Public funds spent on jets and horses. Shoeboxes stuffed with embezzled cash. Ghost payrolls and incarcerated ex-governors. Illinois' culture of "Where's mine?" and the public apathy it engenders has made our state and local politics a disgrace. In Corrupt Illinois, veteran political observers Thomas J. Gradel and Dick Simpson take aim at business-as-usual. Naming names, the authors lead readers through a gallery of rogues and rotten apples to illustrate how generations of chicanery have undermined faith in, and hope for, honest government. From there, they lay out how to implement institutional reforms that provide accountability and eradicate the favoritism, sweetheart deals, and conflicts of interest corroding our civic life. Corrupt Illinois lays out a blueprint to transform our politics from a pay-to-play–driven marketplace into what it should be: an instrument of public good.
At the end of February 2020, Larry and Ann Thomas left their home in Issaquah, Washington, for a three-week vacation visiting family in Colorado and Texas. News of the coronavirus pandemic was slowly spreading. By the middle of March 2020 the world had changed and the global pandemic was in full swing. The Thomases decided to shelter in place in Flower Mound, Texas, for the next six weeks. On March 17, 2020, when Larry returned to his work as the interim pastor at Sammamish Hills Lutheran Church in Sammamish, Washington, it was from a makeshift office in Texas, not his office in Sammamish. Working remotely, Pastor Thomas began organizing weekly virtual prayer gatherings and Bible studies. In order to connect with the congregation, he started writing pastoral letters as a way of reflecting on the intersection of faith, hope, and love while living through the pandemic. Lily Packed a Facemask is a chronicle of one pastor's commitment to engage with a congregation during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Grounded in biblical texts, Thomas takes the threads of a variety of writers and contemporary resources and weaves a tapestry of living life faithfully in the midst of a year of constant changes and challenges.
Popular Music Theory and Analysis: A Research and Information Guide uncovers the wealth of scholarly works dealing with the theory and analysis of popular music. This annotated bibliography is an exhaustive catalog of music-theoretical and musicological works that is searchable by subject, genre, and song title. It will support emerging scholarship and inquiry for future research on popular music.
In The Heart of Grief, Attig gives us an inspiring and profoundly insightful meditation on the meaning of grief, showing how it can be the path toward a lasting love of those who have died. Recounting dozens of stories of people who have struggled with deaths in their lives, he describes grieving as a transition from loving in presence to loving in separation. The thing we long for most--the return of the one who is missing--is the very thing that we can never have, kindling the intense pain of our loss. But Attig argues that we can, in fact, build an enduring, even reciprocal, love, a love that tempers our pain. He tells stories, for instance, of a young girl taking some of her dead sister's practical advice as she enters high school, a widower realizing how much intimate life with his wife has colored his character, and an athlete drawing inspiration from his dead brother and achieving what they had dreamed of together. Far from forgetting our loved ones, Attig urges us to explore ways in which our memories of the departed can be sustained, our understanding of them enhanced, and their legacies embraced, so they continue to play active roles in our everyday and inner lives. Groundbreaking and original, inspiring and compassionate, The Heart of Grief offers guidance, comfort, and a new understanding of how we grieve.
The authors argue that TV regulation should be based on the same principles used for print media, for which control of editorial content lies in private hands rather than the government.
