boundaries
Muddied Waters: Race, Region, and Local History in Colombia,
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Appelbaum, Nancy P. / Nancy P. Appelbaum / Appelbaum, PUBLISHER: Duke University Press, Colombia's western Coffee Region is renowned for the whiteness of its inhabitants, who are often described as respectable pioneer families who domesticated a wild frontier and planted coffee on the forested slopes of the Andes. Some local inhabitants, however, tell a different tale--of white migrants rapaciously usurping the lands of indigenous and black communities." Muddied Waters" examines both of these legends, showing how local communities, settlers, speculators, and politicians struggled over jurisdictional boundaries and the privatization of communal lands in the creation of the Coffee Region. Viewing the emergence of this region from the perspective of Riosucio, a multiracial town within it, Nancy P. Appelbaum reveals the contingent and contested nature of Colombia's racialized regional identities. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Colombian elite intellectuals, Appelbaum contends, mapped race onto their mountainous topography by defining regions in racial terms. They privileged certain places and inhabitants as white and modern and denigrated others as racially inferior and backward. Inhabitants of Riosucio, however, elaborated local narratives about their mestizo and indigenous identities that contested the white mystique of the Coffee Region. Ongoing violent conflicts over land and politics, Appelbaum finds, continue to shape local debates over history and identity. Drawing on archival and published sources complemented by oral history, "Muddied Waters" vividly illustrates the relationship of mythmaking and racial inequality to regionalism and frontier colonization in postcolonial Latin America.
The Arthritis Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to Alternative
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Gordin, Leonid / Weatherby, Craig / Gordin, M. D., PUBLISHER: Healing Arts Press, The complete guide to available therapies for individuals suffering from osteoarthritis and other arthritic diseases. - The most up-to-date information on this disease that strikes one in six people. - Includes case histories, practitioners' perspectives, and a complete resource guide to the organizations, publications, and Internet sites devoted to arthritis. For those suffering from arthritis and other arthritic diseases such as gout and fibromyalgia, "The Arthritis Bible" is the most up-to-date and complete resource to available treatments--both alternative and conventional. Forty-three million Americans--one in six of us--are afflicted with arthritis, yet the traditional medical community continues to offer only the limited number of treatments found within the narrowly proscribed boundaries of Western medicine. And while many alternative therapies do provide relief, too many have become victims of the "flavor-of-the-month" mentality, their true merits being lost amidst hype and unwarranted claims before adequate research has been done. "The Arthritis Bible" supplies the latest wisdom on conventional drugs, exercise, physical therapy, diet, vitamins and minerals, traditional herbs, nutraceuticals, homeopathy, and folk remedies. It also advises how to choose the right medical approach and practitioner, and includes a complete resource guide to the organizations, publications and internet sites devoted to arthritis. For anyone seeking relief from the painful and often debilitating consequences of arthritic diseases, "The Arthritis Bible" is a must for the shelf.
Liberalism Beyond Justice: Citizens, Society, and the
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Tomasi, John, PUBLISHER: Princeton University Press, Liberal regimes shape the ethical outlooks of their citizens, relentlessly influencing their most personal commitments over time. On such issues as abortion, homosexuality, and women's rights, many religious Americans feel pulled between their personal beliefs and their need, as good citizens, to support individual rights. These circumstances, argues John Tomasi, raise new and pressing questions: Is liberalism as successful as it hopes in avoiding the imposition of a single ethical doctrine on all of society? If liberals cannot prevent the spillover of public values into nonpublic domains, how accommodating of diversity can a liberal regime actually be? To what degree can a liberal society be a home even to the people whose viewpoints it was formally designed to include? To meet these questions, Tomasi argues, the boundaries of political liberal theorizing must be redrawn. Political liberalism involves more than an account of justified state coercion and the norms of democratic deliberation. Political liberalism also implies a distinctive account of nonpublic social life, one in which successful human lives must be built across the interface of personal and public values. Tomasi proposes a theory of liberal nonpublic life. To live up to their own deepest commitments to toleration and mutual respect, liberals, he insists, must now rethink their conceptions of social justice, civic education, and citizenship itself. The result is a fresh look at liberal theory and what it means for a liberal society to function well.
