Throughout Louisiana's colonial and postcolonial periods, there evolved a highly specialized vocabulary for describing the region's buildings, people, and cultural landscapes. This creolized language -- a unique combination of localisms and words borrowed from French, Spanish, English, Indian, and Caribbean sources -- developed to suit the multiethnic needs of settlers, planters, explorers, builders, surveyors, and government officials. Today, this historic vernacular is often opaque to hi...

The first book in the Folklife in the South series and by far the broadest look at traditional Cajun culture ever assembled. It not only describes the traditions as they are but also explains how they came to be.

A look into the darker side of tycoon Armand Hammer. Dr. Hammer was a man skilled in bribing world leaders and collecting old masters and young mistresses.

A new biography of James Jesus Angleton by Edward Jay Epstein that asks the question: was he right after all? Angleton was the legendary head of CIA counterintelligence during most of the Cold War.his rise, fall, and the astounding revelations that emerged in the CIA after his death. Epstein .spent hundreds of hours interviewing him to understand the mind of this unique mind warrior.

An investigation by Edward Jay Epstein into the De Beers cartel and the fantastic machine that created the illusion that diamonds are forever. The story of the men and manipulations that maintained the value of diamonds for over a century. Based on interviews with Harry Oppenheimer and the key executives of De Beers. As Newsweek describes it, "Reads like high-finance James Bond. Fascinating detail."

Tennent Bagley’s Spymaster is the single most revealing book about espionage to emerge from the Cold War.” -Edward Jay Epstein, author of Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIAFrom the dark days of World War II through the Cold War, Sergey A. Kondrashev was a major player in Russia’s notorious KGB espionage apparatus. Rising through its ranks through hard work and keen understanding of how the spy and political games are played, he hand...

Five essays by Edward Jay Epstein on the international diamond cartel including the investigation that appeared in the Atlantic "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?"Edward Jay Epstein is the author of 15 books, and which have been excerpted in the New Yorker, Atlantic, and Sunday Times of London. He studied government at Cornell and Harvard, and received a Ph.D from Harvard. My master's thesis on the search for political truth became the best-selling Inquest: The Warren Commissi...

A groundbreaking exposé that convincingly challenges the popular image of Edward Snowden as hacker turned avenging angel, while revealing how vulnerable our national security systems have become--as exciting as any political thriller, and far more important.After details of American government surveillance were published in 2013, Edward Snowden, formerly a subcontracted IT analyst for the NSA, became the center of an international controversy: Was he a hero, traito...

During the heyday of the studio system spanning the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, virtually all the American motion picture industry’s money, power, and prestige came from a single activity: selling tickets at the box office. Today, the movie business is just a small, highly visible outpost in a media universe controlled by six corporations–Sony, Time Warner, NBC Universal, Viacom, Disney, and NewsCorporation. These conglomerates view films as part of an immense, synergistic, vertically integrate...

English Education in Southeast Asian Contexts: Policy, Practice, and Identity provides an account of English education, English language teaching, and language policy in Southeast Asian countries. Both local and international researchers offer conceptual and empirical work that spans a wide range of topics, geographical contexts, and educational levels, providing a unique perspective on English education and policies in Southeast Asia. The issues addressed in this volume include t...

Curiosity led Edward Epstein to investigate some of the greatest political mysteries of our time, such as the JFK assassination in Dallas, the Vatican banking scandal in Rome, and the diamond cartel in South Africa. Seeking more information, he often found himself a fly on the wall at the highest reaches of the establishment, observing how presidents, tycoons, bankers, and media moguls secretly greased the wheels of power. This memoir recounts his life as a pursuer of lost truths.S...

A groundbreaking exposé that convincingly challenges the popular image of Edward Snowden as hacker turned avenging angel, while revealing how vulnerable our national security systems have become--as exciting as any political thriller, and far more important.After details of American government surveillance were published in 2013, Edward Snowden, formerly a subcontracted IT analyst for the NSA, became the center of an international controversy: Was he a hero, traito...