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...

"A sharply articulated, well-documented expos of the political and economic manipulation of language . . . Fans of Orwell, take heart."— Kirkus ReviewsWhat do the phrases "pro-life," "intelligent design," and "the war on terror" have in common? Each of them is a name for something that smuggles in a highly charged political opinion. Words and phrases that function in this special way go by many names. Some writers call them "evaluative-descriptive terms." ...

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...

Today, hundreds of thousands of people, desperate to escape war, violence and poverty, are crossing the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Europe. Our response from our protected European standpoint, argues Slavoj Zizek, offers two versions of ideological blackmail: either we open our doors as widely as possible; or we try to pull up the drawbridge. Both solutions are bad, states Zizek. They merely prolong the problem, rather than tackling it.The refugee crisis also presents an opport...

The classic novella from Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck explores the secrets of man's nature, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as la...

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...

With a new afterword by the authorIn her map to loss, losing and being lost, Rebecca Solnit explores the challenges of living with uncertainty. Meandering eclectically through memory and mortality, Hitchcock movies and heartbreak, Solnit’s beloved account of staying off the beaten path sheds glittering new light on the way we live now.

A riveting exploration of terrorism's relationship to sex, with a new preface by the authorTerrorism is the international crime that has captured the attention of the entire world, forcing governments to make radical changes in security and civil liberties. Meanwhile, everyone tries to comprehend the real reasons that inspire such violence.This is where political philosopher Robin Morgan begins The Demon Lover, a groundbreaking work of investigative ...

**A New York Times Notable BookFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle AwardA personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy, from the author of Orwell's Roses**Apricots. Her mother's disintegrating memory. An invitation to Iceland. Illness. These are Rebecca Solnit's raw materials, but The Faraway Nearby goes beyond her own life, as she spirals out into the stories she heard and read—from fairy tales to Mary Shelley's

"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...

A Penguin ClassicIn the two years after the 1939 publication of Steinbeck’s masterful The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck and his novel increasingly became the center of intense controversy and censorship. In search of a respite from the national stage, Steinbeck and his close friend, biologist Ed Ricketts, embarked on a month long marine specimen-collecting expedition in the Gulf of California, which resulted in their collaboration on the Sea o...