists who have cried fraud, along with the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, Prose, a teacher herself, considers the rewards and challenges of sharing one of the world's most read, and most banned, books with students.

How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspire? "Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife" tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenaged chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.

How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspire? "Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife" tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenage chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.


No preview available - 2009 - 444 pages

User ratings

5 stars

3
4 stars

2
3 stars

0
2 stars

0
1 star

0

Reviews

Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews Copyright (c) 10/1/2009 VNU Business Media, Inc.
An articulate statement of the enduring power of Anne Frank's original work joined with a brief biography, an analysis of the 1955 play and 1959 film based on the diary, some attacks on Holocaust deniers and a few thoughts on approaches to teaching the work.Prose (Goldengrove, 2008, etc.) first read The Diary of a Young Girl (1952) when she was a child, and later saw the original production of the
...
More

More book information

The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes: The Politics of Civility


Book overview

The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes explores the influential public service of this two-term New Jersey governor. He was the only person in New Jersey history to serve as both governor and chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. This biography illuminates the governor's accomplishments between 1962 and 1970, including the creation of the Hackensack Meadowlands Commission, formation of the county college system, establishment of stringent antipollution laws, design of the public defender system, and the adoption of a New Jersey sales tax, as well as his pivotal role during the Newark riots. As chief justice, Hughes faced difficult issuesschool funding, low and moderate income housing needs, freedom of speech, and his decision in the rightto-die case involving Karen Ann Quinlan. With a career characterized by liberal activism, Hughes also contributed nationally and internationally, from serving as host of the 1964 Democratic National Convention to monitoring elections in South Vietnam. John B. Wefings research includes interviews with prominent politicians and leaders who worked with Hughes at various points in his career. The result is a rich story of a public servant who possessed a true ability to work with members of both political parties and played a significant role in shaping modern New Jersey.

No preview available - 2009 - 352 pages

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

More book information

Friday, November 13, 2009

Race and Early Childhood Education: An International Approach to Identity, Politics, and Pedagogy


Book overview

This book explores the prominence of ‘race’ in the lives of young children and their early childhood educators. It critiques the often presumed racial innocence of young children and shows instead how young children actively engage with the politics of race as they form their own identities. It challenges early childhood educators to engage with children’s racialised identity politics, and shows how this often requires early childhood educators to rethink their own racialised identities. Amongst the challenges the book presents it offers points of possibility and hope for creating more racially just early childhood classrooms.


No preview available - 2009 - 212 pages

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

More book information

Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction


Book overview

This engaging study examines diverse genders and sexualities in a wide range of contemporary fiction for children and young people. Mallans insights into key dilemmas arising from the texts treatment of romance, beauty, cyberbodies, queer, and comedy are provocative and trustworthy, and deliver exciting theoretical and social perspectives.

No preview available - 2009 - 240 pages

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

More book information

A Sociology of Immigration: (Re)making Multifaceted America


Book overview

This book proposes a new theoretical framework for the study of immigration. It examines four major issues informing current sociological studies of immigration: mechanisms and effects of international migration, processes of immigrants assimilation and transnational engagements, and the adaptation patterns of the second generation.

No preview available - 2009 - 256 pages

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

More book information

Understanding and Addressing Adult Sexual Attraction to Children: A Study of Paedophiles in Contemporary Society


Book overview

No preview available - 2009 - 240 pages

Reviews

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Write review

More book information