Award-winning novelist Steve Stern s exhilarating epic recounts the story of how a nineteenth-century rabbi from a small Polish town ends up in a basement freezer in a suburban Memphis home at the end of the twentieth century. What happens when an impressionable teenage boy inadvertently thaws out the ancient man and brings him back to life is nothing short of miraculous.
"

This collection of essays challenges our understanding of the history of native Andean rebellion during the last three centuries. The contributors-historians and anthropologists from a number of countries-move beyond the traditional structural analysis of society to a finer understanding of people as actors. Native Andean initiatives and consciousness are clearly placed at the center of this inquiry, which merges the best methods of history an anthropology. Stern begins with a vigorously argued theoretical essay in which he identifies major findings and arguments running throughout the book, demonstrates their pertinence to the more general field of peasant studies, and draws out the implications for theory and method. He reappraises the role of peasant consciousness and political horizons; and the significance of ethnic factors in explaining "peasant" consciousness and revolt. The case studies themselves revamp the history of Andean peasant rebellion and consciousness in Peru and Bolivia. This is accomplished by studying violent uprisings as transitional moments within a long-term trajectory embracing varied forms of resistance, and by scrutinizing closely the ideological and cultural aspects of domination, political legitimacy, and rebellion. The results sharply alter our understanding of three major historical problems: the crisis of Spanish colonial rule and the outbreak of native Andean insurrection in the eighteenth century; the response to peasants to creole wars and nation-building efforts in the nineteenth century; and the political strategies and dilemmas of Andean peasants in the context of populist and radical politics in the twentieth century.

"An astonishing writer ... who has secured himself a seat in the distinguished history of Jewish-American letters". -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

Steve Stern returns with lyrically comic tales about the Pinch, a backwater Jewish community in Memphis, whose misbegotten citizens refer to themselves as "the lost tribe". Stern's dreamers are plagued by history, lust, solitude, and the extravagance of their own fevered imaginations.

Stern is a consummate spinner of tales, a mythmaker. A Plague of Dreamers evokes the American Jewish experience, weaving a tapestry of tradition and assimilation and, ultimately, of transformation.

The revolutionary war launched by Shining Path, a Maoist insurgency, was the most violent upheaval in modern Peru's history, claiming some 70,000 lives in the 1980s-1990s and drawing widespread international attention. Yet for many observers, Shining Path's initial successes were a mystery. What explained its cult-like appeal, and what actually happened inside the Andean communities at war? In How Difficult It Is to Be God Carlos Ivan Degregori-the world's leading expert on Shining Path and the intellectual architect for Peru's highly regarded Truth and Reconciliation Commission-elucidates the movement's dynamics. An anthropologist who witnessed Shining Path's recruitment of militants in the 1970s, Degregori grounds his findings in deep research and fieldwork. He explains not only the ideology and culture of revolution among the insurgents, but also their capacity to extend their influence to university youths, Indian communities, and competing social and political movements. Making Degregori's most important book available to English-language readers for the first time, this translation includes a new introduction by the editor, historian Steve J. Stern, who analyses the author's achievement, why it matters, and the debates it sparked. For anyone interested in Peru and Latin America's age of "dirty war," or in the comparative study of revolutions, Maoism, and human rights, this book will provide arresting new insights.