“A crazy American epic” –Newsweek Complex, contentious, and blessed with the perfect-pitch ability to find the next big talent, David Geffen has shaped American popular culture and transformed the way Hollywood does business. His dazzling career has included the roles of power agent, record-industry mogul, Broadway producer, and billionaire Hollywood studio founder–but from the beginning his accomplishments have been shadowed by the ruthlessness with which he has pursued fame, money, and power. With The Operator, Tom King–who interviewed Geffen for the book and had unimpeded access to his circle of intimates–presents a mesmerizing chronicle of Geffen’s meteoric rise from the mailroom at William Morris, as well as a captivating tour of thirty sizzling years of Hollywood history. Drawing on the recollections of celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Yoko Ono, Warren Beatty, Courtney Love, Paul Simon, and even Cher (whom Geffen nearly married), The Operator transports readers to a world that is as ruthless as it is dazzling, revealing a great American story about success and the bargains made for it. “A detailed portrait of Hollywood’s premier manipulator…The Operator is as much a composite portrait of the ‘New Hollywood’ as it is of the fifty-seven-year-old partner in DreamWorks SKG.” –San Francisco Chronicle “Illuminating...[The Operator] shows how raging ambition and chutzpah are as much valued as talent–or more so–in determining success.” –Philadelphia Inquirer
What others in the trenches say about The Pragmatic Programmer... “The cool thing about this book is that it’s great for keeping the programming process fresh. The book helps you to continue to grow and clearly comes from people who have been there.” — Kent Beck, author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change “I found this book to be a great mix of solid advice and wonderful analogies!” — Martin Fowler, author of Refactoring and UML Distilled “I would buy a copy, read it twice, then tell all my colleagues to run out and grab a copy. This is a book I would never loan because I would worry about it being lost.” — Kevin Ruland, Management Science, MSG-Logistics “The wisdom and practical experience of the authors is obvious. The topics presented are relevant and useful.... By far its greatest strength for me has been the outstanding analogies—tracer bullets, broken windows, and the fabulous helicopter-based explanation of the need for orthogonality, especially in a crisis situation. I have little doubt that this book will eventually become an excellent source of useful information for journeymen programmers and expert mentors alike.” — John Lakos, author of Large-Scale C++ Software Design “This is the sort of book I will buy a dozen copies of when it comes out so I can give it to my clients.” — Eric Vought, Software Engineer “Most modern books on software development fail to cover the basics of what makes a great software developer, instead spending their time on syntax or technology where in reality the greatest leverage possible for any software team is in having talented developers who really know their craft well. An excellent book.” — Pete McBreen, Independent Consultant “Since reading this book, I have implemented many of the practical suggestions and tips it contains. Across the board, they have saved my company time and money while helping me get my job done quicker! This should be a desktop reference for everyone who works with code for a living.” — Jared Richardson, Senior Software Developer, iRenaissance, Inc. “I would like to see this issued to every new employee at my company....” — Chris Cleeland, Senior Software Engineer, Object Computing, Inc. “If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. . . . And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book.” — Ward Cunningham Straight from the programming trenches, The Pragmatic Programmer cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process--taking a requirement and producing working, maintainable code that delights its users. It covers topics ranging from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. Read this book, and you'll learn how to Fight software rot; Avoid the trap of duplicating knowledge; Write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code; Avoid programming by coincidence; Bullet-proof your code with contracts, assertions, and exceptions; Capture real requirements; Test ruthlessly and effectively; Delight your users; Build teams of pragmatic programmers; and Make your developments more precise with automation. Written as a series of self-contained sections and filled with entertaining anecdotes, thoughtful examples, and interesting analogies, The Pragmatic Programmer illustrates the best practices and major pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. Whether you're a new coder, an experienced programmer, or a manager responsible for software projects, use these lessons daily, and you'll quickly see improvements in personal productivity, accuracy, and job satisfaction. You'll learn skills and develop habits and attitudes that form the foundation for long-term success in your career. You'll become a Pragmatic Programmer.