Art Brut: The Origins of Outsider Art
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Peiry, Lucienne / Thevoz, Michel / Frank, James, PUBLISHER: Flammarion-Pere Castor, In the first half of the twentieth century, avant-garde artists in Europe, keen to break with academic tradition, began looking beyond the accepted canons of Western art in a search for new sources of inspiration. "Primitive" art, the drawings of children, the art of the insane, automatism, and graffiti all opened up new avenues of experimentation. One of the key figures in this drive to push back the boundaries of art was leading French artist Jean Dubuffet. At the end of World War II, Dubuffet became interested in the works being produced by patients in psychiatric hospitals and by other social outcasts. He made two fruitful trips to Switzerland, where he discovered Wö lfli, Aloï se, and Mü ller, now recognized as important exponents of what was later to become known as "Outsider Art." In , Dubuffet founded the Campagnie de l'Art Brut in order to extend and document the collections he had recently begun. In , after various adventures, the Collection de l'Art Brut moved to its permanent home in Lausanne. This carefully researched book traces the history of the concept of Art Brut, which is inseparable from the work and personality of the man who did the most for the appreciation and preservation of these remarkable works. The account is completed by biographical notes on the artists featured and an extensive bibliography. The works reproduced, mostly from the collection created by Dubuffet, have retained their subversive freedom, which continues to fascinate and inspire artists and collectors today.
Measuring the Universe: Our Historic Quest to Chart the
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Ferguson, Kitty, PUBLISHER: Walker & Company, More than years ago, Eratosthenes, in Alexandria, used a stick, a hole in the ground, sunllght at summer solstice, and elementary geometry to measure the circumference of the Earth with surprising accuracy, long before anyone was able to circumnavigate it. Today, scientists are attempting to measure the entire universe and to determine its origin. Although the methods have changed, the quest to chart the horizons of space and time continues to be one of the great adventures of science. "Measuring the Universe" is an eloquent chronicle of the men and women- from Aristarchus to Cassini, Sir Isaac Newton to Henrietta Leavitt and Stephen Hawking-who have gradually unlocked the mysteries of "how far" and in so doing have changed our ideas about the size and nature of the universe and our place in it. Kitty Ferguson reveals their methods to have been as inventive as their results were-and are-eye-opening. Advances such as Copernicus's revolutionary insights about the arrangement of the solar system, William Herschel's meticulous creation of the first three-dimensional map of the universe, and Edwin Hubble's astonishing discovery that the universe is expanding have by turns revolutionized our concept of the universe. Connecting centuries of breakthroughs with the political and cultural events surrounding them, Ferguson makes astronomy part of the sweep of history. To measure the seemingly immeasurable, scientists have always pushed the boundaries of the imagination-today, for example, facing the paradox of an ever-expanding universe that doesn't appear to expand "into" anything. In Kitty Fergeson's skillfill hands, the unimaginable becomes accessible and the splendid quest something we all can share.
Daniel O'Connell
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Moley, Raymond, PUBLISHER: Fordham University Press, Daniel O'Connell, as we bring him into focus, after generations of bitter criticism, misrepresentation, and neglect, becomes a very modern man. The principles which he held with such consistency and expounded with such consummate eloquence are, by modern standards, enlightened, even prescient. They are wholly pertinent questions which are of deep concern to all of us. The reader of history will perceive that the span of O'Connell's life, , witnessed profound changes in political arrangements, in power structures, and in national boundaries in the Western world. One of the more important of these developments has been the growth of nationalism, not only here but throughout the world. As the national consciousness affected Ireland, it cannot be interpreted, even understood, except as it was awakened by O'Connell. He entered public life as an opponent of the Act of Union of , a measure which was to infect British relations with Ireland for a century and a quarter.O'Connell earned and held in the Western world high rank among the individuals who promoted religious liberty and separation of Church and State, cardinal principles in the American tradition. Since the first half of his public life was devoted to the restoration of Catholic rights, he realized that he could not rationally insist upon rights for his fellow communicants which he would deny to others. His concept of true religion was of something lived wholly apart from interference or support by civil authority. As we shall see, he carried his zeal for religious liberty to the support of the Jews in their struggle to life the disabilities imposed by English law.
