They Were White and They Were Slaves is a thoroughly researched challenge to the conventional historiography of colonial and industrial labor, a stunning journey into a hidden epoch, the slave trade of Whites, hundreds of thousands of whom were kidnapped, chained, whipped and worked to death in the American colonies and during the Industrial Revolution. This is a chronicle that has never been fully told, part of a vital heritage that has until now comprised the dustiest shelf in the darkes...

A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War, Russia 1941-44 is the haunting memoir of a young German soldier on the Russian front during World War II.Willy Peter Reese was only twenty years old when he found himself marching through Russia with orders to take no prisoners. Three years later he was dead.Bearing witness to--and participating in--the atrocities of war, Reese recorded his reflections in his diary, leaving behind an intelligent, touching,...

"Is Arimasen a nation, then?""As to what Arimasen is and is not... oh, Ephraim, did you but know what a subject you... unwittingly, in all innocence... oh, children, how I love your bright, shining faces, your bright, shining eyes! Is Arimasen a nation? No. Arimasen is not a nation. Nor a planet. Nor a city.""A state of mind, then!""Perhaps, Umeboshi, it is that. Perhaps. I said not a planet. And yet... yes, a planet. I said not a city. And yet... yes, a city. A sta...

Michael Hoffman started writing poetry when he was forty-five. He kept his mind busy while in prison for the six years that he was there. He turned his life over to God, and he started writing poetry in many different themes, writing for his children to their mother during a fall on relationship.He was the one who had to change his life around. No one else could force him to change, but it had to be him who had to do it. He kept thinking and praying and doing it to be able to go ho...

Brave Tsavo, the first African lion hound, never dies. A nature god blesses him with reincarnation, and he lives again and again as an angel of mercy for the people he loves. Follow his heroic journey from the Dark Continent to the 9/11 disaster site and the Battle of Gettysburg. Watch him outwit a famous psychiatrist and cross the genetic line between man and animal to heal his old master's broken heart. Magical realism makes anything possible in these unusual, irresistible stories.

Why does religion sometimes increase support for democracy and sometimes do just the opposite? In Faith in Numbers, political scientist Michael Hoffman presents a theory of religion, group interest, and democracy. Focusing on communal religion, he demonstrates that the effect of communal prayer on support for democracy depends on the interests of the religious group in question. For members of groups who would benefit from democracy, communal prayer increases support for democrati...

Michael Hofmann is renowned as one of our most brilliant critics and translators; that he is also regarded as among our most respected poets - 'one of the definitive bodies of work of the last half-century', TLS - is all the more impressive for his relatively concentrated output. One Lark, One Horse will be his fifth collection of poems since his debut in 1983, and his first since Approximately Nowhere in 1999. But it is also one of the most anticipated gathering...

A documentary filmmaker uncovers the secrets of an enigmatic author in this subtly enthralling novel from “one of Europe’s most exciting writers” (New York Times Book Review).For days, documentary filmmaker Andrea and her team have been waiting for Richard Wechsler in his Swiss hometown. During their first shoots in Paris, the famous writer had not wanted to reveal much about himself, and now the whole film threatens to fail.In the narrow streets a...

A beguiling fable about a summer holiday in the Swedish countryside that transforms into a provocative parable about oppression and the evil awaiting Europe as the Nazis came to power.Castle Gripsholm, the best and most beloved work by Kurt Tucholsky, is a short novel about an enchanted summer holiday. It begins with an assignment: Tucholsky’s publisher wants him to write something light and funny, otherwise about whatever Tucholsky wants. A deal is struck...

Set in Romania at the height of Ceausescu's reign of terror, The Land of Green Plums tells the story of a group of young students, each of whom has left the impoverished provinces in search of better prospects in the city. It is a profound illustration of a totalitarian state which comes to inhabit every aspect of life; to the extent that everyone, event the strongest, must either bend to the oppressors or resist them and perish.

Habermas’s Public Sphere: A Critique analyzes the evolution of Juergen Habermas’s social and political theory from the 1950s to the present by focusing on the explicit and on the tacit changes in his thinking about The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, his global academic bestseller, which has been translated into 30 languages. Integrating “public sphere,” “discourse,” and “reason,” the three categories at the center of his lifelong work as a scholar and as a public intellect...

Werner Herzog is the undisputed master of extreme cinema: building an opera house in the middle of the jungle; walking from Munich to Paris in the dead of winter; descending into an active volcano; living in the wilderness among grizzly bears - he has always been intrigued by the extremes of human experience.From his early movies to his later documentaries, he has made a career out of exploring the boundaries of human endurance: what we are capable of in exceptional circumstances a...