Two thousand years ago, a simple man walked this planet with a simple message. They called him Jesus. His was a message of radical exclusion in a world he called the Kingdom of God. He spoke in parables grounded in common, everyday experiences, parables about yeast and leavened bread, weeds and mustard seeds, fishing nets and pearls. In the Kingdom of God, everyone was equal and differences made no difference. But the world couldnt handle such an outrageous message. Whoever heard of a world where differences make no difference? Of course, they make a difference. So they dangled him from a cross for all the world to take note. After his death, they honored him with a title, the Christ, and began a whole new religion in his name. But for two thousand years far too many have been dishonoring him by misrepresenting his message. His message of radical inclusion has been twisted and contorted into a message that far too many of his followers use to sanction that which he came to overcome. Instead of eliminating distinctions between insiders and outsiders, pure and impure, clean and unclean, his message has been used to perpetuate sexism, racism, age-ism, homophobism, imperialism, and all the other -isms that stand in the way of radical inclusion. All this has happened so gradually, literally over centuries if not millennia through crusty old doctrines, dogma, and creeds that very few have even noticed. Christianity has become fat and happy, just like the frog in the Parable of the Boiling Frog. You stick a frog in a vat of boiling water, and it will struggle with all its might to escape an otherwise certain death. But if you stick a frog in a vat of lukewarm water and ever so gradually keep warming it one degree at a time, the frog will grow comfortable in the increasing warmth of its environment until, before he realizes it, he has been boiled. Two thousand years later, it is time to set the record straight; time to return to Jesus simple message through the common, ordinary experiences of today. In the biblical witness, Moses wandered in the wilderness for forty years; Jesus, for forty days. So, too, shall we wander by channel surfing through forty chapters of scripture. From Adam and Eve to Ricky Nelsons Garden Party at Madison Square Garden; from the Book of Jobs Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar to The Three Stooges; from Matthews and Lukes nativity scenes to Larry, Darryl, and Darryl of The Bob Newhart Show; from the temptation stories and Jesus wandering in the wilderness to American Bandstand, the Temptations, and Dion & the Belmonts The Wanderer; from Pilate and Herod cross-examining Jesus to Judge Wapner and Judge Judy; from atonement theology to Lets Make a Deal, it is time to paint our antiquated parables with a more contemporary brush; in so doing, it is time to turn Jesus simple message into a profound reality. Onward, radical inclusion! On to the Kingdom of God. In the immortal words of Bart Simpson, Surfs up, dude.
Over the course of his career, Billy Joel has released a series of remarkable albums that together chart his journey as an artist from relative obscurity to international success. In Experiencing Billy Joel, musician and writer Thomas MacFarlane explores that musical journey, from Joel’s apprenticeship in the Long Island music scene to his experiences in both New York and Los Angeles writing and recording his own unique brand of piano rock and pop. After achieving a certain degree of musical success in the late 1960s, Joel embarked on a career as a singer-songwriter in the early 1970s. Although his initial albums demonstrated a precocious mastery that helped establish him in the field, his full potential as a recording artist blossomed on The Stranger (1977), created under the guidance of legendary producer Phil Ramone. Subsequent releases explored a variety of musical styles and helped solidify Joel’s reputation as one of the most important pop composers of his era. Experiencing Billy Joel explores each of Joel’s albums, laying out their appeal to musicians and non-musicians alike while also exploring the various production styles that have characterized Joel’s development in the studio. Along the way, MacFarlane reveals how Billy Joel’s recorded works as a whole serve as the foundation for a complex and enduring musical legacy.
The second entry in the civics series clearly and concisely explains how the United States Senate works. From the Fundamentals of American Government civics series, it explores the inner workings of this important part of the legislative branch. It is written for all audiences, but voiced toward high school seniors and college freshmen.
New York Times Bestseller: “A thrill ride . . . The technical details and intricate depiction of Soviet life fascinate.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) American pilot Mitchell Gant barely escaped the USSR alive after stealing its cutting-edge stealth fighter. Nevertheless, he’s going back again—this time, to rescue an American agent with evidence of a looming threat. A group of highly placed, power-hungry Soviets, who want to undermine any hope of a treaty between the superpowers, has plans to put a laser battle station into orbit and destroy America’s space shuttle. To stop them, Gant will first have to maneuver across a thousand miles of airspace—in a helicopter. Once he arrives, he will find himself teaming up with an unexpected ally . . . “With this third Mitchell Gant adventure Thomas firmly establishes himself in the forefront of today’s adventure/thriller writers.” —Publishers Weekly
One of America’s great rock and roll pioneers, Richie Furay played alongside Neil Young and Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield, producing some of the signature sounds of American folk rock. He went on to form Poco, one of the bands that founded California country rock, and then Souther-Hillman-Furay. After declaring himself a Christian in 1974, Furay released four solo albums before taking up the ministry in 1983. He began recording again in 1997, and over the next twenty-five years he released two Christian and five secular albums. In this biography of Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Richie Furay, Thomas Kitts provides an intimate look at Furay’s life and music. Kitts chronicles the musician’s upbringing, his musical career, and his Christianity, drawing on interviews with Furay and others close to him. In documenting Furay’s extraordinary talent as a songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist, Kitts argues that although he never attained the level of stardom of many of his bandmates, Furay is a pivotal figure in American popular music. Fans of Buffalo Springfield, Poco, and country-rock music will enjoy this quintessentially American story of a young man on a quest to fulfill his rock-and-roll dreams.
