Ambitious and masterfully-wrought, Lauren Francis-Sharma's Book of the Little Axe is an incredible journey, spanning decades and oceans from Trinidad to the American West during the tumultuous days of warring colonial powers and westward expansion. In 1796 Trinidad, young Rosa Rendon quietly but purposefully rebels against the life others expect her to lead. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house, for it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she, alone, views as her birthright. But when her homeland changes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners-Rosa's family among them-will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom. By 1830, Rosa is living among the Crow Nation in Bighorn, Montana with her children and her husband, Edward Rose, a Crow chief. Her son Victor is of the age where he must seek his vision and become a man. But his path forward is blocked by secrets Rosa has kept from him. So Rosa must take him to where his story began and, in turn, retrace her own roots, acknowledging along the way, the painful events that forced her from the middle of an ocean to the rugged terrain of a far-away land.

This book examines Israeli-Jordanian relations from the end of the 1967 war until the 1994 signing of the Treaty of Peace, with a special emphasis on the 1967-1988 period. Its underlying theme is that, despite the formal state of war between them, the two countries engaged in functional cooperation resulting from a perception of shared interests. The paradoxical-type of relationship between adversaries is not uncommon in international relations.

This is Judith Caesar's account of her life and work in the Arab Middle East during a period of great political and social turmoil. While there, she was forced to begin the long process of unlearning much of what she thought she knew about Arabs.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN POETRY, with its wellsprings in jazz and vernacular culture and its inescapable political dimension, stands among the most important bodies of literary work of the twentieth century. This collection of essays and six lively interviews with practicing poets, arising from the now-famous Furious Flower Conference of 1994, provides a mosaic of the major critical and aesthetic issues emerging from the poetry and its literary milieu.

African-American poets writing in the last fifty years have raised their voices in the struggle against racism, sexism, political and economic exploitation, violence, and injustice. Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones), Joyce Ann Joyce, Sherley Anne Williams, Michael S. Harper, Margaret Walker and many others have created lyrical beauty in their exploration of public and private concerns. Unlike any previous scholarship, The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry draws readers into a dialogue with leading poets and critics of African-American literature and culture. The interviews and critical essays address the adequacy and appropriateness of theoretical models for assessing the work of black poets, the construction of a literary framework in which to place the poets and their work, and the art and purpose of the poets themselves.

Furious Flowering offers students, scholars, readers, and writers of African-American poetry a chance to take part in an unprecedented discussion of a complex literary culture.

An illustrated book celebrating the achievements of inspirational characters who made a new life in Britain. From Hans Holbein to Raheem Sterling, Freddie Mercury to Judith Kerr, and Harry Selfridge to Kylie Minogue, they have helped to make our country. Many arrived broke, knowing little English. They achieved success by overcoming obstacles and working hard. And their legacies are still with us. Alec Issigonis designed the Mini car, while Henry Wellcome funded British science. Without Michael Marks, we wouldn't have Marks & Spencer. Without Ludwig Guttmann, there would be no Paralympics. Each individual occupies a double-page spread, with a biography and a colour illustration. A reader can add a 100th individual - perhaps a friend, relative, colleague or neighbour.

Following The People and the Books, which "covers more than 2,500 years of highly variegated Jewish cultural expression" (Robert Alter, New York Times Book Review), poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch now turns to the story of modern Jewish literature. From the vast emigration of Jews out of Eastern Europe to the Holocaust to the creation of Israel, the twentieth century transformed Jewish life. The same was true of Jewish writing: the novels, plays, poems, and memoirs of Jewish writers provided intimate access to new worlds of experience. Kirsch surveys four themes that shaped the twentieth century in Jewish literature and culture: Europe, America, Israel, and the endeavor to reimagine Judaism as a modern faith. With discussions of major books by over thirty writers-ranging from Franz Kafka to Philip Roth, Elie Wiesel to Tony Kushner, Hannah Arendt to Judith Plaskow-he argues that literature offers a new way to think about what it means to be Jewish in the modern world. With a wide scope and diverse, original observations, Kirsch draws fascinating parallels between familiar writers and their less familiar counterparts. While everyone knows the diary of Anne Frank, for example, few outside of Israel have read the diary of Hannah Senesh. Kirsch sheds new light on the literature of the Holocaust through the work of Primo Levi, explores the emergence of America as a Jewish home through the stories of Bernard Malamud, and shows how Yehuda Amichai captured the paradoxes of Israeli identity. An insightful and engaging work from "one of America's finest literary critics" (Wall Street Journal), The Blessing and the Curse brings the Jewish experience vividly to life.

