These wide-ranging essays reveal the various roles played by southern rabbis in the struggle for black civil rights since ReconstructionThe study of black-Jewish relations has become a hotbed of controversy, especially with regard to the role played by Jewish leaders during the Civil Rights movement. Did these leaders play a pivotal role, or did many of them, especially in the South, succumb to societal pressure and strive to be accepted rather than risk b...

The Question by Henri Alleg (with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre; translated from the French by John Calder; with an afterword by the author, a foreword by Ellen Ray and an introduction by James D. Le Sueur; 27,000 words)Henri Alleg’s candid account of how the French Army brutally tortured him in Algeria first appeared in 1958. Although quickly banned by the French government, it was widely read and remains a classic and powerful indictment of torture.“The l...

New York is a city of few boundaries, a city of well-known streets and blocks that ramble on and on, into our literature, dreams, and nightmares. We know the city by the byways that split it, streets like Broadway and Madison and Flatbush and Delancey. From those streets, peering down the blocks and up at the top floors, the city seems immense and endless.And though the land itself may end at the water, the city does not. Long before Broadway was a muddy cart track, the water was th...

Legendary legal scholar Staughton Lynd teams up with influential labor organizer Daniel Gross in this exposition on solidarity unionism, the do-it-yourself workplace organizing system that is rapidly gaining prominence around the country and around the world. Lynd and Gross make the audacious argument that workers themselves on the shop floor, not outside union officials, are the real hope for labor’s future. Utilizing the principles of solidarity unionism, any group of co-workers, like th...

Organizers, activists, artists and community members share their struggles in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina.Floodlines is a firsthand account of community, culture, and resistance in New Orleans. The book weaves the stories of gay rappers, Mardi Gras Indians, Arab and Latino immigrants, public housing residents, and grassroots activists in the years before and after Katrina. From post-Katrina evacuee camps to torture testimony at Angola Pri...

In March 2009, the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) was briefly taken over by a Christian faction. Their coup was overturned within a matter of weeks, but the episode highlighted a variety of issues, including the role of religion in civil society, sex education, homosexuality, state intervention and media engagement. Although the immediate issue was control of an activist group concerned with women's rights, it has implications for the agendas and concerns of NGOs, 'cu...

The Glosser Bros. Department Store in Johnstown, Pennsylvania has reopened, just for you, in the pages of this one-of-a-kind nonfiction book. For the first time, the whole true story of Glosser’s has been told, on the 25th anniversary of the fabled department store’s closing. Step through the famous doors on the corner of Franklin and Locust Streets, grab a brown-and-white-striped shopping bag, and smell the roasting peanuts and cashews. You’re about to embark on a journey from the humble ...

A collection of writings from the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angels in America. This volume by Tony Kushner features the play Slavs!, a “comic, mordant and marvelously provocative” look at the crumbling of the Soviet Union (SF Chronicle), as well as several essays, two poems and a prayer.

The beginnings of the contemporary Jewish community in Valdosta starts with the arrival of two Jewish confederate veterans, Abraham Ehrlich and Benjamin Kaul, in 1866 and ends with the formal establishment of the present-day congregation in 1908.  It is a very warm, personal tale of real people that fleshes out  the sterile charts, statistics, and sweeping generalizations found in history books.  During this period, you will peek over the shoulders of members of Va...

How have the Jews survived? For millennia, they have defied odds by overcoming the travails of exile, persecution, and recurring plans for their annihilation. Many have attempted to explain this singular success as a result of divine intervention. In this engaging book, David N. Myers charts the long journey of the Jews through history. At the same time, it points to two unlikely-and decidedly this-worldly--factors to explain the survival of the Jews: antisemitism and assimilation. Usually...

The Liberation of the Jew by Albert Memmi (translated from the French by Judy Hyun; 86,000 words)In this book, written after The Colonizer and the Colonized and Portrait of a Jew, Albert Memmi writes, “It is true that all oppression has a strong tendency to become a total oppression, but it is a question of degree and nuance, of generalities and accent. The specific conditions of each oppression consists precisely of such degrees and particular in...

Newtown. Columbine. Virginia Tech. Tucson. Aurora. Gun violence on a massive scale has become a plague in our society, yet politicians seem more afraid of having a serious conversation about guns than they are of the next horrific shooting. Any attempt to change the status quo, whether to strengthen gun regulations or weaken them, is sure to degenerate into a hysteria that changes nothing. Our attitudes toward guns are utterly polarized, leaving basic questions unasked: How can we reconcil...