To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. Even in light of skyrocketing campaign costs, the belief that major financial interests primarily determine who parties nominate and where they stand on the issues—that, in effect, Democrats and Republicans are merely the left and right wings of the "Property Party"—has been ignored by most political scientists. Offering evidence ranging from the nineteenth century to the 1994 mid-term elections, Golden Rule shows that voters are "right on the money." Thomas Ferguson breaks completely with traditional voter centered accounts of party politics. In its place he outlines an "investment approach," in which powerful investors, not unorganized voters, dominate campaigns and elections. Because businesses "invest" in political parties and their candidates, changes in industrial structures—between large firms and sectors—can alter the agenda of party politics and the shape of public policy. Golden Rule presents revised versions of widely read essays in which Ferguson advanced and tested his theory, including his seminal study of the role played by capital intensive multinationals and international financiers in the New Deal. The chapter "Studies in Money Driven Politics" brings this aspect of American politics into better focus, along with other studies of Federal Reserve policy making and campaign finance in the 1936 election. Ferguson analyzes how a changing world economy and other social developments broke up the New Deal system in our own time, through careful studies of the 1988 and 1992 elections. The essay on 1992 contains an extended analysis of the emergence of the Clinton coalition and Ross Perot's dramatic independent insurgency. A postscript on the 1994 elections demonstrates the controlling impact of money on several key campaigns. This controversial work by a theorist of money and politics in the U.S. relates to issues in campaign finance reform, PACs, policymaking, public financing, and how today's elections work.
Outrageously addictive' -- Stephen Fry Eaton's Modern Ready Reckoner revives the curiosities of old, mixing it with the delights and complexities of the 21st Century. A nostalgic gift book for the modern trivia-loving brainiac in your life, Eaton's Modern Ready Reckoner contains information on everything and anything, from digital algorithms, to weights and measures; SpaceX to interest rates; monarchs, presidents and rap stars. But not only that, it includes out-of-this world trivia as we head into the age of the Large Hadron Collider, of stem cell therapy, Bitcoin, and Netflix; of vaping, emojis and the hashtag; as well as updates on Reckoner classics from days of yore - including metric and imperial conversions; sunrise and sunset times across the world; and, perhaps more usefully, how to tell the height of a tree. Compiled by quiz-buff and self-confessed 'collector of curiosities' Thomas Eaton, Eaton's Modern Ready Reckoner is a wonderful revival of a forgotten treasure trove of facts, figures and trivial delights!
A fresh new perspective that will be a true revolution to readers and will open new lines of discussion on . . . the importance of the city of New Orleans for generations to come." —Dr. Michael White, jazz clarinetist, composer, and Keller Endowed Chair at Xavier University of LA An untold authentic counter-narrative blues history and the first written by an African American blues artist All prior histories on the blues have alleged it originated on plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Not true, says author Chris Thomas King. In The Blues, King present facts to disprove such myths. This book is the first to argue the blues began as a cosmopolitan art form, not a rural one. As early as 1900, the sound of the blues was ubiquitous in New Orleans. The Mississippi Delta, meanwhile, was an unpopulated sportsman's paradise—the frontier was still in the process of being cleared and drained for cultivation.? Expecting these findings to be controversial in some circles, King has buttressed his conclusions with primary sources and years of extensive research, including a sojourn to West Africa and interviews with surviving folklorists and blues researchers from the 1960s folk-rediscovery epoch.? New Orleans, King states, was the only place in the Deep South where the sacred and profane could party together without fear of persecution, creating the blues.
Thomas Douglas Adelman looks back at an eventful life in this engaging memoir about growing up in a Jewish family and becoming a successful producer and director. Born in 1954, he grew up on the Upper East Side of New York City in an upper-middle-class family with the normal dysfunction that you find in all families. Notably, his family was Jewish but celebrated Christmas—although he never could figure out why. His father was a businessman passionate about politics, and his mother was an actress in the forties. When they met, it was love at first sight. The author looks back at his adventures growing up, including being thrown out of private schools as a boy and rubbing elbows with notable people. He also looks back at how he made his way into the entertainment industry, producing, directing, and working on numerous films and projects and ultimately launching his own company. Join the author as he looks back at his childhood, adult life, and his rise to the top of the entertainment industry.
