Ecological Interconnections: Critical Readings on Ethics, Sustainability and Interspecies Communication in Literature and Culture argues that literature and cultural studies are vital tools for understanding and addressing ecological issues. This edited book of sixteen essays explores how literary texts and cultural iconography can highlight ecological ethics, promote sustainability, and enhance interspecies communication. By critiquing anthropocentric perspectives and emphasizing non-huma...

This book examines vital intersections of narration, linguistic innovation, and political insight that distinguish Chinua Achebe’s fiction as well as his non-fiction commentaries. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of these intersections: Achebe’s narrative response to Western authors who have written on Africa, his integration of Igbo folklore, the political implications of writing African literature in English, his use of Nigerian Pidgin, and the Nigerian Civil War. It also addre...

Natalie Angier wrote in The New York Times: "The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated....Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say."This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend re...

Tariq Ramadan is very much a public figure, named one of Time magazine's most important innovators of the twenty-first century. He is among the leading Islamic thinkers in the West, with a large following around the world. But he has also been a lightning rod for controversy. Indeed, in 2004, Ramadan was prevented from entering the U.S. by the Bush administration and despite two appeals, supported by organizations like the American Academy of Religion and the ACLU, he is still barred from ...

Offering an insight into African culture that had not been portrayed before, Things Fall Apart is both a tragic and moving story of an individual set in the wider context of the coming of colonialism, as well as a powerful and complex political statement of cross-cultural encounters.This guide to Chinua Achebe’s compelling novel offers:an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of Things Fall Aparta critical history, surveying the ...

The recent rise of the New Atheism has aroused great general interest, thrown up questions of fundamental importance, and started a fascinating conversation. Why God Won't Go Away invites us to join in. The volume opens with a survey of the main ideas of the New Atheism, as expressed in the works of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. We then examine the core views of the movement closely, making due reference to its 'virtual community' of websites and blo...

In this powerful, compassionate work, one of anthropology’s most distinguished ethnographers weaves together rich fieldwork with a compelling critical analysis in a book that will surely make a signal contribution to contemporary thinking about violence and how it affects everyday life. Veena Das examines case studies including the extreme violence of the Partition of India in 1947 and the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In a major de...

Tariq Ramadan attempts to demonstrate, using sources which draw upon Islamic thought and civilization, that Muslims can respond to contemporary challenges of modernity without betraying their identity. The book argues that Muslims, nurished by their own points of reference, can approach the modern epoch by adopting a specific social, political, and economic model that is linked to ethical values, a sense of finalities and spirituality. Rather than a modernism that tends to...

One of the most provocative and original voices in contemporary literature, Chinua Achebe here considers the place of literature and art in our society in a collection of essays spanning his best writing and lectures from the last twenty-three years. For Achebe, overcoming goes hand in hand with eradicating the destructive effects of racism and injustice in Western society. He reveals the impediments that still stand in the way of open, equal dialogue between Africans and Europeans, betwee...

Anderson reveals the reality of postmodernism in politics, popular culture, religion, literary criticism, art, and philosophy -- making sense of everything from deconstructionism to punk.

"All God Worshippers Are Mad: a little book of sanity" seeks to demonstrate in a logical common sense manner that the fundamental beliefs held by all monotheists are incomprehensible and lunatic. It attempts to show that god worshippers themselves do not understand the things they claim to believe, and by which they live their lives. Then it goes on to draw attention to why this matters so urgently in our own era, with the global rise of religious fascism.What is said in this littl...

A thoughtful, insider view of The Five Percenters-a deeply complex and misunderstood community whose ideas and symbols influenced the rise of hip-hop.Misrepresented in the media as a black parallel to the Hell's Angels, portrayed as everything from a vicious street gang to quasi- Islamic revolutionaries, The Five Percenters are a movement that began as a breakaway sect from the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1960s Harlem and went on to impact the formation of hip-hop. Re...