|
Search Results:
|
Displaying records 1 through 10 of 4000 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Price: $25.95
|
|
Sale: $15.00
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Crown
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
|
|
Author: Barack Obama
|
|
Publisher: Crown
|
|
Edition: Reprint
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.04960730092
|
|
Publication Date: 2007-01-09
|
|
Reading Level: 464
|
|
|
Description: Nine years before the Senate campaign that made him one of the most influential and compelling voices in American politics, Barack Obama published this lyrical, unsentimental, and powerfully affecting memoir, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller when it was reissued in 2004. Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obama’s struggle to understand the forces that shaped him as the son of a black African father and white American mother—a struggle that takes him from the American heartland to the ancestral home of his great-aunt in the tiny African village of Alego.
Obama opens his story in New York, where he hears that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has died in a car accident. The news triggers a chain of memories as Barack retraces his family’s unusual history: the migration of his mother’s family from small-town Kansas to the Hawaiian islands; the love that develops between his mother and a promising young Kenyan student, a love nurtured by youthful innocence and the integrationist spirit of the early sixties; his father’s departure from Hawaii when Barack was two, as the realities of race and power reassert themselves; and Barack’s own awakening to the fears and doubts that exist not just between the larger black and white worlds but within himself.
Propelled by a desire to understand both the forces that shaped him and his father’s legacy, Barack moves to Chicago to work as a community organizer. There, against the backdrop of tumultuous political and racial conflict, he works to turn back the mounting despair of the inner city. His story becomes one with those of the people he works with as he learns about the value of community, the necessity of healing old wounds, and the possibility of faith in the midst of adversity.
Barack’s journey comes full circle in Kenya, where he finally meets the African side of his family and confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life. Traveling through a country racked by brutal poverty and tribal conflict, but whose people are sustained by a spirit of endurance and hope, Barack discovers that he is inescapably bound to brothers and sisters living an ocean away—and that by embracing their common struggles he can finally reconcile his divided inheritance.
A searching meditation on the meaning of identity in America, Dreams from My Father might be the most revealing portrait we have of a major American leader—a man who is playing, and will play, an increasingly prominent role in healing a fractious and fragmented nation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.00
|
|
Sale: $3.95
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Mohsin Hamid
|
|
Publisher: Harvest Books
|
|
Edition: 1
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
|
|
Publication Date: 2008-04-14
|
|
Reading Level: 208
|
|
|
|
Description: Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, dealt with the confluence of personal and political themes, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits that territory in the person of Changez, a young Pakistani. Told in a single monologue, the narrative never flags. Changez is by turns naive, sinister, unctuous, mildly threatening, overbearing, insulting, angry, resentful, and sad. He tells his story to a nameless, mysterious American who sits across from him at a Lahore cafe. Educated at Princeton, employed by a first-rate valuation firm, Changez was living the American dream, earning more money than he thought possible, caught up in the New York social scene and in love with a beautiful, wealthy, damaged girl. The romance is negligible; Erica is emotionally unavailable, endlessly grieving the death of her lifelong friend and boyfriend, Chris. Changez is in Manila on 9/11 and sees the towers come down on TV. He tells the American, "...I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased... I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees..." When he returns to New York, there is a palpable change in attitudes toward him, starting right at immigration. His name and his face render him suspect. Ongoing trouble between Pakistan and India urge Changez to return home for a visit, despite his parents' advice to stay where he is. While there, he realizes that he has changed in a way that shames him. "I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared... I was saddened to find it in such a state... This was where I came from... and it smacked of lowliness." He exorcises that feeling and once again appreciates his home for its "unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm." While at home, he lets his beard grow. Advised to shave it, even by his mother, he refuses. It will be his line in the sand, his statement about who he is. His company sends him to Chile for another business valuation; his mind filled with the troubles in Pakistan and the U.S. involvement with India that keeps the pressure on. His work and the money he earns have been overtaken by resentment of the United States and all it stands for. Hamid's prose is filled with insight, subtly delivered: "I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth." In telling of the janissaries, Christian boys captured by Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in the Muslim Army, his Chilean host tells him: "The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget." Changez cannot forget, and Hamid makes the reader understand that--and all that follows. --Valerie Ryan
A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
 Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book
Read the Amazon.com Interview with Mohsin Hamid
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $15.00
|
|
Sale: $6.94
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Picador
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Philip Gourevitch
|
|
Publisher: Picador