Beer in the United States has always been bound up with race, racism, and the construction of white institutions and identities. Given the very quick rise of craft beer, as well as the myopic scholarly focus on economic and historical trends in the field, there is an urgent need to take stock of the intersectional inequalities that such realities gloss over. This unique book carves a much-needed critical and interdisciplinary path to examine and understand the racial dynamics in the craft beer industry and the popular consumption of beer.

This book debunks the conventional stereotype that Jews and sports are somehow anathema and clearly demonstrates that sports have long been a significant institution in Jewish American life. Jews were among the very first professional baseball players and the most outstanding early American track stars. In the 1920s and 1930s they dominated inner-city sports such as basketball and boxing and produced star athletes in virtually all sports. Many Jews were also prominent in the business, communication, and literary aspects of sport. These essays, written by leading contemporary sports historians, examine the contributions of Jewish men and women to American sports. Steven A. Riess's article on this topic is the most comprehensive overview ever written and will doubtless become a standard reference for years to come.

In a well-known hadith, Muhammed advises Muslims that, "On the Day of Resurrection, you will be called by your names and the names of your fathers; so keep beautiful names." Inspired by the teachings of Islam, names fulfill the cherished ambitions of a true Muslim. In The Dictionary of Muslim Names, Salahuddin Ahmed provides a helpful and substantive guide to common and less-common Muslim names. This lively and informative dictionary lists the original Arabic, Persian, or Turkish spelling, as well as a precise English transliteration. The names' meaning and bearing on Islamic heritage or world history are referenced, along with historical figures who bore the name-an Imaam, a Sultan, a saint-and accompanying illustrations.

The first object created by God, according to early Muslim commentators, was the pen, which he used to chronicle events to come. The word, in its various manifestations, is central to the Islamic faith. Surely a reflection of this centrality, profuse inscriptions mark countless Islamic objects, from the humblest oil lamps and unglazed ceramics to the finest and most expensive rock crystals and jades. The inscriptions serve numerous functions: decorating, proclaiming ownership and patronage, proffering good wishes and proverbs, and spreading religious texts throughout the world. Aside from their aesthetic worth, these inscriptions provide a fascinating window onto a distant culture.

In Islamic Inscriptions, Sheila S. Blair a wealth of stunning images and incisive commentary, while also providing the newcomer to Islamic civilization with a key to unlocking the mysteries of Islamic epigraphy. In addition to chapters devoted to the main types of inscription, detailing the development of their content and style, inscriptive techniques, and the motivations behind them, the book provides practical knowledge on finding, identifying, interpreting, researching, and recording inscriptions. The variety and clarity of information presented makes Islamic Inscriptions an ideal reference for historians, curators, archaeologists, and collectors.

Linguists estimate that there are currently nearly 2,000 languages in Africa, a staggering figure that is belied by the relatively few national languages. While African national politics, economics and law are all conducted primarily in the colonial languages, the cultural life of the majority of citizens is conducted in a bewildering babel of regional vernaculars and local dialects. In The Power of Babel, Ali Mazrui and Alamin Mazrui explore the cultural and political implications of this linguistic diversity, including the role of language in nationalism and expansionist policies, gender roles, and social theory, to provide one of the most comprehensive studies of the complex linguistic constellations of Africa.