This is the first critical biography to explore John Fogerty's life and his music. When inducting Creedence Clearwater Revival into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, Bruce Springsteen referred to the "music’s power and its simplicity... [its] beauty and poetry and a sense of the darkness of events and of history, of an American tradition shot through with pride, fear, and paranoia." This book investigates those aspects and more of Fogerty’s songs and life: his Americanism, his determined individualism, and unyielding musical vision which led to conflicts with his band, isolation from his family, constant legal battles, and some of the greatest songs of the 20th century.
The Acts of Peter, one of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles that detail the exploits of the key figures of early Christianity, provides a unique window into the formation of early Christian narrative. Like the Gospels, the Acts of Peter developed from disparate oral and written narrative from the first century. The apocryphal text, however, continued to develop into a number of re-castings, translations, abridgements, and expansions. The Acts of Peter present Christian narrative in an alternate universe, in which canonization did not halt the process of creative re-composition. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Thomas examines the sources and subsequent versions of the Acts, from the earliest traditions through the sixth-century Passions of the Apostles, arguing the importance of its "narrative fluidity": the existence of the work in several versions or multiforms. This feature, shared with the Jewish novels of Esther and Daniel, the Greek romance about Alexander the Great, and the Christian Gospels, allows these narratives to adapt to accommodate the changing historical circumstances of their audiences. In each new version, the audiences' defining conflicts were reflected in the text, echoing a historical consciousness more often identified with primary oral societies, in which the account of the past is a malleable script explaining the present. Although the genre most closely comparable to these works is the ancient novel, their serious historical intent separates them from the later, more self-consciously fictive novels, and maintains them within the realm of the earlier historical novels produced by ethnic subcultures within the Roman empire.
This comprehensive and instructive study examines the relative success or failure of government policies in preventing and alleviating unemployment. Choosing two contrasting cases—West Germany and the United States—Thomas Janoski probes the causes and consequences of two very different orientations toward labor market policy. In West Germany, labor, employers, and government cooperate in the running of a powerful and effective employment service. In the United States, by contrast, one finds little state involvement, organizational confusion, a long history of poor funding, and legislative resistance to intervention in the labor market. In the author's mind, these inadequate policies have had deleterious consequences for the American labor force. Whereas a skilled and flexible labor force exists in West Germany, Americans are poorly trained and barely assisted in finding jobs and training. To remedy this situation Janoski puts forth bold and useful policy recommendations, including the creation of a new organization to operate in national labor markets, the development of technical training programs in high schools, and the creation of a youth service to prevent teenage crime. The Political Economy of Unemployment offers a trenchant examination of how modern industrialized nations deal with the vicissitudes of the economy and how they might develop and implement more effective labor market policies. Meticulously researched, it is an important contribution that policymakers and social scientists will find provocative and useful. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.
William Shepherd ("Billy Shears") took over The Beatles and the McCartney estate on 16 September 1966, going from "Billy Pepper" of Billy Pepper and the Pepper Pots, to The Beatles' new "Sgt. Pepper" of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Taking creative control of the band from John made William "the new boss," saving the band, but tormenting all involved. The Memoirs is the source of the "Paul is Dead" material reprinted in Billy's Back! and of the insights in Beatles Enlightenment, but also includes the darker aspects: Paulism, Satanism, and Biblical humor--calling The Beatles the four-headed 666 Beast. The Memoirs is the first fully encoded full-length book. As part of that encoding, it contains the world's largest acrostic, and is the world's premier of word-stacking. By reading The Memoirs, you will learn the secret meanings of their songs, and will recognize Paul and William's distinct physical differences, personality differences, and vast differences in musical skills.
Countless children, students, and adults have gone to Washington, D.C., to stand before the Vietnam Wall. Many others have stood before traveling versions of the wall, but for those who did not lose someone special in the war, the experience might not be as meaningful as it is for others. Thomas Mangan, a Vietnam veteran and longtime journalist, examines the lives of the Americans who died in the war and tells how they paid the ultimate price for freedom in this extensively researched handbook that reveals the people behind the list of names. The book serves as a resource for teachers, schoolchildren, and anyone seeking to make their visit to the wall more educational, meaningful, and inspiring. By reading about those whose names are on the wall, youll approach it with a new perspective. Whether youre a student, a teacher, soldier or a member of a veterans organization, youll gain a deeper appreciation for the freedom we enjoy from the stories of bravery and sacrifice in Who Are Those Guys?
