Often considered peculiarly American, lynching in fact takes place around the world. In the first book of a two-volume study, Michael J. Pfeifer collects essays that look at lynching and related forms of collective violence in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Understanding lynching as a transnational phenomenon rooted in political and cultural flux, the writers probe important issues from Indonesia--where a long history of public violence now twines with the Internet--to South Africa, wi...

Mr. Kushner’s glorious specialty is in giving theatrical life to internal points of view, in which our thoughts meld with a character’s wayward speculations or fantasies... He makes the personal and the universal, the trivial and the cosmic come simultaneously to life in a single character’s bewilderment.” Ben Brantley, New York TimesAn extraordinary play…a deeply felt, expansively ruminative drama.” Paul Taylor, Independent (London)What a feast of a ...

In 1961, a black veteran named James Meredith applied for admission to the University of Mississippi — and launched a legal revolt against white supremacy in the most segregated state in America. Meredith’s challenge ultimately triggered what Time magazine called “the gravest conflict between federal and state authority since the Civil War,” a crisis that on September 30, 1962, exploded into a chaotic battle between thousands of white civilians and a small corps of federal marshal...

In this book Alex Perry explores how humanitarian activities across the world, including those of celebrities like George Clooney and others brought pressure to bear that resulted in the creation of South Sudan as a separate state. This at a time when senior diplomats believed the chances of the new nation surviving and thriving were slim. Predictably, it seems an outcome that should have solved problems, reduced violence and saved lives has produced a fresh wave of bloodshed. Perry opens ...

On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a forty-nine-year-old black man, was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. It happened just outside of Jasper, a sleepy East Texas logging town that, within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the murder, would be inextricably linked in the nation’s imagination to an exceptionally brutal, modern-day lynching.In this superbly written examination of the murder and its aftermath, award-winn...

Naomi Wallace's plays speak the underside of life. Her characters suffer and survive against the enormous weight of the times with a dignity that inspires. Her work challenges the audience and reader to reexamine the conflicts and meaning of our everyday lives through her singular, poetic imagery and language.Includes: One Flea SpareIn the Heart of AmericaSlaughter CityThe War BoysThe Trestle at Pope's Creek

A provocative, timely, and deeply-researched history of gun culture and how it reflects race and power in the United States

Violence in Israel and Palestine has become the norm.Do we even understand this conflict? Do we know where it comes from?Why can't the two sides reach agreement? Can Jews and Palestinians find a way to coexist?An American Jew, Mark Braverman thought he understood the reasons for Israel's existence. But when he visited the region and began to understand the forces that are fueling and perpetuating the conflict, he realized just how far we are from achieving peace....

The harrowing true story of Robbie Tolan, a young black man who was shot in the chest by a white police officer . . . in his own driveway.NO JUSTICE is the harrowing story of Robbie Tolan, who early on one New Year's Eve morning, found himself being rushed to the hospital. A white police officer had shot him in the chest after mistakenly accusing him of stealing his own car...while in his own driveway.In a journey that took nearly a decade, T...

A gripping account of one man's long road to freedom that will forever change how we understand our criminal justice system.During the last three decades, more than two thousand American citizens have been wrongfully convicted. Ghost of the Innocent Man brings us one of the most dramatic of those cases and provides the clearest picture yet of the national scourge of wrongful conviction and of the opportunity for meaningful reform.When the final gavel...

Conceived in the immediate aftermath of the humiliations and killings of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, of the suicides and hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay and of the disappearances of detainees through extraordinary rendition, this book explores the connections between these shameful events and the inhumanity and degradation of domestic prisons within the 'allied' states, including the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland.The central theme is that the revelations of ext...

Nationalist and ethnic conflict can take many forms, from genocidal violence and civil war to protest movements and peaceful squabbles in democracies. Nationalist Passions poses a stark challenge to extreme rationalist understandings of political conflict. Stuart J. Kaufman elaborates a compelling theory of ethnic politics to explain why ethnic violence erupts in some contexts and how peace is maintained in others. At the core of Kaufman's theory is an assertion that confl...