The Power of Babel draws on Ali Mazrui's earlier work in its examination of the "triple heritage" of African culture, in which indigenous, Islamic, and Western traditions compete for influence. In bringing the idea of the triple heritage to language, the Mazruis unravel issues of power, culture, and modernity as they are embedded in African linguistic life. The first section of the book takes a global perspective, exploring such issues as the Eurocentrism of much linguistic scholarship on Africa; part two takes an African perspective on a variety of topics from the linguistically disadvantaged position of women in Africa to the relation of language policy and democratic development; the third section presents a set of regional studies, centering on the Swahili language's exemplification of the triple heritage. The Power of Babel unites empirical information with theories of nationalism and pluralism -- among others -- to consider the future of a linguistically pluralisticAfrica and to offer the richest contextual account of African languages to date.

A hardcover copy of the draft, preliminary, and final versions of Abraham Lincoln's January 1, 1863 Executive Order, the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's slaves.

"A dozen experts provide a coherent picture of the Taliban and the Great Game. . . . They discuss the emergence of the Taliban, their military development, the civil war, and their relations with foreign powers. Several of the authors conclusively demonstrate that the Taliban(and their organized opposition) are the creatures of external powers.... Richard Mackenzie provides a devastating summary of the ineptitute with which U.S. policies have been conducted . . . the volume makes it all too clear that outside powers will determine Afghanistan's fate."
--Middle East Quarterly

"A useful analysis of the Taliban and politics and society in Afghanistan today. The four chapters on the intensive foreign involvement--by Pakistan, the United States, Russian, the Central Asian republics, Saudi Arabia, and Iran--show that the venerable "great game" once played between Britain and czarist Russia now has multiple players."
--Foreign Affairs

"A fascinating and thorough analysis of the very complex political/military situation that evolved in Afghanistan follwing the demise of the Soviet puppet regime in 1992. This volume also provides an insightful study of the rise of a new form of puritanical Islamic fundamentalism that overran Kabul in September 1996--namely, the Taliban, and its impact on Afghan society. . . . Highly recommended."
--Choice

"[It] is an important collection of essays by leading experts on Afghanistan and the Taliban...an invaluable academic resource for anyone seeking to understand how the Taliban came to rule and "ruin" Afghanistan."
--"Washington Times"

In 1996, the world watched with varying degrees of interest, surprise, and unease as armed, ultra-fundamentalist insurgents overthrew the Afghan government. Within days of their victory, the Taliban, a militant Islamic sect, were issuing draconian religious decrees, restricting women's employment and movement, rounding up Afghans at gunpoint to pray five times a day, and publicly executing political opponents and criminals.

Composed of essays commissioned from the foremost experts on the Taliban, this anthology traces the movement's origins, its ascendance, the reasons for its success, and its role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Crucial to the Taliban's staying power as a governing force will be its relations with neighboring countries and with the West. Interestingly, given their intense hatred of Iran, the Taliban were enthusiastically supported by the U.S. government up to the very moment of their triumphant arrival in Kabul.

Examining yet another country on the brink of ethnic disintegration, Fundamentalism Reborn? is a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the history, rise to power, and future of the most dramatic manifestation of Islamic fundamentalism since the Iranian revolution.

2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title In Clues to Lower Mississippi Valley Histories David V. Kaufman offers a stunning relational analysis of social, cultural, and linguistic change in the Lower Mississippi Valley from 500 to 1700. He charts how linguistic evidence aids the understanding of earlier cultural and social patterns, traces the diaspora of indigenous peoples, and uncovers instances of human migration. Historical linguistics establishes evidence of contact between indigenous peoples in the linguistic record where other disciplinary approaches have obscured these connections. The Mississippi Valley is the heartland of early North American civilizations, a rich and diversified center of transportation for every part of eastern North America and to Mesoamerica. The Lower Mississippi Valley region emerged as the home of the earliest mound-building societies in the Americas and was home to some of the most impressive kingdoms encountered by Spanish and French explorers. The languages of the region provide the key to the realities experienced by these indigenous peoples, their histories, and their relationships. Clues to Lower Mississippi Valley Histories focuses on relationships that constitute what linguists call a sprachbund (language union), or language area. Kaufman illuminates and articulates these linguistic relationships through a skillful examination of archaeological and ethnohistorical data. Clues to Lower Mississippi Valley Histories examines the relationship between linguistics and archaeology to elucidate the early history of the Lower Mississippi Valley.