Increasingly popular in the United States and Europe, Andean panpipe and flute music draws its vitality from the traditions of rural highland villages and of rural migrants who have settled in Andean cities. In Moving Away from Silence, Thomas Turino describes panpipe and flute traditions in the context of this rural-urban migration and the turbulent politics that have influenced Peruvian society and local identities throughout this century. Turino's ethnography is the first large-scale study to concentrate on the pervasive effects of migration on Andean people and their music. Turino uses the musical traditions of Conima, Peru as a unifying thread, tracing them through the varying lives of Conimeos in different locales. He reveals how music both sustains and creates meaning for a people struggling amid the dramatic social upheavals of contemporary Peru. Moving Away from Silence contains detailed interpretations based on comparative field research of Conimeo musical performance, rehearsals, composition, and festivals in the highlands and Lima. The volume will be of great importance to students of Latin American music and culture as well as ethnomusicological and ethnographic theory and method.
This multigenerational memoir sketches the lives of three generations of the author’s family that were involved with some of the most profound issues of the twentieth century. Smith’s paternal grandfather was present at the creation of General Motors Corporation and served as its Vice President and General Counsel. His maternal grandfather, William G. Maguire, was an entrepreneur and natural gas pipeline pioneer with a visionary grasp of natural gas’s significance in the twentieth century American economy. Smith’s father served as a senior diplomat under five presidents, working to constrain the nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia and to curtail proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Timed for release with the grand opening of the New Yankee Stadium in 2009, this unique history is based on 30 years of interviews conducted by "Sports Collectors Digest" with iconic players, including Mantle, DiMaggio, Jeter, Giambi, and Berra. The stunning photos inside, featuring memorabilia, player cards, and team photos, capture the essence of the place where dreams are made and greats live forever.
Dave Matthews Band celebrated their 25th anniversary in 2016, a milestone few bands achieve. How did the group build and retain an audience so devoted that they stuck with DMB through more than a quarter century? Dave Matthews Band FAQ answers this question and many more, exploring the group’s history in detail from a variety of angles. Natives of the college rock circuit of the southern Atlantic seaboard, DMB became part of a close-knit group of similarly minded jam bands that spread across the USA during the 1990s. Thanks to a grassroots following that eagerly traded tapes of live DMB shows, the band cultivated a dedicated fan base that crossed over into the mainstream. Dave Matthews Band FAQ traces this evolution, documenting the culture of Charlottesville, Virginia, at the dawn of the ’90s, detailing the group’s peers and examining their catalog, both live and studio, in detail. Collectively, these chapters explain everything there is to know about the most popular jam band in history.
Join one woman's journey from her humble beginnings to the fulfilling life she always dreamed of as an adoptive mother and veterinarian. Her honest impressions as told through letters, journals, diaries and memoirs will be sure to leave you laughing, crying, empathizing and time traveling. This remarkable tale of desire, spirit, perseverance and culture has some inspiration in it for everyone. It is dedicated to anyone who has a dream, and to all of those who contributed to hers, knowingly or otherwise.
Disaffections of Time is a fictional account of a modern wizard-like savant. The charismatic old man utilizes special powers of connecting seemingly unrelated trivia to discern meaningful solutions from his operational base--a coffee shop booth. His reputation enhances a local following. His encounters include a battered housewife, an illegal immigrant with a birth defect, a minority brick mason whose wife is dying, and a hapless bookie pursued by an organized crime syndicate. These encounters lead to dramatic and sometimes humorous interchanges. The major narrative is a compelling tale of romance involving young lovers separated by fate. Their story weaves throughout the novel to be meticulously resolved by the savant. Eventually, the elderly sage must travel forward in time. His exit intrigues. Disaffections of Time incorporates modern science, exotic sites, humorous exchanges, and mystical powers within a vividly descriptive literary flow. Romantic settings entice the reader and elevate the alluring sequences with intellectual discourse. The characters, locations, and events were developed from many of the author's wide personal experiences. Though this is his initial novel, the author has written seven previous books.
