Activism in The Books Store

The Party's Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation, operated with Oakland's Children's Hospital, was among the nation's first such testing programs. Its Free Breakfast Program served as a model for national programs. Other initiatives included free clinics, grocery giveaways, school and education programs, senior programs, and legal aid programs.

On September 11, 2001, the world in which we live was changed forever. The twin towers of the World Trade Center came crashing down, one side of the Pentagon burst into flame, and more than six thousand men, women, and children lost their lives in the most deadly terrorist attack on American soil. As shocking as it was, it had been long in the making: The assault was the most sophisticated and horrifying in a series of operations masterminded by Osama bin Laden and his Jihad group -- an organization that CNN's terrorism analyst Peter Bergen calls Holy War, Inc.

One of only a handful of Western journalists to have interviewed the world's most wanted man face to face, Peter Bergen has produced the definitive book on the Jihadist network that operates globally and in secrecy. In the course of four years of investigative reporting, he has interviewed scores of insiders -- from bin Laden associates and family members to Taliban leaders to CIA officials -- and traveled to Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom to learn the truth about bin Laden's al Queda organization and his mission.

Immense in scope and unnerving in its findings, Holy War, Inc. reveals:

From Thomas Mapfumo to Bob Marley, William Parker to Frank Zappa, Edgard Varese to Ice-T; from American blues to West African drumming, hip hop to son, gospel singing to rock’n’roll cabaret, rebel music is at the heart of some of the most incisive critiques of global politics. With explosive lyrics and driving rhythms, a new wave of rebel musicians are helping to mobilize movements for political change and social justice, at home and around the world.

Original in concept, unrivaled in content, Rebel -Musics is alone in placing human rights issues side by side with different forms of music. A wide range of -accomplished contributors, from a variety of disciplines and performance contexts, examine the ways in which human rights and music are explicitly linked, how musical activism resonates in practical, political terms, and how musical resistance is enacted.

Apart from the editors, contributors include: cabaret artist, author, and musician Norman Nawrocki; film makers Marie Boti and Malcolm Guy; musician Jesse Stewart; poet George Elliott Clarke; author Timothy Brennan; economist Spencer Henson; author Martha Nandorfy; radio host Ray Pratt; editor, author, and music -reviewer Ron Sakolsky.

Daniel Fischlin is professor of English at the University of Guelph and co-author with Martha Nandorfy of Eduardo Galeano: Through the Looking Glass (Black Rose Books). He has been active as a musician for most of his life and this is his fourth book devoted to an interdisciplinary musical topic.

Ajay Heble is professor of English at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice and coeditor (with Daniel Fischlin) of The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, -Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue. Artistic director and founder of The Guelph Jazz Festival, he is also an accomplished pianist.