The Onondaga County Department of Parks is pleased to have organized this book to interpret seventy-one turn-of-the-century photographs of the Onondaga Indian Nation. they offer rare and compelling insights into life nearly a century ago on the reservation just south of Syracuse, New York.

The Bible is harshly opposed to participation by Israelites in the worship of other nations' gods. Was this strict command to the nation of Israel not to worship other deities extended to other nations? Or was it legitimate and acceptable for other nations to worship their own gods just as Israel worshipped the God of the Covenant?

In The Nations That Know Thee Not, Robert Goldenberg takes a historical look at attitudes towards foreign religions that are found in Israel's scriptures and in post-Biblical Judaism, and he traces an ambivalent attitude toward foreign religions as it developed through the history of Judaism. How did Jewish outlooks on gentile religions vary so much over time? As Jewish acceptance of paganism grew under rabbinic leadership, did Christianity become heir to other, harsher biblical attitudes toward other religions?

Systematically covering the entire range of Jewish literature of antiquity from the Bible through the rabbinic canons, Goldenberg sheds light on the ways in which ancient Jews understood the religious worlds in which they lived.

A Darker Shade Of Pale tells the story of life as a person of mixed race in apartheid South Africa.

After the National Party gained power in South Africa in 1948, the all-white government took control by legislating their policies of racial segregation under a system called apartheid. Forced to live among the sand dunes and narrow streets of Council housing estates, through her mixed ancestry Beryl was classified as Coloured, not white enough or not black enough. This allowed the government to shape her life, where she was allowed to live, to attend school, to sit on the train, to work, and who she could marry.

Growing up in council housing estates on the Cape Flats in the 1960s and early 1970s it wasn’t until reaching high school that she discovered a richer life on the other side of the tracks for those classified as white. The stark reality of the inequality towards her skin colour made her question her ancestry and her parents’ acceptance of their classification. She was drawn to joining rallies to fight the government but at home any such discussions were strongly dismissed.

It is a remarkable story of the resilience of her parents, particularly her mother Sarah who recognised that the future for her children was through education. Sarah, faced with many challenges – the death of a young child, a husband suffering ill-health, five children to feed and to keep a roof over their head powered the way forward to increase their chances of a better life should apartheid crumble.

A Darker Shade Of Pale is a moving account of Beryl’s family and community life in segregated South Africa – the injustices, humiliation and challenges and finally finding acceptance when she moved to Australia in the 1980s.

Reflects what traditional proverbs used in Christian catechetical, liturgical, and ritual contexts reveal about Tanzanian appropriations of and interpretations of Christianity.

For centuries, Whiteness has been the invisible norm in the West, a transparent, yet ubiquitous frame of reference so pervasive that most Whites consider themselves absolved from race matters. In recent years activists, scholars, and writers have been challenging this cultural and political monolith by investigating Whiteness in its many manifestations. Yet, once it is rendered visible, Whiteness proves to be perilous and paradoxical: we single out Whiteness to expose its status as an unexamined center, yet the more we single it out, the more attention we invariably draw to it, once again at the expense of marginalized cultures. Organized into sections on white politics, white culture, white bodies, and white theory, this anthology collects much of the most important work on Whiteness to date. Such writers as David Roediger, Eric Lott, E. Ann Kaplan, Fred Pfeil, Amitava Kumar, and Henry A. Giroux serve up what is, in essence, a second generation of writing on Whiteness, moving past acknowledgment of its heretofore invisible nature, to in-depth analysis of its resilience and alleged disintegration. Taking on film, literature, music, militias, even Rush Limbaugh, Whiteness: A Critical Reader is a crucial contribution to discussions of race, politics, and culture in the U.S. today.