Hailed as a national hero and musical revolutionary, Thomas Mapfumo, along with other Zimbabwean artists, burst onto the music scene in the 1980s with a unique style that combined electric guitar with indigenous Shona music and instruments. The development of this music from its roots in the early Rhodesian era to the present and the ways this and other styles articulated with Zimbabwean nationalism is the focus of Thomas Turino's new study. Turino examines the emergence of cosmopolitan culture among the black middle class and how this gave rise to a variety of urban-popular styles modeled on influences ranging from the Mills Brothers to Elvis. He also shows how cosmopolitanism gave rise to the nationalist movement itself, explaining the combination of "foreign" and indigenous elements that so often define nationalist art and cultural projects. The first book-length look at the role of music in African nationalism, Turino's work delves deeper than most books about popular music and challenges the reader to think about the lives and struggles of the people behind the surface appeal of world music.
Framed within the lens of Robert Greenleaf's Servant Leadership model, Truth and Reconciliation examines and explores trends through global historical accounts and examples of diplomatic leadership surrounding the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions of South Africa and Canada, as a guide to approach America's divided identity and racial tensions. Through the wisdom and diplomacy illustrated during the transition of a South African nation defined by legal racial segregation of apartheid to democracy, as well as a Canadian national identity deeply scarred through the cultural genocide of generations of First Nations children and families through the abusive Residential School system and the Sixties Scoop, it is the hope that this manuscript will offer insights as well as a theological lens for reflection to approach a nonviolent narrative-based option of seeking truth and the first steps toward reconciliation, beyond cyclic ideologies. By highlighting the historical parallels between South Africa, Canada, and America, this manuscript serves as a conversation starter, offering reflective stories and activities to help establish an initial dialogue in a nation whose consciousness remains deeply rooted in unresolved cultural conflict from Indigenous genocide as well as the residual deep cultural challenges and stereotypes of American slavery ideology and practices.
After World War II the United States faced two preeminent challenges: how to administer its responsibilities abroad as the world's strongest power, and how to manage the rising movement at home for racial justice and civil rights. The effort to contain the growing influence of the Soviet Union resulted in the Cold War, a conflict that emphasized the American commitment to freedom. The absence of that freedom for nonwhite American citizens confronted the nation's leaders with an embarrassing contradiction. Racial discrimination after 1945 was a foreign as well as a domestic problem. World War II opened the door to both the U.S. civil rights movement and the struggle of Asians and Africans abroad for independence from colonial rule. America's closest allies against the Soviet Union, however, were colonial powers whose interests had to be balanced against those of the emerging independent Third World in a multiracial, anticommunist alliance. At the same time, U.S. racial reform was essential to preserve the domestic consensus needed to sustain the Cold War struggle. The Cold War and the Color Line is the first comprehensive examination of how the Cold War intersected with the final destruction of global white supremacy. Thomas Borstelmann pays close attention to the two Souths--Southern Africa and the American South--as the primary sites of white authority's last stand. He reveals America's efforts to contain the racial polarization that threatened to unravel the anticommunist western alliance. In so doing, he recasts the history of American race relations in its true international context, one that is meaningful and relevant for our own era of globalization. Table of Contents: Preface Prologue 1. Race and Foreign Relations before 1945 2. Jim Crow's Coming Out 3. The Last Hurrah of the Old Color Line 4. Revolutions in the American South and Southern Africa 5. The Perilous Path to Equality 6. The End of the Cold War and White Supremacy Epilogue Notes Archives and Manuscript Collections Index Reviews of this book: In rich, informing detail enlivened with telling anecdote, Cornell historian Borstelmann unites under one umbrella two commonly separated strains of the U.S. post-WWII experience: our domestic political and cultural history, where the Civil Rights movement holds center stage, and our foreign policy, where the Cold War looms largest...No history could be more timely or more cogent. This densely detailed book, wide ranging in its sources, contains lessons that could play a vital role in reshaping American foreign and domestic policy. --Publishers Weekly Reviews of this book: [Borstelmann traces] the constellation of racial challenges each administration faced (focusing particularly on African affairs abroad and African American civil rights at home), rather than highlighting the crises that made headlines...By