Books
Showing 1025–1056 of 1120 results
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“The Sex Side of Life”
Mary Ware Dennett's Pioneering Battle for Birth Control and Sex Education$15.00The publication of Constance M. Chen’s “The Sex Side of Life” rescued from obscurity the life and accomplishments of an extraordinary woman: Mary Ware Dennett, suffragette, leader of the American Arts and Crafts movement, peace activist, and crusader for the right to obtain and distribute information about contraception.
In her battle to make birth control information accessible to all, Dennett tangled both with reluctant Congressmen and Margaret Sanger. She was brought to trial in a landmark censorship case surrounding the sex education pamphlet “The Sex Side of Life,” which she wrote for her sons.
At a time when family planning information and the Draconian communication laws are at the center of national debates, this biography is as timely and important as ever. -
Lines of Fate
A Novel$13.00 – $25.00A philosophical mystery novel populated with artists, criminals, and drug addicts, Lines of Fate is one of the most extraordinary novels to emerge from the last years of the Soviet Union. Written at the height of Gorbachev’s power in 1985 but not published in Russian until 1992, the novel is a profound meditation on Russia’s past and present, and a subtle examination of the crippling effects of Soviet power on the nation and on the Russian psyche.
The story follows the young researcher Anton Lizavin’s efforts to piece together a biography of the provincial writer Simeon Milashevich from the bits of candy wrappers Milashevich wrote on during the early period in Soviet history, when paper was scarce. As Lizavin becomes immersed in Milashevich’s life (and presumed death), the two begin a metaphysical conversation across time, and the book becomes a kind of postmodern detective story, painting a broad, fascinating picture of Russian society throughout the century.
Widely hailed in Europe as a new classic of modern Russian fiction, Lines of Fate is an exploration of the Russian soul in the grand tradition of Pasternak and Gogol.
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Edge of the Knife
Police Violence in the Americas$14.00In Edge of the Knife, noted authority Paul Chevigny draws on years of field research to investigate torture and the use of deadly force, in addition to less drastic forms of violence, in New York, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Kingston. Chevigny, author of the classic Police Power, examines the sources of official violence and offers possibilities for controlling it. What emerges from his work is an image of police violence as a reflection of the larger order of a city, and a convincing argument for persistent government action against crime—including accountability for police violence.
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Inside U.S.A.
$40.00The seventy-fifth anniversary edition of Gunther’s classic portrait of America
John Gunther’s Inside series were among the most popular books of reportage of the 1930s and 1940s. For Inside U.S.A., his magnum opus, Gunther set out from California and visited every state in the country, offering frank, lucid, and humorous observations along the way in what legendary publisher Robert Gottlieb, writing in the New York Times, calls Gunther’s “fluent, personal, casual, snappy” voice. Gunther’s insights on race, labor, the impact of massive New Deal public works projects, rural life, urbanization, and much more yield fascinating insight into life in a postwar America that had vaulted into the status of the world’s preeminent superpower.
This seventy-fifth-anniversary edition of Inside U.S.A. provides an invaluable picture of America as it was and is both a delight to read and filled with insights that remain deeply relevant today.
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Faceless Killers
$26.99 – $36.00At once a gripping mystery in the classic detective tradition and an incisive commentary on contemporary society, Faceless Killers introduces Swedish Inspector Kurt Wallander, a cop whose personal life is in shambles. Tenacious and levelheaded in his sleuthing, Wallander has to deal with an eruption of antiforeign sentiment as he searches for brutal killers.
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Working
People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do$18.99 – $24.99Studs Terkel’s classic oral history of Americans’ working lives—and the inspiration for Barack Obama’s new Netflix series about work in the twenty-first century
“Reading these stories, I started to consider my own place in the world, and understand how connected we are to one another. [Working] helped inform the choices I made in my own work.” —President Barack Obama
Perhaps Studs Terkel’s best-known book, Working is a compelling, fascinating look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from gravediggers to studio heads, this book provides a moving snapshot of people’s feelings about their working lives, as well as a timeless look at how work fits into American life.