"Cheyennes at Dark Water Creek" tells the tragic story of the southern bands of Cheyennes from the period following the Treaty of Medicine Lodge through the battles and skirmishes known as the Red River War. The Battle of Sappa Creek, the last encounter of that conflict, was a fight between a band of Cheyennes and a company of the Sixth Cavalry that took place in Kansas in April 1875. More Cheyennes were killed in that single engagement than in all the previous fighting of the war combined, and later there were controversial charges of massacre-and worse. William Y. Chalfant has used all known contemporaneous sources to recound the tragedy that occurred at the place known to the Cheyennes as Dark Water Creek. In Cheyenne memories, its name remains second only to Sand Creek in the terrible images and the sorrow it evokes.

Chalfant tells the story in a sweeping style that recreates Cheyenne life on the southern plains. Beyond examining firsthand and secoundary accounts in detail, the author personally retraced the route of the army detachment from Fort Wallace, Kansas, to the battle site at Sappa Creek, and the route of the Cheyennes from Punished Women's Fork to the Sappa. His recounting of the lives of the Indian and military participants, both leading up to and following the battle, is sure to appeal both to scholars of the Indian wars and to the general reader.

American expansion, says Richard Drinnon, is characterized by repression and racism. In his reinterpretation of "winning" the West, Drinnon links racism with colonialism and traces this interrelationship from the Pequot War in New England, through American expansion westward to the Pacific, and beyond to the Phillippines and Vietnam. He cites parrallels between the slaughter of bison on the Great Plains and the defoliation of Vietnam and notes similarities in the language of aggression used in the American West, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia.

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the eve of World War II, Africans displaced by colonial rule aggrandized the attainments of American blacks, creating an African american myth that played an important role in their religious, political and social life. This myth, while existing in direct contradiction to the intense discrimination faced by black people in the United States, provided Africans with an inspirational model upon which to improve their lives.

"Africans on African-Americans" traces the development of the African American myth and the way in which the Liberal Movement in South Africa looked to America for a formula for racial harmony that eluded their troubled country. While highlighting the strength of the African american myth, Gershoni also demonstrates that everywhere the myth had adherents it also had opponents, who insisted that the solution to Africa's ills lay in African culture and African peoples.

"In this powerful, lucid poems, Allison Joseph looks unflinchingly at the chronic angers of an unromanticized urban childhood. The vividly rendered neighborhoods of In Every Seam unfold before us, showing us how the young are taught over and over that the glittering, sparkling, dazzling things of the world are beyond their grasp. But Joseph, a survivor of these neighborhoods, brilliantly disproves these lessons. In Every Seam is literally a triumph". Maura Stanton

"Like all good literature, the poems in Allison Joseph's In Every Seam explore the common yet complex notion of what it's like to be a human being. These poems take a close-up look at the particular world of the author -- a black woman who grew up in an America which refused, again and again, to see her as a person first, a black person second". Andrea Hollander Budy

During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, many Korean-American businesses were looted and burned to the ground. Although nearly half of the looters arrested were Latinos, the media portrayed this aspect of the riots more in terms of the on- going conflicts between Korean-Americans and African- Americans. In another part of the world in 1984, the violence which ensued after the assassination of India's Indira Gandhi was portrayed by officials and state leaders as a spilling over of mass sentiments of grief and anger, a conflict between ethnic groups instead of a pogrom against the Sikhs.

Riots and Pogroms presents comparative studies of public violence in the twentieth-century in the United States, Russia, Germany, Israel, and India with a comparative, historical, and analytical introduction by the editor. The focus of the book is on the interpretive process which follows riots and pogroms, rather than on the search for their causes. Its emphasis is on the struggle for control over the meaning of riotous events, for the right to represent them properly. How do political and social forces seek to assign causes and attach labels to riots, attribute motives to rioters and pogromists, and explain why particular groups are selected for violent assaults? To what extent are the state and its agents implicated in those assaults? To what degree does organization and/or spontaneity play a role in these incidents?