Data Privacy in the Information Age
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Klosek, Jacqueline, PUBLISHER: Praeger, Passage of the European Data Protection Directive and other national laws have increased the need for companies and other entities to improve their data protection and privacy controls. Clients, stakeholders, and the public are clamoring for it. Klosek introduces the various legal means to protect personal data in the United States and the European Union, targeting her book at American and international businesses that may have difficulty complying with the European Directive. She explains its main elements and practical effects, presents primary components of national privacy laws abroad and in the United States, and gives advice on some steps companies can take to improve the level of protection they afford to the data they possess. Klosek offers a comprehensive review of the American and European systems for providing protection to personal information in the Internet age. She explains the European Data Protection Directive, the national data protection laws of the fifteen countries of the European Union, and the laws and other initiatives for protecting individual personal data. She endeavors to discuss the protection of personal data in general but focuses on, and emphasizes, the protection of personal data within the context of the Internet. In doing so, she provides much useful, fascinating information on the obvious and non-obvious means of collecting and processing personal data through the Internet. Among its unusual features, the book helps United States corporate decision makers assess the effect data protection laws will have in Europe and the U.S., and how companies that are operating web sites that cross international boundaries can ensure they stay in compliance withdata protection laws in countries in which their web sites may be accessible. The book is essential reading for corporate compliance executives, corporate communications and other top-level organizational administrators, particularly in Internet industries.
Thinking Art
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Van Den Braembussche, Antoon / Braembussche, Antoon / Braembussche, A. A. Van Den, PUBLISHER: Springer, In the twentieth century, avant-garde movements have pushed the concept of art far beyond its traditional boundaries. In this dynamical process of constant renewal the prestige of thinking about art as a legitimizing practice has come to the fore. So it is hardly surprising that the past decades have been characterized by a revival or even breakthrough of philosophy of art as a discipline. However, the majority of books on aesthetics fail to combine a systematical philosophical discourse with a real exploration of art practice. Thinking Art attempts to deal with this traditional shortcoming. It is indeed not only an easily accessible and systematic account of the classical, modern and postmodern theories of art, but also concludes each chapter with an artista (TM)s studio in which the practical relevance of the discussed theory is amply demonstrated by concrete examples. Moreover, each chapter ends with a section on further reading, in which all relevant literature is discussed in detail. Thinking Art provides its readers with a theoretical framework that can be used to think about art from a variety of perspectives. More particularly it shows how a fruitful cross-fertilization between theory and practice can be created. This book can be used as a handbook within departments of philosophy, history of art, media and cultural studies, cultural history and, of course, within art academies. Though the book explores theories of art from Plato to Derrida it does not presuppose any acquaintance with philosophy from its readers. It can thus be read also by artists, art critics, museum directors and anyone interested in the meaning of art. Acquista Ora
Trumpet in the Wadi
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Michael, Sami / Lotan, Yael, PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster, Leading Israeli novelist Sami Michael shares his gift for navigating the cultural conflicts in modern Israel with "A Trumpet in the Wadi," a novel that transcends its Middle Eastern setting with an honest and heartbreaking story of impossible love and the strength of family. Set in the months preceding the Israeli-Arab conflict in Lebanon, this beautifully written tale is the coming-of-age story of two fatherless Christian Arab sisters, Huda and Mary, who live in the wadi -- the Arab quarter in the Jewish city of Haifa on the northern coast of Israel. An extraordinary bond of love and mutual respect unites the sisters -- polar opposites from their appearances to their tempers. Huda, the narrator of the story, is thin and withdrawn and, after abandoning her chance at marriage a few years back, has prematurely resigned herself to the monotonous life of an old maid. Her younger sister, Mary, is voluptuous, carnal, and perennially unemployed. Wrapped in the love of their sometimes bitter mother, their iconoclast grandfather, and the cheerful and omnipresent neighbor Jamilla, the sisters' lives change when a peculiar young Russian Jewish immigrant, Alex, moves into the upstairs flat. The melodies of the soulful trumpet player become the intoxicating theme music for Huda's unexpected reawakening -- and for Mary's dangerous foray into a love triangle with the heir of the local Muslim mob and her country cousin. Michael's internationally acclaimed novel is a major achievement, illuminating the vast range of interlocking relationships between Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, men and women. "A Trumpet in the Wadi" is an honest, witty, and ultimately heartbreaking story -- onethat draws on the conflicts in the Middle East, but one whose insights into love and family can cross all cultural and political boundaries.