Working received rave reviews upon its initial publication, including from the New York Times Book Review, which praised its “incredible abundance of marvelous beings” and “very special electricity and emotional power,” and the Boston Globe, which called it a “magnificent book . . . a work of art,” adding, “To read it is to hear America talking.”
Nearly fifty years after its initial publication, Working remains a deeply relevant American classic, one of the most important works of oral history ever published.
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France Under the Germans
Collaboration and Compromise$16.95 – $27.50From 1940 to 1944, the French people adapted in a variety of ways to life under the domination of Nazi Germany. France under the Germans is the definitive study of the choices made by ordinary French citizens during that turbulent historical period, exposing for the first time the degree of their complicity with the Nazis. Acclaimed Swiss historian Philippe Burrin makes use of a wide variety of newly discovered sources: the records of businesses, industrial organizations, and banks; police files; and reports on mail censorship and telephone conversations. France under the Germans is an extraordinary analysis of the ways in which people respond under extreme pressure, and of how people can betray not only their countries but themselves.
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Smoke and Mirrors
$13.00 – $23.00Media critic John Leonard offers a provocative challenge to conventional ideas about TV. Taking on a diverse range of topics from kid shows to cable, from the cheap thrills of action adventures to the solemn boredom of pledge drives, Leonard argues for a whole new way of thinking about television.
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The Cold War & the University
Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years$17.99 – $25.00The years following 1945 witnessed a massive change in American intellectual thought and in the life of American universities. The effort to mobilize intellectual talent during the war established new links between the government and the academy. After the war, many of those who had worked with the military or the Office of Strategic Studies took jobs in the burgeoning postwar structure of university-based military research and intelligence agencies, bringing large infusions of government money into many fields.
The essays in this text explore what happened to the university in these years and why. They show the many ways existing disciplines, such as anthropology, were affected by the Cold War ethos, and discuss the rise of new fields, such as area studies, and the changing nature of dissent and academic freedom during and since the Cold War.
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Corruption
$10.00Casablanca and Tangier provide the backdrops for Corruption, and erotic tale of morality about Mourad, the last honest man in Morocco. After a lifetime of resistance, Mourad finally gives in to the demands of his materialistic wife and accepts “commissions” for his work: just one envelope stuffed with cash, then another. Ben Jelloun’s compelling novel evokes the dangers of succumbing to the daily temptations of modern life, as Mourad lives the consequences of betraying his existence.
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Asian Art Portfolio
Masterpieces from the Asia Society$22.95Dancing lords and praying goddesses, swirling dragons and Buddhas atop lotus blossoms. We see these images in Asian art, but how can we learn to appreciate them? This guide introduces the history, artistry, and religious and literary symbolism of Asian art. Beautifully designed, the portfolio comes with twenty-four full-color reproductions of frameable quality and an accompanying booklet that covers three millennia of Asian art. The lush reproductions from the Asia Society’s Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection highlight masterpieces from India to Japan, Indonesia to China, Korea to Thailand.
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The Mexican Shock
Its Meaning for the United States$13.00 – $23.00One of the most trenchant critics of the Latin American scene and American foreign policy, Jorge G. Castañeda has been hailed as the “leading Mexican voice in the U.S. media” (In These Times). In The Mexican Shock Castañeda examines the major issues in Mexico in recent years and their effects on the United States: emigration, the relationship between politics and economics, the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Colosio, and the rapid devaluation of the peso. He also explores the United States’s changing perceptions of Mexico and the historical and cultural outlooks that still divide the two countries. Finally, he examines the campaign behind Proposition 187 in California, discussing the dangerous mix of ignorance and bias that has formed so much of America’s reaction to Mexico.
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The Missing
$20.00Hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as an “International Book of the Year” on its publication in Britain, The Missing is a fascinating literary meditation on missing persons by the acclaimed young Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan.
Writing with what one reviewer praised as “passion, eloquence, and honesty,” O’Hagan explores one of society’ most enduring, yet unexamined, concerns—missing persons. He writes movingly of his own grandfather, lost at sea during World War II; of Sandy Davidson, the three-year-old who disappeared from a construction site near O’Hagan’s childhood home; of James Bulger, the toddler abducted from a mall in Liverpool and murdered by two ten-year-olds in 1993; and the twelve young women Fred and Rosemary West murdered and buried in their Gloucester backyard over a period of nearly thirty years.
