Beacon Press
Acts of faith; the story of an American Muslim, the struggle for the soul of a generation.
Patel (founder and executive director, Interfaith Youth Core, "a Chicago-based international nonprofit building the interfaith youth movement") is an Indian Muslim who grew up outside of Chicago. In this memoir, he explores the evolution of his own religious and cultural identity as he gradually came to reject anger at being excluded from mainstream American society in order to promote interfaith awareness with a focus on younger generations. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
American furies; crime, punishment, and vengeance in the age of mass imprisonment.
Despite generally declining crime rates, at present more than 2,000,000 people live behind bars in the US. Journalist Abramsky finds they face dehumanization and violence in prison systems have given up on rehabilitation and have settled on delivering little more than revenge. As he moves from institution to institution Abramsky cites such thinkers as Foucault and Milgram along with inmates, prison reformers, victims' rights activists and corrections professionals as he examines America's social experiment with criminology, not only inside the walls but in surrounding communities. He evaluates the realities of life in and out of prison as they pertain to class, race, and poverty, analyzes the insularity of the prison system, and shows how new and frightening attitudes about violence in America are reflected in prison life. The result is an elegant but harrowing account of a hidden subculture, both inside and outside the walls. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The bone gatherers; the lost worlds of early Christian women.
In the annals and other accounts of the early church in Roman, Denzey (religion, Harvard U.) points out women — always women — who gather the remains of saints and transfer them to respectable resting places. She says that the glimpses not only reveal the importance of female patrons of the church and perhaps theological divisions among the faithful that remain unresolved today, but also reflect a long tradition in the ancient world of powerful women who used their wealth and influence to further causes they believed in. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Boston Italians; a story of pride, perseverance, and paesani, from the years of the great immigration to the present day.
Boston resident Puleo digs up the history of Italians and Italian-Americans in Boston's North End, from mass migrations beginning in 1880 through the first and second World Wars, the depression, and onto the present. Topics include violence at the hands of the Irish powers-that-be and difficult struggles for citizenship and equal rights, inter-Italian separation, local fallout of the Sacco and Vanzetti executions, and Boston-Italian leaders — some criminal, some not. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Courting equality; a documentary history of same-sex marriage in America.
Filled with photos of the people involved in getting gay marriage enacted in Massachusetts, and those who got married once it was, this oversized volume (10.25x10.25 inches) contains the whole story of the historic process and event. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
On private property; finding common ground on the ownership of land.
Debates about US property law have been distorted by misunderstandings that fail to account for either the history of property law or its legal-philosophical foundations, argues Freyfogle (law, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), leading to a situation in which all sides — government, the emergent property rights movement, and environmental conservationists — have a arrived at an impasse. In this work, labeled by an admirer as "Roll Over, John Locke," he aims for a reimagining of American property law that addresses physical confiscation, protection for current uses, resolution of land-use disputes, new uses and development rights, the right to exclude, notice of change and transitions, variance procedures, and good process. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Our world.
Contemporary Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver offers informational and inspired text alongside 50 b&w works by her late partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook. Portraits of artists, writers, friends, and strangers in Germany, New York, New Mexico, and Mississippi are dotted with famous faces — Eleanor Roosevelt, Lorraine Hansberry, Jean Cocteau — and excerpts from Cook's journals, along with Oliver's own memories, give further dimension to the photographer's subjects and intention. Oversize: 9.5x8 inches. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
"They take our jobs!": and 20 other myths about immigration.
In the spirit of her famous father, Chomsky (Latin American studies, Salem State College, Massachusetts) has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrant rights issues for over a quarter of a century. Among the myths she dispels are that immigrants send most of what they earn out of the country, they threaten the national culture by refusing to assimilate, that countries need to control who goes in and out, and that the American public opposes immigration. She has not indexed her work. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Victory for us is to see you suffer; in the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Declaring at the very beginning that "This is not a political book," journalist Winslow, who worked for the United Nations' Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees during the Second (Al Aqsa) Intifada, explores the human dimensions of the Israel/Palestine conflict. He discusses the violence of both sides — Palestinian suicide bombers and the quantitatively more destructive Israeli military missiles and other attacks — but also discusses other important topics necessary for understanding the conflict, including the checkpoints scattered throughout the occupied territories, the economic realities of living under occupation, and Israel's illegal settlements in the territories, all with the general aim of painting a picture of what armed conflict does to humanity. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