avoiding the crutch of "turning points" for storytelling convenience, he makes a convincing case that no single event can be untied from a constantly thickening web of connections among civil rights, American foreign policy, and world affairs. --Jesse Berrett, Village Voice Reviews of this book: Borstelmann...analyzes the history of white supremacy in relation to the history of the Cold War, with particular emphasis on both African Americans and Africa. In a book that makes a good supplement to Mary Dudziak's Cold War Civil Rights, he dissects the history of U.S. domestic race relations and foreign relations over the past half-century...This book provides new insights into the dynamics of American foreign policy and international affairs and will undoubtedly be a useful and welcome addition to the literature on U.S. foreign policy and race relations. Recommended. --Edward G. McCormack, Library Journal
(FAQ). Pearl Jam FAQ is what the British refer to as a "spanner," covering the entire arc of the band's career, from their pre-Pearl Jam days to the present. Each chapter explores a different aspect of Pearl Jam's fascinating history. You will read about the members' successes, failures, and tragedies in earlier bands. You will learn the band's origin story and the unusual manner in which they came up with a name. We will go inside the studio and analyze each of their albums in turn. We will hit the road with the band as Pearl Jam sets out to conquer Seattle, the West Coast of the United States, and then the entire world. We will watch as Pearl Jam adapts to an ever-changing media landscape where MTV, not radio, is the major power broker. You will revel in their battles with Ticketmaster and learn about the roots of their socio-political activism. In short, you will experience Pearl Jam in every imaginable context: on CD, on vinyl, on the radio, on television, on film, in videos, onstage, backstage, on the road, in the air, and at home. Written by Pearl Jam enthusiasts, Pearl Jam FAQ presents a must-have text for band devotees to devour.
Thomas Edward Harkin's Woodstock FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Fabled Garden cuts through the lofty rhetoric and mythology surrounding the legendary festival. Rather than waxing philosophical about whether or not the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was the defining moment of the 1960s as so many have done before, Harkins places the focus on the music, solo artists, and bands who performed. Thirty-two acts took to the stage in Bethel, New York that weekend, and the book gives the performers and the music their due consideration. Who were they? Where did they come from? What songs did they play? What happened to them afterward? How did the festival impact their careers? Those are the questions explored in these pages. Further, the book attempts to restore the chronological arc of the festival from concept to concert to its aftermath and enduring legacy. Drawing on his experiences as a media scholar, Harkins ponders how the album releases and Michael Wadleigh's Academy Award-winning 1970 film Woodstock helped shape the narrative of the festival and in the bargain distort people's memories of the actual event.
The end of apartheid in 1994 signaled a moment of freedom and a promise of a nonracial future. With this promise came an injunction: define yourself as you truly are, as an individual, and as a community. Almost two decades later it is clear that it was less the prospect of that future than the habits and horizons of anxious life in racially defined enclaves that determined postapartheid freedom. In this book, Thomas Blom Hansen offers an in-depth analysis of the uncertainties, dreams, and anxieties that have accompanied postapartheid freedoms in Chatsworth, a formerly Indian township in Durban. Exploring five decades of township life, Hansen tells the stories of ordinary Indians whose lives were racialized and framed by the township, and how these residents domesticated and inhabited this urban space and its institutions, during apartheid and after. Hansen demonstrates the complex and ambivalent nature of ordinary township life. While the ideology of apartheid was widely rejected, its practical institutions, from urban planning to houses, schools, and religious spaces, were embraced in order to remake the community. Hansen describes how the racial segmentation of South African society still informs daily life, notions of race, personhood, morality, and religious ethics. He also demonstrates the force of global religious imaginings that promise a universal and inclusive community amid uncertain lives and futures in the postapartheid nation-state.
This Historical Dictionary of Panama covers Panama’s unique history from the time of its Spanish colonization, through its connection to Colombia in the nineteenth century, and its long period of U.S. presence. Throughout these periods, Panama drew the outside world’s attention as a transit route that first connected the west coasts of Latin America and the United States to Western Europe. Thus, in the long history of the isthmus, its transit route has served to move cargo, people, and culture throughout the world. The rich history of Panama is covered through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Panama.
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