In all of these cases, O’Hagan goes out with police and meets with social workers and families, always looking for the deeper truths so often left forgotten. What kind of lives did those who have gone missing lead? What made them disappear? What happens to those left behind?
Merging social history, memoir, and reportage, The Missing is one of those rare books that bring a neglected corner of human experience into the public eye, and a memorable debut from an exceptionally perceptive and talented new writer.
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The Art of Ancient Egypt
A Portfolio : Masterpieces from the Brooklyn Museum$22.95Ancient Egypt has always been an endless source of fascination and inspiration. Drawing on the exceptional holdings of Egyptian antiquities from The Brooklyn Museum, The Art of Ancient Egypt covers more than four millennia of Egyptian history while exploring the most intriguing themes surrounding ancient Egyptian artifacts.
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Should We Burn Babar?
Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Stories$14.95 – $18.95In “provocative and entertaining essays [that] will appeal to reflective readers, parents, and educators” (Library Journal), one of the country’s foremost education writers looks at the stories we tell our children. Available now in a revised edition, including a new essay on the importance of “stoop-sitting” and storytelling, Should We Burn Babar? challenges some of the chestnuts of children’s literature. Highlighting instances of racism, sexism, and condescension that detract from the tales being told, Kohl provides strategies for detecting bias in stories written for young people and suggests ways to teach kids to think critically about what they read.
Beginning with the title essay on Babar the elephant—”just one of a fine series of inquiries into the power children’s books have to shape cultural attitudes,” according to Elliott Bay Booknotes—the book includes essays on Pinocchio, the history of progressive education, and a call for the writing of more radical children’s literature. As the Hungry Mind Review concluded, “Kohl’s prescriptions for renewing our schools through the use of stories and storytelling are impassioned, well-reasoned, and readable.”
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The World Out There
Becoming Part of the Lesbian and Gay Community$14.95A much-needed introduction to life beyond the closet door, Mike Ford’s The World Out There: Becoming Part of the Lesbian and Gay Community is the first book for a new generation of young men and women who want to know more about what being part of the gay and lesbian community means.
In a book that many older gay men and lesbians will wish had been available to them, The World Out There addresses everything from dating and the gay bar scene, to career and education choices, community centers, and online services.
The book includes lists of songs, artists, books, films, and resources of special interest to lesbians and gay men; schools with gay studies programs; and portraits of a half-dozen gay communities in cities across the country. Brief profiles offer examples of men and women who have successfully incorporated their gay identities into their personal and professional lives.
Ideal for the thousands of young men and women who migrate to urban gay communities every year, The World Out There is also for the thousands of others isolated in less receptive settings for whom this book will open up a whole wonderful and reassuring universe of possibilities.
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“What Happened to You?”
Writing by Disabled Women$22.50Lois Keith was thirty-five, with a successful career, two daughters, and a partner of many years, when she was hit by a car and paralyzed from the waist down. Over the next few years, she discovered both a community of disabled people and a paucity of literature and public understanding about their lives.
In response, she began soliciting the manuscripts that make up “What Happened to You?”, a candid, powerful, and often hilarious collection of fiction, essays, and poetry by women with disabilities. Coming from a wide range of backgrounds and ages, impairments and experiences, the thirty-six women included in the book write on everything from access to abuse, equality to equanimity, in what may well be the definitive volume on living with a disability.
At the same time, this anthology tells a universal story about dealing with pain and illness, about overcoming prejudice and unjust legislation, and about the importance, regardless of an individual’s fortitude, of creating a community.
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Critical Race Theory
The Key Writings That Formed the Movement$32.50 – $60.00What is Critical Race Theory and why is it under fire from the political right? This foundational essay collection, which defines key terms and includes case studies, is the essential work to understand the intellectual movement
Why did the president of the United States, in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis, take it upon himself to attack Critical Race Theory? Perhaps Donald Trump appreciated the power of this groundbreaking intellectual movement to change the world.