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1510967571
|
|
Publication Date: 1999-09-01
|
|
Reading Level: 356
|
|
|
|
Description: "Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute. The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $4.95
|
|
Sale: $1.77
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Frontline Distribution International
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Kashif Malik Hassan-El
|
|
Publisher: Frontline Distribution International
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.362
|
|
Publication Date: 1999-03-01
|
|
Reading Level: 30
|
|
|
|
Description: The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave is a study of slave making. It discribes the rationale and the results of Anglo Saxon's ideas and methods of insuring the master/slave relationship.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.95
|
|
Sale: $7.76
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Soft Skull Press
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Tim Wise
|
|
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
|
|
Edition: 2nd
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.800973
|
|
Publication Date: 2007-12-28
|
|
Reading Level: 176
|
|
|
|
Description: Racial privilege shapes the lives of white Americans in every facet of life, from employment and education to housing and criminal justice. Using stories from his own life, Tim Wise shows that racism not only burdens people of color, but also benefits those who are "white like him" — whether or not they’re actively racist. Using stories instead of stale statistics, Wise weaves a compelling narrative that assesses the magnitude of racial privilege and is at once readable and scholarly, analytical yet accessible.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.00
|
|
Sale: $8.32
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Grove Press
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Frantz Fanon
|
|
Publisher: Grove Press
|
|
Edition: Revised
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.896
|
|
Publication Date: 2008-09-10
|
|
Reading Level: 240
|
|
|
|
Description: Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon’s masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers.
A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $15.95
|
|
Sale: $5.75
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Broadway
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Ron Suskind
|
|
Publisher: Broadway
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 371.8092
|
|
Publication Date: 1999-05-04
|
|
Reading Level: 400
|
|
|
|
Description: Ron Suskind won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1995 for his stories on Cedric Jennings, a talented black teenager struggling to succeed in one of the worst public high schools in Washington, D.C. Suskind has expanded those features into a full-length nonfiction narrative, following Jennings beyond his high-school graduation to Brown University, and in the tradition of Leon Dash's Rosa Lee and Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here, delivers a compelling story on the struggles of inner-city life in modern America. While it appears to have a happy ending (with Jennings earning a B average in his sophomore year), A Hope in the Unseen is not without a few caveats (at times, Jennings feels profoundly alienated from his white peers). Trite as it may sound to say, this book teaches a lesson about the virtue of perseverance, and it's definitely worth reading. --John J. Miller
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $17.95
|
|
Sale: $10.00
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: New Press
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Lisa Delpit
|
|
Publisher: New Press
|
|
Edition: 1
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 379
|
|
Publication Date: 2006-08-01
|
|
Reading Level: 240
|
|
|
Description: An updated edition of the classic revolutionary analysis of the role of race in the classroom.
Winner of an American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Award and Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic book award, and voted one of Teacher Magazine's "great books," Other People's Children has sold over 150,000 copies since its original hardcover publication. This anniversary edition features a new introduction by Delpit as well as new framing essays by Herbert Kohl and Charles Payne.
In a radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur Award-winning author Lisa Delpit develops ideas about ways teachers can be better "cultural transmitters" in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and "other people's children" struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system.
A new classic among educators, Other People's Children is a must-read for teachers, administrators, and parents striving to improve the quality of America's education system.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.95
|
|
Sale: $8.00
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Jonathan Kozol
|
|
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 379.2630973
|
|
Publication Date: 2006-08-01
|
|
Reading Level: 432
|
|
|
Description: Over the last 15 years, the state of inner-city public schools has been in a steep and continuing decline. Since the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.
Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems by the Bush administration. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $20.00
|
|
Sale: $12.20
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
|
|
Author: Cornel West
|
|
Publisher: Beacon Press
|
|
Edition: 1
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.800973
|
|
Publication Date: 2001-05-25
|
|
Reading Level: 108
|
|
|
|
Description: First published in 1993 on the one-year anniversary of the L.A. riots, Race Matters has since become an American classic. Beacon Press is proud to present this hardcover edition with a new introduction by Cornel West. The issues that it addresses are as controversial and urgent as before, and West's insights remain fresh, exciting, and timely. Now more than ever, Race Matters is a book for all Americans—one that will help us build a genuine multiracial democracy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Displaying records 1 through 10 of 4000
|
|
|
|
