What defines a multicultural city? Policy? Geography? Demography? In Multicultural Cities, Mohammad Abdul Qadeer offers a tour of three of North America’s premier multicultural metropolises – Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles – that demonstrates the critical qualities that make these cities multicultural. Guided by the perspective that multiculturalism is the combination of cultural diversity with a common ground of values and institutions, Qadeer examines the social geography, economy, and everyday life of each metropolitan area. His analysis spans the divide between Canada, where multiculturalism is official government policy, and the United States, where it is not. A comprehensive investigation of how some of today’s leading majority-minority cities thrive, written by a keen observer of North American urban life, Multicultural Cities is an important complement to any discussion about how cities can and should accommodate diversity.
Few people are more respected or better positioned to speak on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan than M. Hassan Kakar. A professor at Kabul University and scholar of Afghanistan affairs at the time of the 1978 coup d'état, Kakar vividly describes the events surrounding the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the encounter between the military superpower and the poorly armed Afghans. The events that followed are carefully detailed, with eyewitness accounts and authoritative documentation that provide an unparalleled view of this historical moment. Because of his prominence Kakar was at first treated with deference by the Marxist government and was not imprisoned, although he openly criticized the regime. When he was put behind bars the outcry from scholars all over the world possibly saved his life. In prison for five years, he continued collecting information, much of it from prominent Afghans of varying political persuasions who were themselves prisoners. Kakar brings firsthand knowledge and a historian's sensibility to his account of the invasion and its aftermath. This is both a personal document and a historical one—Kakar lived through the events he describes, and his concern for human rights rather than party politics infuses his writing. As Afghans and the rest of the world try to make sense of Afghanistan's recent past, Kakar's voice will be one of those most listened to.
Those that follow international migration commonly agree on the fact that the late twentieth century has been the age of migration. However, human migration started about two million years ago and continues to the present. The author hails from India and immigrated to the United States in the late twentieth century. Researching his ancestors' migration patterns led to the interesting but not surprising discovery that they, too, migrated to India from different parts of the world. Migration impacts culture, and that effect is captured in some period photographs that are part of this book. Footprints in stone, however, is not just about the past. It also speaks to contemporary life in the United States of America and then ventures to look to the future to what could be possible if we take care of the myriad challenges that humans face in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The readers of Footprints in stone in 2089 will hopefully gain from reading about the past, but they will be the only ones to see if the author's predictions were accurate.
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