In recent years, Critical Race Theory has vaulted out of the academy and into courtrooms, newsrooms, and onto the streets. And no wonder: as intersectionality theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw recently told Time magazine, “It’s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it.” The panicked denunciations from the right notwithstanding, CRT has changed the way millions of people interpret our troubled world.
Edited by its principal founders and leading theoreticians, Critical Race Theory was the first book to gather the movement’s most important essays. This groundbreaking book includes contributions from scholars including Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, Dorothy Roberts, Lani Guinier, Duncan Kennedy, and many others. It is essential reading in an age of acute racial injustice.
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Picturing Us
African American Identity in Photography$14.00Winner of the International Center for Photography’s 1995 Award for Writing on Photography, Picturing Us brings together a diverse group of African American writers, scholars, and filmmakers in the first concerted effort to analyze and respond to the photographic images of blacks through history. The book’s contributors—including bell hooks, E. Ethelbert Miller, Angela Davis, and others—examine the personal and public issues embedded in family portraits and news photographs, movie stills and mug shots.
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The War on the Poor
A Defense Manual$12.95The War on the Poor counters attacks on the poor in the same lively, accessible style that made The New Field Guide to the U.S. Economy a cult classic. Using charts, graphs, and political cartoons, The War on the Poor presents topics including middle-class welfare, “family” values, child support, teen poverty, the minimum wage, the underclass, orphanages, health, hunger, corporate welfare, block grants, private charity, work requirements, and incentives. It includes a comprehensive resource list of addresses and phone numbers of activist groups, lobbying organizations, information sources, and media contacts.
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Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution
$24.99Written by the award-winning duo who produced the groundbreaking college textbook Who Built America?, this book is an innovative examination of the ways that ordinary people–men and women, white and black, Northern and Southern–experienced and helped shape the events during the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The vital role of African Americans is especially highlighted. Illustrations & photos throughout.
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China Pop
$17.99Using her constant contact (and, in many cases, friendship) with a dynamic group of young novelists, filmmakers, and artists in China, acclaimed writer Jianying Zha has compiled a knowledgeable, eye-opening book. . . . (China Pop) draws a fresh and often poignant portrait of a deeply confused country (San Francisco Chronicle).
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Try This at Home!
A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Winning Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Policy$14.95Try This at Home! is a practical, no-nonsense guide for individuals and grassroots groups on how to pass laws and policies that protect lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals from discrimination. Written by the director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project of the ACLU, the book suggests strategies to use at the state and local government levels, and at private institutions—including universities, corporations, banks, and social service organizations. The book includes information on:
- Building support in the lesbian and gay community
- Designing your campaign organization
- Developing an endorsement strategy
- Building relationships with the media
- Writing and negotiating policy
- Lobbying
- Domestic partnership policies
Written in response to the hundreds of requests for assistance Coles has received, Try This at Home! also contains anecdotes from those who have helped enact pro-gay policies, sidebars on what works and what doesn’t, and appendixes with the actual wording Coles recommends for gay-friendly amendments to all manner of policies and legislation.
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What the Night Tells the Day
A Novel$11.00 – $22.00Compared to Conrad, Nabokov, and Beckett by Octavio Paz, Argentine-born Hector Bianciotti is one of the leading literary figures in his adopted homeland of France. What the Night Tells the Day, his first novel to be translated into English, is the fictionalized story of Bianciotti’s youth among poor immigrant peasants in rural Argentina during the late years of the Perón regime, and a moving and sensitive portrayal of a boy’s discovery of his own homosexuality.
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Dear Bruno
$12.00In 1979, Alice Trillin, who three years earlier had been diagnosed with a malignant lung tumor, received a call from good friend Annie Navasky telling her that Annie’s twelve-year-old son, Bruno, also had cancer. Alice’s response was a letter to Bruno in which she tried to show that it was possible to talk about cancer in a tone that was frank, honest, and funny. Children and adults struggling with the ‘why me?’ of cancer will find in this book a realistic, funny, and somehow, reassuring exploration of the fight for survival. Illustrated with cartoons by New Yorker artist Edward Koren.