Literature and Politics in the Age of Nationalism: The
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Ahmed Talat / Ahmed, Talat, PUBLISHER: Routledge India, This book aims to provide a historical account of the All-India Progressive Writers' Association (AIPWA). In a structured narrative, it focuses on the political processes inside India, events and circumstances in South Asia and the debates and literary movements in Europe and the United States to demonstrate how the literary project was specifically informed by literary-political movements. It explores the theorisation of literature and politics that informed progressive writing and argues that the progressive conception of literature, art and politics was closer to the theorisation of two thinkers of whom the writers themselves knew very little - Leon Trotsky and Antonio Gramsci. The book charts the progressive movement's extension into the cultural arena through the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) and the deepening of its nation-wide character through a progressive nationalism instilled with left-wing ideology. One of the important aims of the AIPWA project was to advance the development of a popular vernacular based on the demotic language of north India - Hindustani. The book locates this issue within the broader nationalist discussion on the national language. Contrary to what is implied by much of the previous scholarship, the book argues that the progressive movement did survive the ravages of partition and that the progressives maintained organisations in both India and Pakistan. It looks at the short-lived but very colourful history of the PWA in Pakistan, using PWA documents, government records and personal testimonies. Arguing that literary output and cultural production cannot be understood, let alone interpreted, outside the context of the nationalist movement, war, independence and partition, the book presents a narrative that necessarily transcends disciplinary boundaries between literature, politics and history. Supplemented with literary and archival sources and oral testimonies from the members of the movement, it provides the readers with a balanced and considered assessment of one of the twentieth century's most influential and most interesting literary-political movements.
Art: Sublimation or Sympton
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Adams, Parveen / Restuccia, Frances L., PUBLISHER: Other Press (NY), "This book extends our map of the articulations that link art and psychoanalysis into a new understanding of what they do for and to each other. Between Lacan and Freud, Caravaggio and Joyce, Hitchcock and Cronenberg, the authors work through the methods of art and the structures of psychoanalytic thinking about art to show us that the roles of sublimation and displacement, symptom and enunciation are at once discursive and aesthetic. The partial identifications of the object and discourse, their incomplete relationships and overlappings between them, constitute a new kind of knowledge. If there is one that lies outside the established boundaries of cultural and psychoanalytic studies, then these essays take a step toward disclosing it, inventing it, and giving it a name." -Adrian Rifkin, Professor of Visual Culture and Media at Middlesex University and author of "Ingres: Then, and Now" "With Art: Sublimation or Symptom, Parveen Adams breaks new ground in a remarkable career during which she has made some of the most original and inspiring contributions to psychoanalytic theory as it explores the artifice of cultural form. In the company of her gifted and insightful collaborators, Adams explores the psychic and semiotic crises of creation. The making of art as symptom, they suggest, engages the enigmatic 'lack' or 'void' of both sign and subject. Why do we take perverse pleasure in being strung out by the experience of art, placed somewhere between semblance and signification, beyond the mimetic consolations of coherence, reference, and recognition? Psychoanalysis may not have all the answers, but it has the deepest insights into the insatiable desire that drives us to ask such difficult questions. With Art: Sublimation or Symptom, Parveen Adams has, once again, orchestrated a profound and patient inquiry into some of the most urgent cultural issues that face us today." -Homi K. Bhabha, Rothenberg Professor of Literature, Harvard University
Remaining and Becoming
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Roberts, Shelley, PUBLISHER: Routledge, "Remaining and Becoming: Cultural Crosscurrents in an Hispano School" deals with the politics of identity and the concept of boundaries during a time of rapid change. It investigates how the role of schooling for Hispanos in the Norteno School District (a pseudonym) in Northern New Mexico--a public school district, not fully consolidated until --has changed significantly over the past three generations. Today, the Hispanos, a minority in the outside world but a majority in their own, are debating how the functions of the school should respond to the changes resulting from the coming of public education to their region. But the contemporary story of education in Norteno has much deeper roots in the political, religious, and cultural history of Northern New Mexico--a region where, over a period of several centuries, Spain, Mexico, and the United States each have claimed sovereignty, with differing goals for and attitudes about the welfare of the people. This study is an analysis of the ambiguity of education, the losses and gains that are its consequences, the lingering doubts about the past, and the questions about what future education can and should serve. It is about asking: Is what the students are learning worth as much as what they are forgetting? How does schooling affect the evolving process of asserting, renegotiating, and defending an Hispano identity? By exploring historical factors and ideologies of a particular school within a particular community, Roberts seeks to understand community expectations for the school as a fitting place for its children. The goal is not to generalize from the particular to the universal, but to join others in suggesting that we move away from discussing students in a generic sense and focus instead on looking at them in relation to the community in which they live. The fascinating and largely unknown story this book tells will be of interest to educators, researchers, and students across a range of fields, including sociology of education, educational anthropology, multicultural education, ethnic studies, Chicano studies, and qualitative research in education.
