Achieving socio-political cohesion in a community with significant ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity is a difficult challenge in contemporary liberal democracies. In the quest for neutrality, public policies and institutions shaped by the needs of the majority can inadvertently marginalize minority interests. Minority groups must therefore translate their desire for cultural recognition into terms that, ironically, often minimize cultural difference. Intercultural Deliberation ...

Sara Jeannette Duncan’s classic portrait of a turn-of-the-century Ontario town, The Imperialist captures the spirit of an emergent nation through the example of two young dreamers. Impassioned by “the Imperialist idea,” Lorne Murchison rests his bid for office on his vision of a rejuvenated British Empire. His sister Advena betrays a kindred attraction to the high-flown ideals in her love for an unworldly, and unavailable, young minister. Nimbly alternating between politics and ro...

A groundbreaking work that exposes the twisted origins of affirmative action.In this "penetrating new analysis" (New York Times Book Review) Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by Southern Democrats that specifically...

While panhandling outside a coffee shop, Johnny, a Cree woman who lives on the streets, is shocked to recognize a face from her childhood, which was spent in a First Nations residential school. Desperate to hear the man acknowledge the terrible abuse he inflicted on her and other children at the school, Johnny follows Anglican bishop George King to his office to confront him. Inside King’s office, Johnny’s memories are fluid, shifting, and her voice cracks with raw emotion. Is the bishop a...

US society is notoriously complacent when it comes to the rise of fascist tendencies. When Dylann Roof murdered nine black parishioners in a Charleston church, media emphasis remained superficial. Familiar narratives of insane lone wolves and Confederate flags masked the organizations that inspired Roof's act and their connections to politicians at the local, state, and federal levels throughout the South—groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens (formerly the White Citizens Council...

Fear and What Follows is a riveting, unflinching account of the author's spiral into racist violence during the latter years of desegregation in 1960s and 1970s Baton Rouge. About the memoir, author and editor Michael Griffith writes, “This might be a controversial book, in the best way—controversial because it speaks to real and intractable problems and speaks to them with rare bluntness.”The narrative of Parrish's descent into fear and irrational behavior begins with big...

Influential French novelist, screenwriter, pioneer in literary genre and Oscar nominee Vladimir Pozner came to the United States in the 1930s. He found the nation and its people in a state of profound material and spiritual crisis, and took it upon himself to chronicle the life of the worker, the striker, the politician, the starlet, the gangster, the everyman; to document the bitter, violent racism tearing our society asunder, the overwhelming despair permeating everyday life, and the uny...

How American westward expansion was governmentally engineered to promote the formation of a white settler nationWestward expansion of the United States is most conventionally remembered for rugged individualism, geographic isolationism, and a fair amount of luck. Yet the establishment of the forty-eight contiguous states was hardly a foregone conclusion, and the federal government played a critical role in its success. This book examines the politics of American ex...

Two lives senselessly struck down without provocation inside a popular Seattle park shock the city. Police find only a single clue to identify the assailant. Following this tragedy a fateful series of escalating violent incidents begin plaguing the metropolis, driven on by a man of twisted faith.This novel examines the impact of religion on modern day society, paralleling current issues affecting our times. We explore the myriad ways individuals invoke the name of God to justify th...

Passed in 1965 during the height of the Civil Rights movement, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) changed the face of the American electorate, dramatically increasing minority voting, especially in the South. While portions of the Act are permanent, certain provisions were set to expire in 2007. Reauthorization of these provisions passed by a wide margin in the House, and unanimously in the Senate, but the lopsided tally hid a deep and growing conflict. The Most Fundamental Right is an effort to ...

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...

A hard-hitting essay combined with factual reportage on the new anti-semitism throughout Europe.This book argues that what the 21st century now faces is an ideological assault based on hatred of Jews which is as serious as any major threat to universal values as the world has faced. Anti-semitism is the visible language and action of a deeper threat to world peace, to the achievements of the human spirit we call the Enlightenment, and undermines vital work to addre...