In response to the events following September 11, a number of leading cultural studies and interpretive qualitative researchers write from their own experiences and hearts. Their essays-by noted scholars Kellner, Fine, McLaren, Richardson, Denzin, Giroux and others-are collected in this volume, and were written in crisis within days and weeks of September 11. The immediacy of their writing is refreshing, and reflects the varied emotional and critical responses that bring meaning to this ca...

The Time at Darwin's Reef is primarily a book of storytelling through mixed genres-verse, prose, and painting. Brady's work is designed to draw out key dimensions of the poetics of anthropology and history embedded in creative writing-in the mix and on the margins of verse and prose, painting and writing, fiction and fact-to revisit the sometimes academically resistant idea that there is more than one way to say (and therefore to see) things. This is a poetic exploration of themes encounte...

The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that have resulted from intelligence failures.In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Ira...

THE PEARL is Steinbeck's flawless parable about wealth and the evil it can bring. When Kino, an Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in church and their little boy, Coyotito, will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed, fear and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with haunting simplicty and lyrical simplicity, THE PEARL sets the va...

Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures.In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the...

In Dark Ages America, the pundit Morris Berman argues that the nation has entered a dangerous phase in its historical development from which there is no return.As the corporate-consumerist juggernaut that now defines the nation rolls on, the very factors that once propelled America to greatness—extreme individualism, territorial and economic expansion, and the pursuit of material wealth—are, paradoxically, the nails in our collective coffin. Within a few d...

An ant to the starsor stars to the ant—which ismore irrelevant?Weekend Jet Skiers—rude to call them idiots,yes, but facts are facts.Clamor of seabirdsas the sun falls—I look upand ten years have passed."—from "Dawn Notebook"Such is the expansive terrain of Seven Notebooks: the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed; our lives as they are felt, thought, desired, and lived. Written in forms that rang...

"This is a must-read book for anyone ready to transcend fear and imagine a new reality."--TikkunDisposable Futures makes the case that we have not just become desensitized to violence, but rather, that we are being taught to desire it.From movies and other commercial entertainment to "extreme" weather and acts of terror, authors Brad Evans and Henry Giroux examine how a contemporary politics of spectacle--and disposability--curates what is seen and what is...

**“An intriguing amalgam of personal memoir, philosophical speculation, natural lore, cultural history, and art criticism.” —Los Angeles TimesFrom the award-winning author of Orwell's Roses, a stimulating exploration of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown**Written as a series of autobiographical essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Rebecca Solnit's life to explore issues of uncertain...

The New American RevolutionA controversial and powerful manifesto for twenty-first-century American Patriots"It's time to swing back the curtains and invite the light in. And that light is American Nationalism, perennially shunned by the Left, condemned by Socialists, and without any special interest group fighting for its rebirth. It has no legitimate advocates. And yet it is the very idea that will save not only our nation, but the rest of the world as well," declares Tam...

Humans and dolphins have a unique bond. We know that dolphins are highly intelligent, intensely sociable beings who recognize their own reflections, introduce themselves by name, form close friendships, communicate constantly, feel despondent, rescue one another (and humans), deduce, infer, throw tantrums, gossip, joke, and scheme. Many who have swum with them describe the experience as life-changing. They are heralded as magical creatures, and yet we force them into starring roles at them...

Terrorism is the most clear and present danger we confront today, yet no phenomenon is more poorly understood by policymakers, the media, and the general public. The Faces of Terrorism is the first serious interdisciplinary examination of terrorism in all its facets. What gives rise to it, who are its proponents and how do they think, and how--and why--does it work?Neil Smelser begins by tackling the fundamental problem of defining what exactly terrorism is. He shows why a...