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If I Could Write This in Fire
An Anthology of Literature from the Caribbean$18.95In this unprecedented collection, Pamela Maria Smorkaloff brings together fiction from the French-, Spanish-, and English-speaking Caribbean, much of it translated here for the first time. The book’s wide-ranging and diverse selections address the central themes of the region’s literature: the plantation, maroon society, colonial education, rural and urban life, women’s changing roles in the modern Caribbean, exile, and the diaspora. Works include Jamaican author James Carnegie’s powerful novella Wages Paid about a day in the life of a slave plantation, a selection by noted Guadeloupan novelist Simone Schwarz-Brat, Puerto Rican short stories from Ana Lydia Vega, and fiction from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, St. Kitts, and Barbados. Together they offer the first picture of a Caribbean voice and aesthetic, and an extensive bibliography of further reading invites students, scholars, and others to explore beyond this initial collection.
From Columbus’ diaries on, the Caribbean has been the scene onto which a steady stream of myths has been imposed If I Could Write This in Fire offers the first collection of authentic Caribbean voices—a small set of gems that will introduce readers to a rich and lyric tradition.
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Naming the Jungle
A Novel$18.95Antoine Volodine has been hailed as one of the most innovative and accomplished writers in France today. Compared by critics to Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll, Volodine weaves an unusual novel of political and psychological intrigue in a lush, exotic setting. The publication of Naming the Jungle marks his American debut and the first translation of his work into English.
Puesto Libertad could be any Latin American city torn by the strife of civil war. In this isolated capital buried in the jungle, the revolutionary secret police have started digging into Fabian Golpiez’s past. In order to avoid brutal torture and interrogation, he decides to feign madness. Led by a local shaman/psychiatrist in a bizarre talking cure, Golpiez must use indigenous names to prove both his innocence and his true Tupi Indian identity. To name is to conquer. He names the monkeys, the plants, and the insects all around him as he names his fear, his paranoia, and his pathologies.
A masterful storyteller, Volodine speaks to us about the slow and fatal agony of revolution in a haunting and intense novel, one of the most dazzling pieces of fiction to come out of France since the early novels of Robbe-Grillet and Duras.
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The New American Crisis
$13.95Noam Chomsky, Marc Cooper, Marge Piercy, bell hooks, and Seymour Melman are just a few of the leading activists and progressive thinkers who examine this nation s current conservative political climate in a candid and provocative book that issues a call to action amid inertia and represents trenchant radical analyses of the key issues Americans currently face.
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Ellis Island
$16.95The French novelist Georges Perec has continually captured the American imagination, most recently with the publication of A Void, a novel written without the letter “e.” Ellis Island holds us in thrall once again. With poetic grace, insistent questioning, and a stunning carousel of images, Perec and filmmaker Robert Bober open our eyes to the intriguing blend of permanence and transience that is Ellis Island. -
After Liberalism
$16.95In After Liberalism, the distinguished historian and political scientist Immanuel Wallerstein examines the process of disintegration of our modern world-system and speculates on the changes that may occur during the next few decades. He explores the historical choices before us and suggests paths for reconstructing our world-system on a more rational and socially equitable basis.
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Recipe of Memory
$14.00 – $22.00A multi-award winner, RECIPE OF MEMORY is a unique blend of cookbook, family memoir, and social history. In an antique chest left to L.A. journalist Victor Valle by his great aunt, recipes dating back to 1888 give tips for preparing more than 50 dishessuch as Squab on a Bed of Saffron Rice. And five generations worth of family journals and old photographs offer insights into the development of Mexican American culture and cuisine. Illustrated.
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White House E-Mail
$14.95This unprecedented, revealing, and at times comical collection of the most dramatic computer communications that flowed electronically through the national security offices of the Reagan/Bush White House represents the best of 3,000 pieces of electronic mail behind the most scandalous policies of our times–e-mail Oliver North and John Poindexter thought they had deleted from their computers.
Showing 1025–1056 of 1120 results