Trio: A Corpus Christi Trilogy
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Caram, Eve La Salle, PUBLISHER: Plain View Press, Eve La Salle Caram's new short novel, published here in Trio for the first time, is a story not only about a search for a lost relative, but about finding the lost pieces of several lives. It is also the story the author's students at Los Angeles City College, who after reading her novel Rena, A Late Journey, have repeatedly urged her to write Looking For Johnny, the story that brings her Corpus Christi novels full circle. About: Looking For Johnny "Two of my favorites just became three Eve Caram has fulfilled the promise offered by Dear Corpus Christi in her usual inimitable style." Carolyn Howard-Johnson, multi award-winning author and poet "Looking for long lost Johnny was the last thing Elizabeth wanted to do, and we, as readers, are compelled to search with her. Eve La Salle Caram draws us into her web of mystery in a world of secrets that Looking For Johnny weaves. A relentless page turner, impossible to put down, riveting " Linda Rader Overman, award winning author, Letters Between Us About: Rena, A Late Journey "A lyrical telling...the rhythms in Rena, A Late Journey, are magical and gentle, the losses and revelations gut wrenching. Caram's enchanting novel brings healing in the form of a friendship that sees no boundaries of color or age or passage of time..." Louinn Lota, Arts and Entertainment Writer, Associated Press About: Dear Corpus Christi "Eve La Salle Caram's voice is very strong. With the first line you are swept into another place and time. I love this book " Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, author of Magdalena, and When The Rainbow Goddess Wept "A novel that speaks of ephemeral joy." Cathy Downs, English Professor, Texas A & M, Kingsville "Her deep feelings for that place and its people come to us as truth..." Elizabeth Spencer "Wonderful and very touching." John Rechy
Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi: Masculinity,
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Olsen, Christopher J., PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press, USA, This groundbreaking study of the politics of secession combines traditional political history with current work in anthropology and gender and ritual studies. Christopher J. Olsen has drawn on local election returns, rural newspapers, manuscripts, and numerous county records to sketch a new picture of the intricate and colorful world of local politics. In particular, he demonstrates how the move toward secession in Mississippi was deeply influenced by the demands of masculinity within the state's antiparty political culture. Face-to-face relationships and personal reputations, organized around neighborhood networks of friends and extended kin, were at the heart of antebellum Mississippi politics. The intimate, public nature of this tradition allowed voters to assess each candidate's individual status and fitness for public leadership. Key virtues were independence and physical courage, as well as reliability and loyalty to the community, and the political culture offered numerous chances to demonstrate all of these (sometimes contradictory) qualities. Like dueling and other male rituals, voting and running for office helped set the boundaries of class and power. They also helped mediate the conflicts between nineteenth-century American egalitarianism, democracy, and geographic mobility, and the South's exaggerated patriarchal hierarchy, sustained by honor and slavery. The political system, however, functioned effectively only as long as it remained a personal exercise between individuals, divorced from the anonymity of institutional parties. This antiparty tradition eliminated the distinction between men as individuals and as public representatives, which caused them to assessand interpret all political events and rhetoric in a personal manner. The election of and success of the Republicans' antisouthern, free soil program, therefore, presented an "insulting" challenge to personal, family, and community honor. As Olsen shows in detail, the sectional controversy engaged men where they measured themselves, in public, with and against their peers, and linked their understanding of masculinity with formal politics, through which the voters actually brought about secession. Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi provides a rich new perspective on the events leading up to the Civil War and will prove an invaluable tool for understanding the central crisis in American politics.
Michael Douglas: A Biography
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Eliot, Marc, PUBLISHER: Random House USA Inc, A groundbreaking portrait of one of Hollywood's most successful stars, from critically acclaimed and bestselling biographer Marc Eliot Through determination, inventiveness, and charisma, Michael Douglas emerged from the long shadow cast by his movie-legend father, Kirk Douglas, to become his own man and one of the film industry's most formi-dable players. Overcoming the curse of failure that haunts the sons and daughters of Hollywood celebrities, Michael became a sensation when he successfully brought "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, "starring his friend Jack Nicholson, to the screen after numerous setbacks, including his father's own failed attempts to make it happen. This box-office phenomenon won Michael his first Oscar (the film won five total, including Best Picture), an award Kirk hadn't won at the time, and solidified the turbulent, competitive father-son relationship that would shape Michael's career and personal life. In the decades that followed, Michael established a reputation for taking chances on new talent and proj-ects by producing and starring in the hugely successful "Romancing the Stone "and "Jewel of the Nile "movies, while cultivating a multifaceted acting persona--edgy, rebel-lious, and a little dark--in such films as "Wall Street, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, "and "Disclosure. " Yet as his career thrived, Michael's personal life floundered, with an unhappy and tumultuous first mar-riage, rumors of infidelity (especially with leading ladies such as Kathleen Turner), and a headline-grabbing stint in rehab. Rocked by a series of tragedies, including Kirk's strokes, his son Cameron's incarceration, and his own fight against throat cancer, Michael has emerged trium-phant, healthy, and happy in his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones, a Welsh actress twenty-five years his junior, and their new young family. In "Michael Douglas, "Marc Eliot brings into sharp fo-cus this incredible career, complicated personal life, and legendary Hollywood family. Eliot's fascinating portrait of the lows and remarkable highs in Michael's life--in-cluding the thorny yet influential relationship with his father--breaks boundaries in understanding the life and work of a true American film star.
Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Rugh, Susan Sessions, PUBLISHER: University Press of Kansas, When TV celebrity Dinah Shore sang "See the USA in your Chevrolet," s America took her to heart. Every summer, parents piled the kids in the back seat, threw the luggage in the trunk, and took to the open highway. Chronicling this innately American ritual, Susan Rugh presents a cultural history of the American middle-class family vacation from to , tracing its evolution from the establishment of this summer tradition to its decline. The first in-depth look at post-World War II family travel, Rugh's study recounts how postwar prosperity and mass consumption--abetted by paid vacation leave, car ownership, and the new interstate highway system--forged the ritual of the family road trip and how that ritual became entwined with what it meant to be an American. With each car a safe haven from the Cold War, vacations became a means of strengthening family bonds and educating children in parental values, national heritage, and citizenship. Rugh's history looks closely at specific types of trips, from adventures in the Wild West to camping vacations in national parks to summers at Catskill resorts. It also highlights changing patterns of family life, such as the relationship between work and play, the increase in the number of working women, and the generation gap of the sixties. Distinctively, Rugh also plumbs NAACP archives and travel guides marketed specifically to blacks to examine the racial boundaries of road trips in light of segregated public accommodations that forced many black families to sleep in cars--a humiliation that helped spark the civil rights struggle. In addition, she explains how the experience of family camping predisposed baby boomers toward a strongenvironmental consciousness. Until the s recession ended three decades of prosperity and the traditional nuclear family began to splinter, these family vacations were securely woven into the fabric of American life. Rugh's book allows readers to relive those wondrous wanderings across the American landscape and to better understand how they helped define an essential aspect of American culture. Notwithstanding the rueful memories of discomforts and squabbles in a crowded car, those were magical times for many of the nation's families.
An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Shriver, Donald W., Jr., PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press, USA, Our century has witnessed violence on an unprecedented scale, in wars that have torn deep into the fabric of national and international life. And as we can see in the recent strife in Bosnia, genocide in Rwanda, and the ongoing struggle to control nuclear weaponry, ancient enmities continue to threaten the lives of masses of human beings. As never before, the question is urgent and practical: How can nations--or ethnic groups, or races--after long, bitter struggles, learn to live side by side in peace? In An Ethic for Enemies, Donald W. Shriver, Jr., President Emeritus of Union Theological Seminary, argues that the solution lies in our capacity to forgive. Taking forgiveness out of its traditional exclusive association with personal religion and morality, Shriver urges us to recognize its importance in the secular political arena. The heart of the book examines three powerful and moving cases from recent American history--our postwar dealings with Germany, with Japan, and our continuing domestic problem with race relations--cases in which acts of forgiveness have had important political consequences. Shriver traces how postwar Germany, in its struggle to break with its political past, progressed from denial of a Nazi past, to a formal acknowledgement of the crimes of Nazi Germany, to providing material compensation for survivors of the Holocaust. He also examines the efforts of Japan and the United States, over time and across boundaries of race and culture, to forgive the wrongs committed by both peoples during the Pacific War. And finally he offers a fascinating discussion of the role of forgiveness in the American civil rights movement. He shows, for instance, that even Malcolm Xrecognized the need to move from contempt for the integrationist ideal to a more conciliatory, repentant stance toward Civil Rights leaders. Malcolm came to see that only through forgiveness could the separate voices of the African-American movement work together to achieve their goals. If mutual forgiveness was a radical thought in , Shriver reminds us that it has yet to be realized in . "We are a long way from ceasing to hold the sins of the ancestors against their living children," he writes. Yet in this poignant volume, we discover how, by forgiving, enemies can progress and have progressed toward peace. A timely antidote to today's political conflicts, An Ethic for Enemies challenges to us to confront the hatreds that cripple society and threaten to destroy the global village.